În ciclul „Faima sfertului de ora şi Libertatea de impresie“, vă prezentăm capitolul:
Ţări civilizate vs. ţări necivilizate
de Bogdan Lepadatu
Sintagma de „ţară civilizată“ constituie un exemplu clasic al limbajului de lemn – acel „newspeak“ de care vorbeşte apologetul gândirii clare, George Orwell – autor al mai multor justificări lirice aduse faptului că a fost, printre altele, şi un talentat informator al serviciilor secrete britanice, MI5.
Această sintagmă constituie una dintre formulările cele mai prozaice, menite să sublinieze diferenţele flagrante, aparente intre societăţile (necivile) acestei lumi din ce în ce mai omogenizată de meschinăria consumistă a globalizării – un proces aparent ireversibil, care urmăreşte, printr-un sistem eficient de îndoctrinare, să transforme umanitatea într-o masă amorfă de consumatori apatici şi apolitici. Sunt unul dintre cei care, până nu demult, au considerat neoportună folosirea nefericitei sintagme, în această epocă de antropocen primitiv în care se spune că am fi intrat.
Nu demult însă, am schimbat macazul - mai precis, de când s-au înmulţit cei care deplâng această descriere pe motiv că le-ar nega statutul zâmbitor de câştigători (detaşaţi) ai eternei tranziţii a neamului. „7 noi miliardari, în dolari!“ este lecţia de responsabilitate socială a primului an de la intrarea nemeritată în clubul de ofiţeri al Uniunii Europene, pe care o dau aceşti parveniţi flămânzilor co-naţionali expulzaţi in corpore din ţările calde, pe care-i hrănesc acum cu firimiturile speranţei onctuoase că avuţia lor se va prelinge eventual şi către ei, pentru a forma acea „clasă de mijloc“ – acel panaceu justificativ al tuturor regimurilor exploatatoare.
Îmbrăcată în haine colorate pentru a şterge cenuşa trecutului activist din care au renăscut precum pasărea Phoenix - transformată într-un papagal limbut de aceşti hoţi de buzunare publice, plini de icre adăpostite de ochii miopi ai fiscului prin Insulele Caiman, sau prin alte paradisuri fiscale – camarila noii nomenclaturi „liberale“ tronează peste averi fabuloase, strânse din jefuirea activelor regimului „dictatorial“, sau cu ajutorul unor avansuri generoase apropriate din banii publici.
Voi încerca în cele ce urmează să explic oportunitatea revenirii la această sintagmă din cu totul altfel de motive decât salvele patriotarde ale unor nostalgici – cu simpatii politice care se întind, convenabil şi aleatoriu, de la o extremă la cealaltă a spectrului politic carpato-dâmboviţean.
Pentru a nu mai lăsa nicio îndoială celor care sunt deja enervaţi de ambiguitatea acestei poziţii – părând că vrea să evite posibilitatea categorisirilor facile, de genul, „dacă nu eşti cu noi, atunci eşti împotriva noastră“ – le voi povesti, în cele şase-şapte sute de cuvinte care mi-au mai rămas din acest op-ed, un basm menit să-i trezească din toropeala demnă de o climă mai blândă decât este cea încălzită pe sfert de microundele mult-iubitului şi stimatului popor american!
Precum Ileana Cosanzeana basmului agrar al statorniciei noastre secu-milenare, care se dă bătută – precum găina fugărită de cocoş – în faţa avansurilor primului băiat de bani gata care o invită la discotecă, voi face, cu o masculinitate tipic balcanică, un schelet de analiză SWOT al motivelor pentru care consider acum oportună revenirea la terminologia cu atribute condescendente pentru descrierea unei ţări.
Trebuie clarificat din start faptul că această dihotomie nu urmăreşte compilarea statisticilor tendenţioase, în baza cărora se calculează nivelul de trai al populaţiei – de genul numărului de telefoane mobile, de tractoarele numite de proprietarii lor „gipane“, sau de alte bunuri destinate consumului în economia banilor gheaţă.
