The concept of a love team is both infuriating and fascinating. It puzzles me how scores of Filipino fans believe — with hardly a hint of irony — that the romantic team-ups they see on the big and small screens feel exactly the same way about each other when the cameras stop rolling. It seems that no one among those ardent followers wants to separate fact from fantasy, or acknowledge that these TV and film couples were contrived primarily as very charismatic marketing tools. It can get worryingly serious, which is also hilarious.
The process appears simple enough:
1. Pick a pretty girl and a pretty boy (or in the case of Dennis Trillo and Tom Rodriguez, a pretty boy and another pretty boy).
3. Craft a project to launch the new “couple.”
4. Spend way too much to promote the duo to the point of saturation.
5. Order the tandem to suggest that they feel “that way” for one another “in real life.”
6. Cross fingers and hope that “sparks” fly and that the public buys the “romance.”
7. Create more projects such as movies, soaps, and albums to sustain interest.
8. Repeat process if pretty girl and pretty boy (or whatever configuration) buoy each other to stardom; cry if not.
While most admirers are only too happy to play along and embrace the charade, I’ve realized that I’m too grounded in reality to believe in these things. (More important, I’m, like, not stupid.) Like most unmistakably Filipino ideas, love teams are devoid of subtlety. In some ways they’re the living, breathing equivalent of typing in all caps, making the text bold, then underlining everything because, you know, why not?
Then again, on some level, these onscreen tandems function as company-approved fanfiction. But instead of letting the public do the “shipping” — when two fictional characters are paired together, ostensibly derived from “relationship,” though it might as well be “worship” — the suits do it themselves from the comfort of their network boardrooms.
It’s fun, I guess, to indulge one’s imagination from time to time, but I draw the line when you can see through the PR stunt. It stops being fun and becomes insulting. For die-hard fans, those who never stop trying to will their favorite make-believe romances to life, love teams represent affection that is pure, true and eternal. As for me, I rule with my head rather than my heart.
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