Questão 34 do ITA 2022

Jaap Wagelaar was my all-time favorite secondary school teacher. He gave me a 10/10 for my oral Dutch literature exam, taught psychoanalysis during grammar class, astounded pupils with odd puppet show performances during lunch breaks and sadly ended his career with a burn-out. Few students and fellow teachers understood him. But since I trusted his judgment like nobody else’s, I once asked him why Piet Paaltjens and Gerard Reve, both canonized Dutch literary figures, albeit of very divergent genres, could occasionally be kind or ironic but were more often rather cynical, cold and heartless. The response he gave has stuck with me ever since: cynical people are in fact the most emotional ones. Because of their sentimentality they are unable to handle injustice and feel forced to build up a self-protective screen against painful emotions called cynicism. Irony is mild, harmless and green. Sarcasm is biting and represents an orange traffic light. And the color of cynicism is deep red, with the shape of a grim scar that hides a hurt soul. They are all equally beautiful.

These words again came to my mind when thinking back on the dozens of ironic, sarcastic and cynical memes about underperforming politicians and policy scandals disseminated over the past year. Who has not seen the image of Donald Trump walking through a desolate, scorched forest mumbling to himself: ‘My work here is almost done’? Who has not read the scathing reports of Flemish Ministers Bart Somers and Hilde Crevits escaping from a window aided by an unidentified third person after a meeting of the Council of Ministers to avoid critical journalists with the defense that they urgently needed to go on holiday and windows are faster than doors? Who has not come across the video announcement for a fictitious thriller called Angstra Zeneca with Dutch Health Minister Hugo de Jonge exclaiming ‘ik heb er zo’n kankerbende van gemaakt’ (I have made it all a cancerous mess) with a grimace stretching from ear to ear? And who has missed the most recent true story tragicomedy played by Charles Michel, male President of the European Council, and Ursula von der Leyen, female President of the European Commission, who had jointly been invited by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to discuss the position of women in Turkey? Unfortunately, they were only offered one chair for two people, which was symbolically occupied by Michel who left Von der Leyen standing awkwardly for a while. She ended up settling for a place on the comfortable sofa reserved for second rank guests.

It was damned easy to get addicted to these countless videos, photos, images and written parodies. Oh, did we have fun with them! Some were ironic, some sarcastic and others cynical, but they jointly sketch a disconcerting image of the quality and reputation of key politicians in liberal Western democracies.