One need not look far to verify this unfortunate fact. The most popular Filipino YouTubers, for instance, are all remarkably alike: their content is very run off the mill, nothing thought-provoking, nothing to pique the mind. It's all fluff and offensive jokes/gags, worn-out challenges, sorry cliches, trite plots, and an abject lack of thinking.
Which is why it is refreshing to encounter videos like the ones produced by Darryl Yap of VinCentiments, specifically the KPL or Kung Pwede Lang series.
This video series has captured the attention of Filipino netizens, particularly the millennial generation accustomed to memes, witticisms, anti-authoritarianism, and hugot or pick-up lines.
There have been four videos in the series thus far. All of them have a recurring theme: the protagonist (often a woman) is placed in a situation where she doesn't want to comply but has to, and in the interim voices out her disapproval, only to admit defeat in the end.
The first video features a female student in a classroom who is required to answer her teacher's question. Standing up, she concocts a long litany of complaints detailing her suffering in the hands of her teacher. In the end, she wakes up to her reverie and admits to her teacher she has not read the assignment.
The second video, entitled "Resbak Kakak," features the faceless teacher in the first video. Here, she tells the class of her own sufferings as an underpaid but overworked teacher who, despite it all, is villified, demonized, and hardly appreciated.
The third video, entitled "Bossaboss," features an office employee about to leave the office to attend a birthday party, but who is told to stay put. In between, she descends to a lengthy monologue about how she suffers under her power-tripping employer.
The fourth and latest installment, entitled "HagGuard," features the female student in the first KPL video. Here, she rants about the shabby treatment she gets from the strict security guard at school.
The videos draw their strength from words.
All the videos feature characters who talk, talk, and then talk some more. The script is snappy, featuring constant references to pop culture and unabated use of street language. This is one of the reasons why the videos have managed to attract a sizeable viewership: they reflect the way real people talk.
The videos are characteristically brutal in their honesty.
The characters' description of their struggles runs the gamut of their daily existence -- from waking up, to having meals, to having sex. It is easy to tell that the scriptwriter is a very observant person with an understanding of the things hardly anyone pays attention to.
The videos are character-driven.
Sketches like these have the tendency to create one-dimensional characters. But the KPL videos manage to escape that tendency by allowing the characters to shift back and forth to an array of emotions and mindsets and experiences that are neither linear nor predictable.
The videos feature female protagonists.
These characters would not have been as impactful had they not been played by highly capable female actors.
The videos highlight timely social issues.
For all the histrionics and wild script of the videos, they happen to touch on very timely subjects. These include the outdated educational system, dismal state of schools, oppressive condition of teachers, capitalism, and abusive employers, among others. Rarely do these subjects get featured, if at all, in any Filipino-produced sketch.
Despite these positive observations, there are some things that do not escape even the casual viewer.
First, why do the women protagonists always have to take off their clothes? (NOTE: The fourth video did away with this, but it almost didn't.) The script is engaging enough as it is, it's a shame that the last sequence always has to feature the characters without their shirts on.
Is it to increase viewership by placing the shirtless women in the video thumbnails? Regardless, these sequences are hardly necessary, if at all. If anything, all they do is pander to the male gaze and ultimately reduce the characters as sex objects.
Second, the common plot twist at the end of each of the videos leaves a bitter taste in the mouth. All the build-up and tension in the first sequences portraying the female characters as strong, opiniated individuals with an axe to grind against the oppressive system turns out to be a mere dud. That in reality, the female characters are voiceless, afraid to buck the system, content to suffer in silence.
In this sense, the videos in the KPL series represent the false hopes and the delusion of justice harbored by women who think they can but ultimately can't.
In the end, the viewer asks: What purpose do these videos serve? To draw laughs? To attract online views? To serve as insightful social commentary? To feature angry women in bras?
The only truth there is to these videos is that there is no courage in holding back, or is there?