Opinion • November 16 2003

Culture with a capital C

It is not going to be politics or Satan in actor’s clothes and his clowns this week, so please read on. Cultural events are running amok and anyone who declares that Malta has nothing to offer is simply not being realistic.
Not one day goes by without an exhibition, a drama production or a musical event. This small Island has more to offer in terms of ‘going out’ than any other European medium sized town with a population of 400,000.
The same applies to the different fare offered by ambitious and inconsistent restaurateurs. The diversity in gastronomy is never ending as are the exhibitions put up in our eateries by artists, some of whom fail to realise that their sketches are not art, but doodling or glorified draughts-woman-ship.
The good thing is that culture is more open and less class oriented. I am no theatre buff and I should not forget that years back when I chose to go to the Manoel to watch Maltese actors sink deep in an American accent in a Tennessee Williams production I was stopped by a childhood friend and asked in Sliema minglish. "Ara, mela you like theatre - what are you doing here?"
As if only theatre freaks were allowed in.
MaltaToday has not decided to print expletives so I will not record my riposte. Last Sunday at the Manoel, there were very few of the minglish types, and the theatre was full of actors and Maltese die-hards. It was an Oreste Calleja play, and the theatre was not even half full. It is a play that reverberates some of Oreste Calleja’s tribulations with his own personal experiences of leaving Malta for 17 years.
Now, I have no intention of standing in as a theatre critic, I have neither the verbosity nor the finesse to dissect plays, actors or playwrights. But I enjoyed every bit of this play, more so because of the fact that it was in Maltese and had something to say. And yes I get goose pimples when I see il-Malti in action.
The other thing that struck a chord this week was the film The Piano Teacher at St James Cavalier. It is a difficult film, but it is very good. The film offered many scenes of Isabelle Huppert sniffing tissues picked up from a peep cubicle and obviously scandalised and shocked the film critic Eric German. Understandably considering that most men fail to acknowledge that voyeurism is widespread and practised by most adult men. Even more strange are those critics, commentators and members of the public who find less harsh words for the violence and gore that appears in many of the US films that romanticise violence and what as teenagers we would simply call: zinnati.
This explosion of culture naturally has little do with the political mood of the day, but more to do with the urgent need many of us feel in Malta to run away from the trauma of daily life.
The general repetitiveness of our daily lives which, considering the often poor return for the effort we put in brings to the fore the very simple consideration: Where are we going with our lives?
Which is why so many silly films, theatre productions and art have become convoluted reflections of our life, dreams and nightmares.
And with that final comment of my personal views on culture in Malta, I end this article and promise my readers that next week, it will be politics and Satan in clown’s clothes in a warehouse all over again.