Beyond The Veil - The sad art of turning a blind eye

*Bloggers Note: Please consult the useful glossary by scrolling down to the bottom.


Veils, curtains and frontiers, divisions and barriers of different kinds; many of them have something in common. While some are physical and can be touched or at least seen from a distance, others exist purely in the thoughts of the creator, but few are really what you might term impenetrable.

The word "veil" inspires a mental picture of diaphanous cloth, silk or damask, a delicate fabric of one or many colours wafting in a perfume-scented dusk. A veil can be used to separate the mundane reality of life from the desirable yet unobtainable - just think of all those clichéd movies from the fifties and sixties with their swashbuckling mariners lusting after exotic Oriental veil-clad dancers. A veil can give a glimpse into another, forbidden world, but weave it from a coarser thread and it can also create an illusion of separation, of distance between us and what we want to see and something on the other side that is not quite as desirable.

Maybe by now you're wandering where I am going with this rather obvious metaphor. So to raise the veil a little, let's take a brief trip through two starkly contrasting aspects of Spanish society. Had Marx been alive today, he might be saying that celebrity gossip, not religion, is the opium of the people. Gossip magazines and programmes are not of course unique to Spain, but they are up there, loud and brash, in-your-face, as blatant and unavoidable a part of modern Spain as bullfighting and corruption.

I often ask my students if they watch programmes like the excruciating "Corazon*" and inevitably they throw up their hands in horror: "No way!" "Really...?" I probe further with a vaguely cynical smile. "Well, maybe, if there's nothing else on..." These juicy tidbits are like the proverbial forbidden fruit; you just can't resist nibbling away at the buffed and plasticised lives of the pijos*, the elite and the famous-for-being-famous with their flippant affairs and tedious separations, their time on the beach or the yacht, the first day at school for their children... even though after you've stuffed yourself to the gills with such sickly fare you are often left with that feeling you get when you have eaten something vividly coloured that is full of refined sugar and an arm-long list of additives with names that sound like industrial waste.

Worse still are those fly-on-the-wall series that follow the day-to-day lives of people like "Alaska and Mario"* or "The Kardashians"*. I personally find it hard to believe that anybody would - willingly and in their right minds - indulge in such visual equivalents to what I imagine the experience of drinking bilge water to be like. But then, there is seldom any accounting for taste.

Enough said about celebrity gossip for the moment. Tragically, but as in too many countries around the world, Spain is not protected from the evils of child abuse and child murder. In the last few years, a number of shocking cases have occupied the headlines. One of these is that of José Breton, a father from the Andalucian city of Cordoba who murdered his two young children and incinerated their bodies. Closer to home there is the little boy who was thrown to his death from the window of a high-rise flat in Granada, the victim of a feud between families.

I am not a parent and there are times when I get more than a little annoyed at having to endure the over-indulged misbehaviour of children while trying to enjoy a civilised meal in a local restaurant. My middle-aged grumpiness aside, Spanish families dote on their youngsters to an extent that I was not accustomed to seeing in the UK. It is, therefore, an uncomfortable eye-opener when a child is physically chastised by its parent in a public place. This, of course, is a purely hypothetical situation. Of course.

But before the accusatory finger is raised and the words, "Why didn´t you say something?" are hurled, consider this. How many of us turn a blind eye to what is going on around us, in plain view if we choose to see it? We don't want to get involved: our lives are too hectic, it's not our business, we might become victims of persecution ourselves. Our justifications are as numerous as they are ultimately unjustifiable. Yet who hasn´t done it? Who hasn´t pulled the veil over their eyes, leant on their hands, averted their gaze? And how many warning signs go "unnoticed", and how many more José Bretons has the world spawned because we so often choose to immerse ourselves in the trivia on our side of the veil, rather than confront the issues that will not go away simply because we collectively pull a curtain between them and ourselves?

After all, it's far easier to watch Kim Kardashian getting a $7,000 hairdo than it is to save a life. But it would be grossly unfair to point individual fingers of accusation. This sadness is the collective responsibility of society, a media that deals up tasteless, nutrient-free pap, and the modern mantra of "Pass the Buck."




Glossary of Terms: 

Corazon:  A televised celebrity gossip magazine.
Alaska and Mario: A celebrity couple; Alaska came to prominence as a singer and part of the new-wave 1980s "Movimiento Madrileño".
The Kardashians: A wealthy celebrity family, primarily famous for being famous.
Pijo/pija: Spanish pejorative meaning posh, snobby, rich and/or spoilt.