When we still lived in the best of times under her spouse’s reign of progress, when the system ran on positive thought and money grew instead of trees, when phenomenal deals were struck in style and capital-P projects cash-cowed the land, when Chiefs-of-Staff were chiefly catalytic and the only limit was but the sky, then, my friends, we were all carefree and serene and transfixed by Mrs Muscat’s tastes in fashion.
Michelle Muscat, Joseph Muscat’s wife, carved out a para-constitutional role for herself as “Prime Minister’s Spouse”. She seemed to have entertained a hazy notion of political accountancy, and carried her role in the electoral campaign forward to the Profit-and-Loss account of governing the nation, obviously engrossed in her notion of herself as more profit than loss. It seems to have never crossed her mind to work out this foggy pseudo-constitutional idea of hers. She created a para-constitutional role but never asked herself on what basis. Did she create her public role on the basis of her private (marriage) contract with her husband? Had they divorced, would she have lost her “constitutional” role? The absurdity of her constitutional thinking was rivalled only by the absurdity of her fashion choices.
We owe a lot to Daphne Caruana Galizia’s sartorial analysis in this department. She had first brought to our attention the hilarious outfits worn by Mrs Muscat, and then, from one particular photograph we all remember, the comparison that begged itself, the comparison to Eva Perón.
Evita and Perón
Eva née Duarte was the wife of the Caudillo of Argentina, Juan Perón. Together they founded the Justicialist Party in 1947, to supersede the Labour Party. The following year, Argentina’s women acquired the right to vote, and the First Lady founded the Peronist Women’s Party.
We know neither the exact circumstances in which Eva met Perón nor the exact words that ignited their love story that was to engulf all of Argentina in a burning triangle of passion, power and populism. Tomás Eloy Martínez, the Argentine novelist, interviewed Perón in 1969, and later used the material gathered to write two of his more brilliant novels, The Perón Novel (1985) and Santa Evita (1995). In the latter, Martínez fictionalises the fateful encounter between Evita and Perón.
Perón has just delivered a speech, describing himself as a humble soldier who had been granted the honour of protecting the working masses of Argentina. Evita turns her great dark eyes on him as he returns to his seat.
“Colonel.”
“What is it, my girl?”
“Thank you for existing.”
Evita and Michelle
Like Michelle, Evita was First Lady for six years (1946-52). In a 1951 speech, Evita told the descamisados, the “shirtless”, the poorest of the poor, of Argentina: “I have only one thing that matters, and I have it in my heart. It sets my soul aflame, it wounds my flesh and burns in my sinews: it’s love for the people and for Perón.”
In his book Postmodernity in Latin America: The Argentine Paradigm, Santiago Colás writes, “If their romance was the symbolic and real cement holding together the Peronist movement, then the movement, in turn, sustained their marriage: ‘Now I love Perón differently, as I did not love him before: before I loved him for himself... now I love him because my people also love him!’” In her autobiography, Evita wrote, “To divorce himself from the people, the head of the government would have to begin by divorcing his own wife!”
“Perón and his wife,” writes Mónica Esti Rein in Politics and Education in Argentina 1946-1962, “thus became the most prominent figures in the country, around whom everything in the ‘new Argentina’ revolved. The adulation they enjoyed and the personality cult of which they were the center recall similar examples from other undemocratic regimes. This personality cult, orchestrated from the presidential palace, was designed to help mobilize the masses and unify them around the regime. By this means, Perón and Evita became the glue holding the Argentine nation together – or such was their ambition, at least.”
Why did Martínez ...
... thus fictionalise the encounter? Because in that scene, Evita speaks on the People’s behalf and the successful politician is s/he who receives such declarations from the People, whether explicitly or implicitly. The successful politician is thanked for existing, for satisfying a general need.
If nobody thanks you for existing, then you’re not a good politician and your future in politics is bleak and sterile. You’d better start seeking greener pastures.
No ghetto in Malta
While I’m writing this, I’m listening to a 1973 song called “Across 110th Street”, by Bobby Womack. I’m not actually listening to it on speakers or headphones; it’s simply playing over and over again in my ears, I can’t get it out of my head. It’s a song about the black ghetto in Harlem, New York City, and was the soundtrack of a blaxploitation movie of the same name, starring Anthony Quinn and Yaphet Kotto. However, I first heard it on Quentin Tarantino’s Jackie Brown (1997). But it was Anthony Quinn’s film which set me thinking. And the lyrics to “Across the 110th Street”, which explain the struggles of the blacks, for whom
Trying to break out of the ghetto was a day to day fight
Been down so long, getting up didn’t cross my mind
But I knew there was a better way of life that I was just trying to find
You don’t know what you’ll do until you’re put under pressure.
