TV PERSONALITIES CRY THEIR HEARTS OUT ON-AIR
by Nestor U. Torre, Inquirer News Service, August 3, 2001

LAST Sunday, viewers had a good cry while watching some of the early-evening shows on television. On Sharon Cuneta’s program on Channel 2, Sharon and her best buddies Zsa Zsa Padilla and Bing Loyzaga were crying their eyes out as they and their respective daughters expressed their love for each other for all the world to see and hear.

Not to be outdone, GMA Channel 7’s “Partners: Mel and Jay” featured stepmothers and their stepchildren, and tears flowed on that set as well, as the stepchildren belatedly expressed their appreciation for what their second mothers had done for them. (GMA Channel 7 is a joint venture partner of the Philippine Daily Inquirer for this website.)

But if an award for the most copious weeper were handed out that night, it would definitely have gone to Sharon, who went to pieces as she sang a particularly meaningful song to her beloved KC.

Sharon’s tears were grateful and loving, but some of the waterworks in the “Mel and Jay” episode that night were made murkier by some past resentments that the weepers had to first confront and then rise above, before they could achieve a similarly liberating and loving catharsis.

In this regard, the contrast between the two shows was interesting, indeed.

Why does local TV just love to make its program hosts and guests cry? Because our entire lives are six-handkerchief tearjerkers, that’s why—and our televised cry-athons pull in the highest ratings, besides.

The psycho-logic goes this way: the “ordinary” viewer has many problems in his own life to cry about, so it gives him a perverse kind of pleasure to see that the rich and famous can also be emotionally blackmailed into bawling in public.

A less cynical view has it that tears “humanize” a celebrity, so viewers like it when famous people break down because this means that they can be just as vulnerable as you and me, and this makes it easier for us to relate to them more personally, heart to heart (or hurt).

Whatever the motivation, celebrities are made to cry as a matter of course on local TV, and nowhere is this more apparent than on our show biz talk shows, where star-guests weep frequent and wanton tears--crocodile, alligator, iguana, tuko, butiki, or otherwise.

The trick on those shows is to subject the celebrity guest to rumored reports that a loved one or dear friend has been saying unkind things about him, prompting the celebrity to break down as he defends himself or rues the end of a beautiful relationship.

Or else, the celebrity is feted on his birthday, and his relatives and friends are trotted out to praise him to high heavens, touching him so much that he ends up a wet and blubbering heap.

Even better, an old grudge is dug up, and the show becomes the venue for the resolution of the conflict with another celebrity, who dramatically appears “in person” on the show so that the two former enemies can rush into each other’s arms and bathetically bawl on each other’s shoulders.

Amazingly, many of these tearful displays are motivated, not just by a genuine desire to make belated recompense for an old hurt, but to promote the celebrities’ latest show biz projects.

That’s why, after using those six handkerchiefs to wipe their copious tears away, the celebrities take a deep breath, put on their brightest smiles, and plug their new projects with great enthusiasm.

From rainy to sunny in the blink of an eye—that’s show biz for you, and there are many stars willing to play the game, as long as their new projects, and consequently their careers, benefit from the lachrymal flood!