Film – Page 21 – HystericallyBored

1998-10-162022-04-11

Mickey Rat

We were about to see the “Mickey’s Day Care Centre”. With a big picture of Mickey Mouse on the sign in the front yard. Yes, the day was coming.

But not yet. Right now, if you own a daycare, you can’t call it the Mickey Mouse Day Care, and you can’t put a picture of Pluto or Goofy on the sign. Mickey and his friends were copyrighted by Walt Disney way back when, and the copyright stays in force for fifty years. And The Disney Corporation has generally been quite ruthless about enforcing it’s copyright, taking day cares, schools, and other institutions to court to force them to remove Donald and Mickey and Goofy from their advertisements or classroom walls and pay up. That’s because Disney loves children. That’s Disney’s “family values”.

Well, in 2003, Mickey is “Public Domain”, which means anyone can use him.

Unless….

Let’s say for a moment you’re the Disney Corporation. The law says your copyright is going to expire because the first legislatures who created copyright law decided that you should not be able to cash in forever on your creative work, to sit on your assets, indolent, dependent on a legislative teat. After a reasonable period of time, you should have to do more work to continue to make money.

But you make a lot of money off this copyright. It’s had work coming up with new ideas and new products. So you go to the government, like any other citizen in this great country of ours, and say, “Please, can I keep my copyright?” The government says, “No, of course not. Ideas belong to everyone. Copyright, you see, is not about protecting your rights as an owner. It is merely designed to encourage innovation and creativity by giving a temporary period of protection. Your Mickey Mouse did not come from nowhere. Mr. Disney benefited from all the artists and innovators and creative persons who all contributed techniques and language and styles to our culture before him. Now, Mr. Mouse goes back where he belongs: to the greater body of culture.” (And, of course, we discover that Mr. Disney did not, as it were, actually invent Mickey. Someone else did and Mr. Disney took credit.)

“Well,” says Disney, “would you change the law if I pay you some money?” And Congress says, “Money! You have Money! Why didn’t you say so! Of course we can. We are a group of utterly corrupt and gutless wimps who always pass laws that favour the people who keep us in office by providing us with an endless supply of money to spend on election campaigns. Ask Archer, Daniels, Midland! Ask Jack Valenti! Ask anybody with money! It’s true! And since you have a lot more money than all of the day care owners in the world, you win!”

And so it was.

Disney’s Political Action Committee (PAC’s are created to bypass election laws that restrict the amount of money corporations can give a candidate, just so this sort of thing can’t happen, ha ha) gave election money to 10 of the 13 sponsors of the new copyright bill.

Now you might naively think, “that’s bribery! That’s corruption!” Well yes, but those same congressman wear flag pins in their lapels and promise to stop protestors from burning the U.S. flag and illegal immigrants from taking your job.

The new copyright bill extends legal protection for an additional 20 years, from 50 (after the death of the creator) to 70.

Now in 2023, do you think, by any chance, we will see another extension of the copyright law? Why don’t they just go for the gold: “in perpetuity”?

Maybe that would be too expensive for them.

1998-10-062022-04-11

Doris Day and the Post-Modern Era

Well, when did the world change? It changes all the time, but if you could pick a moment that defined the modern era, here’s my nomination: Doris Day turns down the role of Mrs. Robinson in “The Graduate”.

Doris Day was a famous actress who made her name playing squeaky-clean “girl-next-door” roles in sex farces. Sound contradictory? Well, I was astonished to find out that Doris Day movies were considered quite racy in their day. Doris usually played an independent career woman who had a nice job and got into fights with a nice man, played by Cary Grant or Rock Hudson, who would eventually kiss her while she struggled for a second or two until she realized that she really loved the “big lug”. Then they got married.

Doris really looked squeaky clean. She must have bathed and scrubbed her face before every shot. I hated her.

I thought her movies were phony because they wanted to titillate the viewer, while pretending that everything was as innocent as a Tupperware party. Hollywood thought that putting Doris Day through a car wash in a convertible with the roof open was titillating. But then, they also thought Elvis was convincing as a doctor and Mary Tyler Moore as a nun. More recently, Meg Ryan played a heart surgeon. Tom Hanks as an astronaut? Demi Moore as Hester Prynne??

I thought she was boring. She and Rock or Cary would squabble and fight and argue and then wind up kissing on the couch. You were supposed to figure out that they had sex, sooner or later, but they weren’t going to actually show you anything. That would be immoral. Decent people assumed nothing happened afterwards, at least, not until they got married. Hip New Yorkers assumed that something did happen, because of the way she held her cigarette or something.

You know, you never hear the Republicans say something like, “Bill Clinton and John Kennedy are both disgusting because they cheated on their wives.” John Kennedy had sex with Judith Exner, the girl-friend of a mobster, and Marilyn Monroe, among others. But the Republicans never try to publicly draw your attention to the parallels between the two men. Why not? Maybe because John Kennedy only had sex when you weren’t looking. It wasn’t reported in the papers or used as grounds for impeachment, though a lot of reporters knew about it. And John Kennedy is still very popular. Many Americans still feel cheated by his assassination. Old films and video clips show a young, vigorous, smart man. Like Bill Clinton.

Doris Day movies were always brightly lit up, in the Hollywood manner, filmed on a sound-stage in a big warehouse on a studio lot with big phony backdrops. No shadows or natural earth tones here: everything was hard and plastic.

They’re driving down the coastal highway and he’s hardly even looking at the road. He’s arguing with Doris. I always wished he would suddenly panic and spin the wheel and — pfffttt– gone. End of the movie. The owner of the theatre would have to come out and explain to the audience: “Sorry folks– I don’t know what happened. We thought the movie would be two hours. What a tragedy. Well, go home, we’ll have someone else for you next week.”

Well, by the mid-sixties, squeaky-clean Doris was dying at the box office. Her films didn’t seem very exciting or daring anymore. This was about the time, you may recall, that Faye Dunaway made her very conspicuous debut in Bonnie and Clyde. Compare Doris and Faye. Life Magazine published a picture of Ali McGraw, braless, lying in the grass in tight jeans with her legs apart. You can see that one of them is completely out of sync with the times.

And then Mike Nichols asked her if she would like to play the part of Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate. Mrs. Robinson is the wife of Benjamin Braddock’s father’s business partner. She smokes. She drinks too much. She gets Benjamin to drive her home one night and then flashes him. She later seduces him and they carry on a tawdry affair for several months. When Benjamin, sick with disgust for himself, falls in love with Mrs. Robinson’s daughter Elaine, she tries everything she can to destroy the relationship, even to the point of confessing the affair to her husband, and to Benjamin’s parents, and to Elaine. Bill Clinton did that too, eventually. But Benjamin pursues Elaine anyway and eventually wins her.