Apropo, sigur că mai există şi încăpăţânaţi care nu se uită la televizor – oare din cauza faptului că nu au ajuns să tragă cablu prin peşterile de la Tora Bora? În loc să tragă cu „bombardeaua penetrantă“, reuşind să strice doar peisajul, mai bine trăgeau Dumnezeului cablu. Probabil că acesta este motivul pentru care atunci când astfel de martiri (auto-proclamaţi) sunt puşi pentru prima dată în faţa unei camere de luat vederi este doar pentru a-şi lua la revedere!... Dacă, în schimb, s-ar urma „sfaturile“ doctorului Ewen Cameron şi li s-ar goli mintea de habotnicia religioasă care le-a golit-o întâia oară, ar putea semăna atunci cu orice personaj din Surprize, Surprize!
Ciocoismul economic al oricărei forme de organizare politică bazată pe exploatarea resurselor dezumanizate (din grija patologică a obţinerii profitului!) este acompaniat de o involuţie culturală corespunzătoare, cauzată de o invazie a culturii de masă - de la manele, la telenovele – sub pretextul libertăţii de comunicare, de expresie, sau chiar de impresie, menită să aducă populaţia la cel mai jos şi mai impersonal numitor comun, din care orice ameninţare adusă stării de fapt poate fi cu uşurinţă taxat de către demagogii de serviciu ai regimului drept extremism.
Acest gen de ciocoism – împreună cu ciocoismul moral, la care făcea de curând referinţă Mircea Cărtărescu - este filtrat, după mai bine de optsprezece ani de la implozia regimului totalitar, în subsolul plin cu şobolani unde ar fi trebuit să se afle societatea civilă românească… Degeaba ciuliţi urechea, de-acolo nu mai răzbeşte nicio manifestare semnificativă de protest… Doar ecoul de tinichea al tabloidelor acestei mahalale balcanice a Europei…
Să luăm, spre exemplu, sistemul taxării unice. Într-o ţară europeană (în ciuda insularităţii afişate!) „civilizată“, aşa cum este Marea Britanie, încercarea „simpaticei“ Doamne de Fier (forjat, cu poşetă!) de a introduce aşa-numita „poll tax“ a provocat în rândurile populaţiei o adevărată răscoală. Vai câte maşini scumpe au mai ars atunci în Londra (aviz amatorilor celei mai „dinamice pieţe de tractoare din Europa“!)… Nicicând nu a fost insula britanica mai aproape de revoluţie ca atunci! http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/march/31/newsid_2530000/2530763.stm
In schimb, tăcerea asurzitoare din Rromânica semi-prezidenţială, care acompaniază această taxă impusă de un regim liberal, modificat genetic prin democraţia populistă a sferto-doctului comandant al navelor lui Ceauşescu - care se poate acum declara preşedintele jumătăţii care l-a ales, din jumătatea care s-a prezentat la vot, fără să stârnească hohote hipercalorice de râs! – nu poate fi cauzată decât de sindromul „nu mă întreba cum am făcut primul milion“, sau de sindromul „nu mă întreba de bilet pentru o singură staţie“, sau de cine ştie ce alt sindrom al eternei tranziţii... în care este normal ca parveniţii Revoluţiei (activiştilor) de (Partid şi...) Stat să fie taxaţi la fel ca majoritatea covârşitoare a perdanţilor acestei „schimbări“ de regim!
