Cabaret Travels: Creative Assignment #3

"All participants can improvise and create sections on their own pertaining to how they can best use make-up and costume in their section. However the use of these two elements should enhance and support the politics inherent in their approaches to the form of cabaret that they are working and researching on. The use of material for creating the costumes and make-up can be improvised and be as innovative and unconventional as possible. The whole idea is however that these elements enter the piece as a character and are there to add another layer to the thoughts/arguments/reflections that each participant has on the form of cabaret they are dealing with."   -Aditee Biswas
Please post your assignments by Nov 1 at the very latest.

Dramaturgical Connections: Round 2

The beginning…

What stood out for me the most and very ‘dramatically’, from this round of assignment videos, was the use of make-up and costume. These elements have compelled me to think about the female body, it being covered-hidden, uncovered-revealed and how the body can be ‘othered’ by wearing a garb and make-up like in Cynthia’s work. It was very interesting to see how the act of putting on make-up became more like that of wearing a mask and the choice of costume added another layer of meaning to a persona being created. The choice of the costume and its use, like in Sandra and Cynthia’s work helped me re-look at the saree and the conventional male attire respectively and read new meaning into them. The way Shyamala used her kohled eyes, Anjali juxtaposed the decorative feminine costume and the masculine movements, all lead me to think about these two elements very strongly.

I feel this episode could be a prequel to the episode thought of earlier, for round 1. Here we could individually shoot sections of everyone dressing up but only certain parts of the body being revealed at a time. The episode however could start with a series of images that are a collection of snapshots of symbols, objects/props that can be linked with terms like ‘exotic’, ‘feminine’, ‘masculine’ and etc. So the episode could start with the image of the matchstick being lit and the block being burnt for soot, maybe something like a white powder can or a skin tanning spray can being opened. We can think of more images that can later be intercut with the images of putting on make-up and creating a new identity.

Next we see all 4 performers with bare faces and bare shoulders, placed on a screen, two on top and two below. We see their profiles and different colours are sprayed on to that side of their face, so as to change their skin-tones. Or the images could also be of the performers doing make-up very unconventionally, like Cynthia putting soot on her face. The idea here is to compare the action to that of putting a base layer of make-up but then not to use conventional base make-up for it. However, whether spray-painting the face or using different materials to do a base, the colours being put on the skin could be ranging from white/fair and going to black/dark.

All performers should be placed in front of a white background, with their facial profiles facing the camera on which we see the colouring of the skin, taking place. So if we spray paint on their faces we see the extra colour hitting/collecting on the background wall and spreading unevenly while spraying. Then we all four performers supporting thick layers of paint on half of their faces. The colours put on their faces should be so dense that it appears as though they are wearing half-masks. So here we again go back to our idea of using a split screen and see all the performers first in profile and then facing the camera frontally, so that we see their half coloured half bare (original sink-tone) faces clearly.

It will be very interesting if the extra paint from the spraying lands on the background wall and forms a silhouette of everyone’s face, so that their facial features become prominent. This collection of their silhouettes could then come as a separate shot, rather one image could dissolve into another and this could stay on the screen for a few seconds before we moved into the next round of images. 

Then we could have each performer focus on one facial feature or body part and capture them while in the act of doing make-up or dressing up a bit more conventionally. Like we could focus on only Shyamala’s eyes and her putting kohl, Cynthia’s lips and putting on the red lipstick, Anjali’s hands and her maybe wearing a pair of net gloves or some bangles or some middle eastern jewellery on her hand and Sandra could be dressing her feet or stretch a pair of fishnet stockings over her bare legs.

The next shot could then be of pieces of costume flying around, like a men’s shirt being flung, a gloved had putting on a large ostrich feather on a waist band or a small one on a bun on the head, an animal print material being stretched across the screen, and a top hat being placed on a head. We could probably end this section with an image of Shyamala’s eye blinking once at the audience, through her fingers. From here the next section can start and we see the camera focused on Sandra’s legs.    

Cabaret Travels: Cynthia's Written Assignment #3

Coolly Subverting the Gender Binary: Marlene Dietrich’s Impersona in Morocco

German actress Marlene Dietrich’s first American movie, Morocco, brings together many threads of our Cabaret Travels project: situated at the intersection of German and American cultural production, the film includes several representations of cabaret scenes, non-normative sexuality and gender play, and is set in an exotic “Oriental” locale.  For the purposes of this response, I chose to focus on the infamous tuxedo-wearing cabaret scene. 