Mike Nichols liked Doris Day. He wanted to save her career. He was convinced that this part would make her a star once again. But Doris didn’t like the part. She thought it was vulgar.

She had no idea of what an actress was supposed to be. She thought she was supposed to be a star, a personality, a celebrity, who did toothpaste commercials and appeared on Hollywood Squares and encouraged bored suburban housewives to immerse themselves in her little titillating– but never vulgar– dream world.

She was, by all accounts, a thoroughly nice, decent person, who let an idiot husband mismanage her career until he messed it all up and lost all her money. [Debbie Reynolds, and so many others, suffered the same fate.]

Mrs. Robinson was not her “type”.

So Ann Bancroft, whose career was also in the doldrums, got the part instead. And, of course, it saved her career. She was suddenly in demand again. She made lots of money and people remember her as a decent, if not outstanding, actress.

And Doris went on to obscurity, except for the occasional radio play of “Que Sera, Sera” — it had been recorded originally for the Hitchcock film “The Man Who Knew Too Much” in 1956. It means, “whatever will be, will be” which is about as dumb a lyric as you can imagine. Well, there’s nothing you can sing that can’t be sung.

On a personal note, I have occasionally confused this song with “Is That All There is?” written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, and performed by Peggy Lee (1969), and a much better song. The German title is “Wenn das alles ist”, which sounds even more world-weary to me.

Doris went into obscurity. I don’t know what happened to her. Is she dead? I’ll bet she became a recluse, like Mary Pickford and Marlene Dietrich and Carroll Baker… [She is a recluse, wandering Carmel, CA, apparently looking after stray animals.]

A&E’s biography was going to follow her special with one on Dinah Shore. If that’s not a bad sign, I don’t know what is.

[Updated 2011]

For the record: there is no such thing as a “post-modern” era. We are the modern era. I think some people like this phrase because it implies that there is something after progress that is not progress itself. [2011-02]

1998-09-192022-04-10

Crumbs

Robert Crumb is famous for a number of cartoons he created in the 1960’s and 70’s, the most celebrated of which was the Keep on Truckin’ schematic, which became a trademark of sorts to the Grateful Dead. He is also the originator of the Fritz the Cat character, which became the subject of a full-length x-rated movie by Ralph Bakshi. Crumb disapproved of the movie.

In 1994, Terry Zwigoff, a friend of Robert’s, made a disturbing, brilliant documentary called Crumb, about Robert, and his two brothers, Charles and Maxon. (Crumb’s sisters declined to take part in the film. You may wonder about that by the end of the film.)

rcrumb2.jpg (37467 bytes)

I say “disturbing”. Searing might be more like it. The Crumb brothers pull no punches. At times, you almost can’t believe they are saying the things they say on camera. Don’t they realize how shocking they are? Yet this is no television talk show. The brothers are never coy or evasive, and don’t really shift blame away from themselves, or try to cast themselves as unwitting victims. If there is one attractive quality about these brothers, it’s their honesty and their sense of personal responsibility.

Crumb’s father was brutally strict, and his mother over-compensated, and the three boys had some kind of weird chemistry going. From the time they were little, they became obsessively fascinated with comic books. They were extremely gifted at drawing and Robert even organized the three brothers into a production company and they created their own variations on Treasure Island.

All three were also severely socially dysfunctional. Charles, though in his forties, lives at home with his mother, almost never leaves the apartment, rarely bathes, and uses prescription drugs to keep from becoming “homicidally disturbed”. According to Robert and Maxon, he has never had a sexual relationship with anyone but himself. He had made several suicide attempts before the documentary was made, and, a year afterwards, finally succeeded, providing the film with a poignant postscript.

[Update 2022: read that paragraph now, it occurs to me that a big part of Charles’ troubles may have been the side-effect of the prescription drugs. If he stopped taking them at any time, the effects of withdrawal would have produced “symptoms” that would like be attributed to his personality, instead of to the drugs themselves and the effects of withdrawal.]

Maxon lives alone in an apartment and has been arrested several times for sexual assault. He swallows a long length of cotton cloth every three weeks to cleanse his bowels, feeding it like string slowly into his mouth, and likes to sit on a bed of nails and meditate. Like Charles, he is, frankly, a slob. He describes, with helpless amusement, how he followed a girl wearing tight shorts into a drug store and could not resist the urge to pull them down while she was waiting in line at the checkout. Unlike Clinton, there is no evasion, no excuses, no hypocrisy. He confesses to a repugnant act, but you almost like him.

Robert, who at first appears to be seriously maladjusted, eventually emerges as the sanest of the three. He manages to make a living from his drawings, develops relationships with women, marries, divorces, marries again. He has two children, years apart, one by each wife. Yet you can see that he’s not too far removed from Maxon and Charles. The difference may be that Robert succeeded in transferring his anti-social impulses into his art.

Crumb is one of the most brutally honest documentaries you are likely to ever see. The three brothers talk openly about their father’s abusive discipline, their sexual preferences and fetishes, their own hopeless perspectives on themselves and each other. Robert’s comics have always been controversial, and the film includes interviews with editors and fellow cartoonists who express their own misgivings about some of his more controversial stories. In one, for example, two characters enjoy the sexual favours of a woman with no head. They consider her perfect, since they don’t have to make conversation with her afterwards. In another, an outwardly normal, All-American family, is actually rife with incest. An editor allows that she is not sure that Crumb actually disapproves of the incest. A third example is a parody of consumerism, describing a new canned meat product called “Niggerhearts”.

When challenged, Robert Crumb, like his brothers, is not very evasive, arrogant, or apologetic. Who knows, he seems to say. Maybe I should be locked up. I don’t know why I have to draw those things but I do. They’re in me. Implied, of course, is the idea that many of these ideas are in us as well. Considering the number of awards this documentary has garnered, you would have to admit that many critics and film-goers acknowledge this. How else could you stomach such a man, or a film about this man?

It is unclear, at times, whether Crumb is parodying himself or society in general or those who think they understand society. His stories are hardly simple parables.

Another example: a black woman is convinced by several businessmen that performing degrading acts will make her a superior human being. She doesn’t outsmart them, though she realizes she’s being put on. Some readers interpret this to mean that Crumb thinks she is as foolish as the white businessmen think she is. Or is this a parody of the businessmen, and the way they attempt to turn even social oppression into material advantage? Or is it an assertion that materialism is itself the most oppressive force in our society? (I favour the last one).

Is it a sin to be truthful? Only if your truth is different from everyone else’s. Is our society ready to admit that otherwise “decent” people can harbour obscene fantasies or racist beliefs? Is our society ready to admit that even victims can be stupid?

