Protagonists & Antagonists
But the formula of a good telenovela in the Philippines is having a saintly protagonist who has all the good characteristics in the world but somehow always manages to absorb all the bad luck the world has to offer. He/she is preferably poor who will someday end up to be someone else's rich son/daughter. A good antagonist (in the Philly) has no good features at all, has nothing but evil schemes in his/her mind and wears really bright red lipstick (if female) or really lousy goatee (if male). They also have goons who happen to wear leather jackets all the time.
The protagonist always ends up rich or married while the antagonist ends up either dead, in prison or poor.
Now let's talk about Glee. I'm not an avid fan of Glee (meaning I do not watch all their episodes because I'm too lazy to download or buy DVDs), but despite the exaggerated singing and ridiculous situations (such as Finn believing that he is the father of Quinn's child even if they never had sex) its actually as real as it gets. You never really know who's the bad guy and who's the good guy becausethe series shows aspects of their lives wherein they can be the bad guy of the episode or the good guy.
Obviously, Sue Sylvester is the antagonist but we still see nice aspects of her life in the series. We see her sensitive side whenever she visits her sister who has down syndrome or the time that she fell in love with that News Anchor. I actually sympathized with her in some episodes.
Rachel seems to be one of the main characters but she is never portrayed as the perfect saintly protagonist because sometimes I'd like to pull her hair---remember the Sunshine Corazon a.k.a Charice episode?
So what's my point? I do believe that in the telenovela that is our life, we are not always protagonists. Sometimes, in someone else's life, we are the antagonists in their stories. We always seem to see only the bad stuff that other people do to us and tend to not admit how we are also capable of making other people's lives miserable.
Yes, in our everyday lives, we strive to be perfect--which of course we never will be. But we try. We want to be good daughters and sons, girlfriends and boyfriends or ex-girlfriends and ex-boyfriends, bestfriends, employees (and insert all the other possible roles in life that any human being can possibly be).
But that's the whole beauty of it. Because then, we learn. We find out what to do, what not to do. Hit or miss. Trial and error. And its okay.
So where did this realization come from and why the hell am I blogging about this? Because I have accepted the fact that, yes I have hurt people. I am not a victim all the time. It happens. Its inevitable. And I have accepted that. I have also come to terms with my guilt and learned not to beat myself up because of it. Its just like that. Its the way life works. Its not really a big deal. Its how nature balances out human beings.
I am learning everyday. And everyday I get to see bits and pieces of other people's stories that I weave into one big telenovela in my mind and I see how beautiful it is.
So going back to Pinoy telenovelas. I'm not really dissing them. I'm just saying that it has influenced so many Pinoys' way of thinking and thats why whenever I see interviews on TV, people almost always seem to highlight how bad life has treated them. We bank on that. Other people's suffering becomes our entertainment and then we say "Mas luoy mi kay---" as if having the worst luck on earth will make us more loveable.
Everyone has a Mara & a Clara side. Let's accept that. No one on earth is too kind and no one on earth is too evil either.
So to end this, here's a line from the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde:
"With everyday, and from both sides of my intelligence, the moral and the intellectual, I thus drew steadily nearer to the truth, by whose partial discovery I have been doomed to such a dreadful shipwreck: that man is not truly one, but truly two." - Robert Louis Stevenson, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Comments
Post a Comment