Siftings
Soap Watch: Iisa Pa Lamang, Garden of Eden in reverse
This column has become something of a moveable feast, to accommodate the vagaries of my computer/internet unit or server or whatever. So, dear readers, please bear with me as I struggle to reinvent myself to the demands of this gadget/machine/whatever!
I cannot understand why the major networks insist on doing remakes of old films. "Iisa Pa Lamang" is such, along the lines of old Susan Roces horror films which ABS-CBN did some months ago. The result in remaking in this case is initially weird, like an old ancestral house which looks out of shape after undergoing centuries of remodeling to accommodate the varied and expanding needs of generations of family members.
Actually, the soap in question, after months of dithering whether it would be a family-oriented soap or another version of the love-triangle with the requisite twists and turns of seduction, early pregnancy, family obstacles, etc; or the rags-to-riches saga of an oppressed heroine, turns out to be all of the above, and more. Hanep, ang Pinoy nga naman, kapag binigyan mo ng tiwala, bubuhusin na ang lahat ng kanyang kinalaman! After months of grinding one's teeth watching Katherine (Claudine Baretto) squirming under the triple onslaught of murderous bitch Isadora (Cherry Pie Picache), spoiled-brat cum angel-faced bitch Scarlet (Angelica Panganiban), and society matron-politician's wife and classy patrician Estelle Mondragon (come-backing actress of the original "Flordeluna" and directress par excellence Laurice Guillen), we viewers get a turnaround as the oppressed heroine gets her chance to exact her justified revenge, matching insult after insult and slap after slap with her adversaries in one long boring series of one-upmanship until one is ready to puke! Oh well. As of last viewing, Katherine and her half-sister Sophia (Melissa Ricks) find each other, and form a duo against the evil and malice of their enemy, who killed both their father and lola, and will now attempt to destroy the heroine once and for all. As in all melodramas designed for the masa, this soap will have a happy ending, probably replete with moralizing and the triumph of Good over Evil.
Meanwhile, one wonders why the scriptwriter or writers have insisted on naming their two heroes Rafael (Gabby Concepcion) and Miguel (Diether Ocampo). Is there supposed to be a reference to the Biblical Archangels and echoes of the Garden of Eden? But the Garden was guarded by -- if I am not mistaken – the Archangel Rafael; and the Archangel Michael is the one who crushes with his heels the serpent, symbol of evil-incarnate. Why is Miguel in this soap a seducer sired by a criminal, a weakling who could not defend his love and even betrayed her? At least Gabby's Rafael here is no Mama's boy-weakling who gives up his love at the behest of his mother but stands as a pillar of strength and integrity. I see myself rooting for him and I can't see why Claudine's Katherine should win him in the end. At this stage of the soap's progress, she sure has to do a lot to deserve him!
This is a call for the TV networks to be more caring about the moral and spiritual values of their clientele. For a while there, I was seriously thinking of writing the Kapamilya station to stop airing "Iisa Pa Lamang", afraid that the world inhabited by its characters is a poisoned world, like a Garden of Eden in Reverse, where the two Archangels Rafael and Miguel are rendered inutile, themselves about to drown in the flood of Evil rampaging outside the gates of Eden that they have abandoned, leaving us soap viewers grasping for moral/aesthetic survival in the Sea of Bad Taste and Disgust!
I am really concerned for the survival of the old-fashioned but ever-fashionable virtues of Goodness, Honesty, Truth, Godliness, etc., the eternal verities. Family values that do not spill over into the rights and duties of others. Social values that respect others and strengthen the individual resolve to do good to others. I can go on and on.
The media has this duty and privilege to propagate the right and positive values, not only by airing them but more by practicing them. And the most telling media venue for this is the TV soap.