The higher they climb, the harder they fall

One of the many things that never ceases to amaze me about this country is the sheer speed (not to mention acrobatic dexterity) with which some of its inhabitants immediately scramble for the moral high ground at the first given opportunity.

Oddly enough, it seems that an island whose highest point of elevation is only marginally lower than the Eiffel Tower, has somehow also managed to produce a nation of goddamn moral mountaineers. How did that happen, I wonder? Honestly, it's a little like the Central African Republic consistently producing the world's best ice hockey team.

Oh, and please note it's not just the lack of physical mountains that makes our feat somewhat remarkable. On no: it's also the sheer lack of... MORALITY.

I mean, just look at us for a second, will you? Here we are, up to our eyeballs in corruption and literally overflowing with smut and sleaze everywhere you look- the Atlantic City of the Mediterranean, if that makes any geographic sense to you - and yet by our constant self-praise anyone would think we were wading knee-deep in the River Jordan, with white doves fluttering about in the heavens above, as a voice cries out in the wilderness, etc.

Seriously, though. Give someone a public platform to say anything at all, and before you know it they will be pontificating away about how far superior their own views of morality are to everybody else's. And sure enough, whenever a vaguely ethical dilemma rears its ugly head in this dear land of ours- something ethical dilemmas have a rather nasty habit of doing every other week - off they will all go, the self-styled custodians of public morality, scrambling up that greasy pole of 'superior values' like a troop of baboons up the nearest acacia tree.

OK, maybe I watched a few too many fantasy movies when I was younger, but it reminds me of that classic ending to arguably the greatest in the genre: Merian C. Cooper's King Kong (the 1933 version). You know the part I mean. But just in case you don't - SPOILER ALERT! - hate to ruin the film for you, but... he really does fall off the Empire State Building at the end, you know.

And what a (literally) earth shattering climax it was, too! There, in a single iconic image, one may appreciate the vertiginous folly of all human pretensions. And yes, I am perfectly aware that there is another, equally valid and slightly more Freudian interpretation of that scene. Something like: "Hey! You! Big hairy ape! Don't go climbing up buildings if they happen to also resemble 120-storey erections... least of all if you're also carrying a blond bombshell movie star in one hand..." (Or to frame the same concept in its classical literary form: 'Sex = Immorality = Lower overall lifetime expectancy', etc).

All the same... no offence to Sigmund or anything, but I never really bought into all that phallic crap, you know. As far as I am concerned, King Kong has less to do with man's eternal preoccupation with the size of his own pecker, than it has to do with... MORALITY.

In the real sense of the word, please note. None of this namby-pamby, new-fangled, post-modern 'anti-hero' nonsense. Here we have the thing itself: an innocent, guileless and entirely unprepossessing central figure, whose only 'character flaw' - i.e., a penchant for devouring young nubile maidens, generously offered up to him by a nearby native village - was actually a behavioral trait forced upon him by the natives themselves. (I mean, think about it for a second. They built a goddamn wall to keep him out of their village, you know. So what's the point of also offering up a monthly sacrifice of garlanded, semi-naked virgins... if not to satisfy the perverted fantasies of the tribal chief?)

***

Oh, and that reminds me. While I'm on the subject of asking entirely useless questions about Hollywood's most enduring monster movie ever - can anyone kindly explain to me why Kong seems to find no difficulty whatsoever in scaling the Empire State Building towards the end... and yet proves simply incapable of getting over a wall that cannot be more than 60 feet high? (So much so, that he forces his way through the front gate... which kind of raises another question - if he could do that all along, then... why... oh, never mind).

***

Back to the morality bit. So there he was, crashing merrily away through the prehistoric jungles of Skull Island without a care in the world... possibly pausing here and there to rip some T-Rex's jaws apart...  when all of a sudden, BANG! Along comes the White Man from across the sea, straight out of the lyrics of a classic Iron Maiden track: you know, bringing with him pain and misery, and all that...

And before you know it, poor Kong suddenly finds himself seduced by a blonde slut posing as an actress, then lured into a trap laboriously masterminded by an unscrupulous (and slightly demented) entrepreneur... only to be abducted and carted off to New York City, there to be exposed in chains to satisfy the ogling curiosity of a bunch of upper-class pricks.

OK, I know what you're all thinking. It's pretty much what happens every night at any old gentleman's club in Paceville. But still, I can't help but suppress a quiet tear each time I watch the scene. Nor can I fail to note its inescapable moral (in the literary sense), conspicuous on the screen as a political slogan on a billboard.

