High life
Culture vulture
Taki
Then something unexpected happened. Her party was voted into power in 1981 and suddenly Melina didn't have things to rave and rant against. But Melina is no fool. In no time at all she had a cause, one that involved all the things Melina cares about. Things like the Foreign Office, the British Museum, the very heritage of Greece. She sat down in her chic Kolonaki flat one night, and while deep in thought along with her husband, Jules Dassin, decided to ask for the Elgin Marbles to be returned to their rightful owner.
That proved to be a stroke of genius. No Greek dared question her wisdom in asking for the Marbles, and the ones that did — like yours truly — were branded Bulgaro-Turks and traitors by the Greek press, not to mention radio and television. Melina, as culture minister of the most uncultured country in Europe, milked the Marbles as long as she could, until even her staunch friend Jacques Lang, the French equivalent of Merkouri, began to tire of it (after all, imagine what would happen to Lang if France, too, was asked to return certain objects emanating from the birth- place of selective democracy?).
But, as I said, Melina is a lady of many talents. In no time at all she put into action another idea of hers, one she had con- ceived several years ago. That was an annual European culture festival spon- sored by the EEC. Melina found a ready ally in Francois Mitterrand, a man who thinks that Europe is in far greater danger from American pop culture than, say, terrorism. Mind you, Melina had to lobby hard. There are those among the fatcats who live off our taxes who pointed out that the EEC's charter says nothing about culture, and that perhaps the powers that be in the EEC should stick to the charter. But as we all know, Europeans, even fatcat Europeans, cannot resist a lady's charms for too long a period. The first one to give in was the overweight West German foreign minister, Hans-Dietrich Gensher. The rest followed. Merkouri got her way and even more. She got the fatcats to name Athens as Europe's cultural capital for 1985, and the bash will be a fixture on the Continent for years to come.
Now please don't get me wrong. I am not against culture, heaven forbid. What I am against is the use of culture for party political broadcasts, which has been the hallmark of the Athens cultural festival. As well as having my taxes spent by the culture minister of the olive republic of Greece and her enormous entourage. But be that as it may. Culture has finally come to Athens, and with it the proof of the universality of the Greek classics (ancient Greek classics, of course). Euripides' and Sophocles' Trojan Women and Antigone respectively were presented no more than 16 times by foreign performers, and Bri- tain's Royal Opera gave a memorable performance of Verdi's Macbeth. (A local graffiti artist sprayed 'Melina = Lady Macbeth' outside the ancient theatre but it was quickly washed away, by the fire department, no less, which in turn had some people up in arms as to why the rest of the grubby city cannot be cleansed of its socialist slogans.) Needless to say, the classics on their own were not good enough for the organisers. The painted tart Boy George and a hideous woman by the name of Nina Hagen were also invited. And for once the Greeks got it right. About 10,000 gatecrashers stormed the stadium where my uncle and father once competed for . . . God forbid, glory alone, and put the tarts to rout. The police had to rescue Boy George from what I gather were people trying to find out his inner- most secrets.
Well, no festival held in a stadium named the Peace and Friendship Stadium would be complete without Lenny Bern- stein. Lenny duly showed up and con- ducted but was not heard. Not much anyway. The new indoor stadium has such bad acoustics that the audience knew there was music only when Lenny began really jumping up and down on the podium. But not to worry. Melina and Papandreou milked the festival as no self-respecting farmer would ever milk his cow. At present they are milking the radio and television and telling us about their triumphs. Which reminds me of a classic canto by Ezra Pound, Canto LXXIV to be exact: `That free speech without free radio speech is as zero.'
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