It’s never too clear when a political party, any party, says what it really thinks. So, maybe, the Nationalist Party’s dismissal of Joseph Muscat’s Labour conference speech – “hilarious, were it not tragic” – was just spin. Because if the PN really thinks so, it is grossly misreading an important segment of the electorate.
Twenty years on, the PN is making Labour’s old mistake of confusing genre- Ranier Fsadni
How gross? I’d say it approaches Labour’s campaigns in 1992 and 2008.
In 1992, election billboards were used for the first time. The PN, running for re-election, used them as a genre in their own right, a picture that tells a story to a specific audience: people who would be taking things in at a glance while out and about on their daily business. Oh, and they would have been car-owners: at the time, self-conscious beneficiaries of the recent easing of the car market.
The PN billboards were reassuring. “Normality” would continue unfettered; the government was there to provide structure and solidarity. The pictures told a story of convergence: people streaming together from different walks of life, with Eddie Fenech Adami, trusted guarantor, at the head of the stream.
Labour, on the other hand, treated the billboards as a photographic album of mass meetings, with their tub-thumping crowds and sea of red flags. It delivered an uncompromising tribal message. Even on roads leading to Nationalist heartlands. It was like watching a Western in which the Apaches invited white settlers for a war dance by affixing a note to an arrow and firing it through the log-cabin window.
Twenty years on, the PN is making Labour’s old mistake of confusing genre. If it really thinks that Dr Muscat’s speech really was just about him. If it really thinks it is enough to say the Joseph-and-Michelle act is hammy to make it a turn-off.
One segment of Dr Muscat’s intended audience has its ethics and aesthetics shaped by a fare of this-is-your-life TV shows. The kind of declaration that Dr Muscat made to his wife is now a staple of wedding receptions, reality shows, complete makeover shows, quiz shows... Children declare to parents, parents to children... Lovers, fiancés, spouses...
And now politicians. In an age of confessional TV, this kind of episode functions rather like the wife-and-children photograph on the personal manifesto of a candidate: a gambit of intimacy.
Confessional TV is also about reconciliation and reunification of long-feuding families. And that, of course, was the major theme of Dr Muscat’s speech, which he articulated according to the conventions of the genre: admit a few failings (but not too much); evoke the dawning of truth during key moments of solitary, heart-wrung reflection; regret the dear, all-too-dear cost of keeping account of who-did-what in the past; generously offer to wipe the past away.
The message was aimed partly at former Labourites who had stopped voting for the party over the disputes with the Church, private schools and small enterprise. Here, the real convincing message cannot be provided by policies (alone). The real issue is trust.
Dr Muscat practically said: Your instincts were right and my instincts are yours. I’ve had them since I was a child. Come back. The war is over. Look, I even joke about it. I could never turn on you. It would mean turning on my own family.
For another audience segment, disenchanted Nationalist voters, the same speech tapped into a series of widespread convictions, that, in the long run, the major parties are really the same. That history is a repeated cycle of flowering and decline, first one party, then another. That partisanship makes the country waste half its talent. That party loyalty is oppressive.
To these, the speech said: A vote for Labour is not a vote for Labour. It’s a vote against oppressive partisanship. People like you have joined us already. Voting for us shows you too are free: free from tradition, political masters and prejudice.
It’s not difficult to query the narrative. If he thinks the 1987-92 PN Administration was so great, why did he join Labour so soon after? If he thinks Labour was in such a divided shambles in 2008, was it such a bad thing that Lawrence Gonzi won re-election? But such questions are based on the idea that the speech was a monologue about him.
In fact, audiences always participate in a speech, even if they’re silent. Here, the camerawork was a prompter of that dialogue, cutting from Dr Muscat to the appropriate representatives of the target audience (disaffected Nationalists, youth, etc.) in an evidently structured way.
The speech, in fact, borrowed heavily from the PN playbook. There is the theme song, a variation on “together everything is possible”. There is the (partisan) post-partisanship. Dr Muscat even managed to echo Dr Fenech Adami’s 2003 personal plea for forgiveness for any wrongs done. (Only Dr Muscat, not having wronged anyone, asked this of his young daughters, for serving the country by giving it the best Administration ever instead of being a stay-at-home dad).
The speech was not a bad half-hour’s work. All Dr Muscat needs is for the PN to fill the role he’s assigned to it: the nasty, tribal party, so cut off that it mocks popular sentiment as schlock.
ranierfsadni@europe.com