DAY 28: ECQ

Twenty-eight days of self-imposed house arrest.

If there are three things that have changed in my life since the implementation of the Enhanced Community Quarantine (Oo na, lock down na nga!), then these are the following:

(a) I have learned to sleep seven to eight hours every night --- something I have not done since I was in Grade Six.  And believe me, that was a long, long time ago.

(b) I have not used a single credit card for a month.  I have not bought a stick of clothing,  not even a shoestring or a swatch of shirt ... and it did not matter.  I am still OK.

But most important ...

(c) I have been "eaten by the system" as one Facebook friend said: I am now addicted to KDramas or Koreanovelas.  

I know that a lot of my friends and a certain percentage of the population of the Republic of the Philippines are Kdrama fans.  The younger among us are KPop addicts.  Whereas I, with my limited leisure time and somewhat  narrow taste, have limited my appreciation of Korean popular culture to its most available cuisine --- namely kimchi and bulgogi.  

ECQ has changed that.  

From a frenetic life that begins at 10AM and ends approximately 2AM the following day whether on location shooting, in air-conditioned meeting rooms for preproduction or in a classroom or my office in the film program, suddenly I find myself home for the past twenty-eight effing days with a sense of tentativeness of what is to come right after.  And I, like the rest of the world do not know when that "end" will happen ... or what will be left after it.

So in an effort to keep my sanity or not think about how this Third World War against a microbe will alter my life and the rest of the world, I gave in to Netflix and the KDrama.  

How would I know, for instance, that after watching my first series entitled Crash Landing On You that my curiosity would be piqued and I would go straight into a second series recommended by Roselle Monteverde entitled Pinocchio?  

So after so many hours of each predictable, more-of-the-same day of quarantine, the KDrama has suddenly become part of my survival kit.  I am not an expert nor a hundred percent Koreanovela authority but watching all these shows made me slowly understand why this form of entertainment has created major addiction for a substantial number of Filipinos.  Now I see why this has become an important addition to the daily menu of human existence of so many.

Out of even more curiosity, I posted a Twitter survey among my followers who I assumed would have a great number of KDrama fans.

I was not prepared for the response:  overwhelming would be an understatement.

My question was simply: 
       " Just wondering because I want to know your thoughts:  WHAT MAKES
         KOREANOVELAS SUCH FAVORITES FOR FILIPINOS? What makes
         them DIFFERENT? "

Since I posted this two days ago, it has been Retweeted ninety-four times and I have received a total of six hundred seventy-three responses.

I was and still am overjoyed with the learning that I am getting because who is the best to know how a media product works than the consumers themselves?  What particularly struck me was the keen mind and observation used by those who responded.  I was not getting hogwash answers: I was getting answers from thinking members of the audience who are reacting to what has been given to them not by Koreanovelas alone but by the local products in the form of mainstream teleseryes.

I realized that a number of us working in media were right.  The Filipino audience is not and was never that docile sponge that merely accepted anything rammed down their throats.  The Filipino audience is not composed to zombie idiots who will devour anything which they feel violates their sensibilities and, yes, intelligence.  With the exposure to Korean, Taiwanese and even Thai and Turkish soap operas through cable as well as streaming platforms, the wide range of products has introduced this sector of the audience to the possibilities of innovation or simply leveling up to a more worthy international standard.

What I received was a whole list of what makes Koreanovelas different ... and, worse, what make them more noteworthy than their Filipino counterparts.

I was engrossed with the way the audience --- not the head of Research in charge of focus groups in the Creative Department of a network --- pinpoints the problems and reaffirms what has already been echoed for years.  This is coming from the real audience,  not a random sample selected as focus groups made to view a show then given a pencil and paper to jot down their thoughts, give a grade or rate the marketability of the material.   The observations sent as replies to my questions were candid as they were sincere --- and apparently these are from people who know far more than me about the art and craft of the KDrama.

Thus, I will blog about what my impromptu Twitter survey revealed ... and compare/contrast the making of Koreanovelas to that of Philippine mainstream television to reveal why the Filipino telenovela has evolved into what it has become today ... and what are the similarities and differences between the same genre interpreted by two distinct cultures and produced by very unique studio practices in the formulation, production and screening of the continuing series.

On the offset, there are twelve points cited by the Twitter folks who are apparently faithful fans and followers of KDramas.

Let me deal with the first three here:

(1) The approach or style of narratives of KDramas is not over-the-top dramatic: they are light, warm, innocent when romantic --- fast-paced, cutting edge and suspenseful when dealing with crime and mystery.

Well, yes.  This is the first thing that one notices in KDramas.  with my limited references to Crash Landing on You (CLOY) and Pinocchio (PIN) is that the dramatic element is never pushed to the limit of people screaming at each other, lashing at each other for catfights or even exaggerated and somewhat obvious choreographed punch-by-number fight scenes or even over-stretched hagulgulan and buwis-buhay ngawngawan.