I found Elizabeth Ann Taylor’s analysis of Dietrich in Morocco somewhat simplistic; she seems determined to see female empowerment no matter the situation and overly reliant on Amy Allen’s work as a theoretical model.  Nevertheless she does provide some interesting description, contextualization, and interpretation of the scene, and I will situate my reading of the scene in relation to hers.

As a viewer who enjoys gender subversion and queer desire, Dietrich’s performance brought me pleasure.  Elegant old Hollywood high feminine glamour meets top hat and tuxedo-wearing masculinity, combined with a narrow waist, full bust, and feminine singing voice.  But most of all, I’m drawn to Dietrich’s economy of gesture, imperviousness to audience boos or accolades, the coolness and aloofness of Dietrich’s gaze and performance.    I am reminded of the tawaifs’ strategy of controlling the gaze of the rasika/patron, renegotiating a male heterosexual gaze by making a male viewer come to you, emotionally, by not giving too much.  In connection to my previous research on the Harlem cabaret, I’m also reminded of Shane Vogel’s characterization of cabaret singer Lena Horne, whose impersonal style was atypical:

She offered not love but hostility, not warmth but aloofness, not presence but absence, not immediacy but hesitation, not touch but distance, not an old friend but a stranger.  She did not seek her listener out in the anonymity of the concert hall, but compelled her audience to come after her.  This aloofness characterizing her early career could be understood within the theatrical and gendered discourse of the diva. (Vogel, 167)

Vogel goes on to say, “[]Horne withheld herself in performance and contradicted the expectation of the cabaret stage as a place of performed plenitude” (169).

            Vogel characterizes Horne’s performance as an “impersona” (167) that evacuates the self, and I would tend to read Dietrich’s performance in this scene in the same way.  This directly contradicts Taylor’s reading, which interprets the scene as a “a way to express her true self” (73).  Taylor reads the female beloved addressed in the French song that Dietrich/Jolly sings as a confession of Jolly’s bisexuality.  Dietrich’s aloof impersona, in addition to the fact that this scene is narratively framed as a cabaret performance and not, for example, as a confession of sexual attraction to a female beloved, makes this interpretation interesting but somewhat suspect to me.  Interestingly, Taylor argues that the performative frame may have been what allowed for the provocative content of the scene to pass film censors:

Even Gaylyn Studlar agrees that the notion of performance allowed for the censors to let this controversial scene pass. "We can only speculate that perhaps these sophisticated, wordless hints at the transgression of gender and sexual norms were tolerated because they were contextualized as being part of the heroine's performance. (Taylor, 71)

This reminds me of the transgressive role that song and dance sequences can play in Bollywood films.  Song-and-dance sequences often depart from or rupture a film’s plot; according to Gayatri Gopinath, they are also subject to less rigorous state control than the rest of a Bollywood film (100).  Gopinath theorizes that the very “fragmented and episodic” nature of Bollywood’s film genre allows “[q]ueer spectators to seize on the numerous ruptures, slippages, and inconsistencies produced by the cinematic text’s heterogeneity in form and address to produce pleasures and identifications that may not necessarily be authorized or condoned within the ideological framework of the text itself” (98).

            Taylor reads Dietrich’s performance as a cross-dressing towards power, empowering a female subject by taking on male mannerisms, clothing, and thus male power.   She claims that Dietrich/Jolly’s “donning of male garb gives her the ability to move and function powerfully among men” and that “[t]he tuxedo indicates role reversal as a means of female empowerment, not merely androgynous appeal” (Taylor, 69-70).  She situates this in relation to Simone de Beauvoir’s formulation that

the definition of woman as female and man as human being forces woman into a position of male-imitation at those times when she most wants to be viewed as a human being (Taylor, quoting DelGaudio, 70-1)

From my position as a 21^st century feminist aware of 3^rd wave, transgendered and genderqueer challenges to the gender binary, this statement gives me pause.  For one thing, is it not possible to be an empowered, fierce femme?  And isn’t there a difference between embodying masculinity and male-imitation?  At this moment, my predilection is to read this scene as a pleasurable defiance of gender binaries, not as a woman imitating a male because she wants to be a human being.  Indeed, I wonder whether it’s necessary to read Dietrich/Jolly as a female at all in this scene.

