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Oh dear. During a meeting of the European Parliament’s Civil Liberties Committee about the proposed harmonization of divorce procedures, a Spanish MEP told us to drag ourselves out of the 16th century and to allow foreigners residing in Malta to be granted divorce decrees. This, I suppose, will be taken as a cue for the anti-divorce lobby to bristle at the impudence of foreigners who dare to comment on our judicial system and to dash off letters to the newspapers decrying the moral degeneracy of those countries which do have divorce legislation.
In fact, the harmful effects of divorce on society are often cited as being the main reason for not going down the same road. All sorts of social problems are pinned on divorce, often with complete disregard for the possibility of these sort of problems existing even if divorce was not in the equation. Consider the following statement made by an exponent of the anti-divorce lobby: “During the Roman Empire, at the same time that the ‘progressive’ law of divorce was in force, babies were abandoned to die of exposure if the father deemed it to be so, people went to amphitheatres to watch blood sports where men fought beasts and each other up to death and where the common manner for criminals was crucifixion. People who lived in such societies could divorce at will, unlike the Maltese today, and this makes me and many others, the silent majority, proud and thankful.”
The writer is making an absurd connection between child cruelty and blood sports in ancient times with divorce legislation. It is a connection which does not exist. Even if a Roman Emperor had suddenly decided to scrap divorce, there is no proof that gladiators or Christian martyrs would have escaped their fate at the Coliseum or that children would not be abandoned or criminals not hung up on a cross. Violence, crime and societal breakdown exist even in countries which allow divorce. Look at Ireland, divorce-free until 1997 and beset with the bloodiest sectarian violence and division for decades. Look at the Philippines – also divorce-free till now (probably not for much longer – Congresswoman Lisa Maza has recently published a bill for its legalisation) but corruption-ridden. Both countries are clear examples of the fact that the absence of divorce legislation does not necessarily mean that the country has retained its moral lode-stone. Conversely, countries which do have divorce legislation should not be automatically tarred with Sodom and Gomorrah status.
Some members of the public who were interviewed for a vox pop and asked for their views about divorce, expressed their fears that if divorce had to be introduced, married couples would jam the law courts pleading for divorce decrees. The implication is that there are loads of Maltese marriages which are held together only because there is no divorce legislation. Stick it on the statute books and you’ve opened the floodgates as husbands and wives hare off to the arms of other partners or to blissful solitude. It is not so, and the latest research – a YouGov poll commissioned by The Sunday Times of London, proves it. The survey shows that despite it being available, the divorce rate has stabilised and that people still aspire to marriage as a lifelong union. So much for the opening of the floodgates argument.
Alfred Sant pretends not to notice that any debate about the subject is going on. Labour MPs waffle on about the need for civil society to take the initiative and discuss the subject before pronouncing themselves on the matter. Marie Louise Coleiro has given us the usual “let’s find out how we can strengthen the family before we proceed” argument. Of course, this is fence-sitting of the highest degree. The MLP is hoping to sit out the discussion and not get embroiled in any potential vote-losing election or uncomfortable skirmishes with the Church prior to election year. Opportunistic, but predictable.
Then there’s the Nationalist Party whose chief exponents claim that they are dead set against the introduction of divorce because that would be devaluating the family, making marriage seem less important in the eyes of society. They forget about their 1998 manifesto which promises to regulate the situation of cohabiting couples and to provide them with rights. If you are granting legal recognition to a unit other than the traditional family and extending legal and financial benefits to that unit, you are in fact, making that unit more attractive at the expense of the family as we know it. There’s nothing wrong in this but it does poke a great big hole in the Nationalist argument about preserving the importance of the traditional family institution above all others.
The British had Barbara Cartland who published some 700 books about breathless virgins overcoming all sorts of obstacles to be united with the taciturn, square-jawed hero of her awful romantic novels. Jackie Collins moved away from the heaving bosoms and throbbing loins of the Cartland genre and wrote in far more graphic detail about the body parts involved. We have Dame Marie Angelique Caruana who has penned the unimaginatively entitled “Gabriella” and “Gabriella 2” and “The Inheritance”, possibly the most embarrassing sitcom to hit the local television screens. If you can make it through the yawn-inducing programme about Nationalist politicians preceding it, you’re in for half an hour of the most inadvertently funny filming around. “The Inheritance” is billed as a “light-hearted situation comedy” but the comic aspect arises solely because of the unbelievably inane plot, the awkward acting and the ridiculous dialogue. As my friend said, “It’s so bad, it’s good”. Then she spent 15 minutes scrubbing off the mascara which the tears of laughter had streamed over her face.
Just in case you’ve missed the first three episodes and their ubiquitous repeats (they’re on nearly as often as David Casa’s website is updated daily), this is the plot in a nutshell: Minka (short for Duminka), has five children and two ex-husbands. The Maltese heroine of the series turns up in London and falls into bed with the extremely hairy-chested Maltese chauffeur of the 70-year old Gerard Crook. Overcome by a strong sense of solidarity and wanting to help a fellow Maltese, the shaggy chauffeur tells Minka how to win a life of luxury by shacking up with his boss. He does this while they are still in bed together (to which we’ve been directed by the ancient film cliché of having the camera follow a trail of discarded clothes). Minka manages to win over Crook who is evidently modelled on Hugh Hefner of Playboy fame – there’s the randy old goat in a dressing gown aspect – but he’s got erectile dysfunction problems. This allows Marie Angelique Caruana to really go to town with the Viagra jokes. So we’re supposed to grin at the never-ending innuendo-laden comments about “rising to the occasion” and “keeping it up”. Minka and Gerard have arguments over whether the cat should have an abortion (She tells him, “You’d better not, because I’ll report you to the animal rights people”), and receive visits from her offspring and their respective partners, all of whom stand stiffly to attention near the door and talk in the same robotic monotone. One of Minka’s daughters slaps Gerard for giving his Porsche to a Russian girl who has given him a three-hour massage: “You dirty old man. Is this the way to treat my mother?” With her utter lack of expression, she could have been asking him to pass the salt. Minka’s children find out that she has inherited a castle “somewhere in the wilderness near Marsaxlokk” and descend upon Malta to try and diddle each other out of it.
This is where the action is supposed to hot up – only it just trips up in a series of farcical clichés. There’s the obvious product placement, “We’re staying at the Hotel X, you must come and see us”, “Yes, we’d love to come and see you at the Hotel X”. Then we get to see Minka’s gay son dumping his boyfriend and flying off for a one-day jaunt to Amsterdam with the lawyer who holds the deeds to the castle (“Gay” goes with Amsterdam – let it not be said that Caruana has omitted a single stereotypical association). In the meantime her other son brings over a string of call-girls to Malta, while her daughter muses about how it is possible to gauge a man’s sexual appetite from his ring finger. It goes on in this vein till the final, relieving moment when the credits roll and a voice-over asks: “Was there ever a family like this?”
The people at NET TV should have asked themselves: “Was there ever a television series as awful as this?” and stuck to their normal schedule of Tuesday night hagiographies of David Agius and the rest – it’s slightly less cringe-inducing.
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