Showing Child Abuse On Primetime TV
This topic really bothers me and I do not know if anyone would empathize with me. I also know that this article would reach only a small audience as my blog is just a small dot in the blogosphere. My blogs are not like the Yahoo news articles that get hundreds of reactions from online readers so I have no way of knowing if my whines are reaching the concerned parties. Nevertheless, I decide to go on and write about the child abuse being shown on free, on-the-air top-rated television (TV) channel. Not only that, the TV soap opera (also known as telenobela) is being shown on primetime with both young and old viewers watching them.
On showing child abuse, I am not referring to the case filed against Willie Revillame when he, as the host of a game show on TV5, gave ten thousand (PhP10,000.00) pesos to a 6-year-old boy after he danced provocatively while tears streamed down his face in the show last March 12, 2011. I did not get to see the boy’s performance live nor did I watch the act in YouTube when it was still posted there because I personally do not like the host’s personality. However, according to what I read, the boy was not physically hurt during his dance performance unlike the scenes shown in the telenobela where the child actress was shown being beaten blue by the older actress.
The primetime TV soap opera I am referring to is Munting Heredera in GMA7 which this week showed a lot of scenes where the small girl named Jennifer, the lead character, was being maltreated by an old woman who was supposed to be her foster grandmother. One such scene which had Jennifer forcibly made to kneel on raw mung beans with heavy books placed on her stretched arms was so horrible to our four-year old female grandchild (apo in the vernacular), she trembled and cried out of fear.
The reaction of our apo upon seeing the unwarranted child abuse scenes in Munting Heredera really made me worry. I wonder what the many young children felt when they saw such cruelty being done to their kind. If I only knew somebody at the Movie and Television Review and Classification Board (MTRCB), I would have called him right away.
I immediately googled this very topic when I saw Munting Heredera on TV after Amaya. The main character, a child, was told by one of the older character to pull out grass with her mouth unless she says sorry. I mean just.. What the hell? It’s on primetime tv. Child Abuse. Disguised as plotline on TV. What a horrible show! Displayed in such a graphic, heavy way too.
Is there anything we could do about this?