After a hard day’s work, don’t we all want to just relax?

No matter what we do, don’t we all love to relax by watching television or going to the movies after a day’s work? As we try to unwind, depending on the time of day, what often happens? Instead of calming us down, many of the shows tend to set our nerves on edge, over-stimulate us, disappoint, or even disgust us. Of course, not all shows have this kind of effect on us – but, sadly, too many of our local ones do.

I really cannot figure out what our TV and movie producers want. Do they want to amuse our viewers, titillate them, inspire them, teach lessons, inform them, or simply "make money"? Frankly, I’d be willing to settle for a combination of all the above-mentioned items, but if the goal of our entertainment industry is simply the last-mentioned one, the callous and unadulterated profit motive, then it’s woe to the values of our struggling society and our nation.

Believe me, while I’m not a couch potato (my work schedule is tight and there are other activities), I’m a regular television viewer. What I can say, though, when I surf our TV channels, is that some of the so-called "popular" shows are actually offensive and even degrading. (This is why quite a number of viewers frequently switch over to Cable TV, where the shows may not always be great, but at least you can be assured of some quality.)

I’m not talking about the morning news shows on our local TV networks, nor of the evening news programs. I’m also not referring to the popular game shows, which I watch with great interest (my suggestion to some game show hosts, however, is that they ought to learn to amuse their audiences in a better way, instead of thinking that the use of corny expressions or vulgarity is a way of appealing to the mass market). By and large, I think that most of the game shows and the news programs are very straightforward and seem to be professionally done. When you get to many of the noontime shows and other pa-cute shows, on the other hand, that’s where the problem begins.

Our television hosts and "hostesses" during the noontime shows are all too-overtly "sexual" in speech and body language. Some scripts overflow with double-entendre or double-meaning in their dialogue (usually malicious and libidinous). The participants, particularly the women, sport deliberately "sexy" and very revealing dresses or outfits (you’d think there was a textile shortage, even of mosquito netting). If their intent is to get males watching their TV shows drooling, I’m sure they’re succeeding. Perhaps I’m coming across in this article as prude or a killjoy, but I must express what I feel – and, perhaps, there are many who’ll agree with me. The poet John Keats once said that "a thing of beauty is a joy forever." But when a woman reveals too much of her "beauty" the purpose of being attractive is defeated. True, most women want to look sexy but there’s a more decent way of doing this, in a manner that enhances personal dignity as well.

Our show hosts, direks (directors), and producers have better think twice about how they’re influencing our society. The "stars" and artistas our televiewers and moviegoers see on the screen have an immeasurable impact on many in the audience, especially the impressionable young. It’s being repetitious, I know, to point out that they become role models and too many seek to imitate them in speech, action and attire.

For instance, do we always have to feature half-nude or scantily-clad dancers doing the "body language"? Who are the audience? On TV, can you presume that everybody watching is an adult or grown-up? Aren’t the children watching, too? Just look around and see how such "shows" have already cost our society: You see many little girls beginning to dance like porno-dancers, mimicking the dancers they’ve been watching on TV. The really sad part of it is that adults are amused by the phenomenon. Isn’t this, in the end, a factor that encourages child exploitation, pedophilia and child rape? (Okay, so this happens in other countries, too, as in the US and Europe, but it is unsettling how blithely this is regarded in our own country).

The bottom line, with regard to kids, is: Are we preparing our little children to become Japayukis and hospitality girls at such an early age?

You may try to sugarcoat downright seaminess and vulgarity with such high-flown labels as "artistic expression" or "artistic freedom", and so forth. For me, it’s yuck!

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Then, at night we have those soap operas, teledramas, telenovelas, and what-have-you. Admittedly, they have their huge army of fans and they do cater to entertaining the millions, or at least enabling them to pass the time.

If you watch one soap, you’ve seen them all. Sure, the story may differ but, in the end, the plot is all the same. There is the drama of two people falling out of love, losing their loved ones, people screaming at each other, or doing evil things to get ahead of others, or bring them down. Not to mention the tragedy of death, which is a surefire tearjerker. I’ve watched ’em all. At a certain point, I came to the obvious conclusion soaps had an almost identical plot – all had "conflict", rivalry, betrayal – and a touch of murder or mystery tagged to them. The harmful aspect is that such "dramas" get the population eventually to resign themselves to accepting such evil conflicting and "‘bad" relations, and double-crosses and even violence as commonplace and an inescapable "fact" of everyday life.

Instead of being an honest reflection of reality, some soaps have begun to seriously influence reality. If only our network presidents and producers took time out to earnestly review the shows they feature on their channels, they might realize how such shows could actually "hurt" our society.

