For Trevor Lynch's Review of Cabaret, Click this Link: https://www.counter-currents.com/2019/07/bob-fosses-cabaret/
I managed to ignore CABARET all these years — I was never a fan of Bob Fosse and musicals in general besides — , but upon reading the above review, I checked it out, and yep, not my cup of tea. It reeks of sleaze(without a real sense of danger), and Liza Minnelli is one of the most repellent screen presences ever. She looks like a cross between Raggedy Ann Doll and Malcolm McDowell in A CLOCKWORK ORANGE. Her character is like a freako Lena Dunham impersonating Matthew Broderick as Ferris Bueller.
Like many artists who came to film-making from other fields, Fosse never developed a sure cinematic style of his own, which accounts for the peppering of his movies with obvious and intrusive visual antics(usually with editing) to demonstrate cinematic prowess. A true master of cinema doesn't have to remind us at every turn that he’s making-a-movie. If anything, he renders the making-of-film invisible and subordinate to the final product. ALL THAT JAZZ is half-interesting(at least it was to my younger self when I’d seen nothing like that prior), but it too is marred by excessive razzle-dazzle of cutting, lighting, and odd angles.
Granted, the very great Orson Welles also moved from theater to cinema, but his genius transferred theatrics into cinematics with masterly ease. Stagecraft merged with screen-magic. In contrast, Fosse's theatrics stick out of his films. The difference between Welles and Fosse is that between compound and mixture. Welles’ method is a chemical process whereas Fosse’s method is merely the physical joining of one art-form with another. And because Fosse could not rise above the stage-centrism of his performance arts background, he relied excessively on editing, a technique unique to cinema, to earn film-making credentials.
Other than that, I find Cabaret-style music to be mostly cringe-worthy, and it's all the worse in CABARET because everything is overripe, wearying, and putrid. At the very least, the American Vaudeville scene was without pretension. In contrast, the Cabaret scene had the affectations of bohemian chic, a conceit that made it even worse. We can enjoy a movie like STRIPES(with Bill Murray) for what it is. It doesn’t pretend to be a serious work of satire. In contrast, CABARET masquerades as an Important Art Film. Its musical acts lack the light-hearted spirit of a number like "Dreaming of You" in SINGIN' IN THE RAIN or other breezy American musicals. Instead of freshness, there's the stale air of putrefaction, as if we’re watching musical acts done by ghouls(like the ones in CARNIVAL OF SOULS).
Politically, CABARET is a dishonest and stupid movie, especially irritating because it tries to have it both ways: Apologia of Immorality as Liberation but also Morality Tale about looming Tyranny. (In rare moments, one wonders if the film is actually a criticism of Weimar Period for indulging in mindless decadence than waking up to the dangers of Nazism. Indeed, the most touching moment is the wedding scene where two Jews reverently reconnect with their roots in a traditional ceremony. Immorality is hardly an effective weapon against a 'moralized' movement like Nazism or communism. Shanghai decadents and the like were swept aside by Mao and his communists, as shown in THE LAST EMPEROR and FAREWELL MY CONCUBINE. Perhaps, this accounts as to why today’s decadence and degeneracy as been moralized than merely liberalized. As globo-homomania is regarded as a ‘spiritual’ crusade, it has the New Moralists on its side. In current America, Cabaret isn’t merely a club but the new church. Stonewall Riots are commemorated as akin to the Resurrection of Jesus. Thus, if few people were willing to die for Weimar Germany, many are willing to fight and die for Weimerica as a ‘moral’ principle.) Culturally, CABARET is THE SOUND OF MUSIC for the artsy set. Oddly enough, both movies ironically end up giving the Nazis their due, as Lynch's review points out. While the wholesome family in THE SOUND OF MUSIC is staunchly anti-Nazi and 'good', they represent in looks and manners exactly the kind of people that the Nazis would have endorsed. They are like the idealization of the Perfect Aryan Family except that they're Anti-Nazi. In contrast, one might say CABARET is a celebration of freaks and weirdos, exactly the kind of 'degenerates' and reprobates denounced culturally and morally by the Nazis. It’s like watching the satanic rituals in ROSEMARY’S BABY. The fact is they do really come across as ugly, repugnant, and demented, as if to admit that maybe the Nazis did have a point. Such perception would have been ‘accidental’(or perhaps incidental) than intentional on the film-makers’ part, but it’s nearly inescapable, especially for those who are preordained to disdain overt displays of excessive decadence. (A much greater work about the life in theater and music is TOPSY-TURVY, a genuine masterpiece by Mike Leigh who, until then, was mainly known for neo-kitchen-sink or bitchin-stink dramas that were mostly wearying.)
The film reminds us of what Paul Johnson said of Modern Art in general: Nazi persecution lent it an air of tragedy and significance it otherwise might not have had. Among anti-fascists in the Liberal West, the idea was "If the Nazis hate it, it must be good." After all, if the Nazis were Evil Incarnate, everything they opposed must have been on the side of angels. In the dreary film FARAWAY, SO CLOSE by Wim Wenders, we see traumatized angels throwing tantrums at the Nazi exhibition of Degenerate Art. With so many problems around the world, one would think angels would be preoccupied with matters other than a Modern Art exhibit, but such is the conceit of deracinated cosmopolitan artists. Since the satanic Nazis were opposed to degeneracy, degeneracy must have been good, or so the anti-Nazi logic would have us believe. If not for the specter of Nazism, one would have to wonder WHAT cultural value the trashy musical numbers in CABARET have. It’s like Jews, even the most noxious and corrupt ones, invoking the Holocaust Card — my so-and-so was a ‘Holocaust Survivor’ — as a get-out-of-jail-free card. Never mind one’s lack of intrinsic virtue because one is bestowed worth simply as the hated-of-Nazis. Similarly, Antifa, a gathering of lunatics and thugs, has been bestowed 'meaning' and 'purpose' because they presumably fight 'Nazis'. And illegal invaders are 'dreamers' simply because their presence is an affront to Trumpism, aka 'New Nazism'.
To be sure, pro-Nazis can fall into a similar mental trap. If the Anti-Nazis argue, "If Nazis hated it, it must be good", the Pro-Nazis argue, "If Nazis were anti-degeneracy, they must have been good." In truth, a movement or system can be anti-degenerate and still turn out to be terrible. Consider Stalin's Russia, Mao's China, Theocratic Iran & Saudi Arabia(not to mention the Taliban), and the Khmer Rouge. Does anyone want the US to be ruled by the 700 Club? Besides, the very people who claim to be anti-degenerate could turn out to be closet-degenerates or repressed-degenerates whose neo-puritanical campaigns serve as cover for new forms of degeneracy passing themselves as morality and order. Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, Josef Goebbels, and other Nazi big-wigs were pathological degenerates in their own ways except that they donned kulturkampf armors to conceal their diseased souls. Just like Televangelist charlatans hide behind God & 'family values', pervert-sadists like Beria hide behind Social Justice ideology, and the axis of cretinous Neocon Zionists & Pentagon warmongers hide behind the smokescreen of 'spreading democracy' and 'war on terror', the Nazis too honed their skills in presenting themselves as the cure for the disease when, if anything, too many of them were diseased themselves.
