Carrie

By Adriaan van Ginkel

I have always been a movie fanatic. Especially the movies made before the wonders of digitalization started to enthrall audiences (destroying in their path the movie industry and putting scores of excellent actors out of work or forcing them to participate in mediocre TV series) will always keep my affection, because of the art, the acting and the work that was then present in the cinema of those pre-digitalized days.  

When there is an original version, I really don’t care that much for digitalized remakes. For example, the horror movie “Carrie” from 1976 with Sissy Spacek and a very young and skinny John Travolta will always have my preference over the remakes of 1987 or 2013, even though I consider Julianne Moore an excellent actress. Ms. Spacek had me jumping up half a meter from my chair at the end of the movie, something only few terror movies have accomplished in me. Or the original version of “Mariachi”, made with one video cam, a bunch of unknown actors and a fistful of dollars, which is really so much better than the multi-million dollar remake with Antonio Banderas, although again, Banderas is a fine actor. I draw for originality, always. 

Thus it was no small wonder that I got captivated by a brand-new reality show version of “Carrie”, played before world-wide TV audiences last week in the sunny and awfully hot republic of Panama. Move aside Sissy Spacek, there is a new star in town! The star’s new name is Nicolás Maduro, whose main professional occupation is being the “people president” (sic) of Venezuela, but apparently also likes to participate in dramatic productions once in a while. He made in clear over and over that he is no friend of the telenovela or Latin TV soap. His cadena interruptions for endless rambling speeches always take place during prime time TV, angering scores of telenovela fans including my wife. Maduro’s acting last week however made it 100% clear that Mr. Maduro was born for reality show. 

Maduro’s version of “Carrie” brought by courtesy of a very tolerant Panamanian government whose aim apparently was to get a billion-dollar debt paid back by Venezuela in exchange for some free-play time for the Venezuelan and Cuban delegations on national soil, was a true eye-opener. Maduro played, Carrie-style, the ugly girl rejected at the school dance. He shouted, screamed, stamped his feet, did everything to get the attention of that handsome tall dark man currently in a full-time job at the White House, but to no avail. US president Obama scoffed Maduro from beginning to end. It didn’t help that Maduro’s life-long pal Raúl Castro (stepping in for his brother Fidel in yet another memorable role) stood to his right to be Barack’s dance partner. And while Barack and Raúl sailed off into a romantic sunset, holding each other’s hands, Maduro was the rejected, resented and oh so angry ugly girl at the party. Maybe Castro’s delicate moustache was more appealing to our dark knight of the Northern Empire than Maduro’s Stalinist handlebar bush under his nose, who knows.  I personally would prefer Raúl’s suave manners to the Hulk-like screaming of our rejected Venezuelan dance partner. 

As we watched and saw how Maduro’s revolutionary acting, side-kicked by BBF Evo Morales of Bolivia (who always plays the same role, by the way), was turning into a Carrie-like spectacle, my wife and I knew that once the rejected lover came back to Venezuela with more than empty hands, hell would break loose over us all in the country, just like in the movie. And so it happened: Maduro blamed virtually everyone, including the TV channel CNN, for his failure at the diplomatic dancefloor. All these past days the bleary-eyed Venezuelan president appeared on prime-time TV, interrupting my beloved wife’s telenovela time once again last Monday, to belch out his hatred and disgust at everyone imaginable whom he blamed for everything going wrong with his gesture – except of course himself and his own political club. Aside from accusing the “ultra-right world conspiration”, their “lackeys” in Venezuela and of course “capitalism” for plotting to kill him (?) and sabotage the Bolivarian Revolution, he lashed out at the few Venezuelans still able to pay the exaggerated flight prices abroad, accusing half of them of cheating and stealing from the state and having caused the crisis. He ordered the cutting down of the amounts of dollars or euro’s that travelers are allowed to carry with them to practically zero, thanks to Kafkaesque bureaucratic measures impossible to cope with. The allowed amount to buy online has been bolted at US$ 300 a year, cut into three neat portions of a hundred each, to be spent only on “educational materials”. Bye-bye iPhone. He raged at private enterprise, insinuating he would fill the jails with businessmen. He thundered at a certain webpage for being the prime responsible for the skyrocketing black market dollar. And of course, he reserved his biggest poisoned arrows for what is left of the political opposition that is now cowering in fear in a corner and trying to come to terms with a president who has declared total war on them.

