Opinion • 13 July 2003

Wake up sleeper

Saviour Balzan is jolted into cynic mode once again by the screening of a programme that publicises religious revival for English speaking upper middle class Maltese

On Friday evenings, I try my very best not watch the box unless excited by watching silly men parade on a programme called BUS or watching a political crusader standing in as the self declared Robin Hood.

Instead I usually prefer to opt for a sumptuous meal carefully prepared and exquisitely offered by the blonde.

Yet, this Friday I sat myself at the telly and zapped around the only three Maltese stations that come up like rice paper on my old tatty telly.

So on Super One it was Gahan in squeamish village Maltese, on NET I discovered a programme which encouraged me to move on, and finally to PBS with a programme that I had heard of, but never actually seen.

Wake up sleeper, is an apt name, for someone with an attention problem in front of television.

It definitely did wake me up.

It is one of those productions that should never be screened on state television for the simple reason that it is bigoted, discriminating and elitist.

The presenters of the programme do not hide the fact that it is earmarked solely for the English speaking Maltese who are more than run of the mill Christians. Or rather the Maltese that cannot speak good English, understand little Maltese, and proceed to mumble in something called Menglish.

With our Constitution, PBS could very well be directed by the Broadcasting Authority to award the same sort of programme to a Moslem fundamentalist sect.

This is a programme about religious revival. It is a TV show that is inundated with middle aged, upper middle class individuals who have lived their life to the full and have now suddenly discovered God.

True, this is Saviour the cynic speaking. But I have a problem with people who call themselves religious then spend Monday mornings with their accountants for cook-the-book sessions and have very little patience for the so called hamalli.

This type of religious revival, which usually comes in heavy doses, tends to happen to people who have not had a very religious, or shall we say spiritual, childhood.

Unlike many English-speaking Maltese I had the privilege of living in the heart of B’Kara and Rabat as a boy.

At the same time other boys where congregating outside Fortizza, Sliema and picking up girlfriends and feeling the warmth of youth. I was busy reciting the rosary at the legion of Mary, flying the flag for the school prayer group and trying very hard to understand why a French kiss was such refined pleasure.

When drugs did hit the road, I was safe and sound watching birds; the feathered ones and when the real youth were spending their dirty weekends off in Gozo I was carrying out voluntary work and pretending to read Kafka.

The story it seems is that as everyone ages and experiences death, illness, birth, depression and tax evasion one suddenly finds it appropriate to seek fast food God.

How very human, or should I say convenient.

Wake up sleeper, is a programme which confirms the hidden schism and division of the spoken language in Malta. It confirms more than anything else the frailty in those sections of the Maltese English-speaking upper middle class trapped in a time warp reminiscent of the 1950’s US bible belt. Furthermore it points to insecurity.

It is an embarrassing and truthful illustration of that section in Maltese society that represents the small but influential body of people that make Malta so diverse, bizarre and electric.