[cont'd]
Let's make our voices heard to help encourage fair portrayals of the housemates kasi hindi naman maganda na may bias yung show kasi malaki ang impluensiya noon sa mga nanonood.
I wanted my voice to be heard, even thru little ways such as internet blogs, mailing lists, etc. I wanted to give justice to the character of Mich, but to put it in a bigger perspective, I wanted to encourage the writers of the show to give fair portrayals of the housemates, no matter which celebrity. If they chose to have a negative bias against another housemate (for instance, if they portrayed Budoy as “anak ng may kaya palibhasa, kaya nag babanda-banda nalang siya”, or John Prats would be shown as “mayaman na child star kaya sa bahay ni kuya agaw atensyon siya”), I’m sure their friends, family and supporters would be upset at the false and unfair depiction of that person’s character. Most people do not have the 24/7 channel, hence they would only rely on the hourly sessions that the regular channel shows, which is already edited to fit the schema that ABS wants to execute.
Because of my desire to make my voice heard (as well as my bandmates), I thought it might be an opportunity to get our message across when ABS-CBN ambushed our band in one of our gigs at Magnet Katipunan. At first, I was uneasy (not to mention quite surprised and annoyed) when they decided to bombard our privacy during the gig. Without asking my permission, they were shooting me once I arrived and they even followed me and my bandmates around the bar. It was only after a while when someone actually introduced themselves to us and asked us if they could interview us for PBB. We were very reluctant to do it but decided that we would for the sake of our bandmate and friend. Later, we thought that it would also be a great opportunity to voice out our opinions. We knew that ABS would probably not even air our comments, but we expressed our criticisms anyway with the hope that the writers/producers/etc would actually listen to the remarks and take some of them into consideration. We told them some of the things which I mentioned above, like how they should be more responsible in their portrayals of the housemates. We questioned the existence of a negative bias against Mich, while none existed towards the other housemates. We told them that they should show the finer points of Filipino culture rather than just showing the low points (the chismis, bickering, constant drama). We also gave a message to the viewers that they shouldn’t believe everything the media shows because they edit the footages to depict what it is that agrees with their script and their vision, regardless of whether it is fair to the housemates involved. We said a lot of things which we knew wouldn’t please ABS. But that is what we are about as UP students/alumni, as a band, and as individuals. We speak up against injustice, and we speak up for what we believe in, even if it means going against media giants such as ABS-CBN. (And which also goes to show that we are NOT using PBB for our band’s publicity. If we were, wouldn’t it be a lot easier just to kiss their asses? J)
But what the heck (let’s omit the profanity because this seems to offend, to a very high degree, viewers and supporters of PBB.. and yes, I say this with sarcasm) happened? PBB did to us the very thing that we were fighting against—the unfair portrayals of people involved in the show. I didn’t think they would stoop that low, we just thought that “hey, they probably wouldn’t air this because they wouldn’t want their ratings to go down..” But no, ABS is lower than low. They told us that they would use the interview as our message to Mich. Instead, they edited the footage in such a way that is FAVORABLE to the viewers’ impression of the show. They omitted our call to the masses not to believe everything the media portrays, they omitted our comments about showing the finer points of Filipino culture, they omitted the part where we questioned the biases and predispositions of the show. Instead, what did they present? They gave us each a measly phrase (such as “Di spoiled brat si Mich!”, “They only show the weird side”) and emphasized the parts when our drummer used profanity. Then, in the end, they had this note that said something like “PBB respects the opinions of viewers” to make them look like a noble network being attacked by…what did their supporters call us again? “Paranoid bandmates na nagdrudrugs na walang pinagaralan” to put it in a nutshell.