Now, given the nature of human psychology, it could be that all such individuals were sincere in their self-delusions. Whether Beria or Himmler, it's possible he actually believed he was on the right side of History. And it's possible that many in the neo-imperialist Deep State sincerely believe in the crap that they spout to maintain world hegemony. And consider the pathetic case of Matthew Heimbach. The Malt-Right bubble-butt kid made a name for himself by spouting off against the corrupting power of Jewish degeneracy. He promoted a family-friendly version of Neo-Nazism as a cure, but it turned out his private life was akin to antics on the Jerry Springer Show. The fat boy humped the wife of his father-in-law and then beat him up upon being exposed. And there’s Richard Spencer and his crew whose idea of White Nationalism was all-night drinking binges and fantasizing about being 007 Darth Vaderians sticking their laser dongs into anything that moves. And there was the audio-recording by some bi-sexual guy(who goes by the pseudonym Pilleater)that revealed Greg Johnson discussing how it's fun to recruit young men for homosexual trysts at white nationalist conventions. Now, this was mis-characterized as 'grooming' by the gross fatbody Matt Forney-the-Horny, but it wasn't exactly wholesome either. Incidentally, Forney is yet another moralist who is actually a total degenerate unlike his nemesis Jim Goad who is open about and even proud of his degeneracy. It seems the crucial difference between Gavin McInnes & Milo(and Goad) AND Richard Spencer & Greg Johnson(and Forney) is the former’s degeneracy is out in the open whereas the latter is more keen to keep it under wraps from the public(without much success, one might add).
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| Moralist-as-closet-degenerate. Matt Heimbach with Matt Parrott whose wife Heimbach boffed in Jerry-Springer-fashion. |
In the 60s, the very Jews and Liberals who championed Sex, Drugs, & Rock n Roll against Old White Conservative America could, in the same breath, extol the virtue of selfless and spartan Viet Cong who were fighting the South Vietnamese lackeys indulging in capitalist-consumerist excesses imported by American Imperialist Occupiers. In the documentary HEARTS AND MINDS(1974), Americans are shown as corrupting agents by spreading drugs, degeneracy, and prostitution among the Vietnamese. But few years prior, Jews and Liberals cheered for M*A*S*H where libertine Americans use sex and debauchery as anti-authoritarian and antiwar statement, especially at the expense of Robert Duvall’s character who is exposed as a Christian-moralist hypocrite. The very Jews who morally condemn a bunch of white people placing bacon inside mosques lend full support to Pussy Riot degenerates who desecrate Churches in Russia. How can Jews be pro-morality in one case but pro-degeneracy in another? It all boils down to, "Is it good for Jews?"
Granted, there is less contradiction among today's Jews because they now possess the ultimate power. Decades ago, Jews resented the dominant position of Wasps in elite institutions, and they sought EVERY means, decadent or moralistic, to undermine Anglo-American prestige and power. But with the fading of communism, the triumph of Jewish power in the US as the Lone Superpower, and the decline of Third World nationalism, Jews now have a narrower agenda than prior to their seizure of power. If in the past, Jews used moralism against decadence(siding with Castro and Viet Cong contra US capitalists) or decadence against moralism(idolizing Weimar subversives contra Nazi authoritarianism), Jews today are more likely to say Decadence Is Moralism, as with their promotion of Globo-Homo that went from pleading for 'gay rights' to mandatory worship of Gay Rites. Indeed, things are worse now than in the Weimar period because we can’t even tell degeneracy apart from morality. At least with Weimar, you knew degeneracy when you saw it. Even those championing it didn’t pretend it was moral. If anything, they got high on its nihilistic kicks. It’s like Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald in THE SUN ALSO RISES and THE GREAT GATSBY weren’t morally endorsing the hedonism they depicted even as they delighted in much of it. Weimarians of the pre-Nazi period were for freedom of perversion as a democratic value; they weren't arguing perversion IS morality. In contrast, so many people today embrace degeneracy as the new hope, the new faith, the new path forward for all mankind. Degeneracy once used to mock religions and faith. Now, globo-homo-mania seeks to take over churches and preach ass-buggery as the stuff of 'rainbow' visions and revelations.
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| Gavin McInnes the Bung-servative |
But then, Jews are hardly the only people who've acted in this regard. After all, what holds the disparate elements of the GOP together? It is implicit whiteness whether one is Christian Right or Libertarian-Capitalist. Donald Trump is hardly a spiritual figure, but many white Christians voted for him because he is 'one of us'. In India, religious Hindus(who tend to be culturally arch-conservative) are allied with capitalist Hindus(who tend to be worldly) because what they have in common is a powerful sense of Indian identity and nationalism. And when communist Vietnamese persecuted ethnic Chinese in the late 70s, communist China didn’t make common ideological cause with the communist Vietnamese but sided with their capitalist-leaning co-ethnics. So, it shouldn't be surprising that the Jewish communists and Jewish capitalists sometimes saw eye-to-eye on the basis of "Is it good for Jews?"
In a way, it confuses matters to address the politics of degeneracy within a left-right ideological framework. Historically, both the hard left and hard right had problems with degeneracy that became mainly associated with aristocratic privilege and/or capitalist excess. Monarchs and aristocrats were supposed to be noble, but their wealth and privilege often led to self-indulgence and excessive behavior. Emperor Ludwig II was the Michael Jackson of his day. He built lavish useless palaces and made homo advances on his servants. He did good to patronize the genius of Richard Wagner, but it's ironic that the whims of a homo 'emperor' laid the material groundwork for the music that would inspire men like Hitler. Many aristocrats ran out of money because they led lives of dissipation filled with partying and gambling. And then, capitalists made tons of money, and their spoiled children grew up with bohemian tastes and became the patrons of Modern Art. Also, as capitalism is all about the BUCK, it was willing to market ANYTHING for profit. This led to the explosion of vice industries, culminating in national legalization of gambling, pornography, and drugs(and even prostitution in some countries), with the result that, especially since the 1960s(but going back to the Jazz Age as well), decadence & degeneracy became synonymous with the mass 'values' as well in a world where young kids grew up to ‘decanography’ of MTV. In time, the aristocracy vanished and gave way to the capitalists. At the very least with aristocrats, despite their dissipation and decadence, there lingered the ideal of dignity and honor. With capitalists, all such lofty ideals eventually faded(as each successive generation of capitalists were further removed from the aristocratic model to which the first capitalists aspired) and gave way to the culture of shamelessness.
In the pre-capitalist world, the main economy comprised the procurement of food and essential goods, and that meant most people were involved with virtuous industry of agriculture, manufacture, repair, and transport. But as capitalist industrialism greatly expanded the economy and moved people from farms to cities, many more people got involved with occupations that were centered around vanity and vice... or at the end of the day, they turned on the TV and became fixated on vapid celebrity as their cultural mainstay. Then, it is not so surprising that homos became the New Angels of the 21st century. In a world where culture is mostly defined by narcissism, hedonism, and vanity, it only seems fitting that the most froopilaloop group would become the focus of attention for the masses hooked to TV shows and the latest fads and fashions.
At any rate, this is not strictly a left-right issue. It confuses matters to refer to the current politics(and even neo-spirituality) of degeneracy as 'leftist'. If anything, it gives the degenerates & decadents(and their globalist-supremacist patrons) too much credit by lending the impression that the Revolution is still alive. Granted, one could argue that decadence is more leftist than rightist because the left is about constant change whereas the right is about reverence of heritage and tradition. However, tradition can grow decadent, stale, and effete, whereas the culture of health could be embodied by the dynamism of change. During the French Revolution, it was the Left that embodied strength, vitality, and warrior spirit whereas the King and aristocrats with their powdered wigs, fake birthmarks, & snuff boxes were a bunch of hapless dweebs. In THE LAST EMPEROR, we see how traditional Chinese Power came to be consolidated in the hands of weak monarchs and silly eunuchs cloistered within their palace as a kind of Never-Land. And tradition among Chinese women had devolved into the sick practice of foot-binding. And traditionalist Chinese literati were effete men who grew their fingernails long and scribbled poetry while disdaining any use of their muscles as ‘vulgar’ and ‘low’. If anything, it was the Chinese modernizers, among whom communists were prominent, who emphasized the need for a healthy vigorous culture that respects labor and exercise. At the time of Japan's forced opening to the West, the ultra-conservative Tokugawa culture had grown decadent, what with poems being written about the smell of rotting teeth as sexual fetish. Both the ultra-conservative Byzantium and Ottoman court fell into despair of decadence. The Ottoman sultan was more likely to indulge in orgies with his harem than roll up his sleeves and rule an empire. And the elite power-holders of Rome grew decadent and acted like the clowns in Fellini’s SATRYICON. In some ways, the Germanic Barbarian invasions had a cleansing effect on a decayed culture and society.
