Altar Keane (Marlene Dietrich): 'I'm sick of smiling.'
Rancho Notorious (Dir. Fritz Lang, 1952)
One of the most commonly repeated complaints by new adherents of Focolare (the official term for fringe-members) is aching cheeks caused by so much smiling.
I'm sure many members of the movement would secretly like to the repeat the words of Altar Keane (played by Marlene Dietrich), in Fritz Lang's western masterpeice Rancho Notorious: 'I'm sick of smiling.' Incidentally, the reason she is expected to smile is because she is a prostitute.
At first, all the smiling faces of Focolare members fool you into thinking this a a group of thoroughly nice people. After a while, however, you cotton on that the smiles are forced and the smiles of the focolarini - especially the women - seem inceasingly blank and they begin to come across like zombies. This is part of the total failure of Chiara Lubich to understand what it means to be human. Facial expressions such as frowns, surprise, fear and smiles are produced by feelings. Most of the time we are not aware of our expressions (years ago a friend pointed out to me that every time I speak about me daughters, I smile - althpough I was never aware of it) and faking an expression is probably quite unusual for most of us, unless we are professional actors.
Once Dori Zamboni, capozona of the UK, scolded those present for having smiles like 'stewardesses' on planes. But that's exactly what was required. As Chiara Lubich insisted, the smile is the uniform of the focolarino - just as the stewardess wears a uniform, part of which is the smile. If you are a focolarino and you aren't smiling, it's like going out semi-clothed, minus your pants or skirt. It's intriguing, too that Lubich should use militaristic language and a concept invoking discipline to describe what should be the most spontaneous thing in the world - a smile. This is how Focolare transplants into the minds of its members - often extremely young - an absurd conflict of meanings that paralyses reasoning and emotions. It's hardly surprising that a girl who grew up in the movement from birth )her father was a married focolarino), says that when she left the movement at the age of eighteen, 'I was like an animal who has lost all its instincts.' But as feelings are considered in the movement to be bad and dangerous, the Focolare smile is a smile without emotion, drained of its humanity. At times - and this is confirmed by the diaries of various focolarini and in the testimonies of ex-members - you can even discern that the smile disguises an inner torment. Another motive for the smile is fear: the only emotion that can be shown in the movement is joy - you have to be 'up', never 'down'. Woe betide you, if your leader ever sees you 'down'. But this requirement will be analysed in a future blog.
As a counterpart of the smile, there is even a Focolare 'voice', mainly used by the women, a soft, cooing tone, strangely lacking any emotion. This particularly hit me one day when I was researching The Pope's Armada. I rang Focolare's Mariapolis centre in Rocca di Papa, in the Roman Hills, and I was answered by a focolarina talking in this 'voice' which struck me as so common in the movement, an 'approved voice' which all the women seem to strive for.
Marlene: 'I'm sick of smiling!'
I belive that the first person who publicly questioned the Focolare smile was none other than Pope Francis, when, in an audience with Focolare leaders at the Vatican (6 February 2021) he suggested in a joke that would do credit to a stand-up comic, that one of the four things that God doesn't know is why the focolarini are smiling.* The focolarini laughed, but I fear that the laughter was as genuine as their smiles.
* The other three are 'what the Jesuits are thinking, how much money the Salesians have and how many congrgations of nuns there are.'
Linked to this blog, see also:
https://popesarmada25.blogspot.com/2022/10/grooming-how-focolare-deceives-new.html
and
https://popesarmada25.blogspot.com/2020/11/the-divine-dictionary-is-for-attic.html
No comments:
Post a Comment