Captives of Impaired Consciousness
Old habits die hard. Despite their absurdity, the daily rituals and details of urban landscapes are so routine for city dwellers that they become engrained. The opposite is also true: things that are natural to any Western city seem to us, people with a Soviet mindset, almost a mockery of common sense. Some of us, who have had occasion to travel in the West, have noticed the multitude of conveniences for handicapped people. Stairs come equipped with ramps for persons in wheelchairs; subway entrances have special elevators. Every public washroom has a special cubicle. Seeing all this, our immediate response is mild surprise. Why are there so many of these things?
That’s what we think, instead of asking: Why do we have so few of these amenities? You don’t have to travel to impoverished provincial towns — just take a walk in downtown Kyiv, go through its underpasses, and peek into private and public restrooms. How many ramps or cubicles, let alone elevators, can you see there?
Of course, finding a scapegoat is easy. But certain things indicate that stairs and restrooms that are not suited for the physically challenged are not a question of indifferent public officials, but an element in a much bigger picture. Take, for example, the television channel whose name (Enter Film) presupposes a special understanding of filmmaking. It also features news from the world of this fabulous art form. The other day, during its usual barrage of international news the channel ran a short feature on Ukrainian filmmaking. The occasion was more than noteworthy: the Ukrainian premiere of the Cannes Festival’s Palme d’Or winner, the short film Podorozhni (Wayfarers). According to the narrator, the screening fell short of expectations, but the film’s director had earlier cautioned that the documentary was no masterpiece (by the way, humility is the hallmark of gifted individuals). The narrator went on to say that the film focuses on patients in a mental hospital, and that the Cannes Festival jury rewarded the director exclusively for his compassion for these patients. The story ended with a brief interview with the director, who said that he wants to be left alone so that he can think about what to do next. This was followed by a torrent of purportedly very important filmmaking news: about such and such a star who no longer wishes to share her bed with another Hollywood celebrity, or about an actress who’s really been hitting the bottle, etc. Indeed, this information is just too important for words.
Of course, no such interesting facts were to be learned from the item on Wayfarers. The only clear message was that a not very successful film accidentally won an award, the clamor it has generated is pure nonsense, and it is better to forget about its creator. Of course, there’s no accounting for taste, but the question of dire incompetence does come to the fore. One gets the impression that the item was written by a dropout journalist (worse still, if he did graduate), who has never seen anything more sophisticated than Dumb and Dumber, and who merely glanced at the screen to produce a quick-selling, $20-a-page article. Perhaps he should have consulted people who are more or less versed in filmmaking — there was a roomful of them during the screening — and asked them what makes Wayfarers so noteworthy. But no, our journalist is a professional, always in a hurry. Ukraine has won a Palme d’Or in Cannes: big deal! To make matters worse, the documentary is about some feebleminded people.
Of course, his bosses will say in righteous anger: “We didn’t imply anything of the kind about the patients! The only thing that the item said about the documentary was that it was all about mental patients, nothing more, and nothing less: no extraneous opinions. Let the viewers find out what makes the film so mediocre.” Meanwhile, no matter what cinematographers might suggest, the authors of this particular story made the reason quite obvious: the film is inferior because it is about people with mental disorders.
One other thing: the administration of the infamous Kyiv “academy,” which pretends to be “managing personnel,” is instead breeding xenophobia and racism. Recently it went so far as to expel a student for trying to protect the rights of sexual minorities. In the West such administrators would be spending most of their time in courts, while the press would tear them to pieces. Here the scandal fizzled out after a few reports on television. Meanwhile, the new prime minister (of the new leadership!) has nothing short of an academic degree from that same “academy.” Well, Western people must be downright unnatural. See, they even have toilets for the physically challenged.
It appears that problems stem not only from personal incompetence or dogmatism, but also from some kind of congenial trauma with which we, people of old habits, are living. Unfortunately, our collective diagnosis is impaired consciousness, i.e., a serious defect that prevents us from understanding those who are different, weaker, or simply unlike us — those who suffer from our intolerance. We see them through the prism of our impairment. As a result of this impaired logic, we reject those who are different, except that they are just like us or even better in many respects. Meanwhile, we listen and elect ethical cripples and mutants in order to become their captives.
Granted, we had been crippled for much too long. But now is the time to recover.
