Friday 26 February 2010

O Tal Canal

I watched this evening on DVD, O Tal Canal, that revolutionary comedy programme of early Portuguese TV. The year was 1983, and I was 12 going on 13. No one had ever seen something like that on TV in Portugal. It was hilarious, nonsensical, challenging, a total riot! Could we actually manage to be that funny, so intelligently funny? So modern?

Watching it this evening for the first time after more than 25 years, I realised - with emotion - that Herman José, the creator and main actor of O Tal Canal, was my first teacher in the art of Camp. And that was lifesaving. It brought me a lot of sanity. It was a most needed vehicle to express so much of my own difference, in tragedy and in comedy. Still today, my inspiration for Camp comes from Marilú (the simple servant girl who was a man after all), Filipa from Cozinho para o Povo (the posh female Chef who, still today, brings me down with laughter), Tony Silva (the cheesy super-star of the Americas), and all the other dozens of fantastic characters that he and his team were able to bring to life.

And what would life be like without Camp? High Camp à la portugaise? Oh, life without it would be ever so boring. Goodness gracious!

I don't have a lot of sympathy for the man behind the actor - his personal and political views do not fit with my own - but chapeau to him for all the fresh air, indeed the storm, the tornado, that his comedy acting represented in Portugal throughout the 1980's and still much of the 1990's. You know the caliber of an actor, when so many of the expressions he made popular in his programmes have become part of my generation's own jargon.

With O Tal Canal colour TV became real!

Saturday 20 February 2010

Uganda and anti-gay legislation

I recently read on BBC News that a Ugandan clergyman, Pastor Martin Ssempa (I actually saw him the other day on TV), decided to show gay pornography to his congregation in an attempt to gain support for a proposed law which would see some gay people facing the death penalty. Apparently, some 300 people gathered at his church to watch it, and the audience included children! He wanted people to "learn" what gays actually do.

Why would someone use these radical measures is simply baffling, to say the least. Equating homosexuality with a pornographic rendering of sexual activity is dishonest and mentally sick. Would he portray heterosexuality the same way?

The situation in Uganda is extreme, but it somehow reflects the general position of those who so vehemently repudiate homosexuality. They tend to concentrate on the sex side of it. It makes me wonder if that is all heterosexuals think about when they fall in love, the sex. Maybe it is. Maybe heterosexuals are so obsessed with sex, they project it on everyone else (no, I don't really think this way, I'm just trying to make a point). Sex is often the corollary of being in love and wanting to get emotionally closer to the subject of your affection through physical contact. Sex is a medium, not a goal in itself. Of course, there's sex without love - and there's nothing wrong with that - but this touches all sexual orientations and is not exclusive to gays and lesbians. It sounds obvious, but not to everybody.

I believe the Ugandan pastor in question should in fact be the one condemned for obscenity and moral corruption. I mean, there were children in that church! What does he expect to achieve with this? I know, to create revulsion at what the nasty, monstrous gays get up to in bed. But how can he possibly justify showing pornography to children? I suppose someone like pastor Ssempa does not use logic very often, nor intellectual honesty. Or maybe he's just crazy and abusive. Likely all of these!

Pastor Ssempa may have been playing with fire too. Maybe some of his audience became titillated by what they saw and will try it later in the secrecy of their homes... if they manage to escape their spying neighbours willing to denounce them to the police (the new law, if passed, will make every single Ugandan, including family members, an anti-gay spy, otherwise they too may end up in jail for collusion. They'll have to build a lot of new jails...).

As US President Obama put it, the projected law is "odious", and what is really upsetting is that some US-based evangelical groups are backing it, and supporting people like pastor Ssempa to promote this agenda of hate. Is that what these groups want for the rest of the world, including in the US? Imprisonment and even the death penalty? These people are crazy, but dangerous because so well organised and funded. Watch out! Human rights is really an ongoing battle.

I hope, almost pray, for this law to be defeated, but I fear that it will be passed - with a few changes to keep international donors "happy" (maybe without the death penalty for "aggravated homosexuality", for instance) - but still increasing the punishments for homosexuals in Uganda and basically rendering their lives even more nightmarish than they already are. They really need a merciful god to help them. It's a pity god is always looking the other way when these things happen (I'm an atheist, thus I only believe in human mercy).

Pastor Ssempa's desperate tactics seem to indicate that he is close to a nervous breakdown (or he has already had one). The man needs psychological treatment soon. Hatred of this kind usually indicates a sick mental state.

Saturday 6 February 2010

The US and the EU

The BBC said this week that the EU had been snubbed by US President Obama because he didn't show up for the last bilateral summit. Here is what I had to say à propos:

The US has difficulties to understand the EU because it is a concept that indeed is difficult to grasp. Not quite a state, not quite just an institution. It's a bit of a cliché, but the word hybrid is still the best one to describe this project of unity in diversity. Those who want reality to be always described in terms of black and white, will always find it difficult to accept the EU.

People are fast to criticize the EU, but they forget that as an operational concept it has only been in existence for little over 50 years, which is really nothing in the larger historical context, particularly if we take into account what preceded it (xenophonic madness and genocide anyone?).

I'm always amazed that, with our historical baggage, we can actually keep talking and struggling to find common solutions in a peaceful manner among Europeans. Yes, sometimes it results in an awful waste of time and resources, but isn't peace worth the price?

People must reconcile themselves with the fact that the EU is not just work in progress, but also the result of forces pulling in opposite directions: national interests on the one hand and the common European good on the other. Sometimes the result is more unity, sometimes more division, sometimes just diversity. That's who we are.

The EU will never be like the US, or any other country in the world, and that's fine. We don't have to imitate anybody. Our chosen path is innovative, challenging, revolutionary, unique, imperfect. It's good that we keep trying, and those who want out of it, well, they are always welcome to leave and let the rest get on with their vision (it is sometimes a bit tiresome to hear the nagging when no better alternatives are presented, unless of course it's the "free-for-all" pre-EU Europe that they want; or a Europe dominated by a few imperial powers, some of which have clearly not yet gotten used to their more humble place at the table... Well, not for me, thank you!).

Tuesday 2 February 2010

health

We have been all sick at the start of the year. I had a bronchitis, then Georgie developed a pneumonia, now Jarl has tonsillitis. And the weather continues cold and inhospitable. And there's snow or rain. And lots of grey. And I'm just really sick and tired of all these bugs!