#1
Posted: 12/1/05 at 7:47pm
Mentioning Cabaret in another thread made me want to bring up this topic. Someone else touched on it on the RATM newsgroup, but I thought it merited discussion here.
Did the 1998 revival of Cabaret stack the deck a little too much in showing such out-and-out sleaziness and unpleasantness? Rather, did it undermine a major theme by making the grit and dirtiness so in-your-face?
In the book The Twilight Zone Companion, the episode "The Obsolete Man" was discussed. That was the one with Burgess Meredith as a librarian in a future society that banned all books, all expression of faith, and all free thought. The book's author acknowledged that the episode was well-written and acted; however, he thought that the deck was stacked too much in making the society so over-the-top. By doing that, he claimed, it allows us to smugly sit back and claim that we'd NEVER go along with such a society. Whereas the classic "Eye of the Beholder" episode doesn't reveal the nature of its society until the episode is well underway, and makes us uncomfortable by thinking that it isn't really so far off our own, after all.
So it is with the 1998 revival model of Cabaret. Although I enjoy it (I saw a small production that modeled itself on it) I can't help but agree to some extent with the comments of the poster on RATM. The original 1967 version showed life in the Kit Kat Klub to be sleazy, but also to have a tacky, perverse sort of glamour. It isn't until the story's well underway that we start to realize something's terribly wrong here, and the Kit Kat Klub soon starts to lose whatever glamour it had...and thus we realize that we were taken in just as so many ordinary Germans were by Nazism, either by closing their eyes, by telling themselves they were powerless anyway, by convincing themselves it was all for the best, or all three.
But by making the Kit Kat Klub so in-your-face unpleasant, with the bruises and needle tracks on the dancers' arms, does the revival model undermine that idea? By making the unpleasantness all on the surface, by making it clear the Kit Kat Klub was such a tough place to be for both the performers and the audience, does it give us room to sit back and tell ourselves, "I never would have been taken in"?
Your thoughts?
Did the 1998 revival of Cabaret stack the deck a little too much in showing such out-and-out sleaziness and unpleasantness? Rather, did it undermine a major theme by making the grit and dirtiness so in-your-face?
In the book The Twilight Zone Companion, the episode "The Obsolete Man" was discussed. That was the one with Burgess Meredith as a librarian in a future society that banned all books, all expression of faith, and all free thought. The book's author acknowledged that the episode was well-written and acted; however, he thought that the deck was stacked too much in making the society so over-the-top. By doing that, he claimed, it allows us to smugly sit back and claim that we'd NEVER go along with such a society. Whereas the classic "Eye of the Beholder" episode doesn't reveal the nature of its society until the episode is well underway, and makes us uncomfortable by thinking that it isn't really so far off our own, after all.
So it is with the 1998 revival model of Cabaret. Although I enjoy it (I saw a small production that modeled itself on it) I can't help but agree to some extent with the comments of the poster on RATM. The original 1967 version showed life in the Kit Kat Klub to be sleazy, but also to have a tacky, perverse sort of glamour. It isn't until the story's well underway that we start to realize something's terribly wrong here, and the Kit Kat Klub soon starts to lose whatever glamour it had...and thus we realize that we were taken in just as so many ordinary Germans were by Nazism, either by closing their eyes, by telling themselves they were powerless anyway, by convincing themselves it was all for the best, or all three.
But by making the Kit Kat Klub so in-your-face unpleasant, with the bruises and needle tracks on the dancers' arms, does the revival model undermine that idea? By making the unpleasantness all on the surface, by making it clear the Kit Kat Klub was such a tough place to be for both the performers and the audience, does it give us room to sit back and tell ourselves, "I never would have been taken in"?
Your thoughts?