I don’t think we are. It’s too difficult. We are far more comfortable believing that blacks are inferior and that women suffocate men or that blacks are innocent victims of racism and that women are morally better than men. We don’t like being thrown a curve. But remember that the most powerful abolitionist tract of the 19th century was Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Today, even black activists are mostly contemptuous of its simple-minded moralism’s. Why? Because someone like James Baldwin had the nerve to attack one of the most sacred icons of progressive and religious humanism in existence. And you know what? He was right.

So is Crumb merely ahead of his time?

Well, what really is outrageous nowadays? I think it is obvious that some of our values are completely screwed up. We find the Clinton-Lewinsky affair outrageous, but not the deaths of tens of thousands of Moslem Serbs. We are outraged by a school boy killing his class-mates with a high-powered rifle, but not by an organization that spends $80 million a year to promote unrestricted access to every kind of weapon imaginable. We are outraged by a school teacher who has sex with a Grade 6 student, but not by a talk show host (Larry King) who has been married five times. We are outraged by someone who clubs a gas station attendant over the head to steal $15, but not by a securities seller who rips his clients off for a billion dollars. We are outraged at a seventeen-year-old kid who breaks into houses to steal money to feed his drug habit, but not a pharmaceutical industry that is doing its level best to make us all dependent on drugs. We are outraged at Mexicans crossing the border to seek a better life in the U.S., but not at the economic imperialism that turns self-sufficient Central American economies into impoverished coffee growers for Starbucks. We are outraged when the United Nations wants to include the U.S. among the nations accountable for war crimes to a new World Court, but not when Congress continues to subsidize an Israeli government that denies the most fundamental human rights to its own Palestinian population. We are outraged when a protester burns a U.S. flag, but not when U.S. negotiators refuse to believe that fish stocks on the west coast are in danger of extinction if over-fishing continues. We are outraged when an artist puts a crucifix into a jar full of urine, but not when the record companies routinely cheat artists out of the royalties they are due by jiggering their accounting records. We are outraged by a doctor who helps terminally ill patients die without pain and in dignity, but not by doctors that routinely recommend expensive and useless surgeries to elderly patients who are likely to die within months anyway. We are outraged by cloned sheep, but not by attempts by corporations to patent human DNA sequences. We are outraged by homosexuals seeking benefit coverage for their partners, but not by the fact that we are denying AIDS treatments to impoverished African nations to protect our own patent rights.

What exactly determines our outrage? What is it that most excites us about someone else’s sin? Isn’t it probable that when we proclaim our outrage, especially when we do it in the strongest possible words, we thereby hope to impress others with our own purity, and deflect suspicion away from ourselves? Since no one suspects us of murdering children in Rwanda or robbing old women of their lives’ savings, we don’t get too excited about those crimes. But if someone were to suspect us of sexually harassing an attractive secretary…. well, we’ve probably had a thought or two about it, haven’t we?

What is most telling about this analysis is not that we seem to be so defensive about certain human failings. It’s that the human race, in general, doesn’t really care all that much about starving children or ethnic cleansing or torture or exploitation. We really don’t. But we badly need to pretend that we are virtuous, so, by common consent, we identify certain transgressions as worthy of our hysteria. We draw lines in the sand, and then go ballistic when someone crosses one of them.

I don’t really like Robert Crumb. At best, he is a maladjusted misogynistic misanthrope. But he is articulate and honest, and his cartoons are the work of a genius. There is a soft underbelly to American public morality, and Crumb pokes a sharper stick at this underbelly than anyone else.

1998-09-112022-04-10

Passion and Disorder

In the movie, Titanic, by James Cameron, lovely Rose De Wit, played by Kate Winslet, is forced to choose between her effete, elitist, rich, snobbish, dweeb fiancé Cal, or the all natural, refreshing, spontaneous, passionate, all-American, artiste Jack Dawson. Combined with the fact that we know that the ship does sink at the end, there is not a lot of suspense in this film.

This dilemma is so familiar you’d think we’d be bored with it by now. When Cal takes out a pistol and tries to remove his rival by force, we’re not surprised. He’s fighting a rigid Hollywood code: simple fisticuffs would never have sufficed.

How close to reality is this? All you women out there: did you choose your man because he was so spirited, imaginative, and “different”? Or because it looked like he could hold a job?

There is some reality to the idea. The phrase “Stockholm Syndrome” comes from a real life case of a Swedish kidnap victim falling in love with her captor. Wonder how that ended. But, other than that, in real life, does it happen very often? Let’s see. I’ll make a list of women I have known over the years. How many married for “passion” and how many married for logical, rational reasons that might include material benefits? I’m going to have to use numbers instead of names, to protect the guilty. I don’t know the answer myself– I’m just going off the top of my head here. Let’s define “passion” as a case in which the woman chooses someone of whom her family would disapprove for the usual reasons. “Rational” is when a woman chooses someone with a promising future, whom her family perceives as stable and mature and responsible.

Woman #1	rational
Woman #2	rational
Woman #3	rational
Woman #4	rational
Woman #5	rational
Woman #6	rational
Woman #7	passion (didn’t work out)
Woman #8	passion (didn’t work out)
Woman #9	rational
Woman #10	rational
Woman #11	rational
Woman #12	passion (didn’t work out)
Woman #13	rational
Woman #14	rational
Woman #15	rational

Hmm. Do I see a trend? Maybe I think the ones whose marriages didn’t work out must have been passionate because everything else about those relationships now seems so illogical. Maybe those whose marriages seem rational now were married in the throes of a stormy passion they didn’t display to others.

There is another factor people who watch the Titanic and get all teary-eyed should consider: some women marry for passion, but immediately set out to make the relationship rational by pushing their husbands into new jobs, education, promotions, investments, mini-vans, quality time with the kids, and so on. So poor Jack Dawson, had he survived the sinking, probably would have taken a job as a commercial illustrator, or, more likely, a salesman, shortly after marrying lovely Rose and getting her pregnant. Picture Rose in 1955, wearing an ugly pant suit to a Dean Martin concert in Las Vegas, while Jack wanders off in an ugly loud shirt and pastel slacks to waste a few quarters on a slot machine. He bumps into a Marilyn Monroe look alike who gets friendly… and considers a moment of passion.

1998-08-192023-10-24

You’re Never Alone With a Schizophrenic*: The Myth of Sybil

More unconscious humour: at one point, the real Sybil (Shirley Mason) wrote a letter to Dr. Wilbur insisting that she did not have multiple personalities. Some critics have made much of the letter and Wilbur’s dismissal of it. But then again, which personality wrote the letter…. (To her credit, Dr. Wilbur published the letter in “Sybil”. )

Multiple Best Seller Disorder

About 25 years ago, I read a book by Flora Rheta Schreiber called “Sybil”. It was about a woman with multiple personality disorder. The good psychiatrist. Dr. Cornelia Wilbur, was able to identify 16 different personalities within the consciousness of one troubled young woman. Some of the personalities knew about the other personalities; some did not. The personalities came into being as Sybil’s way of coping with dreadful abuse at the hands of her own mother. It was an awesome book– I was fascinated.

