sundries

[rm]

There's a lot of comment out there about Amanda Palmer's new project, Evelyn Evelyn, which for those of you who don't know is one of those concept project with fictional characters presented as real things. Think, kinda sorta, Ziggy Stardust & The Spiders from Mars, except in this case it's about conjoined twins rescued from the circus.

Now, I've seen people upset because it's fiction being presented as truth and bilks the audience. I've seen comment on the ableist narrative that drives the thing, and I've seen comment on the now removed child pornography element of the backstory.

And, it turns out, I have something to say too, although it's about none of those things, largely because I don't feel qualified as I am neither immersed in the project or the activist issues from which other people are writing to eloquently.

On the subject of the band itself, I don't know what my opinion is at present, but I think these discussions are important.

On the truth/fiction issue, I probably have a lot to say (some of it, apparently, in the comments to this post -- short version: the "all fictions should be consensual" argument is one I've little patience for), but that's a discussion I can have over less murky subjects on other days.

I probably also have something to say about the sexualization of twins (conjoined or not) and the whole lesbians for your entertainment narrative, but again, that's for another day.

What I want to talk about is a current segment of pop culture's obsession with the first half of the 20th century in general and the period between the wars, specifically. The steampunk "movement" which historically focused a bit earlier, by and large, is also at issue here (and as is noted in the comments, us REgency-era fans are not excepted either). And everything I am about to say I say as a full and at least partially guilty participant in these aesthetic fixations.

I think in America we do this thing where we divide time from itself. WWII exists, apparently, only in the years we fought in it and most high school educations don't really look at Hitler's rise to power or the social and economic conditions in the 1920s and 30s that precipitated it. And because of that, I think we are, as a culture, incredibly blind to the racism, antisemitism, and a host of other evils that flourished in the 1920s and 30s, while we're all sitting around talking about decadent parties in a Berlin we never saw instead.

And it makes me uncomfortable.

It makes me uncomfortable when I hear that the new hot thing in YA literature is "hobos" because they're "scary". I haven't missed that it's apparently fashionable to call the homeless on Americas streets hobos either. Whether we're romanticizing or making that monstrous with that nomenclature, I'm uneasy with it.

It makes me uncomfortable when I go to an event like Dances of Vice and the only time I've ever seen a PoC perform burlesque there it was a recreation of Josephine Baker in a skirt made of bananas while a crowd of nearly entirely white people stood around and ogled. Great dancer and savvy as hell and as an audience, ogling was our job. But still, at a painfully pale party, it was icky. And I've written before about the presumably unconscious but no less distressing for its use of race in other burlesque performances I've seen.

It makes me uncomfortable every time there's another Asian-themed party about opium dens in the 1920s.

It makes me uncomfortable every time there's another "evil circus people" (because apparently women who actually have sex, people with disabilities and con men as best friends forever is a narrative we cannot escape) party.

Look, I'm not saying we shouldn't play with these tropes and historical facts as artists. I go to these parties, often with great excitement (and a bit of concern). Nor, am I saying you can't have a theme party about Germany (or anywhere else) between the wars. But I think people think it's easy. I think they think it's an instant sell (okay, and let's face it, I think it probably is). I think they think it says decadence and comes at the expense of no one.

And I don't think that's true (hi, non-gender conforming person of Jewish and Catholic origin here). I think if you want to work with the perceived decadence of this period and its tropes, you need to know your history and have something to say about something than your own clever wickedness.

There's really nothing I like more than a good bit of 1920s German cabaret stuff (I'm thinking of the very smart/aware Isengart here who has managed to move me to tears more than once because he talks about the bad stuff as bad stuff and frames the joy or the partying than coexisted with the bad stuff in that context). But the cheap/easy show of privilege as our own opportunity to dress up in a casual society is something I've found unsettling for some time and as our cultural fixation with the era gains a lot of mainstream steam, as evidenced by things like and including Evelyn Evelyn, I'm more and more uncomfortable.

Circus freaks. Nazi experiments. Hobos. Racism. Anti-semitism. Playing dress-up.

We need to think harder about how we're designing parties and performances. Which isn't to say we can't use ugliness (or beauty) to critique ugliness. But if no one notices the critique then there starts to be a problem.

Gay conservative group triggers Republican discomfort and infighting.

Haiti, voodoo and the media.

Women and werewolves. As you might guess, a lot of it is about the sin of hair. via catherineldf

Tonight Patty and I are joining a friend and a person we've not met yet at a swanky bar. It'll also be the debut of my tux, since I have this _thing_ where I decided I had to wear it once before Gallifrey for the sake of my mental health. If I ever manage to finish one of the eight billion half-written fics on my hard drive, it'll become clear.