            The most provocative part of the scene, where Jolly plucks a flower from behind a giggling female audience member’s ear, kisses her, and then tosses the flower to Tom Brown is also, for me, the most politically ambiguous part.  Given the cabaret context, I feel unsure whether Jolly’s kiss expresses queer desire or is merely for shock value.  Interestingly, this connects to my research on the women-loving blueswomen, who operated in a realm where bisexuality (as opposed to lesbianism) was seen as titillating and adventurous, and where, according to Angela Davis, many famous blues singers “purposefully seemed to present the images of themselves as bisexual, or purveyors of same-sex female relationships, in order to spark the interest of their audience” (37).  In addition, the sequence of events, where plucking a woman’s flower (a possible metaphor for taking her virginity) only to give the flower to a man, concludes with a heterosexual frame.  How differently would the scene have read if the sequence was reversed, and Jolly had plucked a flower from Brown’s buttonhole, only to give it to a woman along with a kiss, before sauntering offstage, hands in pockets?

            In relation to my previous research, both Dietrich in this scene and the queer blueswoman engaged in performances of non-normative sexuality and gender play.  Indeed, Gladys Bentley’s tuxedo and top hat outfit is strikingly similar to Dietrich’s clothing in this scene.  A key difference, however, is that the blueswomen engaged in self-representation that expressed the complexities of African-American working class women’s experiences, while I do not see this film, which was directed by a male director, Josef von Sternberg, as a instance of Marlene Dietrich’s self-representation, though I am sure Dietrich exercised agency within the parameters of the role.  In connection to our creative work for Cabaret Travels, it makes me wonder at the potential of impersona and coolness as a performative tactic that occupies a different space from performing the self and performing the other.

References

Taylor, Elizabeth Ann.  2009.  Dietrich and Sternberg: From Cabaret Performance to Feminist Empowerment.  MA Thesis, San Jose State University.

Gopinath, Gayatri.  2005.  Impossible Desires: Queer Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures. Durham: Duke University Press.

Davis, Angela Y..  1999.  Blues Legacies and Black Feminism.  New York: Vintage Books.

Vogel, Shane.  2009.  The Scene of Harlem Cabaret: Race, Sexuality, Performance.  Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Cynthia's Cabaret Assignment 2: "Love and Theft"

Please watch the video before reading my contextual information below -- I'd like to know your gut response.

Love and Theft from Cynthia Ling Lee on Vimeo.
password "otherness"

"Love and Theft," or "the detour through the other defines the self"
While the gender-subverting politics of my earlier study seemed clear enough, I was inspired to take a self-reflexive, critical look at myself and dig deeper into the politics of embodying racial others.  On one level, this exploration stems from my discomfort with appropriating the queer women-loving blues in my first study, particularly because this strand of the blues springs out of the lived experience of black American working class women in a post-Emancipation era.  It was also informed by my analysis of the German Kabarett readings, where I perceived that -- once again -- white middle-class women were empowering themselves by appropriating an exotic, racialized, and classed other, in particular through the Orientalism of their naked Salome-inspired dances.  Thus the twin legacies of blackface minstrelsy and Orientalism inform my study, which correspond to the two movement traditions (jazz and kathak) referenced in my first study.

The title of the study, "Love and Theft," is taken from Eric Lott's book, Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class, which looks at white working class males' appropriation of blackness.  "The detour through the other defines the self" is from psychoanalytical theorist Diana Fuss' Identification Papers.  I understand the quotation as suggesting how the very process of identification -- brimming over with desire for the other -- destabilizes identity.

FEEDBACK QUESTIONS
1. What is your reaction to the racial and gendered identity theft performed in this study by my East Asian female body?  Does it read as simple appropriation, or do you feel it has a critical edge?  If the latter, how might I deepen and clarify that critique further?
2. What parts of the study do you find compelling aesthetically, if any?
3. How might you imagine this study and my earlier one connecting?  (Initially I imagined this video would be intercut with phrases from my original study; however, once I started editing, I found this hard to do.)
4. Any other thoughts or suggestions for further development?

PS - Aditee imagined this study as a prequel to my earlier one, so I've cut the two together here.  Please answer Feedback Question 3 before watching!

love and theft_prove it on me blues from Cynthia Ling Lee on Vimeo.
password "make-up"

Babli's Cabaret Assignment 2

Hey all, here is my assignment 2. Its a continuation of Assignment 1, and I just tagged it on. I did not re-shoot to make the location consistent.

