Rev Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping protesting fracking on Princes Street, Edinburgh, 17/8/14 (image Rev Billy / Twitter)
In a post yesterday, I suggested that the direct political engagement with which we still associate Brecht, Weill and Weimar cabaret in general is harder to find on the current cabaret scene, even though we live in a world of war, division, oppression, inequality and exploitation scarcely less outrageous than that of the interwar period. I was reminded of this idea again this morning when I read this piece by Owen Jones in the Guardian about the film Pride and its celebration of solidarity, a value he suggests has become marginalised by Thatcherite self-interest. (I share Jones’s appreciation of the film – in my forthcoming Sight & Sound review, I discuss it in terms of solidarity’s identity-politics-inflected descendant, intersectionality.)
The idea that our own cabaret scene is less directly politically articulate than its 1930s forebear is one I have been mulling for a while, without coming to any fixed conclusion. Here are five potential lines of enquiry or rebuttal.
1. Weimar cabaret wasn’t all that political in the first place
It’s received wisdom that Weimar cabaret was intensely political but it was actually hugely varied and included plenty of sensational, titillating, trivial and plain fun elements; it’s just the more serious-minded stuff has lasted better and been celebrated more consistently. So perhaps it’s not even a fair comparison in the first place.
2. People just don’t care about politics today
As Owen Jones suggests, a generation – two, really – has grown up under a political culture dominated by the idea that ideology is suspect or simply over, and explicit political rhetoric misguided or inconsequential. At the same time, there’s a widespread lack of interest or confidence in the mechanisms of democratic representation, from councils to parliament. We don’t have faith that politics can change things in the way our grandparents’ generation did in the 1930s, or indeed our parents’ did in the 1960s, so why should our art engage in politics in that way?
3. Politics looks different now
Ideologically driven macro-political movements – communism, fascism etc – might be out of favour but that doesn’t mean politics itself is. If politics has turned us into atomised individuals governed by self-interest, that’s reflected in a huge amount of stimulating, provocative and enlightening work that engages meaningfully with such experience through consideration of the body, sex, sexuality, gender, identity, anxiety, insecurity etc, in forms as varied as burlesque, drag, live art and circus.
4. Cabaret is a political form in itself, whatever the content
Perhaps the medium is the message. As I’ve argued numerous times (including here and here), the cabaret form itself, with its lack of a fourth wall and premium on the unexpected benefits that can arise from the collaboration between performers and audience, offers an implicit rebuttal to the consumerist model of customers, products and financial exchange that has come to dominate almost every aspect of our lives, including our experience of art. Cabaret shows that everyone has choice and agency, and that’s a lesson that can be exported from the venue into the rest of our lives.
5. There is explicitly politically engaged work out there
Some of the finest acts in cabaret today are radically political in the sense that they explicitly encourage alienation from conformist-consumerist society; this applies especially to queer performers like David Hoyle and Christeene, or Holestar, but far from exclusively. As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, the phenomenal Reverend Billy has been in Edinburgh with the Stop Shopping Choir and their brilliant latest show, HoneyBeeLujah!, which played at Forest Fringe on Saturday and Sunday. Rev Billy adopts the look and feel of gospel and evangelical Christianity to spread the word about the damage consumerist capitalism does to the world and our souls. It’s profoundly serious but hugely entertaining and uplifting, and the performances are part of a larger mission that also includes protests and activism; Billy was almost arrested at least twice during his visit, once while protesting fracking on Princes Street, once while preaching from a tabletop at the Forest Fringe venue itself. “This is no performance any more,” he said during his show. “Not art. No aesthetics… We are dying together, not doing what we must do… Nobody can tell me that our response is adequate.” By this, he meant that in the absence of organised large-scale protest against systemic financial and environmental wrongdoing, we might be doomed, if we aren’t already.
It doesn’t get more directly political than that. And there are other performers out there with comparable levels of engagement and commitment. But even so, even after all the above thoughts, I still find it surprising that there isn’t more explicit engagement on the cabaret scene with the critical political issues dominating a world that seems to be sliding towards instability and destruction. Or am I missing something…?
UPDATE: Some comments on Facebook have highlighted the economic aspect of this – audiences and venues being less interested in attending or booking political work. Nathan Evans recalled: “I stopped working in cabaret venues because I wanted to make political work: I found the audience just weren’t turning up so I went to work in theatres. Notably, on the eve of the last general election, we put on an ‘Election Entertainment’, with [Dusty Limits], David Hoyle, Sarah-Louise Young, Scottee, and the turn out was probably worse that at the polling booths the next day”. That reminded me of an article I wrote at the time previewing that event, which I think is where I started thinking about this whole subject.