The book created a sensation. It spawned a television movie starring Sally Field, and host of television talk show episodes. It was a big factor in the gradual popular acceptance of the idea of multiple personalities and repressed memories, both caused by child abuse, which, indirectly, led to a lot of the ideas about repressed memory syndrome and the Satanic Ritual Abuse scare in the 1980’s.

Some experts in the field have never accepted the idea of repressed memories, and, as more evidence emerges, many more people are beginning to have doubts. At the very least, most professionals have become cautious about it.

And now it looks like we should start to question the idea of multiple personalities as well: it seems that “Sybil” is a fraud.

First of all, a psychiatrist who worked with the real Sybil, wrote a book questioning the idea that she had multiple personalities. Now a psychologist, after listening to the tapes of the sessions Dr. Flora Schreiber had with Sybil, has concluded that the “multiple personalities” were actually constructions by the psychiatrist to help Sybil explain why her behaviours seemed so strange to herself. It seems that patient, doctor, and writer got carried away with the idea, and, hey, it made good television (and lots of bucks), so why not go with it?

It should be noted that Shirley Mason had read “The Three Faces of Eve”, one of the first books on multiple personality disorder (or Disassociative Identity Disorder, as the DSM called it for a while) before becoming multiple personalities herself.

Well, every time you get tempted to think we humans are pretty smart, it helps to think about something like this. A lot of people, educated and not so educated, were completely fooled by “Sybil”, and, to this day, there are a lot of psychologists out there eagerly diagnosing patients as having multiple personality syndrome or as having repressed memories, on the basis of bad science. And, remarkably, a lot of patients who insist they are MPD– remember– an acronym means it’s true– which of course makes ridiculous the claim that they are…. MPD.

*This title is borrowed from the album by Ian Hunter.

Update April 2008:

An impressive interview with Dr. Herbert Spiegel, a psychiatrist who treated Sybil for a short time, and refused to participate in the book. He observes that the idea of Multiple Personality Disorder only took hold in the U.S.

Links to More Information about the Sybil Myth

Other Hollywood Disorders
Recovered Memories

Update: May 2003

Someone reading this website recently asked me a few questions about this story. I confess that I didn’t provide enough details for anyone to check into the facts, or to do an intelligent search on the subject. Here they are:

Sybil’s real name was Shirley Ardell Mason. She was born January 25, 1923 and died of breast cancer February 26, 1998.

Her psychiatrist, Dr. Cornelia Wilbur, died in 1992, so she isn’t around to defend herself. But other analysts who have listened to tapes of her sessions with Mason say that Dr. Wilbur was suggestive in her therapy and that she used hypnosis.

Flora Rheta Schreiber, the author, also died in the early 1990’s.

The psychiatrist who also treated her and concluded that the multiple personality disorder label was a fraud was Dr. Herbert Spiegel. I read an interview with him in an interesting article in the April 1997 New York Review of Books, in which he stated that Sybil was merely a “suggestible hysteric”.

Another analyst, Dr. Robert Reiber, actually listened to tapes of the sessions between Sybil and Wilbur and concluded that
Wilbur planted the idea
of “multiple personality”
into Sybil’s head, possibly out
of some kind of misguided
therapeutic strategy, and possibly for dumber reasons.

Wilbur claimed that Sybil was “cured”– the book and movie both build up to that startling miracle moment when she “reintegrates” her personalities, but, as in so many similar stories that have been popularized on TV and books, that is not quite the truth. Shirley Mason followed Wilbur to Lexington, Kentucky, and continued to receive therapy for many years.

I would check the archives of the New York Review of Books. [Wait a minute: has it been removed? It would not surprise me.]

You could certainly argue that no popular book about mental illness has done more damage to more families than this one: Sybil. With the exception of the infamous medieval text Malleus Maleficarum.

Who profits? The royalties from “Sybil” were split three ways, between Sybil, Schreiber, and Wilbur.

According to the Associated Press, Sybil wrote a letter to Wilbur denying that she had multiple personalities.

“Wilbur had decided she was going to make the Sybil case into a book, because she couldn’t get it published in professional journals…” From an interview with Dr. Herbert Spiegel. My emphasis.

But then, Dr. Spiegel “believes” in hypnosis. But then, Dr. Spiegel describes hypnosis as something more like a some kind of self-induced “trance” state– not what you see in the movies.

Incidentally, in the same letter in which Sybil denies having multiple personalities, she also admits to making up the stories of horrendous abuse.

Where do you put that?

1998-07-092022-04-10

Stealing Ideas and Francis Ford Coppola

Francis Ford Coppola just received $20 million from a Superior Court Jury in Los Angeles because they jury believed that Warner Brothers stole his idea of a live action version of Pinocchio.

Do you ever get paid for your ideas? I’ll bet. I’ll bet you never got $20 million. But then, this is Hollywood, which will spend $120 million on a movie about Kevin Costner riding sea-doos around an old oil rig.

So a jury decided that this idea– to do Pinocchio with live actors– was so good, so brilliant, so original, that it was worth $20 million. Suppose that just by reading this you got an idea. Suppose you thought, hey, why not do a remake of Bambi with live actors? Or how about a remake of “The Ten Commandments” with a live actor instead of Charlton Heston? Or how about a remake of “The Love Bug” with a DeLorean instead of a Beetle? Or with one of those new sexy Beetles that just came out? With all of the remaining Spice Girls stuffed inside? There– that wasn’t hard.

Now all you have to do is find a lawyer and wait for Hollywood to steal your idea. Wait– you might have to prove that they stole the idea from YOU in particular, and not any other person they might have had lunch with. The trick is, you have to have lunch every day in those exclusive Hollywood restaurants frequented by producers and directors and script-writers. As you’re having lunch, just talk loudly about your great new idea. Someone is sure to turn up. Be sure to keep track of who might be stealing your ideas. And believe me, it is a lot less painful than spilling hot coffee in your lap.

Well, Warner Brothers, hold on to your pants. Here are some ideas that I think are way better than Coppola’s idea about Pinocchio, or even my idea about “The Ten Commandments”.. But don’t try to steal them, or I’ll be suing your asses for more than $20 million!

1. The Three Stooges, in an all-new adventure: Curly, Larry, and Moe star as Microsoft software engineers. Starring Jim Carrey, Reg Varney, and Rip Torn as “Moe”. Come to think of it…

2. A lobbyist from the tobacco industry courageously fights prejudice and injustice and succeeds in bribing 50 Senators to vote against a restrictive tax bill that would deprive us of our freedoms and liberties and prevent gas stations from selling cigarettes to pre-teens. Starring Tom Bosley as Newt Gingrich.