Anyway! I am excited. Less about the tux than going out and functioning. I've been dead dead dead since my trip to DC and I hate that feeling of exhaustion and underwaterness. I'm looking forward to seeing friends and having a date night.

Buffy! We're continuing to watch, and I have to say, I remain very impresed about how plot lines are not just dropped. Giles was tortured and we see that acknowledged after that episode (fine, fine acting in those acknowledgments too). I'm really impressed and moved on that front. Also it really matters how much grieving/mourning we see on the show. It completely changes the audience response to various events that there's a blueprint and that we're not left to do it alone. Meanwhile, I really the Willow/Oz getting back together/virginity-and-OMG-Barry-White soundtrack thing was handled SO WELL, and I thought Giles dealing with the scorned woman fairy raised some interesting gender issues that I'm wondering if the shoe will develop further as I'm having thinky academic thoughts on that front.

The winning look on Project Runway last night. How much do I want the jacket for the adult?

Comments

[rose71.livejournal.com]

So, taking a break from brooding about Evelyn Evelyn (which upsets me horribly because I usually LOVE Amanda Palmer)... thanks for your great post about the problems with an ahistorical, sensationalist view of the between-wars period.

My own interest actually is more in Weimar Germany, but I'm constantly frustrated by how people jump to the celebration of "decadence." Because of course that's how the Nazis themselves saw any dissident expression of leftwing/ feminist/ Jewish/ queer culture--as "degenerate" art. I love how the real Berlin cabaret artists explored a situation of political catastrophe--and potential positive change--through wit and wordplay. And I can't stand the movie "Cabaret" for emphasizing female objectification and doomy "decadence" instead. But I do love Ute Lemper's Berlin cabaret albums for recreating the full spectrum of songs from the time. Along those lines, thanks for the link to Isengart--I hadn't run across him before.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Ute Lemper is a great example of people doing it right. So's Isengart. I've seen performances of his where I've been deeply, DEEPLY uncomfortable with some of his choices and Every Single Time, he's ultimately brought it back to a making a historically/culturally-informed point that totally justifies whatever set me off. Also, he's got a voice and a half and is one hell of a performer.

[thatwordgrrl.livejournal.com]

As an unabashed lover of Cabaret (and I don't like most musicals), I must disagree that it is only about doomy decadence.

The effect doesn't work as well in the play version, but the movie version of the progression of "Tomorrow Belongs to Me" from one seemingly-innocent boy singing a sweet song about nature to an entire beer garden of onlookers joining in and giving the Nazi salute along with the boy (who we discover is a member of the Hitler Youth) is indeed making a larger point.

Heck, the entire point of the MC is to be the Greek Chorus for the inevitable changes that are coming to Germany.

[rose71.livejournal.com]

You're making me want to give Cabaret another look! I haven't seen it for about 10 years, and at the time I was so wrapped up in German history debates that I might have been looking at the musical through overly academic eyes. I do remember the powerful sequence you mention with the Hitler Youth. (And I also just read your comment above, where you talk about the pink triangles the stage version.)

For what it's worth, my problem with Cabaret is that it reproduces a master-narrative of German history, where Nazism seems to arise inevitably out of the "decadence" of Weimar culture. In that master-narrative (and in my possibly jaded recollection of the movie), there's no alternative between those two kinds of darkness, because non-Nazi culture is all about doomy excess. But what I love about Weimar history is the incredible vibrancy of radical and oppositional culture--including cabaret culture--that combined political commitment with biting wit (and of course sexiness). My memory is that Cabaret downplays the anti-Nazi political awareness and makes the urban scene sort of sad and tawdry. But now I need to see it again! (And not just because of this highfalutin' conversion... I've also signed up to write a Torchwood fanfic with a Cabaret prompt.)

[thatwordgrrl.livejournal.com]

Certainly Cabaret does not exist in a historical vacuum. There are constant reminders about the rise of the Nazis. It's less, I would say, an inevitability and more a shift in how Nazism is perceived.

At the beginning of the film, the Brownshirts are rather ridiculed by the MC and the denizens of the KitKat Club. By the end of the film, they are the majority of the audience (the play, as I mentioned, has a different ending which is quite powerful in its own right, of the MC in striped concentration-camp garb sporting a pink triangle).

And as I said before, if there is one number that exemplifies the anti-Nazi political awareness, it's "If You Could See Her Through My Eyes," featuring the MC dancing around with a guy in a gorilla suit wearing a dress. Which, hah hah, funny funny, gorilla suit, dress, tee hee.

Until he delivers the final line to the audience with a sly wink: "If you could see her through my eyes, you wouldn't know she's a Jew!"

For me, Cabaret is so brilliant because it does the one thing most musicals don't dare do -- use the songs themselves as political commentary.

FWIW, I could see a Torchwood/Cabaret fic if you think of Jack taking on the Michael York role.