By Andrej Nikolaidis, CdM columnist
Mr Dritan Abazović claims to be a hero: billboards with his face on them displaying a message “cowards don’t make history” testify for that. I wish my neighbor all the best: among other things, that he doesn’t succeed in what brought him to power in Montenegro. It goes without saying that I wish him a long and happy life.
However, the message from billboards is simply – incorrect. And here’s why.
The list of things invented by the Greeks is practically endless. The Kosovo battle should be added to it. Kosovo is originally called Thermopylae, and Vuk Brankovic’s name is – Ephialtes. Namely, he was a traitor.
The brave Greeks, in fact the Spartans (that would be the Greek Montenegrins), clashed in the pass of Thermopylae with 5, 10, 50 or – as many times as the guslar needed – numerous Persian army. If there hadn’t been for a traitor, they would have won – you know how it goes.
Anyway, Ephialtes was greedy and was a coward. But, he wrote history. Dritan sees himself on the billboards as Leonidas, but whether he is him or Ephialtes – it remains to be seen. History will tell, which, neither Dritan nor I will write no matter whether we’re heroes or cowards. The Court of History, in fact, is not a center for self-help.
Or, here’s even more famous, the so-called Easter example. One of the most significant entries in the text we call history was made by Pontius Pilate, a coward who “washes his hands”, refuses to make the right decision and leaves to the bloodthirsty mass a man he knows to be innocent.
I have already told you about this, but, as Mr Bojan Tončić would say: in the absence of better sources, let me quote myself…
From the premise that someone falsely presents himself and pretends to be someone/something he is not, charming comedies can be played.
For example, the ‘Birdcage’ by Mike Nichols, a remake of ‘La Cage aux Folles’ by Eduard Molinar. In that movie, a gay couple running a dear club called the ‘Birdcage’ is forced to host an ultra-conservative politician and his wife. The son of a gay parent is, in fact, engaged to the daughter of a Republican senator, so it’s time for the parents to meet. A dinner during which gay parents pretend to be a conservative heterosexual couple, while, below them, a lavish gay party takes place in the ‘Birdcage’, is an inexhaustible source of comedy.
Or the far more famous example ‘Some Like It Hot’ by Billy Wilder. You know that movie, with Marilyn Monroe, in which, running away from gangsters, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon pretend to be women? Remember the ingenious ending of that movie? When millionaire Osgood Fielding III proposes to Daphne, played by Jack Lemmon, she takes off her wig and says, “I’m a man.” To which Osgood says: “No one is perfect.”
Sometimes, however, those who think they are something special end up tragically. Like, for example, Franz Reichelt. You must have watched the old black-and-white footage of the Pathé movie magazine, which shows Reichelt falling like a stone from the top of the Eiffel Tower and down, on the sidewalk, finding his death. Why did that man jump?
Reichelt was a tailor who claimed to be a bird-man. And he was determined to prove it. So he sewed an “aviator costume” with wings that weighed 60 kilograms. When he jumped from a height of 10 meters wearing it, he broke his leg. He then concluded that he was ready to fly from the Eiffel Tower.
Mr Vladimir Božović, a Serbian citizen who falsely presents himself as Serbia’s ambassador to Montenegro, and who terribly insulted this country again on Easter, which Mr Krivokapić’s government cowardly allowed, is neither Jack Lemmon nor Franz Reichelt.
He’s a classic agent provocateur. And the adequate reaction to such people is neither laughter nor medical care, but decisive police action.
