Where Colombian openness to nudity as a form of expression is seen from the perspective of Malta’s new Committee of the Wise Committed to Assessing the Obscene in the Name of the Hoi Polloi.A Colombian magazine (SoHo – adult image warning) has started a promotional awareness campaign in Bogotà in support of the freedom of expression. The ad campaign involves sending a topless model into the streets (covered in body paint). This modern Lady Godiva seems to have immediately attracted the attention of passers by and that of the military police. Rather than arresting the senora desnudada, the police are seen taking commemorative snapshots of this wondrous occasion.
Elsewhere in a parallel universe, the Maltese government announced yesterday evening that it would be convening a parliamentary committee to discuss the definition of obscenities and pornography, as well as ways to control racism and xenophobia. The Committee will be set up in accordance to the provisions of the Criminal Code following a suggestion by Labour MP Owen Bonnici.
Dr Bonnici noted that the only time that regulations defining obscenities had been published in Malta was on July 15, 1975. Since then, there had been a whole series of judgements by the European Court on Human Rights which defined what constituted pornography, even in the context of freedom of expression and artistic freedom. Malta, Dr Bonnici said, needed to review the freedoms of expression as soon as possible. (Times)
Also according to the Criminal Code provisions, this committee will be chaired by none other than Malta’s very own conservative guru, Minister for Justice Carm Mifsud Bonnici. Malta’s equivalent of phronmoi and spoudaioi (my (guessed) plurals of spoudaios and phronimos) will be trying hard to establish the common standards of morality and decency against which obscenity is to be measured. It is ironic that this kind of exercise follows an election in which voters were often asked to form their choices on the basis of “taste” – that which they feel happy to consume (albeit metaphorically). Kafkesque it may be but the Hobson’s Choice in taste that was foisted upon electors by the rules favouring a two-party system now translates into a committee of (self-appointed) “Wise men” who are supposedly able to decide for you and me whether the (political) action of la senora desnuda in Bogota would find a similar welcoming reaction on the Republic Street.
Somehow I doubt whether most of our spoudaioi would reach for their cameras to commemorate such occasions.
GLOSSARY:
hoi polloi: the majority, the many
spoudaios: is the man who has maximally actualized the potentialities of human nature, who has formed his character into habitual actualization of the dianoetic and ethical virtues, the man who at the fullest of his development is capable of the bios theoretikos. Hence, the science of ethics in the Aristotelian sense is a type study of the spoudaios (link) (or Aquinas – spoudaios = person of good character)
phronimos: prudent, wise man
