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Twilight Gay 03: When the sparkle hit the fan, may bumayo

Twilight Gay is back! You can't really expect him to just keep quiet about Takipsilim, right? So here's his take on the whole mess about the so-called "Pinoy Twilight remake", and all we can say is: bato-bato sa langit, ang tamaan huwag magagalit. Smile na lang kayo, and sparkle!

As with previous installments, this column uses adult language and themes, and is not recommended for younger readers, or older readers who are too sensitive. :p

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TWILIGHT GAY 03: When the sparkle hit the fan, may bumayo
By: Ronald

Have you guys missed me? It's been almost a month since my last post – not that anybody's been keeping track – and quite a lot has happened amongst the Twilight faithful.

The biggest thing to happen, of course, was the quick rise and equally quick descent of that cultural abortion that is "Takipsilim". If all of you were thinking that this issue is a horse already beaten to death, then you're wrong, because I haven't gotten my kicks in yet.

Of course every Filipino Twilighter knows the story: Some time around the holidays, word began to spread that ABS-CBN would be making Takipsilim, a Filipino adaptation of Twilight starring Rayver "Fishlips" Cruz and Shaina "Lookit! Mah boobs!" Magdayao.

Cue everyone running around screaming like Godzilla was all up in this bitch. Cue online petitions, online insults, and online wishes of death upon the ABS-CBN infidels. From all the ruckus, you would have thought Armageddon was coming, in the form of a teleserye.

People, people, people. Look at me. Take a deep breath. Listen carefully. GET A GRIP.

It's not that anybody ever thought that Takipsilim would be a great idea. While our local stations make the occasional great drama every once in a while, fantasy series have never been their specialty. My two personal favorties, Marina and Kampanerang Kuba, while camp classics, were far from being any kind of "good". Watching most Filipino fantaseryes is like sucking very warm shit through a very short straw.

What was so distressing to me, and probably to the saner Twilighters, was the somewhat subconscious hate some people displayed towards being Filipino.

There was a lot of hand-wringing as to how the (in)famous lion/lamb conversation would sound like in Filipino, with one particularly rabid commenter noting that "leon/tupa" doesn't have the same delicious flavor as lion/lamb.

Honey, the lion/lamb conversation is bad, and no amount of translation, in Elvish or otherwise, is going to make it sound any better. Even SMeyer agrees with me. You probably didn't mean to sound like an annoying, pretentious twat, but you did.

The ease with which most people threw our country under the bus was equally disconcerting. "Oh, how embarrassing! Them white people will laugh at us! All we ever do is remake stuff!" As if Hollywood is the bastion of originality. As if the people who comment on Perez Hilton are the cream of the intellectual crop. His whole schtick is putting cum stains on people's pictures! And their idea of witty reparte is "First!" and "Whoreanus!"

A lot of people were so eager to condemn a Filipino company daring to adapt a Western work that nobody even cared to ask how reliable a source a Pinoy Exchange forum poster is. While ABS-CBN showed their ineptitude and idiocy with their handling of the mess once the story broke, why didn't any one think that a $1 million investment isn't something you just calmly let loose on a public message board without any sort of fanfare? And as Clair de Lune pointed out, does nobody use fact checkers anymore? Not even the paper I work for?

There are so many valid reasons to hate the possibility of Takipsilim. Hate it because Rayver Cruz, Joross Gamboa, and Carlos Agassi can't act thier way out of a wet paper bag. Hate it because the special effects will no doubt look like something I could have just as easily done on Powerpoint. But don't use it as a convenient excuse to display your own insecurities about being brown.


8 comments:

  1. Anonymous said...
     

    Again, I love the cute little icon. As for Twilight Gay's comment, I understand the 'Rayver "Fishlips" Cruz' but I don't really get the 'Shaina "Lookit! Mah boobs!" Magdayao' remark. And yeah, you were right, the column did use inappropriate language. I shouldn't have read it. I think I need to rest now. x,x

  2. Anonymous said...
     

    I would just like to correct him. A lot of people believed this lie because an article was posted on THE ABSCBN website, not because of some post in PEX. I myself havent seen that PEX post. Nor did my friends.

    I never believed this story until I was actually shown that article on the network's official website. turns out it was a "mistake" by one of the staffers.

  3. Anonymous said...
     

    and so u thought that this thing can only be done by abscbn, i think your wrong
    because gma comes up with there own idiocy by tagalizing(tagalugin) the meadow seen
    so no one watch kablog las saturday(january 17 2009)?
    oh well good
    you didnt see how they ruin everything by using twilight and edward cullen's name.
    the story is like this. the girl(impersonate bella) compliment the guy(impersonate edward) by saying he is so cool so the guy replied and he said 'ofcourse thats why they called me edward cool-len'

    i dont know wat to think but it pissed me off
    i hate this using the cullens name in vein

  4. Anonymous said...
     

    Ouch!

    I must say, you hit the mark…. brilliant as always

    My aversion for the remake may be just because of Shaina-Rayver, if the rumor included Kim-Gerald I could’ve liked it. Hahahah (please note: this is a joke)

    Seriously, I haven’t had the luxury of time thinking who’s best fit for the role or how are they gonna make the special effects not-so-crappy as they’ve done before. When I first heard the rumor, I got emotional (too emotional) to think of anything else.

    I believe that we can do better than imitating (not because of the so-called ‘colonial-mentality’ which by the way is a misnomer… it should be ‘colonized mentality’ as pointed out by some local writer, who I forgot the name…but I am crediting for my ‘realization… where am I?)
    There are so many brilliant writers in the Philippines. They just need air time, someone who will believe in them, willing to risk money for them... (Calling all producers)

    I hated the idea of remake for the simple reason that it limits pinoy’s creativity and imagination... we can do so much better than that.

  5. Anonymous said...
     

    Bravo! That's all I can say.

  6. Anonymous said...
     

    Very well said elsbet. :)

  7. Anonymous said...
     

    Well, one of the reasons why I didn't believe that there would be a remake was the fact that how could a company waste $1 million just to shelf a project after receiving so much backlash. If ever they had already paid for it, I'm sure they would continue the production whether it has received so many negative comments or not.

  8. mareb said...
     

    @edwardlovesjec: alam mo ba yung ibig sabihin ng parody o spoof? XD

    @anoushka:that's true. let's wait and see.

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