Last week, Marsascala and Buġibba were privileged enough to host what has become known as the summer carnival. It’s really much the same thing as its winter sibling, only smaller and set to a summery theme, whatever that means. It apparently also has the entertainment of tourists very much in mind.

Sadly, I was not able to sample this off-season Mardi Gras. The mayor of Marsascala, Mario Calleja, said that it was a dream come true. It was “proof that the south had not been forgotten” and an all-round positive experience for the people of Marsascala and especially those who ran businesses there. The people of Marsascala, he added, had been starved (“kien hemm għatx”) of such events.

Now it so happens that Calleja is not the sharpest instrument in the mayoral armoury. And yet, even by his standards, I found his comments – and the summer carnival itself – most unthrilling.

That’s mainly because they’re a symptom of a great and growing obsession with events, spectacle, attivitajiet għall-familja kollha (family entertainment), contrived merriment, festivals, pointless noise, listicles of things to do before you die, and so on – all of which make me wonder what exactly was the matter with living.

The easy answer is that I’m growing old. It’s also the wrong one, because many of the people who are behind this never-ending round of scintillating gaiety are much older than me.

Besides, I find fun and spectacle perfectly agreeable in principle. It is the glut of contrived fun and the implication of calendrical horror vacui that I have a problem with.

That bloated calendar hosts dozens of Catholic feasts, two carnivals, and heaven knows how many other festivals (jazz, fireworks, harbour life, and so on).

The obstinate fixation on spectacle is turning art and culture into a glorified events calendar

The list grows longer when we include the multitude of local events that are usually themed around some kind of real or fictional local produce.

I have in mind the bread, strawberry, pumpkin, chocolate, ricotta, snails, ravioli, milk, olive oil, banana, citrus, wine, and now even a Nutella festival.

The combined calorific value of Catholic saints and hazelnut paste mean that there is never a lean moment in Malta, but the argument’s elsewhere. It is in the assumption that life is not worth living unless it is packed to capacity with spectacular and extraordinary events.

The value or otherwise of those events is irrelevant. It is their existence, and the fact that they fill time, that matter. Which also means that people constantly find themselves forced to perform, participate, or feel left out.

There’s another thing. The organisers of the summer carnival included the Malta Arts Council, which appears to be as bowled over by spectacle as everyone else, and to damaging consequence.

This year, the council was kind enough to provide me with a perfect example.

One of the acts at the Malta International Arts Festival was a performance by the Vertical Waves Project, tongue-twistingly billed as an “artistic project that mixes together research on body movement with sound and video in the spatial context of where the performance is taking place”.

On the night, the performers apparently used harnesses and ropes to carry out a set of manoeuvres on the façade of the bibliotheca in Valletta.

My point is not about the Project itself or the quality of its performance, but rather about the venue.

The bibliotheca was a painfully ironic choice for a spectacle of culture put up by the national arts council.

That’s because even as the performers whizzed and turned, our national collection lay falling to pieces a few metres away.

The library – which, by the way, houses a collection of great value by any standards – is chronically and disastrously starved of human resources, expertise, and funds.

But no matter, because books do not slide down façades in a spectacular fashion.

I repeat that there is nothing the matter with events in themselves. On the contrary, I can think of several examples of excellent ones.

This year’s baroque festival featured Philippe Herreweghe, among others.

The arts festival hosted Arvo Pärt.

The Kinemastik short film festival was of high quality and brilliantly organised.

As I write, Inizjamed is holding its annual and highly-regarded festival of Mediterranean literature. And so on.

My point is that when the extraordinary becomes an obsession, it does so at the expense of everything else.

Art and culture become detached from everyday life and come to be associated exclusively with spectacle.

It follows that forms of art and culture that are not particularly spectacular – books in a library, for example – are systematically devalued in the process.

The mayor of Marsascala thinks that people are “forgotten” unless they are remembered by special occasions.

He is not alone. The obstinate fixation on spectacle is turning art and culture into a glorified events calendar.

Our choice is to consume, or to live artlessly.

mafalzon@hotmail.com