There is a reason why Hitler shared the communist disdain for the German bourgeoisie. Even though National Socialism chose to ally with the bourgeoisie than overthrow them, Hitler found the conservative elite class too timid, effete, or dull to possess the necessary will to take command of History. And in a way, he proved to be right. The German Business class aided Hitler’s rise in the hope that it could control him, but, as events proved, it lacked the ‘balls’ to restrain Hitler whose balls proved bigger like Tony Montana’s in SCARFACE. National Socialism drew much from the Left — the color of red for example — because, despite fundamental disagreements, men like Hitler admired the leftist fighting spirit and determination to smash the old corrupt order and build a new one. Part of the reason why Wasp Conservatives became almost overnight a bunch of decadent ninnies is their power and privilege spoiled and softened them. Without the toughening effects of struggle, people lose the Will to Power and power of vision. Catholic Church is supposed to be ‘conservative’, but its inner circle now seems to be made up of a bunch of child-molesting degenerates addicted to privilege.
The true leftist struggle is dead and had been so for quite some time. Globalism is both anti-true-right and anti-true-left. No true leftist would have embraced globo-homo or 'gay marriage' or so many things associated with ‘progressivism’ nowadays, like ‘twerking as liberation’ or ‘Bruce Jenner is a woman’. Leftists believed women could do a lot of things that men can do, but they never said Man is Woman or vice versa. What goes by the label of ‘progressivism’ today is really the product of late-stage capitalism and the end-logic of vanity and hedonism as the highest values in the post-virtue age. This isn't even 'Cultural Bolshevism' but Cultural Capitalism. It is what happens when capitalism goes from an economic system to a value system. Now, there are some solid values, even virtues, associated with capitalism: Hard Work, Enterprise, Competition, Risk, and Ability, all of which support Competence, Accountability, and Meritocracy. But as capitalism emphasizes profit uber alles, it is driven to sell anything to maximize influx of cash. So, if billions can be made by selling fast food junk and turn lots of people into fatty-fatsos, capitalism will do so. If billions can be made by expanding gambling into every town and city, so be it. If stuff like Rap can rake in lots of dough, capitalists don't hesitate to fill the airwaves with garbage despite its corrosive effects on society. In time, the profit-centrism of capitalism can effectively rot the core of society. While capitalists themselves must be intelligent and hardworking, they make their money by selling stuff to the masses, most of whom happen to be dumb and vulgar. To maximize profits, capitalists use their smarts to come up with dumber things for the idiocratic masses. Lots of smarts went into the creation and development of video-games, but consider its overall impact on society. Smart geeks make dumb stuff for the masses. Consider the impact of smart-phones on consumers. It’s smart-machines for the high IQ designers & engineers but dumb-machines for their owners who spend inordinate amount of time staring at nonsense on them. And lots of creativity and smarts go into CGI, but the result has mostly been lots of dumb action movie spectacles about superheroes. And estimates show that one-third of all internet traffic goes to pornography. So, when addressing the problem of degeneracy, we need to stop blaming the 'left'. It is the result of neither the left nor the right but of capitalism's fixation on profits based on maximum short-term efficacy. Since the shameless masters-of-hedonism are most adept at concocting stuff that bring in the most profit, they are favored by capitalists to manage and define the culture, and the result is the 'Gay Party', like the one in THE WOLF OF WALL STREET, which is like the culmination of the late consumer-capitalist mentality of the X-ers in RISKY BUSINESS, hardly a movie about 'leftists'. (What goes in fraternities are pretty crazy too, and the opening scene of DAS BOOT would suggest German military men were no strangers to acting wild and crazy.)
Had the German communists come to power in 1933, they would have done away with Weimar decadence just the same IF NOT MORE SO. Indeed, even under Nazi Rule, Germany was far less repressive than communist nations where culture was concerned. Jazz was disapproved but not banned. Swanky clubs continued to exist though without the excess of degeneracy seen in CABARET. For several years, Nazi Germany was less censorious of Hollywood movies than the Soviet Union was. Indeed, most of Nazi movie production aped Hollywood genres far more than the Soviet movie industry did. It’s no wonder that the ‘gay’ character(William Hurt) in THE KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN loves to watch Nazi-era movies because they are filled with glamour and fantasy. If anything, the neo-puritan leftist prisoner(Raul Ruiz) despises Hurt-character’s frivolity... though their eventual love-and-alliance perhaps prophesied the new politics whereupon leftism went ‘gay’ and ‘gayness’ became political. The film THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING shows how communist authorities didn't care for 'decadence'(associated with capitalism) either.
Also, the humanist cinema of the 40s and 50s(that generally leaned heavily to the Left) was often disapproving of the 'capitalist' culture of vanity and pleasure. Keep in mind that classic Marxists argued that Fascism was the final culmination of capitalism — maybe there is something to that given the current state of US as a gangster-fascist fiefdom of Jews and their globo-homo henchmen. In Roberto Rossellini's OPEN CITY, the Nazis come across as rather decadent, and there is a lesbian Nazi bitch to boot. In Vittorio De Sica's UMBERTO D, the least likable character is the wanna-be-rich landlady who evicts the old protagonist and invites affluent bohemian types to her social gatherings. In Frank Capra's movies — Capra was a conservative Republican but worked on scripts by leftists, even crpyto-communists — , the Good Common Folks embody simplicity whereas capitalists live it up. In IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE, the vision of hell is Pottersville where raw capitalism runs like sewage; Violet isn't merely a floozy but an all-out whore, and Martini's joint is Nick's with a big-ass cigar-chomping Negro banging blues rhythms on the piano. Also, even though Sam Wainwright the uber-capitalist turns out to be an A-Okay guy, it's the social-communitarian George Bailey who is the real hero, and he's all about Family and Community. He stuck with the Savings and Loans out of loyalty to his father, and he finds most meaning with wife and kids in his hometown. (This is why today's globo-homo urban decadents hoot-and-holler throughout the movie, especially in the scene where George encounters Mary-as-old-maid-librarian.)
In Akira Kurosawa's movies like STRAY DOG, IKIRU, and HIGH AND LOW, the urban capitalist culture is presented as corrupting, degrading, and alienating. Federico Fellini's LA DOLCE VITA and Michelangelo Antonioni's L'AVVENTURA were hailed at the time for what many took to be a commentary on the soulless materialism of post-war Europe where everything revolves around the ME. Even up to the 70s and 80s, it wasn't rare for Leftist or Liberal artists to depict villainy in the form of homosexuals(even when the artists themselves were tootkins). In Visconti's THE DAMNED, one of the arch-villains is a transvestite who goes over to the Nazis like Annakin Skywalker to the Dark Side. In THE CONFORMIST, it's implied the main character settled for fascist conformism as the result of childhood trauma of having been molested by a homo. In Z by Costa Gavras, one of the right-wing thugs is a nasty homo. Even as late as 1987, the arch-villain in NO WAY OUT was William Patton’s brilliant portrayal of a homo social-climber and henchman whose blushy face gives the impression that he just walked out of the washroom after sucking someone’s cock.
Also, back when society disdained homosexuality(or found it ridiculous, as in Mel Brooks' THE PRODUCERS with "Springtime for Hitler" number), it was commonplace to associate the Nazis and Fascists with the culture of perversity. In that regard, CABARET somewhat stood apart from anti-fascist films such as Pasolini’s SALO(where fascists bugger kids), NIGHT PORTER(where fascists indulge in S&M), and Szabo’s MEPHISTO(where the Nazis are eager to recruit a bohemian artist as a culture warrior). In Bernardo Bertolucci's 1900, the Fascists come across as the craziest bunch of party dudes who even hang a cat on the wall and bash its guts out. Donald Sutherland plays a Fascist who makes Alex of A CLOCKWORK ORANGE look like Mr. Rogers. He's a total pervert and degenerate. In contrast, the communists represent simplicity and virtue. Fellini's AMARCORD is supposed to be about how everyone was so idiotic under Fascism, but everyone just comes across as lovable and funny, even the Fascists.