Back in 1973, a few critics understood that Quinn’s movie had a number of messages to convey about the dreadful, miserable lives of the blacks in Harlem. There’s one particularly poignant scene in which a protagonist justifies his participation in a robbery that ended in a bloodbath by arguing that he’s 42 and black, has no education and a medical condition, and thus has no prospects in life. He simply wishes a better life.
Earlier this year, the State of New York passed the Reproductive Health Act to resist any attempt by the Supreme Court or the Trump Administration to reverse Roe v. Wade, the 1973 court decision that affirmed American women’s constitutional right to access abortion. Unable to offer proper social welfare, New York can only offer abortion as a solution.
Where there’s social welfare, there’s no need for abortion. And those who make it their mission to poison the minds of the young – such as those who are conspiring to convince University students to bear the abortion standard – should keep in mind that, despite the ravings of backbencher Muscat, Malta isn’t New York.
Malta has social welfare and doesn’t need abortion.
Unless, that is, their aim is to facilitate cynical immaturity, not just of a few youngsters but of others who learnt nothing from the university of life.
In the meantime, it’s expected that the US Supreme Court could soon overturn Roe v. Wade. At least this is how Mary Ziegler’s recent publication Abortion and the Law in America: Roe v. Wade to the Present (Cambridge) is being marketed.
Anniversary
Last Monday was the ninth anniversary of the passing away of my direct ancestor. When I decided to stop supporting Muscat’s Labour, Sensiela Kotba Soċjalisti – which my father had helped to found – gave away his books for free, as if to distance themselves from whom they perceived as his demented offspring. It must have been another egomaniac order from the Corrupt Man of the Year himself, who thinks he’s God’s gift to Malta. What a preposterous mindset. History has already shown us that I and those like me who denounced him, were right: Muscat was an embarrassment to the entire country. Time will tell if his direct successor will ensure that justice is served. Frankly, I doubt it. Instead of giving backbencher Muscat a wide berth, Bobby Abela has Muscat advising the Government on the post-COVID-19 economic recovery. That Bobby Abela was weak was evident from even before the beginning; that he was so weak, I must admit, comes as a bit of a surprise.
On Monday the space-time continuum of my thoughts was bent by the black hole of my father’s death. What had he felt, nine years before to the day, when he breathed his final breath? How did it feel when he fell into the final void? Was it weightlessness, was it dread? Was it nothingness, was it cold? Were all the lights suddenly switched off? Did it hurt?
He probably crossed the frontier into the unknown beyond too soon. Then again, who knows why we die when we die, why we’re born when we’re born. But also, who knows whether we ever manage to become our own father and mother, or – according to backbencher Muscat’s demented policies – our own Parent 1 and Parent 2?
My Personal Library (94)
When I write this part of my column, I usually look at the books on my shelves and let them inspire me. This time, I want to write about a book that, as far as I know, has still not been published. Quentin Tarantino spoke about it during a conversation with Martin Scorsese, published on the Directors Guild of America Quarterly last October.
Scorsese says, “The more pictures you make, the more there is to learn.” And Tarantino answers, “Right now, I’m working on a book. And I’ve got this character who had been in World War II and he saw a lot of bloodshed there. And now he’s back home, and it’s like the ’50s, and he doesn’t respond to movies anymore. He finds them juvenile after everything that he’s been through. As far as he’s concerned, Hollywood movies are movies. And so then, all of a sudden, he starts hearing about these foreign movies by Kurosawa and Fellini… And so he’s like, ‘Well, maybe they might have something more than this phony Hollywood stuff.’ So he finds himself drawn to these things and some of them he likes and some of them he doesn’t like and some of them he doesn’t understand, but he knows he’s seeing something.”
Many people must have watched many movies during this lockdown. So it’s good to keep in mind that most – though not all – Hollywood movies are juvenile.
Which reminds me of something P.G. Wodehouse wrote in one of his autobiographies. His publisher would give Wodehouse’s manuscripts to his 14-year-old nephew to read. If the boy laughed, Wodehouse would publish a new book. If not, the manuscript would be returned as rejected.
The entertainment industry has always been meant for the adolescent mentality. The showbiz approach is analysed in Clint Eastwood’s White Hunter, Black Heart, a 1990 movie that’s exquisitely shot and fared badly at the Box Office. Two excellent reasons to enjoy it during this time.