A tradition of movie and comic villains is that they usually have pet hitmen, but many of them also have terrifying beasts for greater evils, and the key is to never confuse one with the other. The intergalactic criminal par excellence, Jabba the Hutt, had as a pet a Kowakian lizard-monkey named Salacious B. Crumb, with an irritating giggle, and he also had a pit where a tremendous rancor awaited, to account for those who were condemned for his whim to capital punishment. To understand why it is important not to mix one thing and the other, just think about the consequences of confusing the parakeet cage with Jurassic Park. More or less, what Jumanji tells.
Six years ago, we talked here about Shin Godzilla, an extraordinary film about the Japanese State’s confrontation with the impossible, a poorly drawn dinosaur that spits lightning. What distinguishes this title from any other of the dozens of Japanese monsters is that it almost completely lacks human protagonists: Godzilla does not face a handful of heroes, scientists and soldiers, but rather a choral co-protagonist, the public powers. Japanese, to whose meetings of committees and political bodies. The film is useful because it proves, in Hobbesian terms, that when a State is freed from its democratic straits because it faces an unspeakable, it often runs the risk of losing its democratic condition and becoming the Leviathan that the English philosopher predicted, an ungovernable chimera. and extremely powerful that, although he can destroy Godzilla, he himself becomes a threat to human life. Leviathan is not the pet of the rulers, but the untamed beast: the kraken from Clash of the Titans that, once freed, no one can tame or tame.
We were telling this about the Procés, because the impossible, Godzilla, was a Generalitat that abandoned the road of law and began a flight through meadows and forests, and whom the Leviathan decided to pursue cross-country. That is to say, far from all of them observing the Law. The State that has since persecuted residual separatism operates outside of its constitutional surnames: it is no longer social or democratic by law, it is just a State. There are plenty of examples, from the trial against the trialists to Operation Catalunya by Minister Jorge Fernández Díaz. It is an angry and defensive State and, therefore, a clear threat to citizens. The latest evidence, which we talked about here last week, is the shocking pronouncement of the Board of Prosecutors of the National Court regarding the cartoon instruction of Judge Manuel García Castellón against Tsunamic Democratic.
The professor of Constitutional Law at the Pompeu Fabra University, Enric Fossas Espadaler, in the Attorney Debate Forum, said in that dizzying autumn that “constitutional law cannot be asked to solve a great political problem for which it is not made.” . When Mariano Rajoy sent the police to Catalonia, the famous piolines, he was still directing the operation, but when he stated that it would not be politics but “the law” that would solve the matter, what he did was open the pit of rancor, give free rein to the deep state to put an end to the problem. That is why the teacher of journalists Guillem Martínez tells in his chronicles that at this point in the move, Alberto Núñez Feijóo barely paints anything. When Luke Skywalker confronts the rancor, Jabba no longer pokes or cuts.
The mutilated millionaire Mason Verger from Ridley Scott’s Hannibal, played by an unrecognizable Gary Oldman, ends up devoured by the carnivorous pigs he trained to eat the man-eating murderer.
All modern states have succumbed to the temptation of special actions, from state terrorism to summary trials when they have felt at risk or feared that the law alone was insufficient to mitigate a threat. That’s what Ken Loach’s exceptional Hidden Agenda is about, about Tacherian whims in the fight against the IRA. To avoid this, modern constitutional law contemplates “special states”, such as alarm, exception, siege and war for situations in which ordinary law and the freedoms of citizens are an inconvenience. But the characteristic of these special states is their limitation in time. They are a rancor with a powerful chain around their neck and a muzzle.
Gozer the Gozerian, an all-powerful deity worshiped by Hittites, Mesopotamians and Sumerians, has two faithful servants, two subaltern demons who, as we see in i, are the Guardian of the Gate and the Master of the Keys, Sigourney Weaver and Rick Moranis ( to whom social networks long ago brought out their intriguing resemblance to the local and regional leaders of Madrid), but in the face of greater challenges, he invokes his form as an untamed and gigantic beast, which takes on the appearance of the Marshmallows candy doll.
Watching (P)Ícaro, the wonderful Netflix documentary that pulls the thread of the case of little Nicolás (and who is like the stepfather that Miguel Gila’s aunt pulled), one discovers, in the shabby pigsty of politicians, police officers, robes , spies, businessmen, and journalists that is the Madrid court, that our Great Leviathan, our terrible deep state, is much more like the plump sugar colossus from Ghostbusters than the mythical kraken from Clash of the Titans. It causes destruction everywhere but is more laughable than scary.
And speaking of national glories, today is the birthday of the actor who could play any of the characters in that Madrid plot that (P)ícaro narrates: Don Fernando Esteso. Congratulations.
