Why would you interview someone for three hours who is already unstoppable from the tube himself? What do you ask someone who, in his widely read work, talks at length about how he became who he has become? What strategy do you choose to arrive at the 'rosebud' moment everyone is waiting for? 'Rosebud' as that one all-explaining secret that makes everything fall into place, like the sleigh with that name reveals the childhood trauma of Citizen Kane in that famous film?
Nice open questions for an enjoyable evening of Summer Sisters. Perhaps for next time, as the kick-off of season 2025 did not include any open questions. Fresh interviewer Griet Op De Beeck found it difficult enough to get talkative waterfall and master storyteller Özcan Akyol to elaborate. After all, she herself had already seen, heard and read everything the writer and TV personality had to say in her preparation, so she was eager to get her own out somewhere. Something like that?
Apprenticed to Theo Maassen
Anyway, this first episode of the current series was a curious example of a total lack of chemistry between interviewer and interviewee. Eus, as Özcan Akyol is better known, was eager to narrate and he can do that like the best of them. As social climber and stacker, he can manoeuvre more easily between the social and intellectual classes than someone born and raised in the upper class, and that became very clear in this programme, which only became a conversation for a few moments.
It looked as if Op de Beeck had been apprenticed to Theo Maassen, who in his only season as Summer Host proved unable to listen to someone of the opposite sex. Like Theo did with his female guests, Op de Beeck did not let Eus finish a single sentence. But unlike Theo Maassen, she rounded off his outpourings all the time with a hasty summary spoken with little interest. After all, she had already seen and heard everything.
Obligatory ticking off
The astonishment on Eus' face grew with each interruption, growing to bewilderment after the umpteenth time that Op de Beeck did not respond to a friendly interjection, or did not follow up on a remark that clearly called for an explanation. Until the last hour of the evening was spent by both of them dutifully ticking off the list of excerpts and accompanying questions prepared by Op de Beeck.
What was behind the interviewer's haste? Why did she sit so stiffly in her chair, why did she rarely seek eye contact and why the murderous pace? As an experienced dramaturge, surely she should know that pacing at the beginning of a three-hour performance is counterproductive to the audience's sense of time?
Matthijs
On whose behalf did Op de Beeck ask her questions? Surely she is also sitting there a bit on our behalf? We, the summer guest viewers who do not follow everything Eus does and have not read all his books?
Just about the same time, something of an answer came. Suddenly, the name 'Matthijs van Nieuwkerk' fell from the sky. Because, Op de Beeck argued, that was a friend of Eus' and Eus had also criticised Matthijs after Matthijs' departure for transgressive leadership and you don't do that, as a friend. Something like that.
Akyol didn't see the problem, because you can criticise friends and he allowed Matthijs to return to TV in no time. This could be cause for an interesting conversation between two experts by experience in the field of public shaming, as Op de Beeck has quite some experience of it through Matthijs: https://www.bnnvara.nl/dewerelddraaitdoor/videos/407677.
It would be interesting to analyse the tension in Op de Beeck's behaviour towards Özcan Akyol precisely on the basis of this shared experience. Now, Akyol was mostly disappointed that the conversation descended to a kind of RTL Boulevard level.
Swing gone
Anyway, after this vague clash, no swing came back into the evening. While there were still some very demeaning fragments that came by and Eus said nice things about poet Rodaan Al Galidi. That such an artist makes us feel how important it is to allow strangers into our midst, because they make us look at ourselves with their eyes.
Such tiles: Eus had a truckload of them with him, right down to Fresku and the Metropole Orkest's stunning rap, which took on extra charge in light of the current derailment of the destruction of the people of Gaza.
Op de Beeck had an easy first summer guest with Eus, who would have gladly taken all the work off her hands. Perhaps it's logical to want to make a statement in your debut as an interviewer, not to come across as too therapeutic, to show a different kind of journalism. But then at least be genuinely curious.
For instance, she could well have asked Eus why there were actually no women at all in all his clips. But then again, you can ask that question to almost any male summer guest. We are now particularly curious to see whether Griet Op de Beeck will be able to drop her armour on the next broadcast.
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