Portrayed as a lighter version of Sodom and Gomorrah, Paceville has been one of the country’s supreme scapegoats for years. Frans Sammut wrote a book about it; my grandmother gave endless sermons about it from the pulpit of her kitchen table in Gozo, doling out salacious tales of rack and ruin despite having never been north of Msida. Everything bad that could happen seemed to stem from this one epicentre of sin. And in the past few days, Paceville’s name has come up yet again when discussing COVID-19 rules being flouted and the way forward. Only this time, I’m reluctant to blame club owners.
It’s not an exaggeration to say that the pandemic has effectively choked the entertainment industry. Teetering close to the edge to begin with thanks to little funding and even less interest from the public in general, the arts and culture section was in a dire state before the news of a mysterious virus from China spread. Paceville, however, has been reinventing itself for decades.
Sadly, it is a shell of its former self. The clubs we once frequented have either been turned to strip clubs or little convenience stores selling everything from bread to fridge magnets. However, what hasn’t changed is the speed with which people decide to grind their axe against this little town that has ultimately always been what you made of it.
Many of us have walked through its streets in the last few months to get to somewhere else; people have even shared videos of scenes outside clubs that look like something out of Animal Planet; however, despite all of this, no valid effort seems to have been made by the authorities to change things. Instead, every time an article comes up, people just seem to revert to the narrative that they expect nothing less from Paceville – as if it were some evil stepchild who can’t be tamed.
The reason why we have laws is because people can’t always be trusted to do the right thing- Anna Marie Galea
If there’s anything that this pandemic should have taught us it’s that sadly too many of us won’t even put a piece of cloth over our mouths for a few hours for our neighbour, and yet, we continue to focus our rage on people’s selfishness rather than acknowledging the fact that the authorities keep failing us. Everyone could guess that the outcome of people being locked indoors for many months would lead to them wanting to let off steam, but instead of regulating situations, we only seem to have two speeds, either nothing or everything.
By this time in our vaccination cycle, clubs should be open, but if you’re still quite unrealistically insisting on having a certain number of people and asking that they be seated, then it goes to follow that you do your due diligence and make sure that rules are being adhered to. It would be nice to leave everything up to everyone’s conscience and hope that people’s better nature be appealed to, but ultimately, the only reason why we have laws is because people can’t always be trusted to do the right thing.
You can’t just blame club owners and club-goers when you’re doing nothing to help keep a situation in check and it seems just a little too convenient to always lay the blame for COVID-19 spreads at entertainment establishment doors when you’re studiously turning a blind eye to what is openly going on. How can people in the art scene not be infuriated to have their plans for productions constantly reworked while only a few miles away there’s an all-out rave going on? Don’t blame Paceville though, blame the people tasked to protect us.