Chit-Chat with Mr. Killer

For some time, a TV show has grown into one season as others in ten. It seems that Simona Gheorghe, the host of the show "Access Direct" on Antena 1, found the way to the wishes of the Romanian viewer, this great master of the remote control. How else, since every afternoon, housewives, unemployed and dolce far niente specialists leave everything aside and get connected to the never before seen events presented on that TV channel. "Facts of life, ladies and gentlemen”, "this is who we truly are”, "reality, reality, reality!" - in these, nearly Pirandellian terms, let’s admit it, they’re discussing the new-old TV gimmicks. Success in terms of audience was so great that the main media competitor, Pro TV, seriously considered dismissing Măruţă and replacing him with Teo Trandafir, with sudden great media success owing to her health problems. (The sicker you are, the higher your audience rate!)

I got such information not in some in-depth studies at the reading hall of the Central University Library, but from the cleaning lady in the institution I work. Each morning, in the smoking room, a team of "analysts" with sober faces, burden with thinking, covers the topics of the edition in the previous afternoon. The seriousness and passion with which give verdicts are impressive. And if the degree of involvement in job matters would be one percent of the viewer’s enthusiasm, then budgetary institutions in Romania would completely look different.

On this background, not wanting to seem ignorant to really important things, at the beginning of last week I also watched an edition of the "Access Direct". I shuddered from the first minutes, when Simona George, more gracious than flowers, introduced her guest in a crystalline voice.  No, it was no VIP, that would have been too common, too "Măruţă like", nor some political or sports personality. Well, Simona’s guest was no other than Mihaela Runceanu’s assassin. The individual spent 17 years in prison, was released around 2006 and, from what I was told, he became a TV star last year, when he participated in some reality-show.  Neat, with a cruelty finely hidden under a somewhat melancholic smile, Daniel Cosmin Ştefănescu managed to charm Romanians. And indeed, it is fascinating to watch a man whom you know he killed someone. There is a sort of morbidity to it which, exploiting it, many televisions have earned their bread. After the live broadcasts of funerals, after close-ups on the dead, after reports of dying or incurably ill, they might have felt the need for some chit-chats with notorious criminals.

Mister killer provided, of course, the theme of the edition: he claims that he had not killed him Mihaela Runceanu. The creators of the show organized a visit to a lie detector, somewhere in Bulgaria (?!), whose results were to be made public at the end. The prosecutor who had once investigated the case came in live by telephone.  The man was downrightly shocked: the esteemed gentleman assassin himself repeatedly acknowledged to have committed the murder, recounting in details how he did it. A guest in the studio, the judge who passed the sentence, a serious man with white temples now, was quite shocked as well. Not discouraged at all, the presenter started her own investigation, basically reopening tombs, and bringing back to present the horrors that many in Mihaela Runceanu’s entourage have tried forget. A sinister reconstitution which, I have admit, gave me the creeps.

Minutes elapsed. In the second part, with great science, to dilute the tension, pending the climax, they introduced two such dumb girls that you sit and wonder how can nature be so vile. I only remember that they had been rivals but now have become friends; the former boyfriend of one of them also called in and her “slut", and that was when the venerable university professor, Simona Gheorghe had to object. In the midst of vehemence the presenter felt the happiness rating points which she sensed and which, of course, amounted to a renegotiation of her contract.

And finally: a close up of the wonderful killer’s face as a voice presented the results. Drama, suspense, well, the whole set of techniques mastered quite well. "Have you killed Mihaela Runceanu?". "No". "Lie" said the detector. Daniel Cosmin Stefanescu wants to add something, he’s not very clear and has a dull smile. But Simons is already another person, her civility and human understanding went to dust, and she now treats him like a criminal.... As if to that moment she had lived with the feeling that her guest is a cherub with his soul in sight.

I have no doubts on the media story. It’s easy to imagine the discussion that led to the "birth" of the subject. "You’ll say that you are not the killer, all right?" "Well I can’t, since I’m really the murderer. You know, I went to prison as well...", "Yes, we know that, only that you have to say that", "I’ll say it, but what’s in it for me?", "Image, you rehabilitate yourself, and people might even believe you”, "I want money", “Okay, fine we’ll include it in the budget of the edition. But we’ll take you to Bulgaria, to a lie detector”, "No problem, will we visit Sofia?" Ultimately, what does it matter whether the nice Daniel Cosmin strangled the singer or not? The truth is of no interest to us, we only want scripts, bits of grotesque, bold strokes of the sub-human, echoes of the animals breathing inside us.

And we’re left wondering what kind of a country is that where criminals become TV stars... How is it possible that TV becomes such an esplanade on which such a variety of macabre characters walk freely? But such questions seem to be outdated and unnecessarily rhetoric...