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What's a coffin to you?

The Iranians carry a symbolic box (they would not know what a coffin is of course)
The Iranians carry a symbolic box (they would not know what a coffin is of course)

Isn’t it amazing? Even though Moviment Graffiti is supposed to be really radical – though let’s be honest, nobody really radical would haul out that coffin cliché in 2009 – its members are betrayed by their nice-boy Maltese Catholic upbringing. They think all burials involve a coffin and that all coffins come with crosses on. I’m guessing they didn’t even stop for a second to think about the significance of that cross when they painted it on, and that what they’re telling us, in effect, is that the earth buried inside was baptised into the Christian religion. All the funerals they’ve been to have involved coffins with crosses, so what do they know. – Daphne Carauna Galizia (The Malta Independent)

What a load of codswallop. I do not know what is more ridiculous – Graffiti’s display of passé activism or Galizia’s false naivety about the role of the coffin as a symbol of death in the global village. Desperate to poke fun at the young protesters – and believing to have found the usual easy target – Daphne is suddenly blind to all the Middle East protests featuring coffins prominently among the usual panoply of burning flags and effigies.

True, Muslims are not buried in coffins. But to claim that the representatives of Mediterranean governments would be oblivious to the symbolism of a coffin is extremely far fetched. Maybe this fixation with crosses has really gone to everyone’s head. Or maybe some people have run out of relevant things to write about.

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4 replies on “What's a coffin to you?”

The Diva is becoming more and more like a clone of Anne Coulter (except that Coulter is better looking)

surely the point here is that Graffiti are (have become?) an anachronism, and the less heard from them, the better

Well if the effort to make that point requires a statement that implies that a Muslim leader would not understand the symbolism behind a coffin then the point is not being well made. In maltese we would say “sfurzat”.

I still think that any excuse to pick on the meaning of crosses will be pounced upon.

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