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.