A kind of Saul-Alinsky's RULES-FOR-RADICALS outlook shaped the cultural strategy of the 70s, especially as the 60s flamed out by alienating Middle America or the Silent Majority. Alinsky argued that radicalism has to be presented as mainstream, normal, and respectable. But, if radicalism was to become the New Normal, then the Old Normal had to be made the New Perverse. It appears Alinsky was a genuine leftist and socialist, but his lessons were adopted by others as well, though they likely arrived at the same conclusion on their own. If cultural perverts were to gain power in a society that was still socially conservative — where even many liberals found homosexuality to be weird or sick, pornography to be offensive or demeaning, and drugs to be corrupting to the young — , then the biggest symbols of Political Order, the Nazis and Fascists, had to be presented as the Real Perverts. Then, it is not surprising that so many Fascinating-Fascist Cinema of the late 60s and 70s featured Nazis or Fascists not so much as Men of Order but the Real Men of Degeneracy, with Pasolini's SALO really taking the cake. (In contrast, globo-homo came to associate ‘gays’ with middle-class values, white picket fences & green lawns, clean-cut white collar jobs, and even ‘marriage’. It was like HOMO KNOWS BEST or LEAVE IT TO HOMO. PHILADELPHIA presented a homo as upstanding middle class professional, and BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN had homos as American icons: Cowboys as rump-humpers. Homos were made out to be more-normal-than-normal, and in time, even churches were festooned with ‘gay’ colors. The fact that the children of John McCain and George W. Bush all so easily become globo-homo shows how vapid and shallow the values of the ‘conservative’ elites are. They have no core convictions beyond hankering for status & approval by the latest fads and fashions.) Why did homos and other perverts feel a need to invert symbols and values in this way? It was their way of hoodwinking the larger society that was still culturally conservative in many respects. When we survey some of the biggest or most significant films of the 1970s, what really strikes us is how 'conservative' they are despite the fact that most were written and/or directed by 'liberals' or Jews. There was PATTON, DIRTY HARRY, AMERICAN GRAFFITI, THE GODFATHER I & II, DEATH WISH, THE EXORCIST, THE FRENCH CONNECTION, ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST(if not conservative, then libertarian against liberalism), FIDDLER ON THE ROOF, TAXI DRIVER, JAWS, ROCKY, and THE DEER HUNTER. The problems of urban crime made DIRTY HARRY, FRENCH CONNECTION, and DEATH WISH relevant. THE GODFATHER and FIDDLER ON THE ROOF focused on the Family as the only worthy attachment in a world of chaos, corruption, greed, and/or hypocrisy. THE EXORCIST portrayed men of the church doing battle with the Devil who turn a young girl into proto-Miley-Cyrus. CARRIE mocked the ultra-religious mother, but its top villains were the soulless materialist school girls who torment good-hearted Carrie. And Woody Allen's early comedies, though certainly not right-wing, tended to be more negating of the Left because of their cynical anti-utopianism that remained skeptical of the program. It was Allen’s way of saying "We Won’t Get Fooled Again". Given the norms of the time, it would have been rather risky to make an anti-Nazi statement by promoting degeneracy as the cure. It made more sense to associate Nazism or Fascism itself with degeneracy and decadence. Besides, the early 70s dealt with the hangover of the late 60s with its hippie freakouts, Manson murders, Altamont disaster, endless riots, and social protests. In that context, CABARET's unapologetic celebration of Weimar degeneracy wasn't characteristic of the period. Despite Nazism's anti-homosexual policy, it wasn’t rare in arts & culture to associate Nazism with homo perversion, not least because of emergence of S&M homo subculture with fetishes for Nazi regalia(like in CRUISING with Al Pacino who, as undercover cop, gets in too deep with the bung-busters). Granted, times were changing fast. ALL IN THE FAMILY featured Divine as a sympathetic transvestite character. And the sitcom SOAP featured Billy Crystal as a nice 'gay' character. Still, the overwhelming attitude about homos remained negative throughout the 70s. At most, homos could hope to turn homosexuality from a butt of kicks to butt of jokes. Better to have people laugh at homos than insult or attack them. Make people see homosexuality as humorous than hostile, like in the SANFORD AND SON episodes
The problem with CABARET(and movies like ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW) is their weirdness is too easy and mostly phony. Weirdness, strangeness, and even freakiness are a part of life and may be fascinating as such but not when misguided souls(who are not even genuinely weird) go out of their way to be ‘different’. Perhaps, the cult of modernism spread weirdness as some kind of 'cool' model, thereby encouraging even non-weirdos to go out on a limb to appear eccentric or odd in some way. "Hey look, I’m special." (Today, so many people get tattoos and piercings to make a ‘statement’. Especially as Political Correctness doesn’t allow for controversy or differences of views, people hope to be a fresh face in the crowd with token signifiers, a conceit that gets lamer by the day as tattoos, piercings, and pink/green hair dyes have become the New Conformism among idiot Millennials, the dumbest generation of all time surely.) It’s like some people are genuinely schizo and, as such, their condition can be an interesting and worthy subject of study, but it makes no sense for non-schizos to act schizo. It'd be a mockery, at best a parody, and why? Non-weird pretending to be weird is like non-talented pretending to be talented. The Arts & Culture community has an excess of both. Too many nice middle-class kids raised on cult of modernism & post-modernism trying desperately to be the next weirdo artist. As much as I detest Robert Crumb, at least he is a genuine weirdo with real talent. But everything in CABARET is fake, a farce. The players are just insipid no-talents pretending to be edgy bohemians and free spirits when they're about as engaging as the no-can-dance extras in ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW.
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| The utterly worthless ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW where weirdness is just a big put-on. |
This Strange Factor is always a bit disturbing but also fascinating and provocative. Even beauty is most potent with an element of strangeness. Any number of decent artists can paint a beautiful scenery with trees, lakes, and sunsets, but it is the special artist who conveys something more than niceness. The real question is whether the strangeness is genuine, the stuff of inspiration/conflict, OR just a big put-on. For the naturally normal or non-talented who seek fame(or even notoriety) in the arts, strange-posturing is all-too-often a shortcut to being ‘special’. It’s like avant-garde-ism is dime-a-dozen across Art Schools with their new gremlin-batches of artistes who’d be the new Basquiat or worse. It’s all just a put-on with the freaks on display in CABARET. Worse, it’s a put-on without any discernible talent. (Bob Fosse has been widely praised as a choreographer, but what was his contribution to dance other than having women roll their hips and thighs like chunks of ham on a stick?) Now, a put-on artist or poseur can have talent, which was certainly the case with David Byrne as part of Talking Heads. Unlike David Bowie, Byrne wasn't a real weirdo but a clever showman(like Peter Gabriel) but with some genuine musical flair. But apart from playfulness, Byrne was nothing more than College Rock music. In contrast, Bowie had a genuinely strange musical sensibility, though his stage persona as Ziggy or some such freak was just plain dumb. Musically however, he was like one-man time-machine bridging nostalgia and futurism, primitivism and sophistication. Most people will outgrow Talking Heads but will be haunted by some Bowie songs for a long time.
