Robbert Dijkgraaf, the exact scientist with the flux-de-bouche of a great orator, kicked off the traditional Paradiso debate on Sunday 30 August in an extremely cool Paradiso. The Amsterdam pop temple was packed with invited guests and press, and expectations were high: could the debate really become a conversation this time, instead of the now somewhat threadbare clamour for money and understanding? Hope enough. After all, in addition to Dijkgraaf, a couple of politicians would also take office, who had dined with a real artist in preparation.
Well: the food seems to have been fantastic, and there was definitely rapprochement. Filmmaker Jan Willem van Ewijk had had a good chat with Jacques Monasch of the PvdA, theatre-maker Marjolijn van Heemstra had just failed to get Mona Keijzer of the CDA to sing in Volendam, and Guy Weizman persuaded Alexander Pechtold of D66 to drop by Groningen.
This is going in the right direction, but we are still a long way from the once natural marriage between politics and the arts. Since 2001, politicians have not dared to show up in theatres or concert halls for fear of being called elitist. Those who do, as Plasterk did when he was briefly Minister of Culture, are labelled 'minister of parties and celebrations'. So the Netherlands in the 21st century has become not so much right-wing as steeply Calvinist. Logical too, when you factor in that the biggest screamers of the populist section of the web all come from heavily reformed nests.
Anyway: in a decade or so, a politician may be allowed to go to a theatre or museum again without directly losing voters. Until then, we have to make do with the Paradiso debate.
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