Carnival season in Malta may be over, but are there any important lessons buried beneath the sequins and satire? Russian philosopher and ethicist Mikhail Bakhtin certainly thought so. He saw the carnival as a space of intense social transformation, facilitating free interaction among the unlikeliest of people. Carnival’s festivities promote a celebration of people’s true selves, revealed without consequences or censure.
Bakhtin understood the carnival as a place where division could be reconciled, even if only for a few days. Political groups, religious traditions, cultures of the young and the old, all hold space together. He identified carnivalesque values as an implicit protest against official notions of power, toppling all of the sacred cows that populate the daily lives of citizens.
If one agrees with the philosopher’s analysis, then Nadur may be the only carnival in Malta worthy of the name.
Thousands of revellers descended upon the small town in Gozo – locals and tourists, families, young people and children.
The crowds were confronted by depictions of a mafioso Joseph Muscat and a pimp Adrian Delia. One makeshift ‘float’ simulated the endless printing of fake money, showering revellers in notes emblazoned with the faces of the former prime minister, his former chief of staff Keith Schembri, and disgraced minister Konrad Mizzi.
Another float insinuated electoral irregularities, with open voting booths being monitored by threatening men in anonymous masks, while a third spoofed minister Ian ‘getting things done’ Borg and his road-building frenzy, implying a pecuniary motive behind the new flyovers and thoroughfares.
Much has been made in the press of the coronavirus costumes that appeared in Nadur. Complete with surgical masks and safety goggles, large groups confronted their own fears that have been provoked by the virus’ outbreak in many parts of the world. Most recently, coronavirus hysteria in Malta has seen supermarkets across the islands cleared of stock, raising serious questions about food security in Malta were an actual crisis to hit.
It seems clear that, in light of the rapid social, political and cultural changes being experienced in Malta, reports of the Nadur carnival ‘losing its soul’ miss the bigger picture. Nadur’s carnival is only meaningful in so far as it keeps evolving to meet Maltese social realities.
If carnival has anything to say, it is that holding a funhouse mirror up to the Maltese way of life is a much-needed release. In so far as it has power, carnival expresses this release in ways both primal and raw. Not as a bourgeois commodity, turning its nose up at the ‘bad taste’ and ‘excesses’ that inevitably accompanies the revelry.
At this point in the national story, Nadur is offering the largest protected space for art to be created and experienced by the people of these islands. Over a long weekend, revellers were able to express their identities, beliefs and experiences with all of the ambiguity that makes art so powerful.
Ultimately, carnival is an invitation to learn new ways of accepting the complex reality of all lives, including our own. It is an arena for a peculiarly democratic performance of freedom and in the ‘post-truth’ era, democracy without freedom of expression is impossible.
Likewise, democracy without an artistic life in which everyone can participate, to confront their fears and laugh at their oppressors, is equally impossible – if not downright dangerous.