3. A courageous high school student brings a semi-automatic rifle to school and is able to prevent a tragedy by shooting 13 fellow students who were all planning to shoot their class-mates and teachers. Starring Sean Penn, and Charlton Heston as the compassionate, understanding, phys-ed coach, who encourages the student to keep lots of ammunition in his locker since you never know when you will be called upon to defend your freedoms and liberties against encroaching atheists, communists, homosexuals, and unarmed liberals. Ellen DeGeneres plays the depraved lesbian sex-education teacher.

4. Let’s see: we’ve had meteorites, volcanoes, tornados, earthquakes… what else is left? What else? I know. A gang of rugged, individualistic, violent, unshaven criminals (all of whom are the only men who could possibly save the world from some stupid massive improbable disaster or psychotic super-killer)- – form a gang and decide to take over the world and require all soldiers and policemen to carry three-hundred pounds of weapons and work alone when confronting enemies. This would be a short movie– about three minutes, or as long as it takes for them to make up a set of rules for the new world order and then break them because “rules only get in the way” and kill each other. Starring Bruce Willis, Sylvester Stallone, and Chuck Norris.

1998-04-212022-04-09

Evita the Movie: Rewriting History, Because I’m Worth It!

Most people going to see the movie version of EVITA or renting the video for a snuggly Friday night probably never listened to the original recording by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, and are even less likely to have seen one of the early stage productions. What percentage only saw the movie? It’s hard to say– the movie was not a great success. But let’s make a conservative guess: 70%?

That’s the percentage of people who will get a slightly different picture of EVITA than the ones who heard the original recording or saw an early stage production (the newer stage productions are likely to be modeled on the movie version). The original was based fairly closely on the known historical facts about the life of Eva Duarte Peron, who rocketed to fame and power in Argentina in the 1930’s and 40’s and then died very young, of cancer, at the height of her influence, on July 26, 1952. The picture of Evita, as drawn in the original, is somewhat ambivalent. If she is admirable in any sense, she is admirable only for her remarkable ability to rise from almost nothing to one of the most powerful women in the world. But the original EVITA also makes it clear that the way she accomplished this feat was by whoring herself up the rungs of a ladder of influential men. And once she was married to the top dog in the military, Colonel Juan Peron, she became co-responsible for one of the most brutal and repressive regimes ever to rule Argentina. Snubbed by the aristocracy, she extrapolated bundles of money from everyone–including the labour unions– for her celebrated “Foundation Eva Peron”, and distributed unknown amounts (no books were kept) to the poor. Without a doubt, most of the money went into her own pockets, and to pay for jewels and dresses and her extravagant lifestyle as unofficial queen. It was a little like the Ontario lotteries, except that the lotteries steal from the poor instead of the rich. Eva stocked government officialdom with her relatives and cronies and severely punished any newspapers (including La Prensa) that dared to print critical commentary about her or her husband.

Now, I don’t mean to brag, or maybe I do, but not many of the people sitting in the movie theatres watching the Madonna version of EVITA know every single word of every song in the original. I do. And I immediately noticed many significant changes to the lyrics. Furthermore, I noticed a distinct trend. All of the changes functioned to improve the image of Evita herself. One of many examples: when an aristocrat observes that “statesmanship is more than entertaining peasants”, in the original, Evita snarls, “We shall see, little man!” In other words, yes, statesmanship is merely a matter of entertaining peasants. In the movie version, this line is given to a minor character. The result leaves open the possibility that Eva was more far-sighted than that.

The most disgusting change–because it is so patently self-serving–is the assignment of the beautiful aria, Another Suitcase in Another Hall, to Evita herself, when it was originally performed by Peron’s young mistress after Evita gave her the boot. This aria (remember, this is not a musical, but an opera, in spite of what the movie promoters tell you), had an important function in the original. It followed Evita’s initial seduction of Peron, during which she portrayed herself as a humble, innocent girl, who was so overwhelmed with Peron’s goodness and charm that she couldn’t help but throw herself at his feet. Then she nastily tosses Peron’s 14-year-old mistress out into the streets. The mistress sings a very plaintiff, introspective song about her dismal prospects. Interestingly– and in sharp contrast to Evita– she claims to be hard on the outside but confesses that, in her heart, she is devastated.

Time and time again, I’ve said that I don’t care/
that I’m immune to gloom/
That I’m hard, through and through/
But every time it matters, all my words desert me/
so anyone can hurt me/
and they do

In the original, you feel a twinge of your heartstrings for this poor, vulnerable girl. And your perception of Eva’s heartlessness and ruthlessness is enlarged. The contrast with the scheming Eva makes it plain that her seduction of Juan Peron is nothing more than a ploy to whore herself up another rung of the ladder.

In the movie version, Evita herself sings this song! This is a little like rewriting THE SOUND OF MUSIC and taking “Do Re Me” away from Julie Andrews and giving it to one of the Nazis. What a fun-loving, charming guy!

The reason for the change is obvious, and no, it’s not quite as sinister as you might think. Though the Peronista’s are still a force to be reckoned with in Argentina, I don’t think their reach extends all the way to Hollywood. No, it’s more banal than that. It’s Madonna’s Evita-like ego.

Madonna didn’t just get asked to do this picture: her representatives played an active role in getting her part, and, indeed, in getting the movie made (the property has been around for years but no-one was able to put the package together until recently). Strings were pulled. Everybody knows that the most captivating song in the show is the little aria sung by Peron’s mistress. Well, Madonna wanted that song for herself, and if she had to revise history a little in order to get it: so be it. In fact, all the other little changes also seem calculated to present Eva as less of a conniving slut and more like a poor girl who was merely ambitious and clever. As a result, many people will leave the theatre thinking that Eva Peron may have been a little rough around the edges, but maybe she was genuinely in love with Juan Peron, and maybe she really cared about the poor and dispossessed, and maybe her death was a real tragedy because Argentina was deprived of her gossamer presence as a result of it.

And you know, when you think about it, there are a lot of parallels with Madonna’s life. After all, hasn’t she been accused of the same things that Eva was accused of? Didn’t Madonna exploit her sex for money and power? And wasn’t Madonna reviled by some critics who didn’t really appreciate how sweet and vulnerable she really was, inside? And thus that obnoxious song they added, to ensure airplay for a “new” release: “You Must Love Me”. That’s all the poor girl wanted: to be loved.

