“PASION de Amor” hotties (clockwise from left) Ellen Adarna, Ejay Falcon, Arci Muñoz, Jake Cuenca, Joseph Marco and Coleen Garcia
For two TV seasons now, some drama series have been enticing viewers with the tantalizing promise that they intend to be “sexier” than the shows we usually find on free TV.
Last year, it was “Moon of Desire” that strove to heat things up on the small screen, while for 2015, it’s “Pasion de Amor” that’s doing the sensual honors.
Alas, the “hotter” series are more seductively intended than actually achieved, with their directors limited by TV’s “for general patronage” rule to “sexy” indirection and insinuating rather than forthrightly “hot” depiction!
To stay within prescribed and proscribed limits (because children are always watching on primetime), visualizations of the “sexier” shows are restricted to “symbolic” silhouette shots of implied ardor, “lip-biting” reaction shots in bed scenes that are limited to “medium close-up” framing that avoids showing sensual body parts—etc.!
In light of this limiting reality, the pasion on the local version of “Pasion de Amor” is perforce more muted than in the Latin American original.
Hot to trot
We recall, when we were a member of the Movie and Television Review and Classification Board (MTRCB), watching a string of really hot Latin American melodramas for an entire day—and, boy, were they really hot to trot! Well, that sort of graphic depiction and exposure simply won’t pass officially sanctioned muster in these parts, so cool it, hotsy-totsy lasses and lotharios!
“Pasion de Amor” is especially “controlled” by the fact that it’s shown before the evening newscast. For it to be as hot as intended, it should be pushed back to a late-late slot, when only a few kids are expected to watch.
That, by the way, is why other “controversial” or “edgy” drama series like “Bridges of Love” and “The Rich Man’s Daughter” are more appropriately situated later in the evening.
Of course, exponents and advocates of “mature TV dramatic arts” chafe at the limitations that such adult fare has to operate under. But, they are advised that the regulations aren’t against adult TV programs per se, they just limit them to the post-primetime screening slots.
This is a big change from how things were in the past, when child viewers were startled to get exposed to “green” and “brown” jokes—even on noontime TV programs!
Those most unwelcome and inappropriate intrusions were made by “super-macho” program hosts who loved to underscore their randy sense of “humor” by polluting the airwaves, not just for kids’ impressionable minds and psyches, but even those of their alarmed parents and teachers!
After years of fruitlessly “warning” the filthy-mouthed miscreants to toe the prescribed line for the poor children’s sake, the MTRCB decided to much more firmly lay down the law and handed out some suspensions—message received, loud and clear!
Sleazy shockers
After their cushy livelihood was directly threatened, even the most ferociously macho of the errant program hosts, “suddenly” discovered that they could be funny in much less shocking ways—which is why we have the current TV situation, which is more acceptable than the sleazy shockers of the past.
This happy outcome proves that regulation in terms of the appropriate telecasting slot for a particular program can be effective in upholding the right of kids to child-friendly TV entertainment—without curtailing the corresponding right of mature TV people to tackle adult themes and issues.