When it came to biology, the Nazis understood the dark side of life. Aryan beauty was the product of ruthless evolutionary processes of struggle and brutality. Every life-form, no matter how beautiful, is the product of violent struggles over millions of years. Yet, when it came to Arts & Culture, the Nazis were almost timidly and tidily bourgeois in their near-phobia for the strange and dark. Though Goebbels initially argued in favor of German Expressionism, he fell in line with the Hitlerian dogma that art must mandate beauty and be borne of beauty. Think beautiful images and make beautiful art. But even visions of beauty must emanate from a darker place, just like light of the Sun draws from turbulence deep beneath the surface. True art can only be created by genius individuals, and they must be free to seek their own path. The state cannot dictate or ordain creativity. It can only support it if it exists in the first place on the individual level.
Because of the crucial Strange Factor in creativity, it makes little sense to discuss art in terms of disease vs cure, foul vs wholesome, sick vs noble. The real question is whether it is true in vision, meaning, and talent. A work can be 'noble', 'wholesome', and/or 'healthy' but still lack value as just a bundle of trite cliches executed without talent or skill. Granted, a work can be 'diseased', 'foul', & 'sick' and without artistic value, which would be WORSE than a bad work with 'positive' or 'healthy' qualities. And in this sense, I agree with Trevor Lynch that the volkish song by the young blond lad at a beer garden is preferable to what goes at the Cabaret. It may not be much, but at least it's positive and healthy. In contrast, not only are the Cabaret acts demented but lousy to boot. Worse, it’s like a freakshow with pretend-freaks, like watching Lar Von Trier’s IDIOTS where non-idiots act like idiots just to annoy everyone. (That said, there's the appeal of the Cabaret in its looseness of body and motion whereas the volkish anthem by the blonde Nazi lad is about rigid unity and bound commitment. Cabaret music is about song-and-dance whereas the Nazi song is about song-and-march. Upright stiffness is necessary to uphold civilization and social order, but there's a natural desire to cut loose in lateral motion. It's like dogs are eager to learn tricks and obey orders to please their masters, but they also want freedom to stretch out and run wild. The Claire Denis film BEAU TRAVAIL makes this very point in the final scene where the hitherto overbearing sergeant goes footloose and feels liberated from social and psychological regimentation. Yukio Mishima also embodied both natures. He was both a militarist-traditionalist of sacred order and a bohemian-decadent of spontaneity. On the other hand, anyone who's observed black societies should know that unfettered wildness is not the path to meaningful liberation. It can just as easily be a surrender to tyranny of animal savagery. Just look at black communities in Sub-Saharan Africa, Haiti, Detroit, and London where people's idea of culture is bumping-and-grinding like shameless apes. Animals may live in 'freedom', but they are also trapped in a state of brutality and constant fear. When the West was nearly all-white and well-ordered, the appeal of the primitive to Modern Man was understandable. Too much order, complexity, artificiality, and abstraction can repress or deny something that is natural and vital. In such context, the new primitivism offered spice and flavor, something fresh and reinvigorating; indeed, the German obsession with nature and the Romantic fascination with ancient barbarian myths had something to do with dissatisfaction with ultra-modernity. But when neo-savagery, especially that of blacks, becomes the main mode of culture all across the West -- made worse by heavy influxes of black African migrant-invaders -- , it is no longer a dream but a nightmare. There's a difference between having nature around where you live AND surrendering to the full-blown forces of nature. In the Modern West, we now have the sick phenomenon of the the most advanced technology in electronics and communications using their vast reach and networks to amplify & disseminate Afro-jungle-savagery far and wide. Instead of a desire for a taste of nature separate from modernity, we have modernity itself in overdrive to saturate civilization with the hyper-savagery of the Negro-Gone-Wild.)
As for Liza Minnelli’s character, Sally Bowles doesn't come across as a true free spirit(like Louise Brooks’ silent movie personas or Jeanne Moreau’s Catherine in JULES AND JIM) but merely someone aping the type. To be sure, the film at one point has Michael York's character blurt out that her femme-fatale act is a pathetic sham, but then, why are we made to fixate on her miserable life as some kind of meaningful middle-finger against bourgeois mores and the Nazis?
Everything in CABARET is fake because it's about people going out of their way to be WILLFULLY weird. Willfully wallowing in decadence is the flip-side of willfully straining to worship beauty, which is what made the Nazis dreary. Ironically, the Weimar decadents and the Nazis in CABARET have more in common than they realize. Both are dogmatically committed to the notion that Culture MUST BE one thing or another instead of naturally flowing from genius, hopes, and dreams to make us see the world anew.
At least Holly Golightly of BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S was a 'real phony' and was played by the lovely and charming Audrey Hepburn. In contrast, Liza Minnelli is about as captivating as a sack of moldy potatoes. Her face resembles a blobfish. And her Louise-Brooks hairdo is all the more irritating for evoking the fabulous silent star to whom Minnelli can't hold a candle. As for Joel Grey, he seems to be imitating the magician in Fellini's 8 ½, possibly Fosse's favorite film as his semi-autobiographical ALL THAT JAZZ draws so much from it.
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| Liza Minnelli or a Blobfish |
Lina Wertmuller could see the problems of humanity BEYOND Nazism/Fascism. The makers of CABARET apparently couldn't. One gets the impression from CABARET that, "If not for the Nazis, all would be well with everyone having a grand time." It’s like the crazy notion within PC that evil could be purged from the world by eradicating ‘Anti-Semites’, ‘racists’, and ‘homophobes’, most of whom happen to be white. But such logic is self-defeating because the moral value of the Cabaret world depends on Nazis as the villainous foil. Without the Nazis, the obvious degenerates of CABARET wouldn't be able to say, "At least I'm not a Nazi."
Michael York's character’s only purpose is serve as the alter ego to the average moviegoer. Though a homo, he's the most normal person in the story, the one that the average moviegoer will want to identify with. He is meant to act, talk, and think for us. Since he turns pro-degenerate and anti-Nazi, the average moviegoer is expected to nod along. His role is much like that of the southern boy in SOPHIE'S CHOICE who befriends a very messed-up couple — a Jewish neurotic and a Polish knucklehead — who are meant to represent the tragic burden of art, romance, and history. Though deeply flawed, a much more interesting movie about Weimar period is Ingmar Bergman's THE SERPENT'S EGG that at least tries to understand why things fell apart to make way for the New Order in Germany.
In medicine, one cannot understand health without the study of disease, and the German medical community played a key role in the rise of Nazism as physical & psychological health were seen as analogous to social, cultural, and national health. In a way, an artist is like a doctor who puts his stethoscope to matters of soul & society to listen for signs of health or sickness. An artist who only wants to deal with pleasant, beautiful, or nice subjects is like a doctor who insists on seeing only healthy patients. If Nazis were like illness-phobic doctors, Weimar degenerates were like quacks selling snake-oil to spread disease. A true doctor must possess genuine curiosity to understand the nature of disease, just like a true artist must have the courage to delve into life’s realities to gain deeper understanding.