Nu se poate afirma cu certitudine dacă du-te-vino-ul tranziţiei lui pleaca-ai-noştri-vin-ai-noştri este ceea ce a transformat conştiinţa oamenilor într-un bun mobil – un fel de dulap de birou, pe care-l muţi de colo-acolo, între slujbele care au înlocuit slujba pe viaţă, şi statul bunăstării cu o provincie multilateral globali-dezvoltată. Singurul lucru care tot nu-şi găseşte locul nici în noul birou rămâne etica muncii…
În al doilea rând, din pricina frustrării cauzate de tradiţia seculară în a fi fost subiectul batjocorii marilor puteri, am dezvoltat o potenţă ucigătoare a înjurăturilor (şoptite-n barba poetului naţional!)…
Suntem despărţiţi aşadar de lumea „civilizată“, printr-o nouă cortină de fier (forjat lingvistic, de data aceasta), ce suplineşte instituţiile abilitate (de banii contribuabilului!) – precum „Avocatul poporului“ şi alte asemenea instituţii, pe care cetăţeanul mioritic nu ştie să le folosească pentru că nici măcar nu ştie la ce folosesc – să repare nedreptăţile pe care le suferă acest cetăţean din pricina ciocoilor tractorişti - evident, tot de cei care şofează 4X4, cu acelaşi sentiment de responsabilitate socială de care vorbeam mai devreme, este vorba în propoziţie.
Chiar dacă există şi excepţii de cealaltă parte a cortinei fără perdea - aşa cum este cazul ungurilor, care se pare că sunt, chiar şi la acest capitol, mult mai tari decât noi - în general, înjurăturile considerate moderate, daca nu de-a dreptul banale, în limba vulgaro-latină a românilor, sunt pur şi simplu inimaginabile în alte limbi cu o circulaţie vădit mai largă.
Formatul acestui op-ed însă mă obligă să închei prematur această analiză SWOT – în care „S“-ul este tradus după urechea traducătorilor autorizaţi de Ministerul injustiţiei româneşti prin slăbiciune, iar „WOT“-ul este tot ceea ce le mai rămâne nedumeriţilor oportunităţii scurtării acestei analize a neajunsurilor ţărişoarei câinilor maidanezi şi a căţelelor provinciale, faimoasă nu pentru că ar avea 1000 de lacuri (ce de lebede pentru amatori!), ci pentru că are în schimb trei sferturi de milion de atelaje şi o oaie neagră, oxigenată la vârfuri, de-i zice Mioriţa!
http://www.agero-stuttgart.de/REVISTA-AGERO/COMENTARII/Tari%20civilizate%20vs%20tari%20necivilizate%20de%20Bogdan%20Lepadatu.htm
22 Nov 2007
An op-ed about the advent of Ghost-modernism
Mirror, mirror on the wall… (Self-)Censorship vs. Creativity:
An op-ed about the advent of Ghost-modernism
Most right-wing Eastern European intellectuals and artists in post-communist countries such as Romania, for instance, tend to distance themselves from the view which holds that censorship may actually have had a positive effect on people's creativity, and in that respect, its demise ought to be regretted somehow.
Instead, there’s plenty of nostalgia for the mostly digested creativity cake, which has since been voided of its primary meaning – as there is hardly any need anymore for controversy to be smuggled into the public domain. The only (current and ongoing) struggle consists in keeping up the appearance of continuity – in terms of their still championing a cause as celebre as anti-communism was – despite a public discourse fit for the McCarthy era!
As in that ‘50s B-movie “The Invasion of the Body-Snatchers”, the conundrum facing pod-communist (as in pod-cast) intellectuals and artists – who are still hunting for extinct (communist) fossils as if “the past never went away” – mirrors the imaginative involution of a child being spoilt by too many toys. Such artists’ creativity appears to have been softened by this constant barrage of imagery that was merely supposed to ensure unfettered access to information yet, it now appears this excess of creative freedom, alongside a complete lack of self-censorship – that ought to have harnessed this new-found power to say meaningful things – has been turned into an identity crisis, which manifests itself in vengeful and wasteful witch-hunting…
The Big Bang of 9/11 is the moment in time when history has been kick-started yet again - with those (two!) nails in the coffin where that half-baked "end of history" theory rests! Hence the reason why I strongly believe that this period which we are currently traversing is one during which we will see the re-birth of many things – both good and bad, such as art, on the one hand, or politics (unfortunately) on the other – replacing, at last, a post-modern era that has long passed its sell-by date… This extra-time period is to be replaced by a penalty shoot-out, which I believe it fully deserves to be termed as ghost-modernism – a period during which history, art and many other things (not least, the environment amongst a host of other things) will be looking to regain their composure and meaning…
Surely, such statements need evidential backing if they are to survive longer than the “15 minutes” we are all due. Notwithstanding the fact that I am forced by the format chosen to get to the point a.s.a.p., I will come up with just a couple of examples in the two most far-apart fields that come to mind: no, not the environment and profit-making, but art history and politics. The only things they have in common is that they both relate to this European out-post (read that as the back of beyond if you so wish!) called Romania!
