ΠΑΠΟΥΤΣΙ ΑΠΟ ΤΟΝ ΤΟΠΟ ΣΟΥ
Honestly,
the goings on of the Ministry of Culture of the Hellenic Republic make a person
with the future of the race at heart despair. I mean serious, imagine getting
stroppy with ADIDAS TM simply
because the good people headquartered in Herzogenaurach, Germany, had the
inspiring idea of placing a colourful drone shoe above the Parthenon.
I remember
as if it were yesterday, being ten years of age, warming my hands in front of
the spit at an aged family friend’s nameday, and being approached by an older
boy, who asked: “Hey, do you know what ADIDAS stands for?”
Had I been
just a few years older, I imagine I would have advanced the opinion that they
stand for the proletariat seizing control of the means of production so that
the production of commodities is done away with, but instead I shrugged my
shoulders. Moving close to my ear, the boy whispered in a hoarse voice: “All
Day I Dream about S*x.”
“Rubbish,”
boomed a voice from the other side of the spit, the purple face of his uncle
contorted in various hues of inebriation. “It stands for “All Day I Dream About
Soviet Union.” Crushing his stubby in his enormous proletarian fist as easily
as he would crack the knuckles of the petit bourgeoisie, he then raised that
fist in comradely salute and fixed us with a glare that would brook no
opposition. I never did sum up the courage to illuminate him, when I found out
years later, that ADIDAS is actually an acronym for the name of the company’s
founder, Adolf "Adi" Dassler.
Viewed from
this perspective, one could never accuse for Minister of Culture Mendoni of
mendacity, in responding to the drone shoe with such fury. Not so long ago,
another Adolf tried to stamp his jackboot on our sacred rock. Now this Adolf is
trying to plant his sneaker upon it. Seriously though, the warning signs were
all there, had we bit paid attention. Take the Adidas trefoil design, which
apparently stands for North America, Europe and Asia, the continents or at
least the markets of said land masses, that Adolf presumably seeks to conquer,
subdue or at least peddle his product in. It was only a matter of time before
his cohorts arrived to press us all under his athletic foot. After all, did not
Adidas recently drop their marketing slogan for twenty years: “Impossible is
Nothing” (a prescient warning to us if there ever was one that anything is
possible, even the appropriation of the Parthenon), to the even more ominous
“You’ve Got This,” no doubt referring to the Acropolis, its environs and all
ticket sales therein?
While
pundits and politician cry foul, something more sinister and profound is going
on here and if the good people at the Ministry of Culture had just heard famed
film director Yiorgos Lanthimos out, rejecting his recent application for
filming rights to the Acropolis, they would have realised that the future of
the world is at stake. For in Bugonia, his in production film, Lanthimos
purports the tale of two conspiracy-obsessed young men who kidnap the
high-powered CEO of a major company, convinced that she is an alien intent on
destroying planet Earth. This, we are told and are expected to believe, is
Science Fiction. And yet that is exactly what they want you to think. The truth
is, that there are two CEO’s of two major companies vying for World Domination
under our very noses and we are completely oblivious.
By now, you
have probably guessed the identity of one of them. As to the other, consider
this: What is the name of the temple to the right of the Propylaea at the
entrance of the sacred precinct of the Acropolis? Ten ADIDAS vouchers to those
of you who answered “the temple of Athena Nike.” Yes, NIKE. And I ask you
gentle reader, have you ever heard or read about any Greek government, its
officials, employees, assigns, clients or general hangers on make a gesture of
at least the slightest disapprobation at this blatant infringement of our
trademark and gross violation of our intellectual property by company b? You
will not find one reference to such a protest anywhere, I promise you. For
Pericles’ sake people, just do it.
So if it is
not the violation itself that incenses the Hellenic populace, for we have
already taken sides surreptitiously in the turf war of the alien companies, one
which Lanthimos in his audacity threatens to disrupt, one can only deduce that
the offending component in the whole story must be the shoe. For this at least,
there is ample cultural evidence. Traditionally, to show the sole of one’s shoe
to someone was a sign of the grossest disrespect, which is why one never sat
with their legs crossed on a chair in front of one’s elders and betters. Here
we have not just a whole sole but an entire shoe resting upon us. Then there is the revolutionary saying: «Παπούτσι από τον τόπο σου κι ας είναι μπαλωμένο» (a shoe from
your own land, even if its is a patched one), a powerful Trumpian protectionist
tariff increasing call to arms if there ever was one, which in breach of
European Union regulations, tells Adolf to go stuff his shoe where the Sun of
Vergina does not shine, since the Greeks have their own local shoe industry, even
if this is comprised primarily of leather sandals in tourist kiosks on the
Cyclades and tsarouhia for Manasis’ Froura in Melbourne.
But one defies
one’s European masters at one’s peril. After all, were they not the ones who in
the recent crisis μας
έβαλαν τα δυο πόδια σε ένα παπούτσι?
And when the people rose up as one and voted resoundingly NO in the referendum
against the TROIKA’s bailout conditions, did they not proceed να μας πατήσουν τον κάλο?
And of course, one needs to consider what our response had been had the shoe
been on the other foot, although it must be said that while Greeks did have
imperialistic proclivities before being taught the error of their ways, you
never saw a Byzantine emperor plant his imperial porphyry buskins on the public
edifices of any of its vassal states. Κλέφτες με ποδήματα, all of
them, I say, and instead of protesting against Adolf, verifying the old adage: «γλώσσα παπούτσι, μυαλό κουκούτσι» perhaps we
should be grateful that our overlords «δεν
μας δίνουν τα παπούτσια στο χέρι» exiling us
beyond the lands of the Union where we shall abide in sparsity and austerity, «με μισό παπούτσι.»
Of
course the corollary of all this may just be that dear old Adolf in planting
his sole upon the soul of our nation, is actually trying to pay us a Teutonic
complement, which is why I rail at the overreaction of the Greek Minister of
Culture. In positioning his shoe upon the columns of the Parthenon, is he not
telling us that the very foundation of his foot-cladding philosophy is based
upon ancient Greece, to whom he owes all? Furthermore, pundits who look into
these things closely with the numerologists in Velopoulos’ Ελληνική Λύση Party,
reliably inform me that the shoe actually does not rest upon the temple itself
but rather, being comprised of drones, hovers above it at the conceptual point
where the entasis of its columns meet, suggesting that all things will
inevitably converge and it is futile to resist. (That by the way I am reliably
informed by my astrologer, will be ADIDAS’s marketing slogan for 2026 and they
have applied for it to also be adopted by the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics
Apparently, they are a shoe in).
If after
this length disquisition, you are not convinced and instead of welcoming Adolf
with open arms, have maintained your rage and your enthusiasm, console yourself
at least in the knowledge that our people have from times ancient developed a
tried and true traditional method of dealing with interlopers, foreign and
domestic. Τους γράφουμε στα παλιά μας τα παπούτσια.
DEAN
KALIMNIOU
kalymnios@hotmail.com
First published in NKEE on Saturday 24 May 2025