221 Plaridel • Vol. 13 No. 2• July - December 2016 (Dub)Smashing the Fourth Wall: The Kalyeserye’s Metafiction Ivery Del Campo “God gave me you to show me what’s real.” On September 26, 2015, in what turned out to be an unusually special Saturday in Eat Bulaga’s 36 years as a noontime variety show, actor and TV host Alden Richards, who’s been dubsmashing love songs with (literal) on-screen love interest Yaya Dub, stopped dubsmashing for the frst time and sang something for real, live and with his actual voice. In Philippine showbiz, where it’s common for non-singers to lip-sync to their own pre- recorded edited voices, Alden bared his still developing talent and sang, though not always hitting the notes. Ten the voice quivered; on national TV and the World Wide Web, Alden broke down in tears but carried on with the singing. Te camera panned to the audience, his co-hosts in Broadway studio, and the crowd in a remote location. Everybody was in tears and singing with him. Te enigma of the moment was, were his tears as real as his voice? After the song, Alden spoke up saying the song “God Gave Me You” is dedicated to Meng, the pet name for Maine Mendoza who plays Yaya Dub, a character who communicates by dubsmashing lines from songs and movies or by writing fan signs, and whose real voice was, at that point, unheard in the Kalyeserye (street drama serial). Was Alden’s dedication statement scripted, unscripted, or both? For the Kalyeserye audience used to acting-an lang ito (all this is just acting), Alden’s dedication can be both scripted and truthfully meant, with the song dedicated to both Yaya Dub the character and Maine the real person. For who was Alden Richards before this craze? In the few years he was in showbiz he was a steady though minor presence, and had Yaya Dub not broken character on that fateful Tursday of July 16, 2015 (henceforth celebrated every Tursday weeksary), both he and Maine could still be waiting for a breakthrough that for many in the cutthroat entertainment industry might never come. With what happened afterwards, “breakthrough” became an understatement to describe the speed, suddenness, and consistency of their rise in both traditional media like television and the internet-based social media that activated a frenzied participatory culture among fans in the country and the diaspora. Tat Tursday was a godsend to Alden’s career, thanks to Yaya Dub who made a fortune for both of them by slipping into her real self for a split second. After doing a dubsmash which had become a fxture of the segment with the arrival of her character, the frosty young nanny to the rich old woman Lola Nidora turned to the TV split screen through which she and the others in the outdoor Kalyeserye interacted with the TV hosts in Broadway.