Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 5 - 11 October 2000 Issue No. 502
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875

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Gradgrind in the rumour mill

By Nigel Ryan

Cairo is, most famously, a rumour mill. You might not read all about it -- indeed, you almost certainly won't -- but it is a fact. And the more persistent rumours have a tendency to generate their exact opposites in an automatic rumour reflex that inevitably targets the most widely circulated tale with news of its imminent demise.

No one should be surprised, then, that Franco Zeffirelli will not be directing the next production of Aida to take place at the pyramids. Rumours abounded that he would. Rumour now has it that he won't and it is this latter bit of tale-mongering that is certainly correct. It might, of course, be interesting to know whether Mr Zeffirelli himself had ever pencilled in a Cairo engagement in his no-doubt crowded diary. I'd happily bet my bottom dollar that he hadn't, given that the last people to know about the rumours circulating in their wake are always the subjects of such rumours.

Quite how Zeffirelli was to be invited to direct such a high-profile event when Tea with Mussolini, his most recent film, was last month effectively banned by the Alexandria Film Festival on the entirely spurious grounds that it was a piece of pro-Zionist propaganda, no one bothered to ask. No one even stopped to wonder whether or not he had actually been informed of his pressing engagement in Cairo. No one, in fact, bothered to ask anything, since asking questions can place an awkward spanner in the spinning wheels of rumour. So Franco Zeffirelli was going to direct Aida, and then he wasn't. That is all we knew of the story and all, perhaps, we need to know.

"We want you to talk about important cultural events, we want you to talk about the new Aida." This impossible demand was made of me by way of a preamble by a television presenter, a couple of weeks ago, a minute or so before the cameras were set to roll.

Interesting, I think, to note the phrasing: they may have wanted me to talk about important cultural events but apparently were far from convinced that I would be able to identify one, even if it hit me in the face, and so found it necessary to direct my attention to the only important cultural event on the horizon, a new production of Aida. Now, not really believing that yet another production of Aida actually counted as an important event in the sense intended -- a repeat performance, yes, and significant in as much as such repeats continue to generate media genuflection, but a ground-shakingly important event, no -- I demurred. I knew too few details of the new production, I argued. I didn't want to comment. Yet still the presenter insisted on slipping in a question on camera, eliciting a one sentence answer, much to her chagrin. Subsequently, of course, the important cultural event was cancelled, and I could relish a sense of vindication. Far from noble, I concede, and not that anyone else could give two hoots about it, but we take our personal satisfactions mostly where we can.

But did the cancellation of the important cultural event provoke a crisis, a bout of soul searching as to why something so important, and so cultural, had been cancelled? No, of course it didn't.

The public is all too used to this sort of thing. Can anyone remember that vastly important event -- the lavishly hyped production of Otello, using the fortress of Qaitbey and the Alexandria harbour as backdrop -- marketed frantically, and ineffectively, throughout Europe and the US, and which folded after one night amid pleas from the stage, directed at the audience, that the singers actually get paid? (Or was that last bit just one of the many rumours that circulated following the demise of Otello?) Of course no one can, except, possibly, those officials who found their heads on the block after a respectable amount of time had elapsed.

It should be obvious by now that important cultural events -- or at least those designated as such by young television presenters -- come and go, and leave little in their wake. The most hyped productions, those spectaculars that have a frightening habit of turning into the most spectacular cock ups, and from which someone, somewhere, the inevitable rumours will have it, has made a vast amount of money, occupy a vacuum, touching nobody, impacting nowhere in particular. They are spectacles in a bubble, and when the bubble bursts no one appears to get wet. Which begs the question, why are they deemed so important in the first place?

It is a question unlikely to be answered by those who capitalise on the sound-bite opportunities furnished by the hype surrounding such events -- in their initial stages if not in the moments of demise. Indeed, those sound-bite opportunities, it is perfectly possible to argue, are the raison d'être of the event. It can fail miserably, and be quietly brushed under the carpet and then be forgotten but in the meantime everyone who is anyone in the cultural establishment will have appeared on television, or written in the papers, and basked in the spurious glamour that the media will accord to the non-event by virtue of the stars who will not be turning up, and the director who has probably not even been asked to direct.

Next important event on the horizon, of course, is the Cairo International Film Festival, which opens on 7 November. It at least has the virtue of attracting a mass audience. And this year, as in every other year that I can remember, the festival organisers will be issuing endless misinformation. The lists of international film stars, of leading actors and actresses and famous directors who will be in attendance will be duly trumpeted by the press, only for everyone to discover, at the last moment, that they are not coming at all. At best, they will have been faxed an invitation at the last moment. The hype, though, will once again win out over substance. Experience will count for nothing. And though, in this case, the public will undoubtedly be able to read all about it, that does not mean they will believe in the black and white of the print.

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