Also, it's a super rough draft.

Cabaret Babli Assignment 2 from Sandra Chatterjee on Vimeo.

password: vamp

Feedback questions:

1) Which parts are particularly interesting and worth developing more, on a movement, meaning or visual level?

2) What relationship do you see between part 1 and 2?

3) Where do you see the connections to the German Kabarett readings (besides the song)?

4) Any other thoughts, observations?

Cabaret Travels: Research assignment 3 - Performance of Empowerment

1.  Choose 1 of the following chapters of the thesis Dietrich and Sternberg: from cabaret performance to feminist empowerment by Elizabeth Anne Taylor (or watch the movie that the chapter is about): 

Chapter 3 "A Frolich towards Empowerment": Naughty Lola and her Resistance to Domination. pp 37-57

This chapter describes the film The Blue Angel, which according to Lisa Appignanesi's book, The Cabaret*, was a quite accurate portrayal of the Weimar Republic Kabarett and even included a few Kabarett stars from that time in it.  In the Blue Angel a cabaret star, played by Marlene Dietrich, flips the gendered narrative of dominion and resistance and "empowers herself through the cunning use of the performance of her sexual confidence"  causing the downfall of a moralistically judgmental professor (Taylor, p. 30).

Here's a the actual German movie with English subtitles: Der Blaue Engel

or

Chapter 4:  "For She's a Jolly Good Fellow": The performance of Independence. pp 57-77

This chapter describes the film Morocco about a cabaret performer, also played by Marlene Dietrich, who leaves her past to go to Morocco. "What transpires within the exotic locale are cinematic moments in which Dietrich's costumes mimic male bravado, empower her choices, and uplift her sexual prowess." (Taylor, p. 57)

Here's the movie: Morocco (a famous scandalous scene where she is dressed in a tuxedo and kisses a woman starts around 14 min in)

 2.  Within the reading/film you have chosen, focus on 1 scenario portrayed and the tactic/s for female empowerment used in that scenario.

Some questions that I am wondering about that you may answer if you are interested...
-do you feel this/these tactic/s was/were successful?  explain.
-do you feel this/these tactic/s is/are problematic for any reason?  explain.
-would this/these tactic/s  work similarly or differently in the area of your previous research?
-would this/these tactic/s be useful to us as female performers today?


*For interesting audio of "Cabaret Talk" given by author Lisa Appignanesi check out: https://soundcloud.com/southbankcentre/lisa-appignanesi-cabaret-talk
Lots of talk of Brecht and the creativity coming out of European Cabarets in the 20s-30s.

Cabaret Travels: Anj Creative Assignment 2

Inspired by the poltics of Veleska Gert's simple yet shocking portrayals of those citizens that were rejected or thrown out by Mainstream society, this short study is a rough glimpse into Bollywood Helen as Bulldyke or Bulldyke portraying Helen in drag. Costume wasn't as glitzy and feminine as I wanted.
 Password: helen
ANJ AUG UP from Post Natyam Collective on Vimeo.
Questions: 1) How does imposing masculine movements on an exotic temptress read? 2) What other ways might masculinity and gender play enter this study? 3) Other suggestions for extreme Veleska Gert inspired suggestions?

Cabaret Travels: Shy's Creative Assignment #2 - Inside Outside

I'm traveling so decided to play with audio instead of trying to video anything new.  So here is my last study with a different audio score to it created from Ulka's and my voices and my feet on garage band (a bit rough, but you will get the idea).

Here is the link: https://vimeo.com/72153069
Password is: Cabaret

Outside Cabaret Creative 2 from Shyamala Moorty on Vimeo.

By the way, all the text is from the written assignment 2 research.

Questions:

1.  How do you interpret the piece with this new sound-score?
2.  How might this be political in a similar or different way then my first version of the movement with the "magic to do" soundtrack? Here's the first version in case you'd like to reference it: http://www.postnatyam.blogspot.com/2013/06/cabaret-travels-creative-response-1.html
3.  Does the new sound track inspire any ideas for you as to how the mirror might be used more?
4.  If I were to work with a sound designer or composer, any suggestions on what to add/remove/enhance etc.
5.  Any other ideas or thoughts?