The measures taken by our vengeful Carrie did have instant effect: the black market dollar is now skyrocketing on that certain webpage, reflecting a panic among businessmen, shopkeepers and common Venezuelans travelers to get foreign currency. That will push all prices further up the coming weeks, fanning hyperinflation to an annual percentage raging between 90% and 150%. According to today’s reports, filling a monthly shopping cart of food only for a normal family will now require at least three and a half minimum wages – this month. We’ll see how May will turn out. The despair among people in the country is reaching new high levels, as I have clearly noticed. Last week, the association of Venezuelan psychiatrists warned about a heightened abnormal behavior within the population related to the stress, the anguish and the violent language flowing out of the warped mouths of Venezuelan Carrie and his comrades, and warned of unforeseen and undesired consequences for the national mental health. Tough message not endorsed at all, as you might well imagine, by the regime who maintains that everything is peachy in Venezuela. No single measure announced or taken by Maduro and his team to stem the economic disaster coming over us has had any positive effect till now, and I notice that more and more people on the street, even Chavists, are asking themselves if they are looking at a government in action, or a very macchiavelic show bent on warping people’s minds into wordless submission to a regime whose doubtful ability at basic governing has come beyond any discussion. 

As for me as a resident in this country, my mind is made up. No positive aspects can be seen or felt with Maduro’s gesture. The rejected ugly girl can blame even the sky and the galaxy for her ugliness, but it resolves nothing, least of all her ugliness. What I sense for the mid-term future in this country, is disaster. Around me, family and friends are desperate in finding ways how to feed and support their families. Many have given up leaving the country, since the government has done everything in making it impossible for the average Joe to get on a plane and join his second cousins in Spain. Professionals looking for a job abroad do get out, but that flow has become more and more a trickle. The regime’s unwillingness to pay the billionaire debt to the airlines - which has skyrocketed the airline fares to unpayable heights; the shutting down of the money flow to average travelers; and the imposing of absurd bureaucratic hurdles meant not to be overcome unless you’re connected to the regime, now makes sense to me, the whole package.

Maduro and his team are clearly busy cloning the Cuban experience on Venezuelan soil using psychological warfare on their own population. 56 years Castrist regime on impoverished Cuba at the advantage of a privileged leadership is maybe too much of a temptation for Maduro & Co. If no US “imperialistic” blockade is present, make one up. Bolt down the country from inside, making it impossible for hundred thousands of Venezuelans to leave the country – and blame greedy capitalism for it. Make your followers believe that the US army will invade Venezuela at any moment, like the US is willing to repeat the 1961 Bay of Pigs disaster. Keep saying every ten minutes on TV and radio that Venezuela will be destroyed by US bombers, like it happened in Panama in 1989. Go on evoking what happened with Chile’s Allende in 1973 to drive home the message that Maduro could be assassinated anytime by US agents. Watching the state media long enough will make you believe that an economic war is being waged by the US and the rightist politicians in Europe, meant to tumble the rightfully elected government of Maduro and destroy the country. I can now understand, as I live it day by day, what Cubans and North Koreans are going through day by day. It’s Orwellian brainwashing. It is the sole explanation why virtually all national media are either taken over by, financially destroyed or bent to the regime’s censuring will. And for those who resist being brainwashed, a dark future awaits them, as long as they cannot leave the country. I imagine that before long, desperate Venezuelans will try to escape the country on little boats and try to reach islands like Aruba or Curacao, only to be chased down by patrol boats sold by a Dutch government (my government) doing its very best to become friends with whoever is ruling Venezuela, even if it’s Dracula himself, in exchange for lucrative contracts. 

 

It’s a sad outlook for a country that not so long ago, was one of the richest, most modern and developed countries on the Western hemisphere, whose population, even the poor part, lived in relative wealth. No matter what today’s propaganda from Carrie’s media workshops tries to make you believe, most people were better off before 1999 than now. There is a saying popular in today’s Venezuela: we were happy, and we weren’t aware of it. Till it was too late. 

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© Adriaan van Ginkel 2015