TV Guide interview
Two days before the Academy Awards, an article appeared in the New York Times pointing to the not so subtle fact that the Award ceremony, had in no sense altered its budget or its pointless spectacle of nauseating extravagances, despite the ever-looming "financial crisis" (which to the credit of dominant media, has still not been named a "collapse", ""rupture" or even a "depression"). It is unfortunate however, that the Academy couldn't excercise at least some right to the preservation of its own "decency "by allowing Ryan Seacrest to skulk the red carpet (with a microphone and a cameraman) freely. At a time, when the Oscar's sheer stupidity and utterly grotesque display of capital couldn't have been more obvious, (it's obviousness was part of the point), Seacrest's "interview" full of loosely veiled condescension, (although I think he is too stupid to understand the difference between condescension and the inane "pleasantries" required of red carpet interviews, that is, the duties of his "job") and visibly racist commentary on the children standing in front of him, demonstrated how "post-racial" racism was equally present in all the competitive stupidity of the night.
That Seacrest interviewed the cast collectively and not individually (they were introduced as "a whole bunch of kids from "Slumdog Millionaire"" is just one indication of the ways in which individualism (and with that, a whole world of seeing and doing, speaking and thinking) is reserved only for white adult subjects. That is, "kids can be spoken to collectively as a horde because they are not fully human, and thus silly or irrational. (Keep in mind that Seacrest did not even introduce the cast as actors, but as "a bunch of children from Slumdog Millionaire"). Children of color from India, enforce this kind of blindly paternal chauvinism, because they are assumed to be "wide-eyed, kids from a "backwards" and a completely different country. Their ignorance is "natural" and "obvious", they are "afraid" or "nervous". This fear and nervousness is obvious enough, but it is the condition of child actors who are afraid and nervous in the presence of a nakedly ignorant creep. It might even have been more than those two conditions, it could have been boredom or anxious irritation, but either way the child cast of "Slumdog Millionaire" understood in some sense the ways they were being interviewed, and they did not like it.
Seacrests's inability to pronounce all of "their" names (again the collectivizing impulse that understands children of color as a mass and not as individuals with agency, personality, or identities) and his decision to hold a piece of paper (not even to hold it up clearly or directly so that it could be properly visible to the camera) with all of "their" names written on it, was an indication of his "post-racially" racist style; the logic of which is: "It's not my fault I cannot pronounce "their" names", its "theirs". At least I attempted to give "them" some sort of identification". Victimage, arrogance, stupidity, and a whole pattern of blatantly obvious assumptions characterized an interview that "peaked" with Seacrests' comment, "she speaks good english". His first attempt at a question in the form of an actual address, failed when he received no response, but it actually failed, when he repeated "he doesn't speak English" to the listening audience. If one watches other red carpets interviews with the cast, it becomes perfectly clear that members of the cast gave incredibly articulate (for young children) responses to all kinds of questions. Seacrest's perfectly post-racial moment, from his stress on the importance of English, to his lack of concern with his own racist condescension, demonstrates the structured ignorance and disavowal at the heart of post-raciality.
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