Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1088108
25 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 3 MARCH 2019 OPINION detail, and also announcing that the aggressor had, in fact, been duly identified, ar- rested and charged. OK, let's stop there for now. A talented film-maker could have a field-day with all that material. It could make a good short movie on its own, but also supply the premise for a more substantial docu- mentary or feature. Alas, we are not here to make a film about it right now. All the same, I'm going to imagine that we are: just for the purpose of illustrating all that stuff I was blabbing about earlier. Depending, of course, on the type of film we turn it into: one of the first things we'd need to do is storify the material. Give it purpose, direction. Assign motiva- tions and interests to all the actors. And immediately, we are beset by a crucial choice. Whose perspective are we going to tell this story from? The man? The woman? The shopkeeper? The passers-by? The Police? The women's rights NGOs? The people commenting on Facebook? Heck, could we have seen the whole thing through the eyes of a stray cat, which just wandered off afterwards? All those, and many more, could be doable. But – to avoid unnecessarily compli- cating matters with multiple POVS – let's apply the High- lander principle: 'there can only be one'. Let us further assume that our film is going to take a documentary (or social com- mentary) format, and we are interested in the political/ social dimension of domes- tic violence in general. The choice could then be further simplified: we could tell the story from the police's POV, or that of the NGOs. Whatever we choose, it will turn out a very different story indeed. Let's start with NGO's POV… which is also the opinion of many (not all) of the people commenting online. Very helpfully, their state- ment also gives us a clear, unequivocal idea of their gen- eral motivation: "Time and time again we hear of women complaining about how the police have refused to take their report, failed to investigate and/or never issued charges pertain- ing to their case. Given the lack of action in this case, when there is clear evidence of domestic violence, con- firms further their stories." That could easily be the director's actual instructions to real actors playing those parts. "THIS… this is what's pissing you off. That this sort of thing happens all the time, yet the police never do any- thing about it. And you're sick and tired of it, because it only means it will keep happen- ing… over and over again..." Naturally, it also casts the police (on top of the aggres- sor) in the role of 'the bad guys': if not outright villains, then at least obstacles. And as we all know: the bigger and badder the bad guys, the bet- ter the film… So… yep, definitely. This approach works. To convey it in a movie, however, we would also need to emphasise that the police only arrested that guy because of the social media outrage/pressure – or (if we're going to be re- ally devious), only after the activists' press statement: i.e., suggesting that they also tried to make it look like they had acted earlier, but nobody noticed. This would also work, because – let's face it – the perception echoed by that statement does indeed exist. Things may have changed, but 'domestic violence', in Malta, still has an evident aura of 'omerta' about it. Our own story already implies this: neither the victim, nor the shopkeeper, wanted to press charges. So our movie already con- forms to a certain audience expectation. It tells an all-too familiar tale, about Malta's 'amoral familism' preventing justice from being done. But… is it true of this par- ticular incident? It's not a question to ask of a fictitious movie, naturally. But this is a newspaper article. The truthfulness of the finished product does become an is- sue: here, if nowhere else. For obvious reasons, I can't rightly say off the top of my head. What I can do to redress the imbalance, how- ever, is try and tell the same story from the Police's POV. No need for any change to any major details: the only difference is that our movie would now have to clearly establish that: a) yes, the Rapid Intervention Unit did indeed rapidly intervene (note: I can see them already, all rushing madly out of the Floriana depot int to cars and vans, sirens wailing, like the Keystone Cops…); b) that they really couldn't identify the aggressor immediately, because of lack of co-opera- tion from victim/witnesses, and; c) that they nonetheless took the trouble to eventu- ally identify him themselves, and promptly arrested him as soon as they could. It goes without saying, then, that our film would portrait the NGOs as having been, at best, unfair to simply assume that none of this happened at all, before issuing their state- ment. OK, like I said: we all have our own biases… and mine is that both of those perspec- tives are, in fact, entirely as plausible as one another. Just as we all know the police have a history of turning a blind eye to domestic vio- lence… it is also demonstra- bly true that the police (and all institutions) are often really expected to behave like the Keystone Cops: to promptly, diligently and suc- cessfully respond to absolute- ly every crisis… to save every cat from every tree, and help every granny cross every busy street… and to solve even the most complex of crimes be- fore they even happen (to the extent that they sometimes even get blamed for failing to prevent people from getting murdered)… …and when reality fails to conform to this (bizarrely unrealistic) expectation, a handful of online activists tend to immediately go into overdrive, complaining about the 'total collapse of Malta's rule of law'… What all this ultimately boils down to is that… Woo- hoo! We can now make two perfectly decent films, in- stead of only one. So… what are we all waiting for? Like any good, controversial movie, this one stands out more for the immediate aftermath of its circulation (even though, as a f ilm in its own right, it's actually pretty well-shot). Immediately it went viral; questions were asked about whether the man was going to be arrested, etc. In a word, it became a social media 'thing'