In ‘My Last Breath’, the autobiography of Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel, Luis writes about the reason why we live in such bad times. According to him, it is all due to the demise of the aperitif.
Gin and sweet Cinzano with Campari, Picon with beer, dry martini with a drop of Noilly Prat, no one drinks them anymore. Buñuel effortlessly transfers his musings about aperitifs to the artists with whom he drank them all: Aragon, Breton, Dalí. All surrealists who, with the help of the scandal, tried to expose and overthrow the prevailing morality and the motivations behind it.
Nowadays, hardly anyone drinks an aperitif anymore. And the instrument of the scandal has been wrested from the artists, that way of life has been restricted with a forest of subsidy controls and petty-bourgeois sentiments about the question of whether an artist does anything for society (spoiler alert: art has no need for anything in that society, art is there to explore the area outside society). The instrument of the scandal subsequently fell into the hands of politicians. In that of Dilan Yesilgöz, who clearly does not know how to deal with it.
‘Completely irresponsible extreme right-wing policy’
Because instead of exposing and confronting the prevailing morality with an artistic scandal, Yesilgöz only helps to strengthen that morality with her political scandal. By proposing a motion with which she in one fell swoop will trample her own party, her fellow ministers, the parliamentary system, hundreds of refugees and the residents of Ter Apel into the mud, she releases a scent flag that signals: ‘Yoohoo, my VVD thinks completely irresponsible extreme right-wing policy is also fine!’ Yesilgöz does not question anything, Yesilgöz does not help anywhere, Yesilgöz only causes a scandal to indicate that she wants to remain part of the prevailing morality and power at all costs.
The artistic does not have to solve problems
In doing so, she brilliantly demonstrates that the scandal is a particularly bad political tool. Because as Caroline van der Plas rightly said, after supporting Yesilgöz’s motion with kilos of butter on her head: ‘Get to work, solve the problems, that’s what people expect from us.’ A scandal has never solved a problem. That is why the scandal is also an instrument of the artistic domain, because the artistic does not have to solve problems. Politics has to. And if the Netherlands, Kermisland, falls into piling political scandal after political scandal without solving anything, you will get cynical citizens who lose confidence in politics and will ultimately turn away from society.
Starnacle drunk
So, Dilan Yesilgöz, next time you address the House, have an aperitif. Drink fourteen of them, make sure you’re completely drunk. People will find it scandalous. People will understand that the prevailing morality of xenophobia and nationalism is completely unrealistic and impracticable, a morality for drunkards. They will abandon that moral and actually do something solution-oriented. You can then abandon yourself as a politician and start making drunken art.