Be Careful With My Heart

(Discourse Analysis)

Submitted by:
Milcielo Claire S. Villamayor
2010-03030
Second Semester AY 2012-2013

Submitted to:
Dr. Elizabeth Enriquez
College of Mass Communication
University of the Philippines Diliman

Analysing text on TV is tricky especially with the episodic texts as they usually
contain a lot of discourses within a certain series. Most often than not series that rate are
actually stretched (sometimes to the point of veering away from the original
topic/conflict at hand) to keep the show thus the profits coming in. This is true especially
in the Philippine context and is evident to almost all series. Just from this fact we can see
that the primary objective of television material producers is to gain profit and that
setting an agenda comes as secondary. However, this is a digression from my discourse
analysis but it is important to keep this at the back of your head to back up my analysis
for the show ‘Please be Careful with My Heart’ which is steadily gaining popularity among
the audiences.

In summary, the show is about a typical family-loving girl from the province whose
only hope is to be a flight attendant and help her family. However, she was scammed by a
woman who promised to give her a job overseas thus she ended up being a nanny to an
employer who owns an airline company. The agreement is that the employer would pay
for her studies and let her graduate from school to finally become a flight attendant. The
girl, Maya, then proceeds to be the nanny of the family and is portrayed as being
industrious, hardworking and loving – the typical good girl. She eventually falls in love
with the children and of course with the head of the family – Sir Chief (Richard).
 From this premise two discourses already arise, one is the discourse on Filipino
family and working overseas and two is the discourse on one’s working hard to achieve
one’s dreams, even love. The discourse on Filipino family and working overseas is not new
to us. The Filipinos are known to have close family ties and member/s of a family usually
makes sure to work hard as to provide for the needs of the family. As it is, the solution for
Maya is to work overseas due to the high expenditures in their household. When you
think about it, this is not really different from what is happening now in your typical
Filipino households. Whatever the reason for the flock of overseas workers abroad – little
job opportunities, low-paying jobs, etc., one can already see the irony of the
circumstances. Filipinos have close family ties and yet they have to move and work away
to sustain for the family.

Moving on to the second discourse on working hard and achieving one’s dreams
and love, the show captures exactly this. Maya works hard for the family and she gets to
have her education, Maya works hard and the boss notices her and eventually they fall for
one another. From this one can see the agenda that the text is actually conveying – work
hard and everything you want will be yours. Although for the most part, the former is
true (working hard to achieve your dreams to education) the latter would be usually
farfetched (your boss actually falling in love with you). In real life, it is not impossible
however it would be improbable. What does this say then about the show? The show
actually serves as the form of escape, especially of the nannies or regular employees, from
reality to their fantasies of love in the workplace. This then urges them to just keep
working hard and eventually they will be rewarded. This ideology works well especially to
the businessmen and capitalists who actually benefit from the employee’s diligence. It
must make sense then to tie this up with the introduction I said earlier wherein the
television is a capitalist business and which its primary concern is profit backed up by
agenda setting from the text wherein the agenda is wrapped beautifully to actually
support the ideologies of capitalism.