7-29-08, 9:51 am

A friend of mine called me a few days ago to comment on a scene he didn’t like on the Cuban soap opera presently being aired on television (Polvo en el Viento) in which some criminals hired by a dishonest female cashier beat up a couple as revenge for having reported her.

'This is incredible! What will people think of us, that we have people of that sort?'

My friend, committed for life to build a fairer world, had become frozen in the twisted road of projecting, in public, only the good side of a society for which he has offered his existence. Only the good, and, in any case, only a little bit of 'the other,' for fear of what other people might say.

Although art is neither sociology nor politics or an ideological textbook, it can have a lot of all that as long as proselytism or propaganda doesn’t ooze from the creative endeavor. It can, even though some defenders of 'pure art' persist in denying it.

So lets talk about a social function of art, with so many definitions and controversial points that not even a simple sketch could fit in these lines. Let’s just say that there’s a desire to make art to improve things and in this process a description of our problems plays an essential role. Its about an account in a progressive sense, aimed at prompting reflection, debate, and the interrelation between what we’re watching on the screen and aspects of what’s happening on that other big scene: daily life.

And that said without demanding portrayals faithful to reality, or without forgetting that old recommendation of Charles Chaplin that the true meaning of things is often found while trying to say things in another way.

Can artistic expression also become a way to improve the social situation?

If we analyze that in Polvo en el Viento there’s some critical content mixed in its love plots or of other nuances, I believe it can.

The soap opera shows young people who study, but also other people —young and not so young— that come up against reality in a different way and make corruption, theft, and illegal 'deals' the easiest way to 'triumph in life.'

Non-laudatory behavior assumed with verisimilitude, both in the literary conception of those involved and in the performance of actors.

It’s done without prejudices, demonstrating concepts of the lifestyle of these characters who, like it or not, exist as part of the dynamics of a society under attack and that with mistakes of its own, and that develops —do we need to say it?—, not precisely inside a bubble.

All that’s creative and progressive needs to be reflected in critical opinions that prompt in television viewers what they see in the soap opera. Seeing them not only as elements of fiction, but also as part of social problems worth thinking about and discussing, beyond the artistic act of this soap that, not in vain, is enjoying a large audience.

From Granma International