Dealing with censorship and Malta's social realism

It is unlikely that Mark Camilleri, the 21-year-old University student editor of Ir-Realtà, will be sentenced to nine months' imprisonment and a fine of over €400. Yet that is what he faces if the court finds him guilty as charged and decides to impose the full applicable punishment.

Mr Camilleri published a short story, by novelist Alex Vella Gera, which is intended as an exposé of and attack on macho sexists the like of whom are not unheard of in Malta. Writing in a style dripping with social realism, the author has his subject emitting a monologue expressing the basest of thoughts in the basest of language.

Shocking? Certainly, to the extent that the depicted character is shocking. To the extent that there truly are Maltese men who think, act and speak like the disgusting individual in the story. Will readers be able to make the distinction between a tale intended to project pornographic type material for titillation and gain of sorts, and a story with a message?

Depends who the reader is. If University students are the product of an education and social system that really prepares them for the role of grown-ups understanding and challenging reality, they would comprehend the message proposed by Mr Vella Gera.

By depicting the vicious and selfish vulgarity of this character so nakedly, the author does not elicit an ounce of sympathy for him. Reading the story generates disgust for the character telling it.

The point remains: is there a chance that readers will not understand the author's intended message? The answer is yes, for there always is that, let alone with a story line strong as this one. To my mind the author guarded against that possibility with the title of the piece, Li tħassar, sewwi (Repair what you damage).

The title tells the reader that the story is all about wrong that has to be righted. It does not approve of the wrong within the story, so much so that the title says it has to be repaired.

The rector of the University did not read it that way. He reported Mr Camilleri, the editor of the tiny, apparently left-wing publication which carried the short story, to the police.

On their part the police too read the story at face value, rather than a moralistic effort to condemn base exploiters via a literary effort.

The police, therefore, instituted criminal charges against Mr Camilleri for allegedly distributing obscene or pornographic material and for injuring public morals or decency.

Before the court the accused editor will remain innocent until proven guilty. Until, that is, the distinction between writing to project obscenity (the story character is indeed obscene) as pornography.

Implicitly the University bigwigs consider, in the least, that Mr Camilleri might be guilty and that they would be exposed to charges themselves, for instance by students' parents, had they not brought the police into it. Meanwhile there is a twist to the tale.

The government itself feels that censorship needs to be updated. Not because of the Realtà uproar.

But because our censorship infrastructure is outdated. Laws related to freedom of expression need to be updated to reflect 21st century reality, says a draft national Culture Policy to be launched by the Ministry of Education within a few weeks.

The rub is here - even if such laws are eventually relaxed to refer to the times we live in and do so in such a way that a story like Li Tkisser, Sewwi would not be considered to be in their breach, Mr Camilleri might theoretically be serving or have served a prison sentence by then.

Small wonder that enough people have recognised that the Realtà story was intended as hard-punching literature, and not as pornography.

It will not be only students who will pack the hall when the Court case against Mr Camilleri is heard.