“Come in mister wind!” read the first lines of a poem by the Flemish poetJeanne Vande Putte (1907-1930). While film-maker Angelo Tijssens reads thepoem in West Flemish dialect, presenter, cabaret artist Wim Helsen strokes adog. Just before that, the following conversation unfolded in the ten-minuteprogram Winter hour : “She has not grown old.” – “No, she was in poorhealth, I understand.” – “How did she die?” “I don’t know, I wasn’t there.” –“No, that is true.” The dog looked up. The literature program Winter hour onCanvas is ideal TV, which should last no longer than ten minutes, where it isnot about the guest, in which a dog has an important supporting role and wheresomeone is allowed to recite an unintelligibly good poem – twice.
It’s those moments when you have hope that the world will be okay. On theFlemish channel this is done by having someone address the wind, on RTL 4 thisis done by covering Lego landscapes with snow. For no less than ten hours,celebrities built worlds of Lego in the Lego Masters Christmas special. Andhere too there was room for good stories. For example, the brothers Jeangu andXillan Macrooy built a Lego world around the reindeer Rudolf. The beast standsalone in a forest after being bullied by the other reindeer for his red nose.While he is sad by the water, a sea monster (built of transparent Lego blocks)rises up: the monster turns out to be the mother of all red nosed animals inthe whole world, and Rudolf no longer feels alone. End. Unfortunately, thebrothers did not win, their world was “too empty”, the jury wrongly ruled.
2022 was a shitty year
A world too empty: it is a luxury few can afford. An overcrowded asylumseekers center in Ter Apel, a lack of housing, homes bombed to the ground andwashed away: they were all discussed in the Annual overview NOS Journaal2022. After that summary you saw confirmation that 2022 was a shitty year.While other annual reviews still closed with the hope of peace or a lessexpensive future, the NOS closed with the words ‘Save Me Now’ by Jeff Lynne.Here it was not the wind that got a voice, but the earth that called on man tosave the world instead of destroying it.
An empty call for 2023? Probably for those who decided to watch the firstepisodes of Real estate agents in Dubai on RTL Z. This program is far beyond’Save Me Now’. Everything that is terrible about human beings in general andabout global capitalism in particular, came to the fore. British people intheir twenties decided to get rich quickly and you do that by buying realestate in Dubai and selling it quickly.
Villas with bright green lawns along luxurious harbors sold like hot cakes fora few million. Whoever sold the most got the highest commission. It was hardwork, knocking each other down, but these twenty-somethings said that “successflowed through their veins”. It was simple: you didn’t have to feel guiltyabout anything, you just had to feel richer. “Only the strongest stay,” saidone who had just taken a buyer to a luxury apartment where a silver-coloredcar stood on a turntable in the conservatory. The man was enthusiastic, butwanted an apartment one floor higher. Whether there should also be a car on aturntable in the conservatory, he left in the middle.
“Oh, come in, mister wind … / Oh no, stay outside, mister wind, / you can’tenter our house / our house is not enough for you,” Vander Putte’s wordsshimmer in Dubai a hundred years later.