Persistence of vision(s)

Sabina Guzzanti is, perhaps, the poster girl for its cheap imitation Joe King - about which more later.

This satirist was given the order of the boot because her new show was overly critical of the (Italian) Prime Minister, one of the many people whose voice she imitates to perfection. As she put it, he took her job (inter alia by making the 'Nazi' quip) and so she might as well repay the compliment.

Indeed, one of the things she had said in the trailer-teasers to her show (pulled after just one episode), while impersonating the head of Publitalia and Mediaset, was that 'they' had to find a way to get her off the air.

In the end, a recording of this sole programme was broadcast on big screens in 20 major Italian cities to throngs of people who received it enthusiastically.

Satire is a different kettle of fish altogether in Malta.

Men in black - whether the cassocks are fair dinkum or not - are as likely as the next man to tell jokes against themselves. Lately, for instance, one of my favourite Jesuits narrated one, and the punchline had the mother of a rather 'slow' boy opt for the Society of Jesus through which to channel her 'slow' son's vocation to the priesthood (this order has the longest vocational course of all).

Dun Dione - probably kin of Dun Fenek ta' l-Indji - appearing on the aforementioned Joe King (Super 1, Fridays at 8.55 p.m.) was trying to make us laugh by pretending to be the archetypal spluttering rural community cleric in a cassock that was so filthy it could stand up for itself. To add insult to injury, the punchline involved a person with a mental impairment.

Perhaps inevitably, this programme tries to make up what it lacks in class with a motley crew of young people in various stages of undress, perhaps because they happen to have no dress sense whatsoever.

The good news is that Kathleen Mamo and Daniel Buhagiar (Cama Cama, Radju Malta Tnejn) have won the Best Programme for Children award, as I had said they ought to in a previous column - although as far as I'm concerned awards and stuff are all science fiction. Ironically, therefore, this probably means that in a 10-minute programme (without 'pictures' as one usually understand the term to mean) there is more concentrated sense, information, humour, fun and savoir-faire than in something many times as long that tends to rely on visuals for effect.

Speaking of children's programmes, it is indeed a pity that one of the better programmes on Education 22 - the art programme presented by Catherine Xuereb - is often so badly recorded that it is irritating to watch. The camera flits about, close-ups of work are taken from a moving boat with a seasick cameraman, and the sound is frequently atrocious.

Though nowhere as zany as Art Attack - in fact it's rather too stolid for my tastes - there is a wealth of knowledge imparted to those who are interested.

I do understand the idea behind competition, viz. that similar programmes are presented on different stations at the same time to get the audience to "choose" - and this definitely does not occur because of something that used to be known as the "Children's Hour" - however, in the end, it is the presenters, the advertisers, the viewers and the station with the least of these that lose out.

If it's Saturday, it must be Malta. A flying visit by the Rete 4 crew wedged Malta in between other nations bordering the Mediterranean Sea. ("Island with a 20-ton megalith... lampuki caught in a way that was hitherto unknown to us... date-and-pastry confections that are fried...).

I wish, however, all those who aspire to tell the rest of the world about us would be handed a phonetic script so that Hagar Qim sounds approximately like that, not like Agar Kimm or, well, nothing on earth.

By now most of us are rooting for particular contestants on L-Isfida and Bravi! I watched the credits roll on the last few weeks, and I couldn't help noting how the cameraman kept panning the studio but focussing mainly on the person who had been eliminated, trying to catch the moments of sadness on camera.

It so happened that, as occurs during contests where conversely, the person upon whom our attention is drawn is a winner, other contenders for the title were clustering around the ex-hopeful, and so thankfully the youngster was protected from the searing lens.

Doubtlessly many people appreciate the relay of rosary recitations on different radio stations; however, the automatic pilot that appears to take over the voices of those doing the recitation unfortunately sometimes results in garbled words such as qazza and mitinbin. And maybe someone will decide once and for all whether it's to be jiddi fuqhom or jiddi lilhom.

This reminded me of an incident occurring some time ago, when the feast of the Saint of the Day being observed was of St Andrew Dung-Lac. I don't know whether it's the same saint who is honoured at Luqa, the programme presenter remarked.

People who got home last Thursday afternoon, just in time (not) to hear the (radio) stations of the nations cut off their noses to spite their faces, must have wondered, as I did, why the dial was not in a position to respond. A Xandir Malta strike, when we 'only' had Happy Station (a.k.a. Radio Nederland) and other foreign stations to tide us over dead air, was one thing. Today, when the local airwaves are suffused to well over saturation point with more of the same, the desired effect loses a bit, rather.

In plainer language; it's not as if PBS programmes were just what the doctor ordered, but I suppose it's the principle of the thing.

In an effort to appear hip, several stations have female sports commentators. These have probably attended induction courses run by their male counterparts who say Munch-ister and Brom-witch. So now we have a plethora of new mispronunciations - Moh-dena, Philip-oozes, Zin-ajdin, and a host of new names for players whose parents opted for different ones.