Ang Panday: Ordinarily Appealing

NOTE: This article was written by the newest member of the Ang Panday Blog editorial team. Please welcome Romzkee! :)

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A fight for love...
A battle between good and evil...
A lovestory of two people from different social classes...
A fantaserye of swords and warriors...

Nothing new. Simply ordinary. But what makes it click?

Now that the country is being plagued by a lot of gray areas, from a doubted presidential leader, to the unsolved police rub out case, to the continous surge and fluctuation of oil prices, up to the seemingly dim future of the Filipinos, everything makes us think that the bad is more powerful than the good.

Here goes ABS-CBN offering the Panday story to the multitude of TV viewers who, would most likely succumb to the idea that the good can still triumph over the evil.That's the perfect sineserye strategy. That makes it click.

Well, of course some will say that it's the cinematic effects (which I find really swell!), or the romance between Heart and Echo. As evidenced by the number of successful telenovelas that warmed our hearts because of the love team, we are truly a people who suck on love. You can trace this back all the way from the Rico-Claudine era. The romance is definitely a factor, no matter how predictable the plot is (rich girl meets the poor “kargador” boy).

But I think what makes it most appealing to the masses is the portrayal of how a poor fellow can suddenly become an-all-time hero, a redeemer of peace. It is not really surprising. There have been a lot of tagalog films that used that kind of box-office ingredient, and Filipinos have continously patronized these movies.

What can we get from this observation?

That despite all the mishaps that we endure as a people, Filipinos still remain hopeful that goodness, justice, and peace can be redeemed in our land someday. You might say I'm getting quite overboard, that actually the Alamat Ng Panday is just some sort of time-out-from-the-world-entertainment thing.But that's exactly the point. We choose it as our “entertainment”. According to the theory of selective listening (in this case, viewing), we put our attention only to those which are in line with our own values and principles. That makes sense. Panday viewers, watch the program because they find signifigance with the value it teaches – the good will always win despite the odds. That gives us hope.

And that makes the ordinary story of Panday, very appealing.

NOTE: This article was written by the newest member of the Ang Panday Blog editorial team. Please welcome Romzkee! :)