Letter from Thessaloniki
Today’s letter should be about high-minded journalism. As the March 25 anniversary prescribes, it should be telling tales of chivalry that took place more than 150 years ago during the struggle for Greek independence. Stories that have become the canon of Greek history, that relate the deeds of the legendary heroes of the Greek Revolution in their struggle against the Ottoman Empire. And it should also evoke past and future ethics. If today’s ethics seem a little adrift (and frankly, there’s more than one thing wrong with them), they are there for all to see in the Greek press. Events have left people exposed to a degree of national ridicule unparalleled in Greek history. Therefore, today’s letter is about journalism that is rather less than high-minded. It is about the garter-snapping kind, and about the bottomless bag of trash at the disposal of the news media, in the realms of both sport and art. Above all, it is about private Greek television that finds itself in great danger of becoming absolutely moronic. Last Thursday, March 21, the head of Greece’s television regulatory agency, Mr Vassilis Lambridis, suspended two popular trash TV reality shows, the sleazy «Big Brother» and the tacky «Bar.» The justification given for this decision was that they unwittingly (?) facilitated the violation of laws on public decency and dignity. So what? The truth is that there’s a lot of crap on TV, whereof everyone derives his or her guilty pleasure. «The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it; moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There was, of course, no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment.» George Orwell’s novel «1984» successfully predicted some aspects of the world of TV today. On the following day, Friday, March 22, in a sudden and dramatic shift in the campaign against TV trash, the 11-member National Council for Radio and Television, the very law-enforcement officials who ostensibly safeguard some sort of decency on TV, almost unanimously refused to approve their president’s decision. The raw, gutsy, tell-it-like-it-is approach has finally triumphed. («Hello, good evening and welcome to ‘Blackmail.’ And to start tonight’s program, we go north to Preston in Lancashire and Mrs Betty Teal. Hello, Mrs Teal! Now Mrs Teal, it’s for 50 pounds, to stop us revealing the name of your lover in Bolton. So, Mrs Teal, send us 50 pounds by return of post please, and your husband Trevor and your lovely children, Diane, Janice and Juliet, need never know the name of your lover in Bolton» (from «And Now for Something Completely Different,» Monty Python’s best sketches, written by John Cleese and Graham Chapman, 1971). Oh, I know I shouldn’t watch. No one should. I should be watching Discovery Channel, the sedate talk show «Anichnefsis» every Friday night on ET3, or better yet, reading a book. But I often find myself hypnotized by the spectacle, the tragicomedy of it all. (Compare Groucho Marx [1890-1977], «I must say that I find television very educational. The minute somebody turns it on, I go to the library and read a book.») By the way, all quoted matter, above and hereafter, is from one published source or another, mainly Thessaloniki’s daily Angelioforos, which was first with the TV story last Sunday. But Film Archives, Kathimerini, «The Penguin Dictionary of Humorous Quotations,» the Macedonian Press Agency, as well as various Athens area newspapers can also claim the credit – or the blame. On Sunday, March 24, at the end of the football game that saw Panathinaikos draw 1-1 with Olympiakos, referee Panayiotis Efthymiadis was escorted from the pitch bleeding, with severe facial injuries. He had been savagely attacked – on ideological grounds? – by fans, players, rowdies and officials. Rowdyism is not a purely Greek custom. US President Lyndon Baines Johnson was quoted in the New York Times in 1967 as saying, «To see some of our best-educated boys spending the afternoon knocking each other down, while thousands cheer them on, hardly gives a picture of a peace-loving nation.» On the other hand, and on that same Sunday evening, those present at the opening night of the National Opera’s production of Giacomo Puccini’s «La Boheme» had no particularly compelling reason to speak up. Admittedly this revival of «La Boheme,» so conventionally staged by Italian, and seasoned Puccini-lover, Lina Wertmuller, bears no comparison with the brilliantly creative productions that have preceded it this season. As conducted on Sunday night by the Korean Choo Hoey, the voices were drowned out by Puccini’s surging orchestral climaxes. The evening proved a mediocre affair. Yet the opera-loving audience did not throw tantrums, the way football fans had done some hours before in the Leoforos Alexandras stadium. Yet this production’s catalog of virtues also included some strong singing from the younger male principals. To the part of Rodolfo, the Colombian guest, Caesar Gutierrez, brought a voice of proper resonance and power. Kyros Patsalidis as the painter Marcello, Haris Andrianos as Schaunard and Dimitris Kasioumis as Colline all sang with style, technical confidence and lyricism. Under pressure, Julia Trussa’s soprano in the main role of the consumptive flower-girl, Mimi, sang well, while Jenny Drivala in the part of Musetta couldn’t establish the strong and emotional connection with the audience she had previously displayed when starring in an unforgettable «La Traviata.» Later still, in the small hours of March 24, bewildered and bemused Greek TV audiences, at least those who stayed up that late, saw the Academy awards ceremony in LA. Especially since the years when three Greek artists (actress Katina Paxinou, composer Manos Hadjidakis, and set designer Vassilis Fotopoulos) received «the bald little metallic man, with no genitalia and holding a sword,» as Dustin Hoffman put it when accepting his own Oscar film award, the Academy Award ritual has been popular in this country too. Thanks to trash TV shows, to football and to the Oscar awards (forget the opera), there will at least be debate over topical matters this week. It is far from certain, however, what those debates will yield.