Creative Assignment 2: Inspired by German Kabarett

For this round of assignments I was particularly interested in highlighting the anarchic political character of German Kabarett in the late 19^th-early 20^th century. I combined texts about the Kabarett with actual performance texts and descriptions in order to facilitate the drawing of connections between the politics and the aesthetics of German Kabarett. In addition, for the written assignment I asked you to connect it to your previously defined area of interest of your chosen geographic region, as teased out in your assignment one. 

In continuation of this line of thinking, please relook at your assignment 1 with the objective to trying to highlight the particular POLITICS inherent in your emerging approach.

Choose one part/or aspect from your creative assignment 1, which captures this politic. Take this aspect/part of your assignment 1(could be from its content, its music, a line from the lyrics of the music you used, a gesture, a movement, a movement theme, the costume, a particular juxtaposition of aesthetics, anything really etc.) and interface it with an aspect of the artistic/creative texts from the German Kabarett readings, such as, e.g. the self-reflexivity inherent in the “Course in Stage Directing” or the self-description of the quality of Valeska Gert’s work, or imagery from “The Ox of the Roof,” or draw inspiration from the poems by Anita Berber, from “The Lavender Lay,” or Mrs. X, or the storyline of “The Loyal Citizen of Baghdad” alternatively from the photographs interspersed between the text, or anything that struck you as particularly interesting/inspiring.

Babli's Response to written Assignment 2

The Weimar Republic (1918-1933) is marked by a change in the image of womanhood. During WWI, women had gained some economic independence (due to the absence of men, and them having to inhabit male social roles) and in then gained the right to vote in November 1918.

In this general context, the work of some important female cabaret artists is important and their works' political edge becomes salient.  Claire Waldoff was a central figure in the Berlin cabaret scene,  a famous singer and openly lesbian. Thinking about the political context of women's liberation post WWI in Germany, makes her song  "Raus mit den Männern aus dem Reichstag" ("Chuck out the Men" written by Friedrich Holländer) even more powerful. For me this song continues to be politically relevant (if one changes a few words/terminologies)  -- a song with a feminist drive I miss to this day.

Here are the English lyrics, from http://weimar.facinghistory.org/content/throw-out-men-raus-mit-den-m%C3%A4nnern-friedrich-hollander-1926: 

Lyrics:
The battle for emancipation's been raging since history began
Yes, feminists of every nation want to chuck off the chains made by man
Hula girls and housemaids and wives in Maribou
hear all our voices thunder in protest
Anything that men do women can do too
and more that that we women do it best

CHORUS:  Chuck all the men out of the Reichstag
and chuck all the men out of the courthouse
Men are the problem with humanity
they're blinded by their vanity
Women have passively embraced them
when we could have easily outpaced them
Yes we should have long ago replaced them
or better yet erased them
If we haven't made our feelings clear
we women have had it up to here

As babies men all howl and bluster they cry through the night and the day
perfecting the techniques they'll muster for the times when they don't get their way
Nursie holds the monster and feeds him from her breast
and baby is contented for a bit
But when he sees his nurse is trying to get some rest
the little man decides to have a fit

CHORUS

The men get their pick of professions they're policemen or scholars or clerks
They get rich and acquire possessions like we wives who keep house for these jerks
They're ruining the country while we mop up the floor
They're flushing this whole nation down the drain
Sisters stand together, let's show these men the door
before they drive us totally insane

CHORUS

After WWI, during Weimar Republic, with the removal of censorship laws, Berlin emerged into a center for sexual liberation and experimentation, where over time, an “anything goes” approach to sexuality and also the performance of a variety of gendered identities developed.

Berlin attracted tourists as well as artists and thinkers because of its liberalism and – shall we say- hedonism?

Berlin also emerged – according to the documentary film—Weimar Berlin: Metropolis of Vices  (see link below)– as the most gay friendly/openly gay city of the world in that time, which significantly also had a large lesbian subculture and sported around 160 (!!!!!) gay/lesbian clubs/bars catering to all sorts of tastes, social classes and other interests.

Weimar Berlin: Metropolis of Vice

This atmosphere of sexual openness and liberation was the space in which research on sexuality began to take place (Magnus Hirschfeld) and the first feature film sympathetically and at length portraying homosexuality was created.

