If, as the press has reported, there were 4500 Greeks earlier this year who did not know they had AIDS, there can’t have been 45 Greeks last month who didn’t know that Elizabeth Taylor had stopped in Athens to pick up her share of the Onassis Foundation’s Aristotelis Prize for her contribution in fighting the AIDS epidemic.
The enormous fuss made over every detail of her 48-hour visit, far from trivializing her contribution to combating the disease, proved that if beauty matched with fame can be put to noble use, so much more worthy is it of praise in an age when publicity means just about everything.
By her appearance at the ceremony in the Old Parliament, if ten people were alerted to the dangers of the disease and altered their way of looking at it – and this number was multiplied many times over – then the falderol made over Malcom Forbes’private jet, the number of suitcases she carried, the color of her eyeshadow and the aesthetic battle fought over the large red flower stuck into the brim of her black hat were well worthwhile.
During her brief stay and her short but moving statement, she shed publicity not only on AIDS but on all those around her: the other worthy recipients of awards, the Onassis Foundation itself (a matter that aspiring organizations cannot have been unaware of) and even on Sophocles whom she quoted. By stumbling charmingly on his name, she gave him more notoriety than ten National Theatre revivals.
Even Prime Minister Papandreou, who handed out the prizes in the absence of the president who was on an official visit elsewhere, may have purposefully fumbled the prize as he handed it to her in order to share a moment in the limelight.
Still, the most noted absence at the ceremony was that of Melina Mercouri. For all the premier’s efforts to achieve distinction abroad, he is only a shadow beside the dazzle of his Minister of Culture who has become as great a symbol of Greece abroad as souvlaki and probably more than the Parthenon. Away on official business herself, Melina and Elizabeth Taylor never met. Some said the conjunction of two such brilliant stars would be too bright for such a small constellation as Greece.
Unlike Elizabeth Taylor, Melina is of course a politician as well as an actress, a phenomenon by no means unique today and one most likely to become more common as politics is transformed into a branch of TV entertainment. Papandreou may lack Melina’s thespian talents and her cheekbones, but it cannot be doubted that he has a finely developed sense of theatre, too. It’s not surprising that the only charter survivors of a government that in seven years has lost its socialist ideals and its momentum should still lead as a man/woman TV team with full coverage and high ratings.
In Greece, therefore, as in other countries, politics has become a branch of public relations. If conservatives here complain of party propaganda and censorship, they are only confusing it with high-exposure advertising in which no one cares if he’s censured so long as he’s mentioned. Political parties have become brands. Who cares what the surgeon-general warns so long as the product is displayed and named?
The importance given to PR was perhaps even more impressive during the stay of Turgut Ozal, the first Turkish head of government to visit Athens in over a third of a century. Here maximum coverage was given in the media to what minimum exposure was given in fact, with 8000 police keeping as far away as possible what the media was covering in close-up. The prime minister’s accomplishments may have been negligible but it was the noise and hubbub that counted. It was like Alcibiades of old who cut the tail off his dog in order to make Athenian tongues wag. The reason he did it, he said, was to keep people from saying worse things about him. So Messrs Ozal and Papandreou may have used their meetings to distract attention from more serious domestic issues.
That the surface image of a thing today is considered more important than its content was clearly shown when the government roundly scolded the leader of the opposition when he tabled his motion of censure last month. On the first day of the debate from which the premier absented himself (there is always a danger of over-exposure), the deputy premier in reply to Mitsotakis’ accusations demanded that he answer certain questions. Among these were: Would a postponement of the motion of censure serve Greece’s national interests in the light of Ozal’s visit? Would the motion contribute to the nation’s image on the eve of Greece’s assuming the EC presidency? Would linking the government with terrorist activities enhance Greece’s interests at the opening of the tourist season?
The surprising thing about the government’s stand is that it didn’t even seem to be interested about whether the attacks being made on it were true or not. It was only concerned with how it looked in the eyes of others.
It is the professional hazard of administrations to confuse the government with the country, and national interests are expressed, like tourist promotion, in pretty pictures carefully cropped by itself. In neither case is the truth upheld. This is a pity because bureaucrats in tourism and political leaders, ever fearful of facts, fail to see that it is the whole picture, revealing warts and all, that makes a country like Greece so attractive to foreigners.
