On Stephen Amell and Alyas Robin Hood – Clare

Stephen Amell did not know what he started.

One post about the teaser of the GMA 7 show Alyas Robin Hood and the internet exploded (in the Philippines, anyway).

So many things have been said about the issue: there were a lot of valid points, a lot of funny ones and some that just went to the extreme.

A lot of people reacted to the similarities of the GMA show to the feel of the CW-based Arrow. A number of people reacted saying that it was too quick for people to judge the Philippine show as a rip-off of the DC-based one. GMA has defended their show by saying that both programs are based on Robin Hood, so the similarity is not because Arrow was copied, but because they were based on/inspired by the same character. Things quickly escalated from there.

People who commented on the Arrow similarity were attacked for their opinions and called everything from being elitists, promoting crab mentality and being too big a fan of Western culture. There were those who joined in the whole #PitchaShowToGMA thing (which I found to be funny, I mean, you knew it was going to go there with how Pinoys love to joke around). Some people jokingly apologized to Stephen Amell, some were serious. From the looks of the comments on Amell’s post, all were judged for that apology. I even saw a comment that said (and I am roughly translating here): Stephen Amell shouldn’t even react because Arrow is a flop in the Philippines (Arrow, apart from airing on cable TV in  the Philippines, is also aired dubbed in Tagalog on TV5). Whoa.

Supporters of GMA 7 and Dingdong Dantes, the lead actor in Alyas Robin Hood, were quick to defend the teaser, saying that judging based on a 15 second teaser and a poster that was apparently fan-made was not fair. I have not seen the poster, but based on the comments on Stephen’s post, majority of the people defending the show were talking a lot about that poster, not so much about the teaser.

A friend of mine on Facebook posted that GMA should have just made a character who used a more Filipino weapon, like the arnis (which, coincidentally, is being used by another DC-based character on the CW, White Canary from Legends of Tomorrow). Someone even suggested a remake of a JC Bonin movie called Kamagong, where the lead uses the arnis. Not a bad idea.

Long story short, everyone had an opinion and everyone was going to town on the issue. There was a lot of good-natured humor that seemed to have been taken in a different context by a lot of commenters. There was some sarcasm that seemed to go over the head of others. There were comments from people who did not seem to read the whole thing because they kept talking about the poster and not the teaser. Some were passionate fans of the local network and star whose comments sometimes went a little too far, although there were some who reasonably defended the show as well. Some went all-out network war on the whole issue, which I don’t think is the point.

What all of this proved to me is how social media can be both a good and a bad thing. Good in the sense that it is so powerful that we can all share our opinions about certain things, bad because some people cannot seem to accept exactly that. I mean, some people (on both sides of the issue) were just mean. Too mean, in fact. To the point that you could sense that these were comments that were daring people to reply to start a fight. It’s a dark side of the whole social media thing that I just can’t wrap my head around.

What has the world come to when we cannot accept that we live in a world where people are so diverse that other people will have a different opinion than us? Where we have to attack a person for believing in different things? I think I’ve said this before: can’t we all just agree to disagree? Isn’t that what being in a democracy is about?

Personally, I agree that the GMA teaser did have an Arrow feel. However, it was a short teaser. We don’t know what exactly the show is about. When it does come out, some will like it, some will not. But that’s the thing: it is going to happen. I say this not because I think the show is bad, but because with any product, they have a specific target market. The people who will love it are in that market, the ones who won’t are not.

I hope the issue will die down soon. I’ve been reading it on my timeline a little bit too much. Such a big deal for a post made by Stephen Amell (when he did not even post anything about it except for a blushing/shocked emoji). 

Stephen, look at what you’ve done!

Photo Source: Screen Rant