Anders als die Andern

This is also in the environment in which political cabaret flourished in Berlin. Anita Berber, Valeska Gert, Claire Waldoff, Marlene Dietrich all were protagonists of the politically resistive and sexually liberated artistic subculture in Berlin. The film “Different from the Others” is particularly interesting, because these streams come together here: Cabaret dancer/actress Anita Berber and sexual scientist Magnus Hirschfeld both appear in the film-

What fascinates me most about the work during that time is the way in which affirmation and expansion of desire and pleasure intersect with articulating critical, resistive, and even anarchic political stances. Sexuality/and playing with gendered identities are here central to an articulation of politics, not merely inferred, and certainly or indirectly addressed, while simultaneously played down. It is certainly quite opposite to how we think of cabaret today, particularly when we think of female dancers in a cabaret setting (the notion of political cabaret is there present in Germany, but strangely divorced from the pleasure affirming sexual and erotic dimensions of the 1920s and early 1930s).

Sexual liberation seems to have taken a back seat today, maybe because one can too easily be swayed by the assumption that indeed anything goes today (which of course is not true, but the illusion persists). At the same time I wonder, what kind of content would offer the kind of urgency and drive that sexuality, eroticism and anti-bourgeois political articulations had then, today. Where is the energy today? Where is the urgency? What do we feel compelled to speak out about with that much force, fun and finesse?

It seems to me that this is where our project of finding transnational and transcultural connections in the history of the cabaret can provide invigorating insights and stimulations for our trajectory.

Cabaret Travels: Aditee’s written Assignment 2

Vamp. The fallen white woman. Helen. (The other…)

Upon reading the excerpts that Sandra assigned, I was not sure how to go about the assignment. Seeing how closely cabaret and politics were related in Germany, I began to wonder whether cabaret in Hindi cinema had any kind of politics at all? Was it just a kitschy glitz and glamour loaded song and dance sequence meant only for entertainment? Or was it there to justify the objectification and putting on display of women’s bodies? Or was it part of the accepted ‘formulas’ that supposedly ensure the box office returns for a film? I also wondered what kind of a formula justified the presence and position of a cabaret number in the story or narrative of a film? How did they (the filmmakers and producers) convince their viewers that such a song and dance number was required to take the story further? Or was it a way for the masses, the working class, to get a peep into what the Hindi cinema industry propagated as ‘high society’ nightlife? Did it bring the masses a step closer to understanding the recreation styles of the elite? Did cabaret in Hindi cinema ever get an opportunity to try and communicate any political stands, opinions or messages to its audiences?

Pondering over these questions, I revisited the cabaret numbers in Hindi cinema, especially the ones with Helen in them. Watching the so called ‘characterless’, alcohol drinking, cigarette smoking, night-club visiting, western garment wearing- cleavage showing fashion-ista, the fallen white-woman, I began to realise that probably the Hindi film industry did have a very clear political agenda and thus chose the cabaret for a very specific reason. The use of politics in Hindi cinema cabaret was very different from the way the German's used the cabarett platform. So unlike the German cabaret, which was resistive and anarchic, etc. the Hindi cinema cabaret seemed to have a strong nationalistic agenda embedded in it. Though very interestingly camouflaged by the Hindi Cinema grammar of glitz and glamour, these songs, which were present to increase the commercial value of a film, did serve a political purpose. 

Helen was clearly the other woman. The outsider who was vicious, scheming and almost the devil incarnate. She was the seductress who stole husbands, broke homes and caused nothing but disaster and brought misery to happy families. She was the villain’s sex object and at times his partner in crime. She, using her beauty, her blue eyes and peaches and cream complexion almost always successfully seduced rich men, whose money of course the villain took and then surely shot her. She was a chameleon who could take on the sati-savitri act at a drop of a hat and then mockingly undraped her saree to reveal her mini-skirt and to laugh at the innocence, simplicity and stupidity of the leading ladies who were the unmatchable images of sacrifice, kindness, love and wisdom - the adarsh bharatiya nari. 