Of course, doctors must ultimately treat diseases, but they must also regard them with fascination and even respect. After all, there is a certain Relativity Principle to diseases and organisms. We regard many bacteria as parasitic carriers of disease, but plenty of organisms would say the same of humanity if they could think and speak. Humans have parasitically used land and water to their own benefit at the expense of other organisms. Humans leech milk from cows. Humans empty lakes and seas of fish. All organisms are parasitic in some way. But then, even as they harm other species, they also provide opportunities for others. Humans have been bad for wolves and bears but great for dogs, cats, rats, and pigeons. Also, the decaying agency of micro-organisms performs a cleaning service. Dead animals rot in nature, but it’s also a process of cleansing and renewal. People find maggots gross, but they feed on carrion and waste material. To the extent that other organisms may regard humans as a disease, we need to respect all organisms on some level because life is a competition among parasites. Like humans, all organisms do what they can to survive and gain dominance. In many cases, one organism seeks to devour other organisms, but organisms also arrive at symbiotic relationships where they not only co-exist but become co-dependent. Humans couldn’t survive without certain kinds of bacteria in their guts. Therefore, the Nazi medical ideology, like its cultural ideology, was limited in its strict distinctions of healthy and sick, noble and ignoble. For deeper understanding, some degree of empathy is required to understand why the Other acts as it does and how We may appear to Them from their own sets of values and priorities. Art, at its best, is about exploring and understanding than preaching dogma and pushing the same idols over and over. This aspect of culture was completely missing in Hitler who was so sure of everything, but then, this trait was evident from his childhood. Germans and Jews had developed a symbiotic relationship over the centuries. They were parasites on the other and yet also mutually beneficial. Germany kings and princes gained much from Jewish financial expertise. In that sense, they were leeching off Jewish intelligence and know-how. But, Jews used their financial wizardly to leech off Germans as well. They were both feeding and taking from one another. Same could be said of their cultural relations. Gentiles often regarded Jews as cultural parasites who stole and exploited white culture. But Jews could say of Europeans that they stole the Jewish God as their own God. Also, white Europeans stole the Biblical Narrative as their own. Furthermore, even as Jews took from German culture, they also made key contributions from which Germans drew inspiration. So, the Aryan-Semitic relationship through the years was both troublesome and constructive, with rights and wrongs on both sides. Alexander Solzhenitsyn felt much the same way about Russian-Jewish relations over the centuries. But Hitler refused to consider the Jewish side of the equation and simply denounced Jewishness as all-bad. Today, we see the same pathology among Jews who insist on the narrative/dogma that they were entirely good and innocent while white goyim were entirely to blame for all frictions between Jews and Gentiles. Just like Hitler’s arrogance led to the madness of WWII, the current Jewish madness — an unwillingness and inability to consider the goy side of the equation — is pushing the world over the brink with Jewish Power demanding that everything go its way or the highway. Notice how Jewish media monopolies in the US have refused to publish Solzhentisyn’s book that call for reconciliation by both sides confessing their historical wrongs. Just like Hitler, today’s Jews feel that their kind was always totally correct while all others exist only to lick Jewish boot.
The problem with Nazi medical ideology was it overlooked the sickness within Nazism itself. Though Hitler and his cohorts presented themselves as political healers of Germany and provided certain much-needed cures, they also spread the disease of racial arrogance, aggression, and contempt. National Socialism didn’t so much counter Weimar decadence with morality as replace it with its own brand of nihilism giving Aryans the license to do as they pleased, which would have terrible consequences in the East once war broke out.
Besides, it’s one thing to suppress excessive degeneracy but quite another to render the culture sterile with too strong a dosage of antisepticism. And given the psychological profiles of Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels, and others, it should have been clear to the German medical community that the Nazi cure could just as easily turn out to be as bad as the disease. Likewise, when a pathological nut Jim Jones got to play spiritual arbiter at Guyana, the result was worse than secular sin. And communists, in their war on capitalist exploitation, ended up creating an even more tyrannical society. Louis Farrakhan offers some good insights and proposals, but he is fundamentally a diabolical figure, a demagogue like Hitler with boundless megalomania. If a man like that could come to power, the Million Man March could easily turn into Million Man Murder.
One thing for sure, the medical community is never fully independent of ideology and politics. While all doctors will readily identify certain conditions as diseases — it’s difficult to imagine a day when doctors will defend cancer as a sign of health — , the fact is the medical community also bends to the winds of power politics. Once upon a time, the medical community recognized homosexuality as a pathology, but today, it’s classified as ‘normal’ and ‘natural’. HIV was seen as a grave threat to society, but due to the ‘gay’ lobby, much stigma has been removed from the disease, and there’s even been push for legislation that would NOT criminalize those who knowingly spread HIV to ‘sexual’ partners. Also, part of the reason why HIV causes less panic now is due to the enormous amounts of funding that went into developing medicines to suppress its symptoms and its spread. The reason why HIV treatment got preferential funding owed to the powerful Jewish and homo lobbies that did everything to ensure that their demands were prioritized. Who/whom matters in medicine. If there were a disease that mainly kills Jews and a disease that mainly kills American Indians, you bet more funds will be spent on a cure for the former. Due to Jewish promotion of themselves and homos, America values Jewish and homo lives over all others. In foreign policy, Jewish lives matter more than Palestinian lives. And in medical funding, homo lives are prioritized over the lives of others. Notice how the medical community and the media paid scant attention to all the white working class folks dying as the result of the opioid crisis. The overall attitude among the elites has been, "Let the white trash choke on their own vomit and die", which is hardly distinguishable to Jewish attitude about Russian misery and deaths in the 1990s.
Like those in the medical profession, most people perceive good vs bad on the instructions of the prevailing ideology. If the media/academia tell us that ‘racism’ and ‘homophobia’ are the biggest problems, a lot of white people are likely to look for them under every rock like dogs ordered to track down rabbits will obsessively chase after rabbits. Having their scents directed at specific targets, they will overlook all the social problems caused by blacks and homos. Notice how Jewish Supremacism is the real power that controls America, but too many Americans are fixated on exposing ‘white supremacism’ because the Jewish-controlled media/academia fill impressionable people’s minds with nonstop panics about ‘Nazis’ and ‘white supremacists’(as diversion from the truth of Jewish Supremacist Power). Sometimes, a kind of 'automania' takes hold of human behavior. Just like a dog trained to dig for rabbits will keep digging at everything even when there are no more rabbits to catch, thereby causing damage to floor and furniture, social crusaders trained to hunt down ‘evil’ will keep on the hunt despite the ‘evil’ having been suppressed or expelled.
Now, the analogy of doctor and artist doesn't entirely work, especially in the Performing Arts, because the doctor's role is cerebral and rational, whereas the artist deals with sensations and passion. Whereas the doctor’s role is always about making the patient healthier(in the objective sense), the artist/entertainer is often about making the audience FEEL good, which doesn’t necessarily comport with becoming a Better Person. In that sense, an artist/entertainer is as much a drug dealer as a pharmacist. An artist/entertainer may offer his product as medicine with moral content, but he knows the audience wants something more than a soul-manual. The audience wants excitement and thrills, a bit of sensationalism. After all, the selling point of CRIME AND PUNISHMENT isn’t merely its Christian message but elements of violence and suspense. Also, if doctors must take care to not become diseased themselves even as they treat diseases, artists often embody the dark, impassioned, or irrational moods of their material.
It's no wonder many notable artists have been manic-depressives, like Jean Sibelius for example who was most creative when clawing out from pits of gloom. In a way, an artist is like a patient trying to infect others with his mad fever. Van Gogh’s paintings were made richer by his ‘sickness’. Beethoven’s manic-obsessiveness is all over his music. Jimi Hendrix and Jimmy Page cast their crazy nets of sounds far and wide to ensnare their audiences. There is an element of sorcery and witchcraft in the arts. In ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST, the Medical State is the castrator of all that is alive and virile. It tries to tame man’s nature that must retain spontaneity to be real. Similar message is delivered in John Boorman’s ZARDOZ where repressed nature wreaks vengeance on an ultra-elitist society of absolute order and harmony.
In a way, Hitler’s confusion owed to contradictions between his sorcerer-nature and doctor-tendencies. He might have actually done less harm if he’d just embraced his craziness instead of trying to make the world right with moral instruction, but he couldn’t let himself go due to certain personality traits and/or social upbringing that stressed reputation, seriousness, and respectability. According to the semi-interesting movie MAX about Hitler as young artist befriending a Jewish art-dealer, the ex-corporal has technical talent and strangeness but is unable to connect the two. He couldn't come face to face with this 'crippled' and 'wounded' side of himself(as artists like Edvard Munch and Ingmar Bergman could), which remained repressed to spin his self-made myth as a divine man of history.
