The Philippine Online Chronicles

My first memories of local movies have to do, I realize, with love, and romance, and kilig.

Love was in those afternoon black-and-white movies on Piling Piling Pelikula on Channel 9, with Nida Blanca singing “Waray Waray” as Nestor de Villa goes after her across the movie scene, which in my head cuts to Nida and Nestor dancing the boogie in full costume, with lifts to boot. Later on, these movies would have Guy and Pip (Nora Aunor and Tirso Cruz III) singing on a swing. In the 80s, this would become Maricel Soriano and William Martinez for me, even when there were Sharon Cuneta and Gabby Concepcion, just because the former had some irony going for them: Maricel was taray and William was pabling. The impossibility allowed for a lot of fun between Maricel’s pakipot and William’s efforts at pa-cute.

As a teenager this love would become more familiar and more possible for me, and become all about romance, and a whole lot of kilig. Many weekend afternoons were spent with the love stories of people like Ricky and Dianne (Rico Yan and Judy Ann Santos), Esee and Joey (Jolina Magdangal and Marvin Agustin), Rovic and Eds (John Lloyd Cruz and Kaye Abad), Peachy and Wacks (Angelu de Leon and Bobby Andrews), and the huge barkadas they were part of in the youth-oriented shows Gimik, Tabing Ilog, and TGIS.

And yet, I knew too, that these loves couldn’t be true, blame it on an upbringing that disallowed me from believing in Santa Claus, was quite devoid of romance, and filled with too many soap operas. The latter was a dose of extreme reality – if some teenage girl could be oppressed like that, how can one believe in love?

But the dynamic of these TV and cinematic loves also precisely require an amount of disbelief. The love team in Pinoy showbiz seems to have always been about an un-truth: these two people are not together, but they work together as a team, selling love and romance, and in the process making the possibility of both more and more real.

Confused? Maybe this is only as confusing as love, as it is created for us on TV and film, and as we are made to contend with it in real life. Maybe only because it is ambiguous, fluid, and flexible, changing with a snap of a finger, or staying for forever. Maybe because the love team, manufactured and fake as it is, is really a lot like real love.

Bagay Kayo! or love in the eye of the beholder

The Nida and Nestor, Maricel and William, Sharon and Gabby, and contemporary times’ Marian and Dingdong, were merely that in the beginning: teams. They were but two people thrown together as a matter of the romantic genre, and as a matter of how well they seem to fit together, Pinoy style. In contemporary Taglish the question would be, “Are they bagay?"

An almost definition for “bagay” could be everything from the idea of chemistry, to that of two peas in a pod, sometimes, about how opposites attract. In Kuya Germs’ That’s Entertainment, where virtual unknowns were “discovered” and necessarily paired up, the idea of bagay is an interesting study. Here, Kuya Germs would pair up people at random and would keep at it until a fan base is created.

So on one week Lotlot de Leon sings with Jonjon Hernandez, the next with Monching Gutierrez, the next with Dranreb Belleza. Romnick Sarmenta would be paired with Manilyn Reynes, then Jennifer Sevilla, then Sheryl Cruz – the latter two would make up a love triangle of sorts in the movies, but Sheryl would be his most successful love team, owing to the fact that they did fall in love in real life. This is no surprise of course, given this mode of production: the higher the demand for the love team, the more often the couple is forced to be together, the bigger the chances of falling in love. It’s a win-win situation.

The hit-and-miss process of (love) teaming people up is like watching a rigodon. And yet sometimes this rigodon’s absurdity can only be affected by real life, in its far future. Case in point: in the 90’s Ruffa Gutierrez, Carmina Villaroel, and Aiko Melendez would all be (love) teamed up with Zoren Legaspi, but he would have a real relationship then with Ruffa, making their love team the most successful of the three.

Fast forward to contemporary times. Zoren and Carmina have ended up together in real life, and are the perfect example of how sometimes love comes first, the team second. Though that isn’t always successful. Or acceptable.

Kayo Na? or the unacceptable love(s)

Masa magnet Judy Ann Santos and konyo boy Ryan Agoncillo. Child-star-turned-sexy-star Angelica Panganiban and dusky virtual unknown balikbayan Derek Ramsey. These are two of the more familiar team-ups in recent years, and yet these are technically non-love-teams – they aren’t created as an entity by studios, and love began with the personalities themselves. In cases like these, studios and audience are just caught by surprise and are forced to ask, “Kayo na?” – the Pinoy question for whether or not two people are exclusively together. Answered in the affirmative, studios and fans have nothing to do but jump in, or well, try and make the most out of it.

A related though particular kind of love team are those created within reality TV. Pinoy Big Brother, while throwing together a random set of good-looking and interesting Pinoys across social classes and backgrounds, have come to produce two of the more successful “real” love teams. Kim Chiu and Gerald Anderson of the Teen Edition were already in the beginnings of courtship in the “real” confines of the Big Brother House, and when they stepped out as the show’s winners, the story just continued in real life.

An even stranger entity? Melason, aka Melai and Jason, a product of the recent PBB edition, and now starring in their own realiserye, where their “real” love seems to be in the process of being manufactured into the more acceptable – and profitable! – love team. Here, true and real love is made to contend with the dynamics of being created into a love team, i.e., one where love is for public consumption, where there is no privacy, and therefore no real chance at sincerely performing “love” without cameras in tow.

Obviously, the aesthetic of bagay barely applies in cases where love comes first. In fact, it is the un-bagay that the big studios and movie companies have to contend with, and sometimes they fail at this altogether. This proves that real love(s) don’t necessarily translate into successful love teams, and the perfect examples of this are its more recent victims: Jericho Rosales and Heart Evangelista, Angel Locsin and Luis Manzano, even Kristine Hermosa and Oyo Boy Sotto.

In this sense what is bagay isn’t so much what it is that two people feel for each other. It’s what the world sees of them and accepts as true. It’s the public’s fantasy the love team feeds, the public’s notions of love that are important to take into consideration. Technically, we don’t care whether or not these two people are actually in love with each other. All they need to be is look it.

Pag-ibig! Masdan Ang Ginawa Mo! or when love capitalizes on you and me

Recently John Lloyd Cruz has proven that he has the ability to perform with two partners, Sarah Geronimo and Bea Alonzo, without having to sell the idea that he is in love with them, or that he even desires them. There is chemistry here, and they are bagay, in different ways to each other, but there doesn’t seem to be pressure to sell love beyond the team, maybe because the latter has proven profitable enough.

Elsewhere in the world, John Lloyd would be the rule, not the exception. In third world Philippines, the existence of the love team is proof of a romanticism that’s everything and evil. It is one that speaks of the silences popular and mass culture prove to be true everyday: that singlehood is questionable and problematic, that we all believe in fairytales, and that love – love! – is the end-all and be-all.

And that while we wait for love to happen, we can distract ourselves with the love and romance and the un-translatable kilig that love teams, Pinoy-style, provide. And we necessarily believe all of it, hook line and sinker.

Love, in this sense, is as evil as it comes.

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