So you want to go scrambling up that 120-storey, vaguely phallus-like building, do you, Mr Kong? Well, one way or another, you're going find yourself crashing back down by the end of the movie. (Don't say we didn't warn you, etc).

Not perhaps the most original moral with which to imbue a movie, I am the first to admit. In fact it is indistinguishable from the underlying ethos that makes sense of the sport known as rugby union - the one that goes: "The bigger they are, the harder they fall."

But let's face it: nowhere has the same old tired cliché ever been expressed in quite so cinematically unforgettable terms, as the sight of that giant ape rebounding off the corners of the Empire State building as he plummets to his oh-so-tragic death below... (while his murderers, posing as the true heroes of the movie, fly off into the sunset after a job well done). 

***

Hang on. There was originally a reason I why dragged King Kong into this article in the first place... what was it again? Ah yes! By an overwhelmingly contrived coincidence (and I should know, because I contrived it myself) the same moral applies with staggering precision to all those ethical high-flyers our country produces by the truckload. So, Mr Moralist: you want to go scrambling up that vertiginous tower of your own self-righteousness, do you? Well, you know what happened to the last hulking ape who got the same idea... Yeah, that's right: SPLAT!

And they were picking out bits of oversized gorilla-meat from Manhattan's Fifth Avenue for the next five years at least...

OK, I suppose at this point you may reasonably expect me to come up with one or two real-life examples, huh? Well, apart from the obvious cases of 'my-morals are more-moral-than-your-morals, nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah' - you know, the mantra that underscores practically every online comment this country has ever produced - there is also that itsy-bitsy, teenie-weenie little detail about a 'cohabitation bill' presented by Justice Minister Chris Said last Tuesday.

You know, the one that was sold to us as a reflection of our 'moral superiority'... just because it blatantly discriminates against all unorthodox families models (including, but not limited to, gay couples).

In case you missed it the first time, these (SPOILER ALERT!) were Dr Said's exact words: "We do not want to put cohabitation on the same level as a family constituted in marriage... The Bill is based on what the government believes is right and is acceptable to society."

Hey, don't look at me like that. It's not as though I wrote his screenplay for him, or anything. Besides, you've got to hand it to the man... it's not every day you get someone unilaterally deciding the entire country's value-system on its behalf, without so much as asking us if we actually agree.

Yet there he was, addressing a press conference flanked by the former manager of the anti-divorce referendum campaign (like, there's nothing remotely wrong with that at all...) blithely informing all society what is 'acceptable' or otherwise... to that same society.

***

I don't know about you, but... in my mind's eye, there he immediately was - monkey outfit and all - scrambling up that 120-storey phallus for all the world as if no one ever did it before. And did he pause to listen to the desperate cries from the streets below? The ones that begged him to consider for a moment the fate of our poor friend Kong, and to avoid an otherwise inevitable fall from the dizzying altitudes of his own stratospheric illusion?

Guess not, because... hmmm, how can I put this? Hate to break the news to you, Dr Said, but... neither you nor anyone else in your government possesses the moral authority to speak on behalf of all Maltese society, still less to take moral decisions on its behalf. To be honest, it would be a bald claim to make even if your government did occupy a majority of seats in parliament. But... it doesn't. And it hasn't for quite some time.

In fact, since the 2008 election your government has never represented an absolute majority of votes. As I recall the PN got just under 49% at the last election, and only won the election at all because of a Constitutional mechanism weighted heavily to retain the status quo. Four and a half years later, the same minority government went on to spectacularly lose even the slender parliamentary majority it had never really legitimately won in the first place. All of which raises a small but (I think) pertinent flaw in the same government's entire argument.

Sorry to whisk the Empire State Building from under your feet, Dr Said, but... you do not speak on my behalf. You do not speak on the behalf of any recognizable majority in this country. In fact, you do not even speak on behalf of all the experts and consultants whose advice you were supposed to take on board when devising that bill... but clearly didn't.

Nor do you speak on behalf of any 'morality' that is accepted by all Maltese society equally. And while I don't doubt for a second that a sizeable chunk of this country's population does share your government's views... well, those views remain subjective, and therefore cannot be imposed on a wider public.

Meanwhile: no offence intended, or anything, but I strongly suggest you take the lift down to ground floor while you're still in time to avoid an entirely unnecessary... SPLAT!

Just a thought, that's all...