THE VILLAGE’S FIST TELEVISION
THE VILLAGE’S FIST TELEVISION
Description
In 1971, a rich uncle brings a television to the home of Manolis Bardanis. The first television in the village of Apeiranthos in Naxos, it attracts all the neighbors who gather to see this strange acquisition.
Tags
Credits
Field Reporter
- Euthymia Papagiannopoulou
Interviewee
- Manolhs Mpardanhs
Podcast Producer
- Magia Filippopoulou
Sound Designer
- Iasonas THeofanou
Sound Editor
- Spyros Lymperopoulos
Video Director
- Stefanos Mpertakhs
Voiceover
- Steve Lever
Manolis Bardanis, sixty years old, if you please, born and raised in Apeiranthos, in Naxos. I grew up there until I was eighteen. Eighteen winters in that village. I have so many memories, from my childhood, my adolescence. But let me tell you one story now.
In our main room, where we slept, there was a chest of drawers next to the wardrobes. And, on top of this chest of drawers, was where the first television in the village was going to go. How did we, poor as we were, come to have a television? An uncle, a retired general, gave it to us as a present. A television was a great thing! 1971-72, a television in the village!
Black and white, of course. And then you had to finding the channels, and put up the aerial: ‘Yes, there!’ ‘Not there, turn the aerial more to the right...’, chaos. The technician was the sweetest man in the world: the technician who put up the aerial. It turned out, as we learned, he was a fascist. Yes, a real fascist. But he was so good, the man who found the channels, I don’t know, and the rest...
In the evening everyone got together, all the women in the neighbourhood, to watch two series that were on: one series was ‘The Unknown War’—by Foskolos if you please—it was the first that he did—and ‘Traders of Nations’ by Papdiamantis. Two series that came on late in the evening, and things went mad. All the women in the neighbourhood, and from even further away, got together in the living room to watch the series.
But how were all the neighbours going to sit? About twenty would come to watch. The living room wasn’t so big, we only had four chairs all in all; where would the others sit? Our beds became seating for the ladies. Five fit on mine: two down at the foot, another two on the side, and one right on half my pillow! I will never forget that. I couldn’t turn over. I felt the whole of her left side resting on my cheek and my pillow. And I couldn’t see anything because she was in the way. And the television was at full volume. Most of them were deaf and it had to be on full for them to hear. And my pillow stank, as did the bed, and their breath, because they would eat garlic for their blood pressure, there, where I slept... absolute madness.
And it didn’t end there. What about their chatting? They chatted about what was happening and narrated it. This is them discussing ‘Unknown War’.
It was about the occupation, set in the period of the occupation, with the German occupying forces, etc. There was war, killing, trouble...
One said: ‘Do you think they’ll kill the lad?’
‘No way! His uncle, Vartanis, will save him’, said the other.
My grandmother was among them—the sister of the man who gave us the television—who was quite a show-off and always talking about her brother. She said: ‘They gave him the name ‘Vartanis’ after my brother, General Vardanis.’ Vardanis was her brother’s surname. No one paid any attention to her bragging, because they heard gunshots, etc.
At the gunshots on the television... one of them cupped her cheeks and wailed: ‘Mary, mother of God!’ Another beat her bosom. The one next to me kept jabbing me with her elbow, and kept hitting me. She crippled me! How could I sleep there?
The other series was like this: it had love, adultery and passion, and things the village had never seen before. I remember the dialogue:
‘Isn’t Augousta beautiful, the cow. Neza, do you see her?’
You’ll see, the Venetian will steal her away!’
‘Right, because she’ll need stealing! Can’t you see how she looks at him?’
‘So, she’ll leave the Naxan for Marco?’
‘And what if he can’t ‘interest’ her? What’s the lucky girl going to do?’
And then ‘ha ha ha ha!’ So funny! They all laughed... But suddenly, the laughter stopped. I thought, ‘Great, now I can sleep.’ Thank God! I could sleep! All good... but they hadn’t played the theme tune. I wondered what was going on. Then, I felt my bed start shaking: shaking and rocking. And I thought, ‘That’s it! I’m going crazy. Is it an earthquake? What is it?’
The neighbour next to me was shaking all over; my pillow was shaking. And all the other women were the same. I thought, ‘Oh God! What’s going on?’ I got up to see. What were they watching? I moved my head like this, and I saw... Marco Sanoudo passionately kissing Augousta! Where would these old Apeiranthian women have seen a kiss like this before? They were all shaking, everything was shaking!
Anyway, at some point it ended, the credits came on, and the episode finished. Finally, I could get some sleep.