Our hankering for the Azure Window lingers on. I hate to use the American word ‘closure’ but we just can’t seem to have it – that all-important ‘closure’. It looks like it is impossible for us get over the fact that it’s gone after a totally normal natural process.
The latest manifestation of this inability to let go comes by way of an entrepreneur who has poured seven tonnes of glass-reinforced concrete to make a replica of the Azure Window. The Concrete Window was spray-painted and details are to be applied by hand. The originator of this idea acknowledges the fact that the magnificence of the Azure Window cannot be replicated but he thinks that replicas may provide some educational perspective. I’m not sure about this.
Of course, everybody is free to build copies of whatever strikes their fancy and to do whatever floats their boat. But the re-creation of a naturally formed wonder out of an artificial compound strikes me as being rather depressing. No matter how perfect the rendering, how accurate the details represented, it will never capture the authenticity, the grandeur, the spirit of the original. So what’s the point in having it at all? Why have a Disneyfied version of a landmark?
Whenever I see pictures of the Las Vegas Strip with its faux-Sphinx jostling with its replica Arc de Triomphe, I can’t help thinking it’s all a bit of a sad caricature. It may work in the context of the admittedly superficial Las Vegas gambling town, but it is definitely out of place here. I hope the replica fad will not catch on as we seek to imitate the natural habitat we are destroying. I half expect to find a concrete carob tree being eulogised as an improvement on the real version – simply because it doesn’t shed leaves or attract insects like the genuine thing.
The PN leadership race is turning into a somewhat undignified jostling match between candidates. Despite the faux camaraderie and pretence that it’s a contest between friends, it’s uncomfortable to watch.
I half expect to find a concrete carob tree as an improvement on the real version
As is the case with any political party that has suffered a drubbing at the polls, it seems that the PN will spend a long time in the wilderness. The indication that this spell will be a prolonged one stems from the fact that the party still cannot figure out what it’s about – which overarching cause it should adopt.
It brings to mind the plight of the UK Tory party, which is currently floundering about aimlessly following the election where the anti-Brexit platform was no longer the unifier it once was. In an article about the scenario, columnist James Forsyth aptly remarked: “This is what the Tory party should be reflecting on this summer. It needs a ‘what’ as much as a ‘who’; an agenda that chimes with what the country wants. For all that Brexit dominates the current scene, it will not be such an all-consuming issue at the next election.”
The Nationalist Party too needs to find its reason for being – its ‘what’.
I watched the teaser trailer for a party for young teens last week. It had a Kardashian vibe to it, with young girls pouting away by a pool and duck pouting before applying unnecessary layers of makeup.
The boys in the clip compared luxury watches hanging on their puny wrists and then slipped into waiting supercars. Because as we all know, the first thing that one does on turning 13 is to buy a watch that costs a few zillion times your accumulated pocket money since the moment you were born. And the normal mode of transport for young teens is a Lamborghini (good luck with the dramatic drive-throughs on the Maltese roads clogged with cranes and kiosks).
The clip was unintentionally hilarious – being absurd rather than conveying the glamour and glitz that the crude product placement was meant to convey.
The clip, of course, is just one of several attempts of advertising firms to turn children into consumers – at an ever earlier age. It’s more of that time-worn ply of playing on teens’ insecurities to coax them onto the hamster wheel of perpetual consumerism.
It’s just not true that this form of advertising is meant to empower children to become discerning consumers. Rather, it’s a crude ploy to depict a materialistic lifestyle as desirable – grooming them to become perpetual consumers.
Besides being ludicrously inappropriate, it’s sad to see that this is the message being pushed out constantly.
drcbonello@gmail.com