At any rate, if we are going to have strangeness, weirdness, and even perversity, we want the Real thing, not a put-on or farce. The difference between ERASERHEAD and ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW -- among the biggest cult movies ever -- is David Lynch's work is the product of genuinely weird rumination that experiences the world, inner and outer, in a singular way. Maybe it’s demented and even depraved, but it’s one of a kind. One could argue ERASERHEAD and MULHOLLAND DR.(and BLUE VELVET that I like less) are 'degenerate', but their visionary power cannot be denied. In contrast, ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW is a silly pile of nonsense made by gimps who were desperate to be ‘subversive’. The fakery and strain show in every shot. Granted, even faux-weirdness can be amusing if done with humor minus the pretension. Tim Burton and Paul Reubens had a blast with PEE WEE HERMAN'S BIG ADVENTURE.
Of course, mere strangeness isn't sufficient for art, a lesson lost among art students/critics at some juncture in Modernism. Art is strangeness + talent. There are those with inner vision without the finesse for outer expression. Even among artists, most tend to be limited to mastery in one form of expression. William Blake was a far greater poet than illustrator though he immersed himself in both. Norman Mailer could burn a stack of paper with his fever dreams but was cold with celluloid. Imagine if Van Gogh possessed strangeness but lacked talent; his visions would have remained in his head. If some people have strangeness but lack talent, others have talent but lack strangeness, the singular vision thing fueled by some mysterious source within. It is the rare artist that has both, like Stanley Kubrick or Sam Peckinpah. David Lean had mastery of technique, a way with actors, and a great eye but lacked soulful depth and that strange maverick quality to truly own a work in the way Kubrick or Kurosawa did. Essentially, he provided efficient drama and pretty pictures in grand spectacles that mostly stuck to formula(albeit with more intelligence and taste).
Art needs balance like everything else in life.
If the subject is 'degenerate' or contemptible — and why not since so much of the world is indeed degenerate or contemptible? — , the artist should seek to explore and interpret than wallow and indulge: Be a surgeon than a butcher. IN COLD BLOOD and MIDNIGHT COWBOY are dark but also illuminating. Same goes for Martin Scorsese’s GOODFELLAS that, even as it guides us through the world of psychopaths and criminals, maintains what might be called a Silent Morality, one that isn’t pronounced enough to blur the clarity of the world at hand but nevertheless insists on a distance and awareness that we are in a kind of hell. (Scorsese’s film of THE SILENCE makes more sense in this regard. In a way, Scorsese the artist has had to maintain his silence as a spiritualist-moralist in order to work in Sin City on projects mostly about shameless characters immersed in filth, excess, and debauchery. A moralist can walk away from such a world or barge in to condemn it. But if the moralist is also an empathetic artist who wants burrow inside evil and see what makes it tick, he needs to be like a spy and maintain his silence(like the kid in HUGO who works on clocks while avoiding authorities; likewise, Scorsese had to find a niche in the machinery of Hollywood to pursue his ultimate dream). In the ensuing intimacy, he is in too deep to pass judgement but also too mindful to surrender to temptation. Without this Christo-Zen detachment-within-closeness, the result could be like the utterly degenerate MAN BITES DOG and Quentin Tarantino’s demented movies following RESERVOIR DOGS, his best film and the only one with any sign of moral health, perversely ironic as it may be.
In contrast, if the subject is positive, inspiring, and 'healthy', the artist needs to look beyond the ‘ennobling’ elements and dig deeper for the dirt of life. Jan Troell’s EMIGRANTS and NEW LAND are about good, simple, hardworking folks, but they offer much more, the very stuff of art. We get the fullness of life with failings and follies as well as strength and sacrifice. We see the characters in both their noble and petty moments. From the prosaic growth of details there gradually emerges something like poetry of patience, like syrup slowly flowing out of maple trees. There are no pat truths or easy comforts. As such, it isn’t trite and familiar like PLACES IN THE HEART, a decent enough movie that doesn't show us anything more than what we’ve come to expect from Oscar-hungry American Cinema.
It's oft been said that Nazi Germany was a low-point of Western Civilization in the 20th century(or maybe of all time). According to Ian Buruma, communists made better art/culture because the underlying humanism of their ideology accepted man-as-man. In contrast, the myth-driven ideology of Nazism couldn't tolerate the small and intimate, the stuff that makes life and art rich and interesting. Also, master-race ideology is less inspiring for artists than the dream of the brotherhood of man. But in fact, most German movies during the Nazi period weren't all that much different from Hollywood kitsch, and one of Hitler’s favorite German movie was rather humanist in tone. Also, Soviets remained in power for 70 yrs whereas Nazism lasted only 12 yrs, with the last six years devoted mainly to war. If Nazism had lasted 70 yrs, it may have produced more interesting artists.
Still, it's worth pondering why the less repressive Nazi Germany was culturally less productive than the Stalinist Soviet Union that produced its share of great films and literature(and allowed Shostakovich and Prokofiev to compose their masterpieces). More than the policy of repression, the bigger problem was probably self-exile by talented people who simply weren't as inspired by Nazism as by Marxism. (To be sure, Nazi Germany was far more likely than the Soviet Union to allow people to just pick up and leave, thereby bleeding more of its talented individuals.) For starters, as murderous as Stalin's system was, Marxism was about the embrace of mankind as fellow brethren whereas the ideology of Nazism was about racial arrogance. Even the British who were steeped in racial-supremacist sentiments were offended by the Nazis who made their views so brazen and blatant. Brits found it coarse and in bad form.
As for artists, actors, and writers, they tend to be vain and are anxious to be seen with the 'right kind of people'. Given the low reputation of the radical right in many cultural circles, even those who weren’t inclined toward leftism preferred not to be associated with Nazis or Fascists. It’s also worth noting that, while most artists, actors, and writers are a bunch of narcissistic jerks and stupid pigs, they love the cachet of ‘leftism’ to impress the public that they’re about 'justice' than Just Me.
Artists and entertainers are very nervous about whom they associate with. Today, we see this phenomenon with people in Western arts & entertainment steering clear of Putin’s Russia(and Donald Trump). Though current Russia is hardly tyrannical or crazy — Jewish-run US is now closer to Nazi madness — , it was given bad repute by Jews who dominate arts & entertainment, and so, all those who seek to be on good terms in the culture sphere would rather be caught dead than be regarded as chummy with Russians, at least those who aren’t Jewish or globo-homo. Nazis and Fascists quietly agonized over this deficiency in the arts & culture and what they could to court artists and entertainers but had little more success than the GOP in attracting stars and celebrities. Same could be said of Franco's Spain that actually went out of its way to court artistic talent, such as that of Picasso. But most artists remained on the Left, not because they wanted to live under communism but because leftism made them feel better as an ideology of the brotherhood of man whereas radical rightism of Nazism struck them as too contemptible of much of humanity. Themes do matter. Just like universalist Christianity and Islam spread far and wide whereas Judaism was appealing only to Jews, the universalism of leftism naturally won more converts and enthusiasts than the narrow racial ideology of the Nazis. In a similar way, it is precisely because Zionism has limited appeal around the world that Jews have justified the Wars for Israel on themes such as ‘War on Terror’ or ‘spreading democracy’. It is why they’ve tried to use Globo-Homo as neo-universalist or mino-universalist(universalism of minority privilege) proxy to captivate and control the entire world. The fact that the degeneracy of globo-homoctopus has extended its tentacles so far and wide is proof that something about humanity is made of total shit.
Another reason for communism’s advantage over Nazism in the world of arts & letters had to do with its intellectual pedigree. As tyrannical and capricious as Stalin could be, communism was bigger than any single leader. It was underpinned by elaborate intellectual theory that supposedly unified all of material science, philosophy, ethics, and neo-spiritual longing. Marx, not Muhammad, was the last great prophet in the eyes of communists. As Marx was regarded as a great thinker, no communist leader, however powerful, could be bigger than Marxism and communism. Communist leaders could only be servants of history. This accounts as to why Stalin, despite his cult of personality and iron rule, stuck with the rather modest title of ‘secretary general’ and professed to be a humble servant of Marx & Engels(and Lenin).
