I was recently asked by one of my female clients whether it is helpful or counterproductive to speak with emotion during a broadcast interview.
Women are schooled early in the masochistic art of making themselves sound pleasant & reasonable at all times, no matter how egregious the provocation.
We are advised to ask nicely, object hesitantly, raise proposals apologetically, and to smile unwanted attention away. An angry woman is seen as unpleasant, unseemly, uncouth. Of course, the word for what she actually is, is 'inconvenient'.
The warning stereotype, the mockery, the scorn, serves an important societal function. It makes life easier for men (especially the white ones who tend to be in charge) by keeping half of the population quiet, quite literally, their protests, questions and contributions unheard.
But the TV interview hath no higher spark than the eloquence and passion of a woman scorned who manages to convey her message balancing a reasonable exposition of the cold facts with barely controlled fury in her delivery.
To witness such a performance is a privilege, and a tonic. You stop whatever you were doing, and you just gasp at the magnificent spectacle of nature that is an angry woman un-muzzled. And whatever she’s angry about you won’t forget in a hurry.
And so, to last night’s interview with former sub-postmistress Jo Hamilton on the Channel 4 News special dedicated to the Post Office Horizon scandal, the biggest miscarriage of justice in this country’s recent history. I urge you to watch it back for yourself while the link is still live.
Jo is an ordinary person whose life was made a misery (fleeced of her savings, accused of stealing, forced to confess to a theft she had not committed, prosecuted and so on) by a combination of incompetence, lies and cover-ups. But she was part of a group of victims who fought back, taking the Post Office on in the High Court and winning, even though no appropriate compensation has been paid yet.
Now in late middle age, speaking from her Hampshire home and wearing lilac and a frizzy perm Jo was, understandably, volcanically angry. The lava-like temperature of her scorn and disappointment simmering just below the surface, ready to erupt at the umpteen devil’s advocate question (“But don’t you think the Government deserve any credit for looking into this now?”).
Without ever raising her voice and with a fixed smile on her lips which never quite reached the eyes, she used her four minutes on air to methodically and forcefully trash Post Office management and successive Governments alike. By the time the presenter thanked her I was so full of adrenaline I would have put my shoes on and braved London's subarctic temperature to join a noisy demonstration there and then.
So yes, I'd say expressing emotions, positive and negative ones, both passion and fury, is helpful in a broadcast interview. They have the power to move the viewer/listener from apathy to full engagement. They have the power to make us heard, above the lilac jumper and the polite smile, so that what we have to say finally matters.
