Pluralisation of the media - now that was the joke of the 1990s. True, radio and TV stations proliferated, newspapers were born, the new technologies burgeoned, and University launched specialised courses in communications. Journalists, columnists, and vox pops came thick and fast. And yet, even as the choice of sources broadened, the scope of what they delivered stayed the same at best and probably narrowed.
I write this further to Raphael Vella's terrific broadside in last Sunday's issue of this paper. Barely managing to conceal his frustration, Vella wrote about how Maltese television is incapable of producing but one space, that of stasis and orthodoxy. What follows is in this vein. It is not a criticism of the orthodoxy itself (that's a separate issue), but rather a two-fingered salute at the mentally-comatose space that is public discourse in Malta.
Vella's main reference was to the arts, his field of expertise. More generally, he was critical of the fact that "Maltese TV presenters will continue to invite priests to offer us moral advice on virtually every topic under the sun".
By coincidence, in my last column I wrote about how our handling of immigration is being compromised by a tendency to banalise what is essentially a political and civil rights issue. The list is long. From the arts to immigration, kinship to bioethics, pretty much all our public discourse is vitiated by an inability to eschew sermonising. It is not just the rational argument per se that is rotten, but a whole conceptual infrastructure.
Tune in to any discussion programme on TV or radio and you will find people being addressed by their first names. Linguists, surgeons, philosophers - no matter how specialised and expert, they are merrily cut down to Olvin, Alex, and Joe. Except priests who, no matter how mediocre, are always addressed as Fr Such-and-Such. The implications are twofold. First, that we still believe priests are ritually-transformed people who must be so addressed at all times. Second, that the only incontrovertible authority is the moral one as rooted in the Catholic Church.
Even worse, the frocked moralisers have now been joined by their secular doppelgängers. These are almost invariably psychologists. My choice raspberry goes to a certain insufferable type omnipresent in the local media: cocksure, sanctimonious, parroting the moral orthodoxy usually by referring to some 'research done in the US' that just happens to confirm what the local pundits are saying about the wickedness of divorce or career women.
Sciascia's words are almost too relevant to be true: 'The Church saw that it ought to recognise and embrace psychology... as a substantial, almost consanguinal and irreducible element of the ministry, the ecclesiastical brief; at any rate never to release it to the secular arm" (Candido, 1977, my translation).
Like I said, I am not interested in discussing the orthodoxy itself. Psychology for example has produced some of the most exciting insights of the 20th century. As for churchmen (they always are - the women are relegated to changing nappies or baking cookies), they presumably feel they have a duty to spread the message, and one cannot fault them for grabbing every opportunity to do so. Besides, no one is contesting that the message may on occasion be relevant. It's its structural unavoidability and patronising timbre which are so limiting.
The consequence of this pathetic state of the art is that the public sphere effectively sidelines two groups of people. The first, massive in number, is what we might call the public at large, who go about their daily business regardless of the silliness of public discourse. Who cares if Fr So-and-So and his brethren-in-Freud say that abstinence is better than contraception - what matters is the choice between wild cherry- and mango-flavoured down at the local chemist's. No wonder so many of our University students appear so ill-informed about 'what's going on in Malta'. They simply can't be bothered, which is probably a good sign.
The second type is the erudite renegades you meet at wedding parties, who make it a point of telling you they no longer watch Maltese TV or read local newspapers. They have, quite simply, switched off. They will listen to morning broadcasts on shortwave and spend their evenings in well-stocked private libraries, but they do not have an opinion on whether or not homosexuals are destined for eternal torment. They simply don't care to stoop so low, which is most certainly a good sign.
Which leaves us with a grotesque line-up of ubiquitous faces, smug in their theological and/or psychological certainties and egged on by presenters who either haven't a clue what plural and challenging public discourse is all about (they probably think it means ratings), or else can't find the right people.
And of course a few dissenters to be outscreamed or ridiculed - the Judas in the plot, so to speak, so necessary and yet so maligned. I was recently approached by a TV presenter and thanked for 'adding a dash of spice to the programme' ("Qajjimtilna ftit il-programm"). As long as it's 'ftit', a dash, we can live with it. He also smiled as he said it, which made me feel like a porter scene.
I am fairly optimistic by nature. On this one, however, I'd say things are looking pretty hopeless. It's bad enough that the island of Don Camillo is small and peripheral, and that it leaves little room for even the mildest-mannered Peppone. That he seems barely interested in any case, is where it gets tragic. Then again, who can blame him?
mafalzon@hotmail.com