What do you get if an Iljieli Mediterranji musical mates a Maltese festa using Isle of MTV as surrogate mother, and the love-child is raised on steroids and Viagra? The official opening of Valletta 2018.

This is the latest and grandest carnival of distractions put on by the government. Some might say that that is a little too harsh, that after all there is nothing wrong in Malta showcasing its cultural baubles and its artists.

It is true that beyond the flashy opening, the year-long programme of events (most of which would have been on the ‘normal’ cultural calendar just the same, but don’t tell the foreigners) is not just pizzazz. It includes events addressing important issues such as the life of Filipino care workers, refugees, homelessness, sustainability and different intellectual needs.

Yet there is a whiff of the Potemkin village about the whole enterprise. We went to Valletta to get a taste of things; the four main events were certainly flashy and spectacular. The show in front of St John’s Co-Cathedral was, perhaps, emblematic of the whole. The visuals were mind-blowing and the singing was very good.

But the much-hyped new ‘symphony’ – actually a repetitive musical number – had lyrics with a trite historico-cultural narrative that could have been lifted right out of Ġan Anton Vassallo’s 19th century patriotic poem ‘Tifħira lil Malta’ (Praise to Malta). We learnt these verses in primary school: ‘Int sabiħa, o Malta tagħna!/Mhux għax Malti nfaħħrek jien;/Issemmik id-dinja kollha,/Magħruf ġmielek kullimkien.’

Then the next day I heard the speeches at the official opening, the complete lack of self-awareness of the self-congratulatory Lilliputian hyperbole. The strange insistence on “authenticity”, on not creating “an image of something we are not” in the face of the self-evident touristification of Malta’s cultural identity. And Ralph Waldo Emerson’s words came to mind: “The louder he talked of his honour, the faster we counted our spoons.”

Culture is not only about pleasing the senses and soothing the soul, be it through fine art, music and theatre or popular carnivals and festas. It should also interrogate our conscience by magnifying the fractures and distortions of society, the hidden horrors that are normalised in everyday life and that we would otherwise not dare to name.

There is no authentic Maltese culture without Francis Ebejer’s or Alfred Sant’s disconcerting views of the foibles of Maltese society, without Oliver Friggieri’s ‘Fil-Parlament Ma Jikbrux Fjuri’. Picasso was not just the painter of odd-looking people, but of ‘Guernica’, the searing pictorial indictment of Nazi carpet-bombing of civilians during the Spanish Civil War.

It is when artists become the awkward whistle-blowers of their own society and the conscience of the nation that culture acquires the power to mould the identity of a people. Shorn of this capacity by the powerful through some form of impediment, cultural events become a travesty, little more than pretty folkloristic rituals.

It is when artists become the conscience of the nation that culture acquires the power to mould the identity of a people

At a time when Malta is under unprecedented international scrutiny, its institutions ridiculed, its government scorned, and its respect of human rights and human life increasingly questioned in the highest fora, what is Malta’s cultural response? Trite patriotism and mindless spectacle.  I am willing to bet that not one of the over 400 government-bankrolled cultural events in 2018 will find the space to even acknowledge the elephant in the room, let alone name it and critique it. They may refer to refugees, the homeless and the rest, but Don’t Mention the War (for the You Tube generation, that’s a Faulty Towers reference). In Malta today the government is waging war on truth and justice.   Maltese cultural operators are too afraid to lose their funding, their place in the various ‘hubs’ that will manufacture government-approved culture. But by doing so they are partaking in the national culture of amnesia.

What Malta’s cultural scene desperately needs in 2018 is its Salon des Refusés, artists who are true to their art, not silenced by their funding or their need to conform. Artists whose voices seep, trickle or explode through the official Lie.

Otherwise Martin Luther Kings’s words will come true: “We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people.” We will not have a Year of Culture, but of Kalċer-Kanċer.

Chris Cardona’s anniversary

In two days’ time Chris Cardona will celebrate with Sex on the Beach (which is a cocktail, I hasten to add) the first anniversary of Daphne’s scoop of his visit to the Acapulco brothel in Germany. Of course, no one remotely believes this foul allegation to be true. After all, look at the shining integrity and crystal transparency with which he encouraged public scrutiny to allay any lingering suspicions.

But then, how ironic that the symbol for the first anniversary is paper. Which is the thickness of the ice he will be walking on if those infamous mobile phone records ever see the light of day.

sandrospiteri1965@gmail.com