The truth is that Peron was a Hitlerite and a fascist (Argentina was Germany’s very last ally), and Eva was a little dominatrix who abused her husband’s office for pure personal gain. The tragic results of her ascendancy to power–violence and social and economic instability–were still felt up until the 1970’s. The idea that she really wasn’t so bad is not a harmless delusion. When Bill Clinton talks about teaching Saddam Hussein a lesson, and when Jesse Helms spouts off about Castro, and when Le Pen in France denounces foreigners, and when Bouchard talks about “humiliation”, we are hearing echoes of the same demagogic impulses. EVITA could have done us all a favour by showing us, unflinchingly, just how attractive an evil political philosophy can make itself.

By the way, as a movie, EVITA isn’t great either, though it’s not as bad as some reviewers have decreed. And Madonna’s performance is relatively faultless: the girl does have a set of pipes. But there are too many moments where the singers don’t really know what to do with themselves. See Jesus Christ Superstar for an example of what they could be doing.

One last note: when is someone going to do an opera based on the story of Eva’s corpse? It was embalmed remarkably well and apparently remained quite life-like for years afterwards. It was stolen by the government when it feared Juan Peron would use it to regain political power, after he was turfed in 1955. After years of chaos, Peron was invited to return and he did so, but only after her corpse, which had been hidden in a crypt in Italy, was returned to him. He kept it on a living room table and his third wife, Isabel, (Eva was wife #2) dusted it every day for him, when she wasn’t occupied with her duties as vice-president! Isabel, eventually achieved what even Eva had not been able to achieve: the Vice-Presidency. In July 1974, upon the death of her husband, she became President of Argentina.

Her administration was an unmitigated disaster, as Eva’s likely would have been.

So how about it, composers?

Update 2009

Updated January 16, 2009

The real “Evita” in action, leading a rally (left).

Not the first revision… when introduced in Europe, the musical was controversial — did it glorify a woman associated with Fascism? When brought to America by producer Hal Prince, the authors (Rice and Webber) apparently agreed to develop a character based on Che Guevara to “balance” the role of Eva. He tells the audience what to think… a bad development artistically, if not morally. You can hear it in his songs– let me frame it for you, so you understand just how bad she is. Or good. Or both.

Still, the best lines in the show are Che’s reaction to the monumental funeral of Evita: “Oh what a circus, oh what a show….”

On the other hand… keep in mind that in the process of extorting millions of dollars from workers, the rich, and corporations to give to the poor (in a manner that suggested to them that they were personal gifts from Eva’s own pockets), Eva was merely practicing a form of socialism that benefited families and individuals who managed to come into her orbit. The actual numbers helped probably pale in comparison to the numbers helped by, say, an increase in the minimum wage, which applies to everyone, regardless of whether they have the opportunity to personally thank Evita. It’s a bit like a socialist lottery. In this context, it’s hard to have any sympathy for the upper classes who thought that politics was more than “entertaining peasants”.

1998-02-282022-04-09

Bob Dylan Sells Out

Am Dylan.gif (54973 bytes) I too harsh on people?

In the movie, The Magic Christian, a worldly-wise millionaire (played by Peter Sellers) adopts a destitute young man (Ringo Starr) as his own son. He decides to impart to him all of the great wisdom he has accumulated over the years. The first and most important lesson is that everyone– without exception– can be bought. In the unforgettable climax of the film, Sellers scatters numerous British pound notes over the surface of a swimming pool filled with the most disgusting, offensive substances imaginable as dozens of extremely well-dressed financiers and bankers are strolling by on their way to work in their gleaming towers of steel and glass. They stop, stare, try to reach the money. One of them finally steps right into the sludge, and soon all of them are splashing around in it trying to grab the money away from the others. Yes, everyone can be bought.

I just picked up the latest edition (March-April 1998) of the Utne Reader, a bi-monthly compendium of articles by the “alternative” press. On the back of the cover, there is a picture of a very young Bob Dylan. That makes sense. Who better defines “alternative” than Bob Dylan, especially a young Bob Dylan? Think of those songs from the early 1960’s: “God on Our Side”, “Only a Pawn in the Game”, “Like a Rolling Stone”, “Masters of War”, “Visions of Johanna”… Dylan, unintentionally, perhaps (you could write a whole book on the subject), became a spokesman for a generation of young people who seemed to reject plastic, phony materialism, the consumer ethic, the idea that everything could be bought and sold, and that the ultimate goal of life was a home in the suburbs, a zillion appliances, Tupperware, and a two-car garage.

If you were born too late or too early, you probably have no idea of how powerful his mystique was. No one before or after has had anything near the pull he did in his prime. Every other major artist was acutely aware of what Dylan was doing. Even commoditized performers like Sonny and Cher included Dylan songs in their repertoire.

He was the very definition of “alternative”, because, at the time, the wholesale commoditization of life was well under way and he was one of the first and most powerful voices of popular culture to mock it. His performances were utterly compelling, because he was powerfully eloquent and uncompromisingly savage in his rejection of moral hypocrisy and glib righteousness. [notes on Dylan film]

The trouble is, there is an Apple Computer logo at the top left-hand corner of the page. And under the logo, these words: “Think different”.

Yes, everyone can be bought.

Well, I guess most other folk singers would have regarded selling out as the wrong thing to do, so, yes, I guess Bob Dylan thinks different.

I wish I knew how much he got for the ad, and why he needed the money. I do NOT wish I could hear him explain why I’m an idiot for thinking he should not have taken the money, should not have sang for the pope, should not have taken part in the tribute to Frank Sinatra, should not have allowed “The Times They are a Changin'” to be used in a Bank of Montreal ad, and should not have treated Phil Ochs like dirt way back in the 1960’s. I don’t want to hear it because it is so entirely predictable and self-aggrandizing and phony and I don’t think I could stomach it coming from Bob Dylan even if almost everything else he’s done in the past ten years should have prepared me for this.

This may sound absurd, but does anybody still need an explanation of why doing a commercial endorsement is wrong? It’s not all that complicated.

If the role of art, music, poetry, drama, and fiction, is nothing more than to entertain, then, yes, I guess there is no problem, since consumer products are just another form of gratification. And if you believe that the gleeful consumption– conspicuous or otherwise– of material goods is about as meaningful as life gets, then yes, there is no problem.

But if you believe, as I do, that there is a higher purpose to art, that it should also enlighten and stimulate and provoke, and should in some way expand our knowledge of what it means to be human, of what it means to love, of what it means to be alive, then a commercial endorsement is the anti-thesis of good art. It is a sell-out. It is betrayal of the very idea that human values are above simple self-aggrandizement.

A great artist stands out because he has the courage and integrity to observe and reflect and illuminate the weaknesses and strengths of human behaviour. When an artist agrees to accept money in exchange for the association of his image or persona with a commercial product, he shows that his integrity is compromised, because his endorsement is the result of a bribe. And when he accepts accolades and awards from people whose whole lives are dedicated to dishonesty and materialism, then he shows that he has no courage, for his acceptance is the result of his desire to become like those who thusly honor him.

