He's not a genius… but give Ricky Lo a break

 

Ricky Lo conducted a horrible interview with Anne Hathaway, which was not surprising. What is more surprising is the vitriol directed at the writer, possibly from a sense that Lo made Filipinos look bad in an international setting. (Isn’t it strange that we can peg our national pride on an entertainment writer? It’s bad enough that our nationalism is stoked by a boxer who hangs out with Mitt Romney and Chavit Singson—the fighter who connects trapos from across the seas). 

 

Amid the cyberbullying, very few people noticed that Hathaway was actually mean to Lo. When Lo asked Hathaway about her weight loss, she dismissed the question as being too personal, leaving the writer stunned and embarrassed. But it wasn’t a personal question. Hathaway lost weight as a professional, preparing for a public job. Can’t entertainment writers ask actors about how they become their characters?

 

Moreover, when Lo requested Hathaway to invite Filipinos to watch Les Miz, she refused. Maybe actors and actresses don’t directly invite fans to watch movies in the US, but how difficult would it have been to play along? Hathaway’s co-stars did.

 

That netizens automatically crucified Lo instead of noting Hathaway’s lack of grace is telling. Ricky Lo may not be the best journalist out there, but he should not be subjected to scorn because he failed to please an American actress, especially one who was bordering on rudeness. It seems to me that the seemingly innocuous events surrounding Ricky Lo-gate 2k13 can tell us much about the state of postcolonial culture in the Philippines.

 

In a recent article, Lo narrates, “I felt that she [Hathaway] wasn’t in the mood (sic) during the interview. I learned later that the other Asian journalists (from Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Tokyo, etc.) felt the same way, recalling their own separate encounters with Anne.”

 

One cannot be sure, but Lo’s mention of Asian journalists hints at the issue of racial difference, or at the very least the power differences between nationals from different countries. We rarely talk about race, racism, or global hierarchies in the Philippines, but these issues bear nuanced discussion.

 

Here’s a thought experiment: Would Anne have treated an American journalist similarly even if he had asked equally inane questions? Could she have been as dismissive to Ryan Seacrest (who has, in fact, asked many inane questions in his career)? My sense is that she wouldn’t have. This is, of course, speculation, but there’s nothing wrong with examining probabilities. To be rude to a prominent American host would have made Anne Hathaway look mean to the American public whose adulation her career relies on. But a nervous, worshipful Filipino journalist is not as important. 

 

A parallel example helps illustrate this point. In his interview with the actress, NBC’s Matt Lauer asked Hathaway about a wardrobe malfunction shortly after noting that he had “seen a lot” of Anne. This was not only personal; it was also sexist.

 

In the Lo interview, Hathaway dismissed the question about her weight loss as being too personal. Confronted with personal, shameful, and sexist questioning from Lauer, however, Hathaway smiles and provides a long disquisition about how humiliating wardrobe malfunctions can be. Why does Lauer, the sexist, get better treatment than Lo?

 

Can this difference be explained by racism? Not directly. Anne Hathaway did not engage in systematic discrimination, and Lo could have done a better job. There are many ways he could have prevented that train wreck of an interview: He could have asked better questions; he could have avoided talking about Anne’s class background. Nonetheless, we should also ask: What are the socio-cultural mores that allow someone like Hathaway to be ungracious to a bumbling Pinoy reporter and nice to a sexist NBC anchor?

 

In the cultural landscape of Hollywood, NBC carries a lot more prestige than the Philippine Star. It has what sociologists call cultural capital.

 

It is in this broader socio-cultural sense that we need to think about race in examining the Lo-Hathaway interview. Racial and national hierarchies are not only present in overt acts of discrimination; they filter into, inform, and condition everyday discourse. This has nothing to do with cause and effect, because cultural analysis is not a science. Rather, it is about the contexts in which acts are performed and enabled. So when Anne Hathaway bullies Ricky Lo into inviting Filipino fans himself, we are hurt because an American actress has rejected “the nation.” We are made aware that a postcolonial citizen can quiver before a famous American actress.

 

We implicitly know why Lo is squeamish; after all, he is reproducing the white love that we feel every time we seek validation from someone like Hathaway. We are as aware of racial hierarchies as he is. Lo just happened to be the unlucky one who wrestled publicly with a colonial anxiety that we all share.

 

Ricky Lo deserves a break. He’s more like us than we think. – GMA News