So for me, the political agenda behind the use of cabaret becomes clearly that of image building for the newly formed nation - India. The task then was to probably define Indian-ness and what meaning and values- cultural as well as moral, one must associate with it. By using cabaret thus the image of the ‘model- Indian- women’ is also being built. Except that the modus operandi here being that of juxtaposition of the characters of the “good” leading ladies with that of characters of the vamps- the cabaret dancers, which were mostly played by actresses like Helen. So clearly, the outsider, the foreigner, the white woman, who in this case becomes the personification of everything erotic, bad, evil and untrue becomes the example of someone who is not virtuous enough to be Indian. In fact she could also be described as the person who introduced women from good homes to the darker side and thus needed to be avoided. She was someone no girl/woman from a ‘good family’ should aspire to become. For when weighing on a scale of virtue and morality, and judging fights of good against evil, she who is the epitome of all evil, always lost.

In the introduction of the book Recasting Women: Essays in Indian Colonial History, edited by Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid, describe ‘womanhood’ as often being a ‘part of an asserted or desired, not actual cultural continuity.’ So if the desire in post independent India was to construct a new set of cultural paradigms that put India on the world map with an absolutely unique identity, then one of the most important definitions would be that of Indian womanhood. So Helen’s characters interestingly made it easier for women to choose what they were not to be, thus creating an ambiguous definition of Indian via defining the non-Indian.    

With hardly any television or electronic media in the early 1950’s in fact right up to the 1970’s, Cinema, could be considered as the strongest medium to communicate with the masses. So it also probably became the strongest possible medium to propagate the desired national image. So maybe, cabaret in Hindi cinema did have a very strong political position but in a very different way than the German cabaret, which was all about resistance, anarchism, etc...so the opposite!

Cabaret Travels: Shyamala's Written Assignment 2

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Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who is the most apathetic of them all?

These readings gave me a greater appreciation and understanding of what actual performances in European cabarets might have looked like from 1890-1940.  Thus, I was able to better understand the importance of cabaret’s lineage in relation to American dance and also the films Cabaret and Victor Victoria that I wrote about in my first assignment.   In terms of American dance, I knew that modern dance or expressive dance (in Germany) had roots in cabaret performances, but had never quite understood the depth of artistic creativity that was going on in these venues.  I had imagined cabaret performances consisted of can-can dances and burlesque shows that were merely there for voyeuristic purposes.  While these were certainly a part of it, there was much more going on.  For example Valeska Gert (Gertrud Samosch, 1892-1978), a dancer in Berlin, described “I performed theater, I longed for the dance; I danced, I longed for the theater.  I was in conflict until the idea occurred to me to combine them: I wanted to dance human characters.  I invented an intricate fabric, one of whose strands was modern dance-pantomime; another strand was abstract dance; other strands were satiric dances, dances to sounds, expressionistic dances” (p. 15 Senelick, Volume 2).  She also claimed to have created the first socially critical dance-pantomime by creating a dance portraying a streetwalker.  Another well known dancer, Anita Berber (1899-1929), created dances named Horror, Depravity, Ecstasy , and Cocaine.  The words (1922) and description (1931) of the performance of Cocaine by Anita Berber (p 11-13, Senelick, Volume 2). sound very much to me like they could be from a contemporary dance performance or experimental performance art piece today.

And there was quite an awareness and dialogue about voyeurism itself.  Some progressive groups hailed nudism as “healthy living” and voyeurism as “legitimate entertainment” during desperate times of post-war depression (P. 7).   For some, the nude dancing was legitimized by the story of Salome, the dancer who was considered femme fetal because she requested, on behalf of her mother, the head of the prophet John the Baptist (p. 9, Senelick, Vol 2).  It is unclear to me if this was legitimized as a moral tale, or as the staging of a biblical tale, or just giving a reason and context for a nude dance.   On the other hand, there were critics of the nude dancing who made written and/or performed commentaries on how the rich could afford to enjoy the delights of voyeurism in the nightclubs while the poor, the prostitutes, and the wounded war vets were all in dire circumstances outside the walls of indulgence.  These are the very tensions that the movie Cabaret represents in Berlin in 1931, just before the Nazi take over.  In the song “Money” that I commented on in my first assignment this satirical commentary is present.  Here are the contrasting lyrics with one verse talking about the rich and the next about the poor.

“Money” verse about the rich (All is the man’s text unless noted as woman)

If you happen to be rich,

Woman:.......Ooooh
And you feel like a
Night's enetertainment,
Woman:...Money
You can pay for a
Gay escapade.
Woman: Money money money
If you happen to
To be rich,
Woman:….Ooooh
And alone, and you need a companion
Woman: ...Money
You can ring-ting-A-ling for the maid.
If you happen to be rich
Woman:.......Ooooh
And you find you are left by your lover,
Woman: ...Money
Though you moan and you groan quite a lot,
Woman: Money money money
You can take it on the chin,
Woman:.......Ooooh
Call a cab, and begin
Woman: ...Money
To recover on your fourteen-Carat yacht.