When Bob Dylan first came to prominence, one of his most attractive qualities was the way he stood apart from the establishment toadies and drunken crooners that dominated the entertainment world of the 1950’s, singers like Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra, who sang meaningless love ballads to addled over-weight pant-suited matrons in the crassest of American cities, Las Vegas. Today, Dylan takes part in a tribute to the King of Crass, Frank Sinatra. How long before Dylan himself plays Las Vegas?

In defense of Dylan, I have heard people say that it’s just no big deal. Just because he endorses Apple computers doesn’t mean “Tangled Up in Blue” isn’t a great love song. In reply to that, I have to say that even if it wasn’t a big deal, it’s still a cheesy, tacky, contemptible thing to do, and you have to wonder about why Dylan would do it. Dylan’s income from song-writing royalties alone must be enormous. Did he manage his money so badly that he is desperately broke? Are the alimony payments getting out of hand? Is his exclusive Malibu mansion in need of repair? Is he so isolated and surrounded with sycophants that there is no one to tell him that, considering his stature as a songwriter of uncommon power and intensity, the commercial endorsements look petty and stupid?

Well, maybe we all should be as humble. What if someone offered me, say $100 a week if I agreed to display his product logo on my web page (as if…)? I could argue that journals and newspapers have always carried advertising so it’s really not “selling out”, it’s just the business of writing. If I sold my writing to a journal (which I have done, in fact, on a regular basis for many years) who do I think pays for the checks I receive? Right– advertisers. Dylan’s music is played on radio of course, so his royalty checks really come from the same source.

So is it really such a big leap from a royalty check to a product endorsement? The difference is that we all understand that just because a Miller Lite ad follows a Dylan song on the radio does not mean that Dylan drinks Miller Lite, in the same way we know that a General Motors ad in a newspaper doesn’t mean that the newspaper believes that General Motors cars are any better than anyone else’s cars. There is a line that is being crossed.

The bottom line, I guess, is that it is ridiculous to believe that Dylan needs the money so badly that he will allow such questions to be raised about his integrity as an artist. The answer is that Dylan, singing for the Pope and Frank Sinatra, and flogging his reputation on the Grammys, is after something other than artistic achievement. The answer is that Dylan doesn’t believe himself anymore, and therefore, why should we?

Songs from the Old Dylan:

” you used to ride on a chrome horse with your diplomat/who carried on his shoulder a Siamese cat/Aint it hard when you discover that/He really wasn’t where it’s at/After he took from you everything/He could steal..”

“…businessmen, they drink my wine/Plowmen dig my earth/None of them along the line/Have no idea of any worth…”

“Dear Landlord, please don’t put a price on my soul…”

“…but even the President of the United States must sometimes have to stand naked…”

A Playlist for Bob Dylan when he finally goes all the way and plays Las Vegas.

Opening number: Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again
Mood Piece: Dear Landlord
A love ballad so all those Amway salesmen can get off their duffs and shake out their double-knit pants: Most Likely You’ll Go Your Way and I’ll Go Mine
For those who really appreciate the décor: Visions of Johanna
For those who wonder if this is the same Bob Dylan who used to do those protest songs: My Back Pages
For the maids and kitchen help: The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
And the waiters: Serve Somebody
To his former wife, Sara, if she happens to drop by: It Aint Me Babe
To patrons who favour the Black Jack tables: Lily, Rosemary, and the Jack of Hearts; Black Diamond Bay
To those who wished it was Elvis instead: I Want You
Just before Milton Berle comes on: Motopsycho Nightmare
To a convention of Dupont engineers: Hard Rain
To contestants for the Miss America Pageant: Just Like a Woman
After a Fashion Show: Leopard Skin Pill Box Hat

1997-11-112022-04-09

What a Circus

Oh what a circus, oh what a show
Argentina has gone to town
Over the death of an actress called Eva Peron
We’ve all gone crazy, mourning all day and mourning all night
Falling over ourselves to get all, of the misery right.

[Evita – Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber]

Added March 12, 1998:

Crazy is right. Diana may be the most monumentally insignificant person of the 20th century. What I mean is that the scale of her media coverage exceeded her real importance by an unimaginable degree. Quick, name one thing Diana was good at? Name one of her “achievements”. Name one of her special talents or remarkable gifts? The truth is that any well-brought up girl could have done as well or better at the few things we think she was good at: smiling and giving short, inconsequential speeches.

And while the world wails about her death and spends millions of dollars on flowers and tasteless mementos, another 10,000 children will have died of starvation or malnutrition around the globe. But that’s the point, you see. In Diana’s death we feel validated as people. Look at me– I am weeping. I have a heart. I am compassionate. I have real human feelings! I supported her opposition to land mines and her concern for AIDS victims! I bought the Elton John record…

One last comment, if you can forgive me the cynicism: the height of these cheap emotions was reached with Elton John’s new version of Candle in the Wind. Just in case you didn’t know, Candle in the Wind was written for the memory of Marilyn Monroe, another physically beautiful woman who first courted, then seemed to despise media attention. Then it was rededicated to AIDS victim Ryan White.

I think it was a monumental miscalculation on John’s part to not write a new song for Diana. It makes the whole thing look cheap and tawdry. And British.

What’s the matter Elton– can’t come up with anything new anymore?!

Marilyn Monroe, depressed, and alone in spite of her popularity, probably committed suicide (some paranoids believe the Kennedys had her snuffed). “Candle in the Wind” was a beautiful song that captured something of the tacky ambivalence with which we adore then destroy celebrities (the prurient curiosity about the fact that her body was found “in the nude”).

So Elton John and Bernie Taupin took this sensitive, honest song, and quickly rewrote it to accommodate Princess Diana’s funeral. Unfortunately, they also debauched it. They removed the lines about how the media, ever exploitive, reported that Marilyn had been found in the nude, ironically proving that while overtly despising the media that “hounded” Diana to her death, Elton wishes also to provide a “tasteful” version of the lyrics for mass consumption.

Geez, you have to wonder if Marilyn, up there in the sky with all the other dead celebrities, feels a little jilted. Elton, you’re an idiot.

1996-11-022022-04-09

Our Obsession With “Feel-good” Confections

In 1965, many of us, or our parents, went to see their first Hollywood film, and it was “The Sound of Music”, a glossy, somewhat saccharine musical about how the Von Trapp family escaped from Nazi-occupied Austria. They adored this film so much that it probably did more than anything else to move the Christian Reformed Church to repeal its prohibition against the “worldly amusement” of cinema.

Now, if you are truly convinced that “The Sound of Music” is movie-making at its finest, nothing I can possibly say in the following paragraphs will move you from that opinion. I acknowledge the film’s technical merits. It is expensively filmed, beautifully staged, and the music is memorable and well-performed. Most people are aware of the conscious sentimentality, but don’t mind.