Thus, one of the good things that have happened to this God-forsaken place – which, judging by the next example wishing to give credence to the theory, appears not to be ready for its belated yet, still premature admission to this Union of European nation-states – was the recent visit made by Julian Bell - arguably Britain’s most influential contemporary art historian – to Romania, bidding to promote his latest book “Mirror of the World” – the first ever co-edition of an art history book of such magnitude appearing simultaneously, in both London and Bucharest.
It may seem strange how this rather contentious (political) statement would have been triggered by an art history book, which barely touches on Eastern Europe’s art, or history. Yet, it seems that he achieved something he may never have intended by this omission. This gentle Englishman’s attempt to objectify this most particular view of the world, via his Swanborough Coomb perspective – spanning from the sole of his feet, so firmly entrenched in the soil of the British isles, to the wide horizons of the human intuition – is but the ultimate odyssey during which this unassuming hunter-gatherer-of-artistic-imagery invites one to discover what else could have been said about art’s history by handing people the tools that will eventually allow the transcendence of personal points of view, thus enabling a perspective of the art world as a whole.
To end this on an uplifting note, here is the bad news. Though this time, the two places are not as far apart as London is to Bucharest – not only geographically speaking, but linguistically too, because of a lot of rather close resemblances between the two people who find themselves at odds in this unfortunate controversy – I will briefly point to the unsavoury upsurge in the kind of politics that brought those final two nails I was referring to earlier… This time, the trend is one that brings with it a tension likely to ruin Bell’s unifying perspective on the world.
It is the very same tension which sets people apart according to their religion, ethnicity, or anything else that may seem fit to justify a Stalinist-come-McCarthyist discourse uttered in a newspeak of ignorance, rather than outright hatred. It is this very discourse in the tabloid media that has given the Italian authorities the pretext they needed to begin the expulsion of Romanian passport holders – regardless of whether they are indeed guilty of murdering Italian women, or whether they are but genuine Romanian film stars, who just happen to spend the night in a hotel in the centre of Turin – that makes us all wonder whether we are likely after all to be saved by the Bell…
Such preachers of hate give ample credence to Huntingdon’s theory about the inevitable clash of civilisations, which appears to turn this rather naïve vision of the global village into a dangerous place for all those driven there by poverty and the hope of a better life. Maybe this is what makes this attempt to drum up the advent of Ghost-modernism truly superfluous and what makes this journalist friend of mine – Harry de Quetteville, whom I will meet for the first time tomorrow – right in saying that “the past never really went away”.
An op-ed about the advent of Ghost-modernism
Most right-wing Eastern European intellectuals and artists in post-communist countries such as Romania, for instance, tend to distance themselves from the view which holds that censorship may actually have had a positive effect on people's creativity, and in that respect, its demise ought to be regretted somehow.
Instead, there’s plenty of nostalgia for the mostly digested creativity cake, which has since been voided of its primary meaning – as there is hardly any need anymore for controversy to be smuggled into the public domain. The only (current and ongoing) struggle consists in keeping up the appearance of continuity – in terms of their still championing a cause as celebre as anti-communism was – despite a public discourse fit for the McCarthy era!
