IN a tumultuous week of cultural events featuring Ian Paisley's final performance in Death of a Salesman, the debut of an entire population in the debut of Scotland, the not so brave, which ended on its first night. The musical to be replaced by the vastly experienced cast of Conservatives in their long running play The Mousetrap, a play of such political intrigue, propaganda and empty promise as to have its audiences captivated and duped for generations.
And the end to such a week was Belfast's contribution in a day of culture that embraced all cultures known, unknown and on closer inspection, one suspected, invented on the day for the assembled masses in search of entertainment and attention yet finding neither down roads less travelled but crammed with those supplying its national drink in plastic cups and paying a king's ransom for the privilege.
The whole event resembled Disneyworld scripted by Roald Dahl and directed by Tim Burton, a world ostensibly for children of all ages but with a dark undercurrent at pains not to promote the indigenous but the incorporated, a type of Culture Inc. which promotes the insipid, the bland creating a featureless landscape which threatens and concerns no-one. The host culture was difficult to discern let alone find.
Are we to accept that the price of a cessation to hostilities is the continuous degradation of Irish culture to a point of extinction?
I would ask of our politicians but up to now I have steered clear of an involvement in the great farce - The Peace Process.
LAURENCE TODD
Belfast BT15