The buzzword in these "anti-terrorist" times being promoted by US President George W. Bush (even in the current G-8 summit in Canada, or in the recent NATO summit in Rome, and on other forums) is that we must fight terrorist countries which have accumulated "weapons of mass destruction". When you consider the awesome power of the entertainment and so-called electronic media (which can even get their own media personalities elected by a landslide to the Senate, the House of Representatives, not to mention mayorships and governorships), this should alert us to the fact that mass media, too, can be a destructive "weapon of destruction". It can destroy entire societies with more extensive and long-lasting effects than nukes or bio-terror weapons.

Or, if responsively handled, this can be converted to a terrific "weapon of mass-inspiration". Talk about nation-building: This is what mass media and particularly our entertainment media can accomplish!

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Now for my pet peeve section. Let’s look at our so-called "showbiz" news. I really feel sorry for our actors and actresses who, I think, work hard to entertain us. The trouble is that we seem to believe that the function of a free press is to get them to expose their guts to the public, to entertain us still further by spilling out the heartbreaks and the indiscretions of their real lives. They even have to fight on the TV screen, and divulge their marital problems, love triangles, and the other personal crises afflicting them. Of course, the curious public laps it up.

Do we really have to talk-talk-talk about their problems? I wish we could give them a bit of respect, or enable them to retain their self-respect. Stop the gossip! (I know I’ll offend a number of people, including some of my own friends in media, by saying these things. But I guess that’s me: Ms. Hard Talk. I don’t pretend it’s an endearing trait, nor can I even dream of posing as somebody perfect or a defender of everyone else’s virtue. But I’ve got to say it.)

Again, runaway gossip and prurient and salacious comment do our country no good. We’re not pigs, so why should we attempt to make living in a pig-sty a facet of everyday life? Sige na, let’s cut it out. There are better ways, incidentally, of making a living than waltzing merrily on the headaches and exposed disappointments of our "idols" in showbiz.

Our local movie industry, to zero down on it more specifically, is visibly in the doldrums, no matter how spectacular those bold shows may be, for a time, at the box-office.

Why are Pinoy films withering away? Why, indeed, when even India’s Bollywood seems to be experiencing a revival? (I hear, though that funding from "suspect" sources helps the Indian movie industry, where banks hesitate to fund it.)

Here, has Hollywood begun to dominate us, with the assistance of pirated DVDs and VCDs?

Our own movie producers have been saying that we ought to improve the quality of our films, including both storyline and plot. Yet, they allege in the same breath that they can’t "afford" to do so. In terms of money, or from the fear of losing what they perceive as their core audience? So they keep on using increasingly bold themes, or the usual fighting, shooting and killing. And what about those comedy movies that tend to be corny? Can’t we be more original? Why do we frequently copy "foreign" films, sometimes not bothering to disguise the plagiarism?

In our parents’ and grandparents’ time, there were many truly uplifting and romantic movies (even, as in Bollywood’s Indian "cheapies", the heroes and heroines breaking out in song, or dancing gracefully).

I was able to enjoy some of the old movies – unfortunately, most of the best my family tells me, deteriorated in "their cannisters" owing to the film-stock used then, and were lost forever.

I notice that they were modest, graceful in etiquette, and had decent stories. Film critics, as I’ve observed, still write about those "oldies" with nostalgia and admiration.

Very few classic Filipino movies have been made in this generation – ones that have made our country proud. I don’t have to enumerate them, but we have already proven that we can produce quality films, like Rizal, the motion picture that was a box office hit, and many others. I’m sad to note that our TV and film industries appear to be losing their touch. Gone are the days when our moving pictures, our pelikula and puting tabing inspired us, taught us, informed us, and provided fine role models for the aspiring youth.

At the risk of sounding preachy, I’d like to ask our movie producers and direks to redirect themselves and, while profit may still be the goal, and ROI or return on investment still be the bottom line, re-enlist themselves in the task of helping our country progress, change our character through the shows they produce, and give us hope – particularly at a time when the latest Pulse Asia survey reveals that 8.2 million Filipinos, or 19 percent of our people want to leave our country.

These despairing countrymen of ours want to emigrate, the survey indicates, because they’ve lost confidence in our country. Isn’t this disheartening – actually heart-breaking?

If you’ll recall, I wrote the same thing more than a week before the survey came out, and our other STAR columnist, Boo Chanco, has said it, too.

What can we do about it? Our local movie industry and our TV industry, and our mass media can do much to help reverse the trend. But we must begin now. Sure, there’s a difference between image and reality, but in our nation what starts with image soon becomes reality. I don’t know whether I should be comforted by that thought, or dismayed by it – but it’s a tool we must invoke in these desperate times.

Let’s do it.

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FINALLY, friends and readers (I guess I have a few) have been asking whether this is going to be a permanent column. Relax. I’ve been "pinch-hitting" when Dad goes on leave, or on a trip abroad. So thanks, and God bless you!