As in that ‘50s B-movie “The Invasion of the Body-Snatchers”, the conundrum facing pod-communist (as in pod-cast) intellectuals and artists – who are still hunting for extinct (communist) fossils as if “the past never went away” – mirrors the imaginative involution of a child being spoilt by too many toys. Such artists’ creativity appears to have been softened by this constant barrage of imagery that was merely supposed to ensure unfettered access to information yet, it now appears this excess of creative freedom, alongside a complete lack of self-censorship – that ought to have harnessed this new-found power to say meaningful things – has been turned into an identity crisis, which manifests itself in vengeful and wasteful witch-hunting…
The Big Bang of 9/11 is the moment in time when history has been kick-started yet again - with those (two!) nails in the coffin where that half-baked "end of history" theory rests! Hence the reason why I strongly believe that this period which we are currently traversing is one during which we will see the re-birth of many things – both good and bad, such as art, on the one hand, or politics (unfortunately) on the other – replacing, at last, a post-modern era that has long passed its sell-by date… This extra-time period is to be replaced by a penalty shoot-out, which I believe it fully deserves to be termed as ghost-modernism – a period during which history, art and many other things (not least, the environment amongst a host of other things) will be looking to regain their composure and meaning…
Surely, such statements need evidential backing if they are to survive longer than the “15 minutes” we are all due. Notwithstanding the fact that I am forced by the format chosen to get to the point a.s.a.p., I will come up with just a couple of examples in the two most far-apart fields that come to mind: no, not the environment and profit-making, but art history and politics. The only things they have in common is that they both relate to this European out-post (read that as the back of beyond if you so wish!) called Romania!
Thus, one of the good things that have happened to this God-forsaken place – which, judging by the next example wishing to give credence to the theory, appears not to be ready for its belated yet, still premature admission to this Union of European nation-states – was the recent visit made by Julian Bell - arguably Britain’s most influential contemporary art historian – to Romania, bidding to promote his latest book “Mirror of the World” – the first ever co-edition of an art history book of such magnitude appearing simultaneously, in both London and Bucharest.
It may seem strange how this rather contentious (political) statement would have been triggered by an art history book, which barely touches on Eastern Europe’s art, or history. Yet, it seems that he achieved something he may never have intended by this omission. This gentle Englishman’s attempt to objectify this most particular view of the world, via his Swanborough Coomb perspective – spanning from the sole of his feet, so firmly entrenched in the soil of the British isles, to the wide horizons of the human intuition – is but the ultimate odyssey during which this unassuming hunter-gatherer-of-artistic-imagery invites one to discover what else could have been said about art’s history by handing people the tools that will eventually allow the transcendence of personal points of view, thus enabling a perspective of the art world as a whole.
To end this on an uplifting note, here is the bad news. Though this time, the two places are not as far apart as London is to Bucharest – not only geographically speaking, but linguistically too, because of a lot of rather close resemblances between the two people who find themselves at odds in this unfortunate controversy – I will briefly point to the unsavoury upsurge in the kind of politics that brought those final two nails I was referring to earlier… This time, the trend is one that brings with it a tension likely to ruin Bell’s unifying perspective on the world.
It is the very same tension which sets people apart according to their religion, ethnicity, or anything else that may seem fit to justify a Stalinist-come-McCarthyist discourse uttered in a newspeak of ignorance, rather than outright hatred. It is this very discourse in the tabloid media that has given the Italian authorities the pretext they needed to begin the expulsion of Romanian passport holders – regardless of whether they are indeed guilty of murdering Italian women, or whether they are but genuine Romanian film stars, who just happen to spend the night in a hotel in the centre of Turin – that makes us all wonder whether we are likely after all to be saved by the Bell…
Such preachers of hate give ample credence to Huntingdon’s theory about the inevitable clash of civilisations, which appears to turn this rather naïve vision of the global village into a dangerous place for all those driven there by poverty and the hope of a better life. Maybe this is what makes this attempt to drum up the advent of Ghost-modernism truly superfluous and what makes this journalist friend of mine – Harry de Quetteville, whom I will meet for the first time tomorrow – right in saying that “the past never really went away”.
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