Pedro Sánchez said this week, and he was right, that the bike is not a progressive symbol. But in saying this, it seemed that, instead of de-symbolizing it, he was re-symbolizing it: the government promoting or denigrating something is enough to politicize it. I feared that all my posh right-wing friends — I know so many of them who are enthusiastic about riding bikes to get around the city that I already thought that, instead of being progressive, it was a Cayetano symbol — would rush out and buy a Lambo just out of anti-Sanchism.
Something similar has happened with the TV war between Broncano and Motos: the least politicized gesture, that of lying down on the sofa for a while after dinner, has been politicized to the maximum. If you told Pasolini or any Marxist of the 20th century that, in the 21st century, ideological battles would be decided in the most opiate, demobilizing, frivolous, lazy and adolescent leisure activities, they would be as amazed as those in retirement homes when they see Broncano beating the drum.
If this week’s data is confirmed and sustained, the war will have an intergenerational dimension: it is not that the audience has been divided between bikers and Broncanians, but the Broncanians They are mostly under 45 who did not watch TV, fresh blood recently recruited. For them, TV is not a familiar and dull experience, but rather an individual one associated with social networks, and therefore combative.
Aware that this air of fanaticism is good for starting the programme, but that he needs to recover his mischievous frivolity to hold on, David Broncano took advantage of Latre’s failure to build him a magnanimous silver bridge and temper the bellicosity a little: “This is a comedy programme and we try to make people enjoy it,” he said. Let’s put the soufflé down, come on, it’s just television, it’s not a progressive symbol.
I, who am exactly 45 years old – old for Broncano; young for Motos – grew up with the TV as a nanny and witnessed the arrival of private channels, with the codified porn of Plus and the intrigue about who killed Laura Palmer, miss a non-militant television, made of pure frivolity and criticised by the Marxist gentlemen as the opium of the people. Oh, what a good opium it was. How it made us stupid, what happiness it gave to flip through channels as a gesture of genuine laziness, without fear of falling into the wrong channel and ending up being too progressive or too fascist. I hope it goes back to being a simple comedy for people to enjoy.
#Nostalgia #nonmilitant #television