Soccer and Soap Operas

Soccer and Soap Operas / Yoani Sanchez
Posted on November 10, 2013

"When the teachers aren't listening, what do the students in your
classroom talk about?" I asked my son a few months ago. He barely paused
before answering. "The boys talk about football and the women about
telenovelas," he replied, sure of himself. I confess, I expected more. I
had imagined slightly risqué topics like sexuality, or problems such as
drug use or, in some cases, political controversies. But no, the long
minutes of the breaks between one class and another are dominated by
Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, and the latest wickedness of the Brazilian
soap and its heartthrob who shows his face on the small screen every week.

My first reaction was dismay. "If, at the most rebellious age, this is
what they talk about… we're in bad shape." But then I stopped myself. I
was not going to fall into what older people had warned me of when I was
a teenager. "Your generation is lost," they told me, followed by an
enumeration of everything they themselves had accomplished. So, before
answering Teo, I tried to understand why the reality of the country, its
serious problems and possible solutions, occupy so little time — or none
— in our young people's conversations. Apathy, escapism, indifference…
were some explanations. After the initial moment of disappointment, I
felt relief. Comforted knowing that even this inertia is a way of
bringing the current system to an end.

The Cuban model needs people who applaud wildly, committed soldiers,
ideologically convinced individuals. Indolence will never be the soil
where rebellion grows, nor will it foster partisan fervor. As I've said
many times, "I prefer apathy over fanaticism." From apathy, one can wake
up, from fanaticism, I have my doubts. Frivolity is also corrosive to a
sober and outdated totalitarianism.

These young people of today, they still have plenty of time for their
civic consciousness to awaken.

10 November 2013

Source: "Soccer and Soap Operas / Yoani Sanchez | Translating Cuba" -
http://translatingcuba.com/soccer-and-soap-operas-yoani-sanchez/