Jef Elbers, the shit cart and Flemish culture

The right-wing radical Flemish nationalist singer / screenwriter Jef Elbers will therefore not become a board member of the Flemish Audiovisual Fund, or VAF for short. The press had in fact been baptized and discovered ‘homophobic’ statements about Gay Prides and shit carts. With the known result: tons of dredge from the LGBTQ + brigades, politicians, rainbow flags on public buildings, and all possible opinion makers who wanted to demonstrate their political correctness once again in the appropriate newspaper columns.

I briefly studied Jef’s bio: the child of a Brussels father and a Ukrainian mother who both survived a Nazi concentration camp. Language activist in Brussels, where he went to school and got to know the Francophone arrogance, VMO militant, Colruyt branch manager, protest singer, and screenwriter of BRT children’s series such as Merlina, which my son was mad about. Partly because of the used there parafix, an umbrella that could stiffen villains. In between, Jef flirted with the Vlaams Blok, which he represented for a while in the 1990s as a board member of the public broadcaster. A mocking song about Mohammed Ambras landed him a charge of racism in 1998, but the court ruled it to be free speech and acquitted him. Afterwards he disappeared into the background as a ‘burnt figure’, wrote a book and translated a novel from French.

An eventful life course of an uncompromising straightforward figure that I can muster some sympathy for. Such a person does not have to be nuanced, we already have plenty of great pastors. There can be quite a bit of provocation, from people who say what others only think in silence. We have no use for a democracy of good opinions and people who only discuss periods and commas. And yes, that may also be a joke, splashing mud from the frog pool, controversy, which today is very derogatoryly called ‘polarization’.

Parafix

In such a storm, everyone is invited to get involved and take sides, without it necessarily ending in Rwandan conditions. That makes the difference with barbarism, hurray democracy is not perfect. It is a misunderstanding that unfriendly gay statements and jokes would incite hatred, let alone violence, otherwise the Aalst Voil Janetten prohibit. The legislator determines everyone’s right to a free sexual experience and sets the boundaries (what about pedos, for example?), But no one can be forbidden to consider gay sex to be malodorous. And to come out for it, in his / her way. That too is a fundamental right, perhaps even a merit. The government must be neutral; a ‘neutral’ citizen, however, there is something wrong with that, that is someone without taste buds.

I can’t blame me what the Pope, The Vatican or Bishop Bonny think of homosexuality – what kind of thing is that anyway, a Christian gay? -, but the man’s love in the woods and heaths or on highway car parks, and how that works in practice, everyone should appreciate that. We occasionally see it in concrete terms for us. We still find the fiddling of lesbians sensual and proof of a well-functioning fine motor skills, but a man who puts his parafix in the buttocks of another man sometimes does not remain without consequences, and Jef wanted to air this in his visual way. to give. Many women are averse to it and call this part a no go zoneSo no shit cart, but I had warned myself not to have a gynecological talk about this.

Appointment carousel

Well, of course you shouldn’t drop a rebel like Jef Elbers into such a thoroughly politicized cultural bureaucracy like the VAF. Vlaams Belang corrected quickly – because Tommeke wants to play along with the big boys – and pushed Dimitri Hoegaerts forward: a boring, impeccable party soldier who seems to be born in a tailor-made suit and never allows himself to be caught making a statement with an angle. In the VAF he has to say ‘mister-chairman’ to someone who is equally cut out for the job: the nominated by the N-VA Siegfried Bracke, a man without phobias, free from charged statements, and without principles.

Which brings us seamlessly to the heart of the matter: the appointment carousel in which all parties are allowed to drop their males / females into cabinets, administrations, intermunicipal companies, cultural houses, agencies, you name it, and therefore also the Flemish Audiovisual Fund. According to mutual deals and with criteria that usually do not revolve around competence. Or why I think the homophobic Jef Elbers is silently glad that the party is canceled.

Our native disease is not called homophobia, but participation. I do not understand that politicians and parties should be involved in the production of films, TV series and computer games. Maybe filmmakers should learn something fundraising instead of turning on subsidy taps. Culture patronized by the state does not work. There may be quite a bit of money to restore patrimony, to restore the roof of museums and to light the spotlights in theaters, but creativity has to find its own ways. And politics must focus on its core tasks: efficient management, whereby the watchdogs we elect in parliament should actually bark, instead of obediently pushing a button.

That is perhaps the most important lesson from the story of Jef Elbers and his challenge: the Flemish cultural sector is in the hands of clerks and schoolmasters, who keep calling out about free expression (imagination works‘), but actually strictly adhere to the politically correct taboos. Posts that must be filled because of the balance of power between parties. Abolish that trade, it is the perfect time for it.

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