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From: blp
Category: TV
Date: 23 April 2005
She looked hurt and bewildered. 'I don't understand', she said, 'there are no commercials. Can't we cut to a commercial?' It was her best moment, the closest she came to admitting, except by her expression, that something was wrong - and done with wit. Robert Downey had been on before and mostly she just wanted to talk about fancying him. Downey was equal parts sheepish, reserved and gregariously desirous of public affection, all things considered, riven with the normal human sized fissures of a man of forty, not too starrish. Ross sucked up to him a lot and Downey took it with polite reserve, as if he wanted to say, 'look I'm terribly weak and I have to be very careful not to believe all these insincere compliments you're so shamelessly stroking me with' instead of 'oh, yes, well, thank you very much.' But where the Downey interview was just so much uncomfortable joshing and a few laughs, Anderson's was the archetypal sex bomb chat show appearance, which is to say, a glimpse into a very peculiar type of existential pain and confusion, presided over by an apparently oblivious, probably sadistic buffoon. Ross is scum. Almost immediately he started coming on strong with lewd remarks about Anderson's figure that would see him hauled up sharply on sexual harrassment charges if the two of them worked in an office together. From then on, the interview was a halting, unpleasant slog through a desert of sand and brambles. You could guess at the internal conflict going on in Anderson, mostly hating it, wanting to tell him seriously that she was being hurt, or leave, or give him a swift kick in the groin, but worried, perhaps with that special worry of someone briefed by PR people, about coming across as a spoilsport and so trying, despite her palpable discomfort, to play along. She told a story about her embarrassment at milk squirting out of her bathing suit when she was lactating on the set of Baywatch and Ross indicated it was causing his penis to stiffen. She talked happily about making a video with her friends and Ross used it as a segue to her sex video with Tommy Lee. 'Oh yeah', she said, face falling, 'well, um, video isn't always such a good thing.' 'It was for me', leered Ross. It was bullying and as with all bullying, the only thing that would have shut it down was if the object of it hadn't cared, and she clearly did. But it was weird too, because just as Anderson couldn't admit she was having a bad time, Ross couldn't admit he was administering it. You could argue that Anderson deserves some kind of public holding to account for her contribution to a culture of body fascism. This wasn't it and if Ross thinks it was he's an even more disingenuous mysoginist than this passive aggressive appearance suggests. If he actually has some kind of moral objection to her career, he could say so, rather than just suggesting he's been using images of Anderson to masturbate. No, this wasn't critique. If anything, this was a woman being sexually abused because, in the perception of the abuser, she'd asked for it. I thought of a quote from a feminist, I can't remember which and can't remember how it ends, but you'll get the idea: 'If women knew how much men hated them...' Perhaps Anderson just wanted that commercial break so she could threaten legal action if Ross didn't behave. And perhaps she should take some.
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