“Money” verse about being poor (this part the man and woman both sing in canon, except where noted)

If you haven't any coal in the stove
And you freeze in the winter
And you curse on the wind
At your fate
When you haven't any shoes
On your feet
And your coat's thin as paper
And you look thirty pounds
Underweight.
When you go to get a word of advice
From the fat little pastor
He will tell you to love evermore.
But when hunger comes a rap,
Rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat at the window...
Woman: At the window...
Man: Who's there?
Woman: Hunger!
Man: Ooh, hunger!

See how love flies out the door...

While many cabaret artists fled to America during the Nazi regime, they had little luck for their satirical work didn’t translate well to the de-politicized American  public (for example see P. 252, Senelick, Volume 2).  However, according to Scott Miller in his writing “Inside Cabaret” for New Line theater (a political musical theater group in St. Louis: http://www.newlinetheatre.com/cabaretchapter.html), the musical Cabaret appeared in various forms in the U.S. during certain politicized moments. “The novel appeared at the close of World War II; the non-musical stage version debuted during the McCarthy era; the stage musical opened during the Vietnam era; and the movie musical opened in the midst of the Watergate era. Each of these times has also been a turning point in regard to the social standing of American women and gays.” He notes that each of these versions had revisions in the script and content of the show, making it more and more political, sexually explicit, and gay friendly each time.  He claims that the original musical reflected the director Hal Prince’s, “desire to break through to a new kind of socially responsible musical theater.”  So it makes perfect sense that recreating a politicized theater in Europe, would be a strong parallel for the politicization of arts in the U.S. during its own political crises. 

Miller sees the money song in Cabaret as commentary  “to the fact that people will do almost anything – including abandoning their morals – for money,” like the politically indifferent main character Sally Bowles.  And he sees the over-all purpose of the play/film is to warn the audience against this kind of apathy.  He thinks that Cabaret is situated in 1933 because it is a moment in time where if more people took a stand against the Nazi’s that perhaps Hitler’s extermination of the Jews, arts and homesexuals could have been prevented.  In fact, in one staged version of Cabaret, he says that there was a giant mirror that was facing the audience in order to imply that “the people of Germany, who allowed the Nazis to take power, were very much like us, just ordinary people who found their country in trouble and looked for someone to fix things, to offer easy solutions. If we had lived in 1930 Berlin, the mirror suggests, we too would have been cajoled into believing the Nazis could save the country. It also says that we – the populace – are as much to blame for such horrors as corrupt politicians. Whatever happens in our country, we allow to happen.”  (http://www.newlinetheatre.com/cabaretchapter.html)

Of course, considering my own experiment with the mirror, in my first creative assignment, I am interested to hear about it used in this way. Another similarly interesting method to note in the readings, was the making visible of the inner workings of theater, like the piece where the stage is representing backstage, and the audience is where the actors are imagined to be rehearsing. (p. 76, Senelick, Volume 1). This relocating of elements and implicating of the audience as a part of the action is a tool that could be played with more with the use of the mirror.

Finally, tying back to my research of cross dressing and gay culture in Victor Victoria, the dancer Anita Berber, who had created the piece Cocaine, seems to have been an open lesbian and apparently created a new trend in fashion of women wearing tuxedos and monacles.  Victor Victoria was set in 1934 Paris, while Berber created her dance “Cocaine” in 1922, and while Julie Andrews doesn’t wear a monacle, she certainly sports a fine tuxedo.  There are many more gay and cross dressing elements that could be commented upon and Miller has some very interesting opinions on gay rights in relationship to the rise of Hitler and to the present day rhetoric of the Christian right in America today that are worth checking out: http://www.newlinetheatre.com/cabaretchapter.html

But for now, I would like to close emphasizing the strong political commentary that was present in the European cabarets.  It was particularly surprising to me to discover that Bertolt Brecht, a seminal figure in the field of theater as social commentary, performed original songs in German cabarets early in his career before fleeing Germany, like so many other artists because of the rise of Hitler.