Philippinefails: Telenovelas and Love Teams

Tuesday, March 14, 2017

Telenovelas and Love Teams

Brangelina, Bennifer, Bogie and Bacall, Hollywood has given the world plenty of onscreen and real life love teams. An open secret of early Hollywood is that many of these love teams were covers for homosexuality.

Best Love Team of all time

In Hollywood love teams are fodder for the tabloids and a tool to get people to see movies but in the Philippines love teams are a whole different ball game.

In the Philippines love teams are the foundation stone of all televison and film. These teams start off on television starring in a sappy romantic telenovela. While the show is going on the love team does all kinds of promotion and passes themselves off as a real life couple. And indeed many of them are.

Eventually they will make it to the big screen and maybe even get married in real life. But sometimes it ends and that spells the end of a career which was built on such a precarious point.

Love teams and telenovelas reflect a stark void of originality on Filipino television which contributes to bringing the Philippines in a downward spiral culturally. There is nothing that uplifts the spirit or provokes curiosity in the viewer. Instead a cultic devotion to each team develops and balkanisation takes place. People get real touchy if you diss their favourite team.

Telenovelas make up basically ALL of original Filipino television programming. Romantic novels, movies, and television are generally escapist trash meant for women. Imagine having that being the cornerstone of all televison.

There is no X-Files, Sherlock, Seinfeld, Star Trek, The Office, Cheers, Lost, Twilight Zone or anything else that breaks the mold and draws people into a whole new world of possibility or comedy. The only draw of telenovelas is the love team and the viewer rooting for them. How many people has Star Trek influenced in astounding ways that has affected real life?