Water in a basket

Cuban television (Made in USA)

Well-packaged garbage is still garbage

By Dalia Céspedes

HAVANA – In the red corner, Tom and Jerry! In the blue corner, Elpidio Valdés!

It’s not a question of that. Such a contest would validate the type of dogma that U.S. television seems to preach obsessively: that all existence and its perennial development are based on antagonism, on being either winners or losers.

The fact is that today’s Cuban TV leans, with more than ambiguity and healthy flirtation, toward a blatant broadcast of ideology. Everything and everyone, from tropical iguanas and alligators to the politicians who face each other in the grandiloquent tourney of presidential elections (and let’s not forget high school or college kids who will do anything to excel in football or math or popularity), all must struggle to win and “be somebody.”

To be somebody, it should be said, is a tautology, because it is not possible to be without being someone, something. Someone who not necessarily should excel or be crushed. Someone who can simply exist. But this is not part of the ideology that rules a programming that, from morning cartoons to evening thrillers, is based on “away with you, so I can take over,” a possessiveness that doesn’t exclude violent and unfair methods.

That’s how we learn about human, superhuman and subhuman history, i.e., everything, from zoology to astrophysics, with a Beyoncé soundtrack and narration in the style of Ronald Reagan, because, yes, there must be room for all tastes.

Are the program directors and employees of Cuban (or Havana) TV aware of the zeal with which they broadcast those “values”?

There is a program that is quite a paradigm, with the exciting name of “Journey to the Unknown.” The unknown is what’s shown by the History Channel, the National Geography Channel and other channels from the United States that generously allow themselves to be accompanied by the commentary of Cuban specialists.

It could be said that there’s nothing more Cuban than two specialists commenting about what the Americans think, do or show. But I don’t want to be sardonic. I’ll just ask if those specialists (or others like them) couldn’t develop their own documentaries.

Oh, no! Cuban documentaries would never equal the U.S. model. They would never be as well made or as entertaining in the way they misguide us about science, religion, sex, the Vikings or martial arts. U.S. documentaries have no equal when it comes to disseminating drivel with biblical assurance and a rock ‘n’ roll beat.

There’s a fatalism about the supremacy of Hollywood (read, Washington) as to the place it should – and does – occupy in our lives. It is an impregnable site that not even Brazilian soap operas can threaten. In the end, the Brazilian soapers simply promote the same: murders, multimillion-dollar swindles, adultery and prostitution (child prostitution included). In a word, the rest of the anti-commandments.

Beholding such fatalism, we wonder about the place our own lives should occupy in our own lives. Well, it’s not that we’re interested in the lives of others because they improve our lives, fill them with light and the daily wisdom that emanates from anonymous humans who neither rob nor kill, nor win nor lose, and who are so seldom mentioned on television.

Maybe that viewpoint will seem limited to you, almost fundamentalist. We have to amuse ourselves, right? We must relax! I would like to relax watching the regular and hypnotic dose of mutilated or incinerated cadavers, forensic doctors, prosecutors, defense lawyers, policemen, criminals, corrupt executives, serial killers, cheerleaders, party leaders and other protagonists in the human saga – but I must confess I’ve never been able to.

It is obvious that, for some, the universe is practically an invention by Edison, like the telephone, but I find it difficult to adapt to either premise: things are as they are, or as the programmers who mold our entertainment believe they are. And not just them.

Of course, I could leave the TV set off. I have a distasteful feeling that I’ve already been entertained enough. What worries me is what my grandchildren will do during their free time. They will have to keep up to date with what other children in other countries think, do or watch, i.e., how they prepare to be better athletes in the Olympiads of consumption and drivel.

Those of us who have lived in an environment that’s short in entertainment and long in prohibition know how inconvenient it is to have our doors closed to whatever happens – good or bad – around us. However, to promote well-wrapped garbage is not an alternative to censorship, much less to creativity.

*Water in a Basket is Dalia Céspedes’ blog under construction.

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