KDramas dramatize through tenderness.  Tears fall sweetly in  the right moments with beautifully shot close-ups both from female and male leads.  The emotions are never held back but are never exploited to the point of stretching a scene to squeeze its dramatic intensity.  That was immediately noticeable in both CLOY and PIN.  You are fed an emotional scene but then it is cut right at the time when you know exactly how to react to that moment --- followed by, strangely but effectively, a light moment involving comedic elements.

Yes, cinematography and music play such vital roles in the mounting of scenes but that I will explore in greater detail later on.  But what is even more distinct is that romance  is illustrated with innocence and fragility --- and not with lust or passion.  One respondent from my Twitter survey said that kissing scenes in KDramas are inosente at walang libog,  That much I can ascertain mainly because the producers know exactly their target audience.

There is a well thought-out orchestration of images, music and emotions to make tender scenes enticing but not titillating. 

I will return to this point at the end of this blog to give my five cents worth of observation as to why Filipinos treat love scenes in a certain way which is very different from the way our Korean brothers handle the same material.

(2) The stories are straightforward, narrated to the point with no excess and redundancy.

Now that is very true.

Here we are not only talking about the fast pacing or cutting of the scenes.  It is the precision in the way the narrative is laid out per episode.  You are aware of the primary narrative thread or the main problem ( In CLOY, it the heiress who wants to return home after being literally blown away by a twister to North Korea.  In PIN, it is a pair of brothers seeking revenge and redemption for the defamation of their father's honor due to a frame up by media) but the subplots never get on the way of the focus of the story.

In other words, the writing of KDramas are ... how can I put this in a politically-correct way? --- on point, studied, blueprinted, rendered with precision and never resulting to redundancy of plot points, wholeness in the arcs of character development ... but most important, capable of engrossing the audience without taking them for a route devoid of direction just to stretch the story.

This too is understandable and leads to the next point.

(3) All the KDramas have limited runs.  Others may be shown in stretches but the average is from sixteen (16) to twenty (20) one hour telecast episodes.  They are not ratings-dependent to determine the length of broadcast life.

This makes a whole world of difference.  When a KDrama is launched, it knows exactly how and when it will end.

Seeing the production value and content of these dramas, someone who is familiar with the workings of television can decipher that the episodes are canned before they are telecast.  In TV parlance, canned means pre-taped and prepared for broadcast quality distribution before the date of the telecast.  They are not written as the show is being taped or in progress based on other factors outside and aside from the needs of the narrative.  

This means that the writers have control over where the story will go and how it will get there.  The plot is pre-determined, mapped out then elaborated into subplots from beginning to end even before the day of the pilot telecast.  This keeps the story lines succinct, clear, precise --- therefore uncluttered.  This is because the creators of the KDrama know that they have so many episodes to tell their story and not an eternity to challenge time stretching the narrative as long as the audience wants the story going.

But the tradition of the long-running soap operas have been around even before the advent of the Asian continuing mini-series.

In the United States, daytime programming has Guiding Light (57 years), General Hospital (55 years and adding), As the World  Turns (54 years) and so on and so forth.  Right here at home, the earliest soap operas were those written and directed by Jose Miranda Cruz entitled Hiwaga sa Bahay na Bato starring Ben David and Eva Darren (1963-64) as well as the later Gulong ng Palad of Marianne de la Riva, Ronald Corveau, Caridad Sanchez and Romnick Sarmenta --- derived from the successful radio soap opera of 1950 then directed by Consuelo Osorio --- which ran for eight years (1977-1985).  

Years later, there was the late afternoon soap entitled Flor de Luna  (1978)  starring Dindo Fernando, Laurice Guillen and introducing Janice de Belen,  This was followed by Anna Liza (1980) starring Ray PJ Abellana, Leni Santos and Julie Vega. 

One this was notable though: soap operas (not yet called teleseryes) were aired daily but never on a prime time slot. Prime time refers for TV shows aired from 6:00 PM until 10:00 PM on weekdays and week nights.  By rule, only episodic shows ... including weekly anthologies occupied the privilege of prime time.

Thus, like American soaps, daytime and late afternoon TV viewing were appropriated to teleseryes or soap operas.  Dramatic anthologies ranging from the early Balintataw  (1970-72) , Panagimpan (1968) to Maalaala Mo Kaya? (1991 - ) had always been enthroned in primetime.

The Pinoy teleserye can go on and on forever and ever as long as the audience responds to it.  And until this very day, we know that is how the game is played and how the deal is done.

Thus this takes its toll in the manner the stories are told ... and where the story goes ... or worse, how the long drawn narrative will end.

More on the KDrama or Koreanovela tomorrow.

How are their characters different?  What is the importance of production value?  What kind of stories do they tell?