In contrast, most people understood Fascism and Nazism as nothing if not for the cult of personality. Fascism was about Mussolini cult, and Nazism was about Hitler cult, with its tome being Hitler’s autobiography MEIN KAMPF. Now, some may disagree and contend that Fascism and Nazism were not without big ideas with deep roots in Western Civilization, but because neither Fascism nor Nazism came up with a unified theory of everything(as Marxism did), most people came to regard them as cults of charisma. For the intellectual-minded and sophisticates, it seemed childish and simple-minded, a blindman’s game of 'follow the leader'. Another reason why communism appealed more to intellectuals and writers in the West was they faced the real danger of living under Fascism/Nazism but felt no such imminent fear of communist tyranny. So, communism could remain an idealized abstraction than a looming threat. Indeed, even Eastern European nations would have faced greater threat of fascist than communist rule but for the fact that Hitler invaded Russia and lost the war. Of course, Eastern Europeans who lived under the Iron Curtain after World War II came to see the true side of radical leftism and developed immunity to its temptations, something Western Europe failed to realize as no nation there turned communist.
Now, it's possible that a great right-wing intellectual movement could have risen in the West. Despite the leftist advantage, the right was not with its big guns in arts & letters in the early part of the 20th century. Besides, 19th century Romanticism had been as rightist as leftist. Also, the horrors of the Soviet experiment made many thinkers in the West recoil in horror, much like the reaction against the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars. Indeed, both Fascism and Nazism were fueled by these intellectual and cultural ferments on the Right. And, prior to WWII and revelations about the Holocaust, there was no great taboo with which to silence the Right. If anything, even Winston Churchill named the Jew as a crucial component in the Bolshevik Revolution. And plenty of politicians in Europe had more to gain than lose by baiting the Jew.
In a way, the worst thing for the Intellectual Right was the triumph of Italian Fascism, Franco's win in Spain, and National Socialism. Victory often makes people lazy and rest on their laurels. The most interesting right-wing ideas emerged prior to radical right’s seizure of power. Also, once the radical right took power, it decided which right-wing ideas were correct or incorrect. Thus, the intellectual right became straitjacketed by its own ideological victory. Same happened where communists came to power. Almost all the best Marxist thinkers did their most important work in capitalist democracies. Where communism came to power, one bunch of radical leftists soon purged their rivals(much like Catholics used to attack Protestants and vice versa), and the result was the Iron Boot of Stalinism as the new dogma. Revolutions do tend to devour their children all around.
As for Nazi Art, only Leni Riefenstahl's two monumental propaganda-documentaries, Albert Speer's architecture, and a handful of paintings & sculptures have lasting value(though most haven't survived the war and its aftermath). The state cannot decree or dictate creativity. The state can patronize real talent — like the Soviet Union with Eisenstein, Pudovkin, Shostakovich, and Tarkovsky — , but it cannot turn non-artists into artists, no more than the Chinese government can turn Chinese basketball players into Gold medalists in the Olympics. Most artists favored by the Nazis were second-raters or third-raters, and no amount of state support could turn them into great artists. Granted, second-raters, through experience and practice, can become pretty decent. Ron Howard and Clint Eastwood became pretty good directors over time. But as the Nazis sought greatness in art, they weren't going to achieve much with the kind of human material that were willing to do the Party’s bidding. Nazi artistry relied too much on grand themes than personal inspiration. So, artists were commissioned to create work extolling noble themes, but individuality of talent simply wasn't there to bring it to life. Most self-respecting artists didn’t want to make art according to program, and so, the Nazi Party ended up hiring a bunch of hacks to produce state propaganda masquerading as timeless art.
There's been much talk of how the Weimar period, despite or because of the crisis and turbulence, was a time of great cultural ferment. And there is truth in this inasmuch as it was a time of new freedoms and possibilities. There was a dizzying spirit of novelty and experimentation in the air. Also, defeat in WWI led to intensive soul-searching in some quarters — think of the great anti-war novels like ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT, later banned by the Nazis — and Faustian flirtations with nihilism that, despite the dangers, opened up new venues of thought and behavior. Even the German Right was most interesting in this period because it had to do a lot of soul-searching and had unprecedented freedoms to do so. Times of crisis can drive people over the cliff with madness but also bring them to new revelations and insights. Crisis moments turn everything into a question and compel people to re-evaluate everything. Nothing could be taken for granted, and in a way, the Nietzschean moment had finally arrived.
Weimar period was also interesting for its intense balance of power between the left and the right. While Jews and Social-Democrats wielded great power in government and media, many universities were right-dominated. So was the court system that let the Nazis off the hook time and time again, much like how Antifa is slapped on the wrist by the current system. Also, there were many powerful conservative German oligarchs who bankrolled men like Hitler as a bulwark against the communists. So, Weimar Germany wasn't all about left over right or right over left. Both sides had their key advantages. Likewise, the US was especially interesting from 1950s to 1980s because of the balance of powers among the right and left, among Jews, Wasps, Catholics, the Christian Right, and etc. However, just like the Nazi seizure of power broke the balance in Germany, the Jewish-Zionist seizure of power in the US(finalized in the 1990s) led to what is essentially a post-democratic America where all political elites are little more than tools of the Jewish globo-homo overlords. And in the current US, not only the media and the state but the courts, academia, and just about everything that matters are controlled by Jews and overseen by their goonish cuck-collaborators. There’s one difference however: If the Nazi revolution happened out in the open, the Jewish-Zionist takeover has been invisible, executed behind the veil of the 'democratic process'. As such, most Americans still think they’re living in a liberal democracy when they are the colonized subjects of the Empire of Judea.
Though Weimar Germany was artistically and culturally a fertile period, one that produced lots of flowers and trees as well as weeds and fungi, it had already run out of steam by the time Nazis came to power. But then, nothing lasts forever. It's like the British Invasion and the French New Wave had their moments of glory but soon faded. People say Rock is dead, and Western Culture has been exhausted to the point where no one cares about anything anymore. Notre Dame burns down, but what do we get from experts? Insipid proposals about turning the Cathedral into a greenhouse or maybe a disco. And in pop culture, people say the music sounds the same year in and year out, and Hollywood keeps recycling shopworn formulas whose only appeal is Better Special Effects. So, maybe the Nazis had a point. While democracies can guarantee more freedom for the creative pursuits, an excess of creative fuel can burn out fast, resulting in a jaded culture whereby increased dosages of jolts and thrills are required to elicit any reaction. Culture often acts like a drug. Like a junkie develops tolerance and needs heavier amounts to get the same high, Western Culture has reached ridiculous levels of tolerance whereby excess has become the New Normal because people can’t feel anything without overdosing on thrills and sex. Chris Hedges calls this the Empire of Illusion.
It’s as if most people have become comfortably numb with too muchness and inured to ever-shifting distractions of violent video games, porny pop songs, and movies that are more about explosions than expressions. Japan had a great run in cinema and literature in the aftermath of WWII, what with all the soul-searching by the generation that had undergone so many crises; but when the dust finally settled and Japan became a stable & affluent nation, the culture degenerated into infantile TV shows, trashy literature, comic books, pornography, and video games. Japanese became at once more mechanical & animal and less human & soulful. The lesson here is that a society doesn’t need ‘fascist’ or communist tyranny to run into a cultural deadend. This happened in so-called liberal-democratic Japan. Incidentally, it’s quite a challenge to think of any significant cultural product from France or UK in the last 20 yrs, something that was truly seminal and made a real difference. Some might say HARRY POTTER, but if that's the best the UK could do, what a joke. As for the world of Fine Arts, vapid junk by the likes of Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst is making even the worst of Nazi and Commie Art seem not-so-bad by comparison. Maybe there was something to the culture of eternal truth and meaning sought by the National Socialists. That said, they weren't going to find it under the leadership of Hitler whose blindspots, moral and historical, were legion.
