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OP-ED

Elsa Lila and Bana King: the murderous talent of Albania

Politiko 2022-03-18 15:06:45

Elsa Lila and Bana King: the murderous talent of Albania

Alfred Lela

Albania has talent. She can kill an event by throwing it to the bottom of the ocean of oblivion, or crucify it by holding it, for days, in the eyes of a crowd so fascinated by moral pretexts, that it gives itself to the one stuck in the hurry of public lynching, as you sit and watch, with your hand under your chin, in the haunted pose of one who, mazeallah, is not participating in crime, but in philosophy.

Two events, which separate a few months from each other, aggravate the calendar of common social hypocrisy. The latest is the arrest in Italy of singer Elsa Lila, an enfant prodige of the modern song, accused of participating in a drug trafficking group. The status of the singer's star takes part of the burden for the strong and wide reaction on the news in question, which moved the young Albanian woman from the red carpet of Sanremo to the wall of shame of Italian handcuffs. The second layer of reaction should be blamed on a political naivety, or persuasion, or protagonism, of Elsa Lila, who appeared alongside Edi Rama and his socialists, in the hunger strike, accompanied by a boulevard umbrella, in 2010. You can not separate, of course, which one weighs more on public outrage, the naiveté of political involvement, or the mistake of participating in the narcotics trade. Or is it the status of a falling star - the fall of which you can not associate with an expression of desire - right at the feet of those who, for a long time, more than can be remembered, has led life to the feet of life?

It is not the reaction, which depending on the form, can be justified, how much is cynicism, gnashing of teeth, a schadenfreude (joy from the misfortune of the other), which make the occasion for Lila to push her shoulders up in the pose of astonishment. What stands out most, at least in the eyes of the author of these lines, is that we, as social groups or societies, are more willing to tear up our peers than quite the opposite. Elsa Lila is a child of a difficult Albanian transition. She is tempered, like a small and fragile girl, as we remember from "I ask tears" at the Song Festival '96, she is spiritually and psychologically shaken by the ruthless anguish of the difficult years of Albania of these 32 years. With one more misfortune, the murder of the mother, she is one of us, each of us. With the dream of the peak, with the drama of exile, with the trauma of a divided family, with the self torn between the motherland of origin and the adopted homeland, it becomes, suddenly unremembered, or completely awaited and remembered, the enfant terrible of a transitional period in society and history.

Why, then, is this fallen angel even a more elevated target, easier for the mediocre sign of the average Albanian or the vulgar one? If this requires a sociological study, which goes beyond the capacity and readiness of this writing, it is a case of antithesis that serves us the answer, or at least a silhouette of it.

How do they behave, the middle Albanian or the vulgar one, with another case of narcotics trafficking. On January 2 of this year, a cocaine load of 119 kg was seized in the container of an Albanian company, famous for Bana King, the banana that has filled the advertising space of the main shows in the country with advertisements. As a result, the news of the cocaine shipment was given in part, so beheaded, leaving out the name of the parent company, but also the banana brand. The reason, more than not intimidating the brand, had to do with the fact that advertising in Albania is not a genuine commercial operation, but a purchase of media silence. When a company advertises, it does so that, in the event of bad publicity, that is, the release of negative news, the media that has advertisements and is paid for it, at the very least, should not publish the news.

So it was with Bana King drugs. This episode can not be parked alone in the yard of media standards. Bana King's advertisement makes her a very famous character, more popular than Elsa Lila in Albania, with an effort for fame in Italy, just like her. Neither the company removed the ad from the media, nor the media interrupted Bana King's advertisement, nor did the singer returning to the showman distance himself from the firm Zico that traded this commodity, made this advertisement, presumably as a shadow for the activity of illegal, in which even if she was not involved she was put under investigation.

What would have happened in Italy in such a case? It is repetitive to say that the advertisement would have been removed immediately, until the full clarification of the event, and any artist who would have appeared in the publicity of a firm suspected of international drug trafficking would have withdrawn from the advertisement and distanced himself. from the firm whose product until yesterday boasted in front of the public.

What this different standard of conduct reveals in the case of Lila and Bana King, is that the crowd becomes louder the more vulnerable the offender or culprit becomes. Elsa Lila had no one by her side, to take away the good memory of the songs at the end-of-year festivals, or that collective neighborhood of Albanians for the compatriot who manages to compete in Sanremo. But, neither one nor the other was enough, before the sensation that provided what could be called in pop language as 'drop from the meal'. Elsa was no longer someone we could brag about in front of Italians or compatriots in Albanian cafes, she even made the unforgivable mistake of undoing the model we do not believe in, but love, or create to warm up the cold misery of our spiritual recesses. The model we really believe in is that of Bana King, not only of the banana as a commodity that is eaten, sold, and brings profits but also of the drug that is hidden behind the profile of the business and the man behind the business. Media owners, journalists, artists, Facebook thinkers, intellectual and rope intellectuals, do not come out to debate or condemn this model, because it has financial power, advertises, buys, sells, favors, gives, and receives, but what it receives, since it is immaterial, does not stand out. It is about shame or its social absence.

Elsa desolate this star 'dropped from the meal', from poster girl becomes collective whore. And they shoot them in turn: the new whores of the Bloc, the scoundrels who pay for the silicone for the peaches turned into compost, the journalists of the mejlis, the artists of the dish, the pre-political angry people and our people who, for so long, come and go in the streets of bravery and legend, that he is no longer a people, but a discipledom in search of fallen angels and Baraba's to save.