Mad ‘Housewives’. Teri Hatcher and Felicity Huffman costar on Desperate Housewives, the ABC hit comedy that has gotten Filipinos everywhere hot and bothered.

THE other day, I received an e-mail from a cousin, presently based in the US. In the Philippines she was a pediatrician and a poet, sharing a generation with writers like Susan Lara and Geraldine Maayo, individuals noted for their own elegant approach to the craft of fiction. My favorite memory of this cousin is that she opted to attend the Silliman Writers’ Worskhop one summer and decided to forgo her medical internship.

The letter is addressed to her colleagues in the medical profession and carried the salutation “Dear Fragile Egos.” By the time you read this letter, she would have already received e-mail from people who think she is mad, not Filipino enough, selfish and simply not adept in media theories. She describes this message a solitary voice aware of the deluge of positions that favored the killing of the controversial program, a full public apology from the producers, scriptwriters and the Teri Hatcher, a boycott of the US TV network ABC, etc. I wrote her, she is wrong about being solitary; I share her perspective and more.

With some passages edited out so I can fulfill this column’s space requirements, here is the letter for your perusal. The language is elegant; the position is fresh and honest.

Personally, in my humble opinion, the uproar of Filipino physicians over such a puny comment on Desperate Housewives is completely misplaced, overblown, and certainly not worth the congregation of emotional stress it has stimulated, at least not mine, and I do not intend to join in the frenzy of this outrage.  I will not attach my signature to this petition, nor write a personal letter other than this piece for our mail group, at the risk of being banned, to share my solitary perspective.  There are serious, real, tragic causes to espouse that I would die for; this is not one for me. The integrity of my ego is oblivious and impervious to Hollywood hype and its well-established insensibilities, which are what you all are really upset about: mere tripe, rubbish, worthless, in a broad stroke. But even as I say this, this generalization is also unfair because I enjoy many shows and Hollywood movies that promote the genteel side of our human nature, the elegance of what it is to be a physician....

Screenplays are written by writers to enrage or be comical, to capture audience where they want this audience captivated...for an hourlong fantasy, for a series of entertainment, for the seasonal audience to lift themselves out of the humdrum of their real lives and step into what is artificial, crafted, FAKE, for goodness’s sake; however close to reality that depiction may seem, whatever reality is created onscreen, on television, in the movies, remains what it is, FICTION, unless presented as a documentary or autobiographical. To be insulted by a fictional character to me is absurd. To expect a fictional character to conform to our real sense of morality is even more absurd; it is ridiculous. To expect candor and compassion for us as Filipino physicians from a show that is purposely written and directed to scandalize and tantalize with its morbidly sexual themes (why Filipino physicians even watch it, I do not understand, as I have never watched this show other than brief glimpses at it while surfing channels), desperate as these fictional housewives are, is showing naïveté and ignorance about what Hollywood is about: SENSATIONALISM, which must necessarily be founded on conflict, controversy and, often, either hilarious or egregious distortion of truths. In the end you just feed fuel to the fire of that sensationalism with this hysterical response, because signatures and petitions most definitely will not by themselves face-lift the negative perceptions of the American public (vice versa) about the Filipino physician and the Filipino community, and will only add to the viewership of this show as an expected impact. This is NOT a genuine battleground for declaring who we are as a people. It is a television show. Teri Hatcher is not Susan; Susan is an invented character that Teri Hatcher portrays skillfully on the measured, effective words the screenwriter puts into her mouth to build her character, not to build our character as Filipino physicians, not to build the character of our medical schools, but to add details to what she as a fictional character is—her thoughts, the layers of her persona, NOT OURS!  If you have to be insulted by all the American writers or foreigner writers who write about Filipinos, take upon your shoulders the burden of those who write into their novels, cameo or recurring roles of Filipinas perennially portrayed as prostitutes, mail-order brides, domestic servants, lowly field workers, commentaries which are more grievous, more unacceptable and surely more offensive than the implication (not even declared, just hinted at) of having inept medical schools in the Philippines (ergo inept graduate physicians?)....

Believe me, this does not approach the scathing diatribes I have received, endured and experienced from a few patients, and few selected individuals, men and women in the military community (although, admittedly, rare as rare birds are, and are atypical comments, not an exemplification of the military community), as a Filipina physician in the US military health-care system, which is even less than what my military Filipina friends, who are neither degree-holders nor married to officers, have endured in their own private corners. Your agony is a mere whine, and pales in intensity and in substance with what the real effronteries are out there. You do not know what real insults are in the real world if you are inordinately excited by this solitary moment in an escapist entertainment medium. Be insulted by genuine, verbal frontal affront to your own person, if you ever experienced it, not by this trivia.

The more outrageous a show is, within categories, the more viewers is captured within that market, and as a result more money is made for the creators, which is the substance of the American dream. My personal, reflexive response is to dismiss this fictive insult because it does not define me as a physician, and I do not consider that one- or two-line comment an insult even in my imaginary universe because Desperate Housewives is not in my personal universe, nor should it be in yours, if you define your self-worth by your own measures, not by what others say about you, about us as a people, as professionals.

What is worth wondering about is why these physicians even watch the show. There are definitely other issues, more universal, more critical, more depressing to contemplate and be harassed about, and to be seriously concerned with more than, yes, our fragile, bruised egos. Climb higher into your superego pedestals, stretch who you are and extend yourself above those fragmented screen characters that are lifeless outside those sedate black boxes, and consider your own reality as separate from what transpires inside nonexistent lands. Comments from fictitious characters who are supposed to play peculiar, on the edge, radical, irreverent “selves” are not reflective of who they are as persons; they are actors and actresses, acting on and acting out the roles that are assigned to them in plots that are designed to titillate, to create controversy and conflict on purpose....Hollywood, if I may remind everyone, is foremost a world of entertainers for entertainment. Assign it that limited entrance into your consciousness and you should not jump as high as you are jumping now, taking in what you hear and see through your higher senses, processing them appropriately as artifacts in your more noble lives....

Sincerely,

Jessie Badillo 

 
Jessie C. Badillo, MD, founder, CEO KISS-ROOT, PHILIPPINES, INC. US IRS Determined PUBLIC CHARITY 501(c)(3), 2005 

If we would count the racial slurs on Philippine TV, radio, film and other mass-media instruments against the Chinese, Japanese, Indians (“Bombay,” as we call them), Africans or any dark-skinned individual, women and children, old persons, gays and lesbians, the disabled, primates and monkeys, we certainly would be hearing demands  for apologies every day.

More recently, during the coverage of Pacquiao-Barrera match, commentators from GMA took note of the punch released by Barrera even when the referee was already separating the two fighters. The voice said, “Look, Barrera did not even bother to go to the side of Pacquiao to apologize.” Another voice joined in: “Hindi kasi Pilipino.”

Dear Cousin, I truly rest my case.

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Reeling: She calls this her solitary voice

THE other day, I received an e-mail from a cousin, presently based in the US. In the Philippines she was a pediatrician and a poet, sharing a generation with writers like Susan Lara and Geraldine Maayo, individuals noted for their own elegant approach to the craft of fiction. My favorite memory of this cousin is that she opted to attend the Silliman Writers’ Worskhop one summer and decided to forgo her medical internship.