I’ve never liked “The Sound of Music” because I’ve always been uncomfortable with films that sentimentalize tragedy, and no tragedy was darker, or more compelling than the rise and fall of the Third Reich. Five to six million Jews, gypsies, and other “undesirables” were systematically exterminated by the Nazi regime. I do not deny that the Von Trapps have a story to tell, but I find it disconcerting to find them centre stage, in all their Aryan purity, in a film that barely acknowledges even the existence of the Jews. The world of the Von Trapps– white, rich Austrians– is pretty well the kind of world the Nazis envisioned, once they had carried out the final solution.

Consider the scene in which the father lines up the children with military precision, in perfect order from highest to smallest, to send them off to bed. Given the nature of Nazi Germany (and Austria), the Nazi’s obsessions with secondary racial characteristics and genetic purity, and Hitler’s passion for order and precision, this scene is either an obscene joke, or absolutely mindless film-making, completely at odds with its own subject. It deplores the Nazis as enemies of this nice Austrian family, while simultaneously inviting you to adore their physical grace, cleanliness, beauty, discipline, and racial purity. It has Dan Quayle’s “family values” in spades. Nobody swears or runs around indecently dressed or commits adultery. The children are obedient, the father is a powerful authority figure, and Maria, the on-again, off-again nun, is both pious and mischievous– an irresistible combination to many of us. In short, this film should offend nobody.

I was recently involved as an actor in a production of “Cabaret” by a local community Theatre group. (A movie version– which is not very similar to the stage version, but still interesting– was released several years ago and is readily available in video stores.) “Cabaret”, like “The Sound of Music”, is about individuals who come into conflict with the rising tide of Nazism. Both of them want you to know how awful the Nazis were. But it is the contrasts of these two works that is most illuminating.

The most obvious contrast is in outward style. Many Christians would not be comfortable attending a performance of “Cabaret”. Much of the action takes place inside the “Kit Kat Club”, a cabaret where prostitutes and dancing girls mingle with drunken sailors, homosexuals and libertines. The dancers gyrate and wiggle their rear-ends as an evil-grinned Emcee invites the audience to discard their inhibitions and forget all their problems. Characters cavort and carouse and explode into brawls.

Thus, the first contrast between these two productions, from Julie Andrew’s convent to Sally Bowles’ Kit Kat Klub, is shocking. In fact, Sally Bowles, the central character of “Cabaret”, makes her first appearance dressed as a nun, singing about her mother thinking she is living in a convent in the Southern part of France, instead of singing in a Berlin nightclub, “in a pair of lacy pants…” This is followed by a drunken brawl, the “kit kat girls” singing, stumbling, rolling over the floor on top of several bar patrons, and a song about picking someone up for casual sex, of various orientations.

The audience is initially fascinated—and repelled—so when a group of healthy, wholesome-looking, well-dressed men, women, and children come out into a “meadow” for a picnic and begin singing a charming German folk song, the audience’s first reaction is relief: finally, some normal, decent-looking people! The actors in this scene actually resemble, physically, the Von Trapp family as presented in “The Sound of Music”! The song is about nature, optimism and faith: “Tomorrow Belongs to Me”. The audience is enraptured by the strength and sense of purpose expressed in the song, particularly in contrast to the brazen physical obscenity of the previous scenes.

A few scenes later, at a wedding, a similar group gathers to sing the same song. As they sing, a few Nazi arm-bands appear, then more, and more, until the entire chorus, stamping their feet and raising their arms in salute, have become a ferocious mob. Suddenly, the song is revealed for what, in fact, it has always been: a paean to Aryan purity and dominance. And a connection is drawn between the earlier “wholesome” ideal of beauty and racial purity, and the expansionist violence and viciousness of the Nazi regime. One realizes– maybe for the first time– that the Nazis did not recruit their members at gun point. They caught them in a web of high-minded visionary ideals and hopes and dreams, exploited the economic and moral collapse of post World War I Germany, and tapped into repressed but still potent nationalist instincts. “Cabaret” suggests that Nazism succeeded because it appealed to the same kind of emotions and ideas that most of us still share today.

“Cabaret” is not content with surfaces and pretty pictures. In fact, it draws a very unpretty picture of humanity, to reveal the corruption in the heart of German culture that gave rise to Nazi Germany, and the corruption within ourselves that could lead to the same consequences. Sally Bowles is so immersed in her own decadent, impulsive life-style that she is blind to the consequences of the political changes going on around her. “What does politics have to do with us?” she asks. The real Sally Bowles, upon whom the original story by Christopher Isherwood was based, died in a concentration camp.*

I was surprised by the number of Christians in the cast of “Cabaret”. I counted at least a dozen, many of whom arrived at Sunday rehearsals fresh from church or youth choir. We often talked about the meaning of the play, the significance of the moral debauchery in Germany in regard to the subsequent rise of Nazism, and the relevance of “Cabaret” to our own time and place. All of us were deeply committed to this production because it would remind the audience of the dangers of allowing a moral vacuum to exist in our society. All of us agreed that the vivid depiction of this moral collapse was necessary to make this point as real to the audience as possible.

The Christian community is frequently guilty of preferring bland entertainment like “The Sound of Music” to gutsy, authentic plays and films like “Cabaret”. Our community is notoriously fearful of the raw power of honest drama, strong language and images, and, sometimes, the power of truth. Is this a harmless matter of taste, or an important deficiency in Christian culture?

I have been thinking recently not only about the contrasts and comparisons between these films, but also about other incidents that resonate with these issues: a Christian Reformed Church sponsors a square dance; a Christian High School History teacher tells me he doesn’t have a television set in his house because all it shows is trash; a Christian High School English teacher shakes his head slowly as I ask if he is familiar with recent work by Alice Munro, Timothy Findley, Michael Ondaatje, or Gunter Grass. A Christian high school is incapable of finding a meaningful play to perform because the teachers fear that parents will be offended. We speak thousands and thousands of words about the errors of our culture, but we make little effort to speak the same language.

The future of the world may not depend on whether we prefer to watch “The Sound of Music” or “Cabaret”, but sometimes we must ask ourselves if our infatuation with feel-good confections, inoffensive literature and music, and “wholesome family values” is teaching us what we need to know about the dynamics of our own history and culture. When we, as parents, object to our children reading or performing plays that are contemporary and meaningful, are we condemning ourselves to even greater irrelevance? Does the world look for answers from people who object so strongly to the language of the streets that they never take the time to hear what the people of the streets are saying?

* Update, January 2004

Apparently the “real” Sally Bowles didn’t die in a concentration camp after all. Her name was Jean Ross and she lived to a ripe old age in England. She didn’t consider the portrait of herself in Isherwood’s story to be very flattering.