In case you thought condescension to young women and YA had stopped…
When I watched this interview this morning, in which Paper Towns star Cara Delevingne’s sarcasm is treated incredibly childishly by professional news anchors, my wife turned to me and said, “They’d never do that to a man,” and she was right.
And here’s the thing: Do I think some of Delevingne’s comments were a little abrasive? Sure, but that didn’t justify the response by Good Morning Sacramento‘s anchors—Marianne McClary, Ken Rudolph, and Mark S. Allen—at all. Instead of being adults and rolling with Delevingne’s pithy remarks, Allen decided to switch from asking her about the movie and her career to asking why she wasn’t quite as chipper with them as she’d been in past interviews.
She even tried to laugh it off and go along with them to keep things civil when she joked that it was the morning (after the movie’s premiere, no less), and she might be a bit tired, but they insisted on making things worse with McClary asking if it was just them that were annoying her. Delevingne sat through that and comments that she should “take a little nap” and “have a Red Bull.”
Then it seemed they cut off her mic and kept talking about her after she was gone. Allen, who practically asked her why she wouldn’t smile, continued to dig that hole he was standing in deeper with some comments about how highly she’s paid and how that basically means she should perform on command. I don’t know how much the anchors of Good Day Sacramento are paid, but I’m guessing it’s enough to weather a bit of sarcasm with a smile and a laugh by Allen’s logic.
And then audiences were treated to what they really wanted: Allen expressing his opinions on the movie.
Ken Rudolph even seemed taken aback a bit by the whole thing, quietly interjecting that he thought she was just being funny, but that it turned that wasn’t the case. (Though I can’t tell if he realized whose fault it really was that her sarcasm played as a confrontation instead of jokes.)
For Delevingne’s part, she mentioned on Twitter that her sense of humor had been misunderstood.
Some people just don’t understand sarcasm or the British sense of humour
— Cara Delevingne (@Caradelevingne) July 29, 2015
But I think assuming it’s a difference of nationalities is generous. If a male actor—of any age—had made similar sarcastic remarks, he’d likely have been treated much differently than the 22-year-old model who was told she was “in a mood.”
(via THR)
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