Cabaret was (and still is) a form of entertainment that can hardly exist without social criticism. Already in its earlier form, during the Weimar Republic, cabaret addressed real life, what people experienced and thought. It would take the most popular fads, the most popular behaviour, anything people took for granted and subverted it in a way that would encourage to look at it from a new perspective, in an innovative way.
Cabaretists extracted from their audience what most worried and interested them, and offered a subversive reflection of it. It was the common experience, the fact to live in the same world, to share the same language that made this form of entertainment so impacting on the German society of the time. Cabaretists were not just critics of society, they were part of it – if in a more critical way – and so they established a form of trust, that then triggered critical thinking in their audience.
Maybe this is the reason why the shifting elements of society were particularly interesting for cabaretists. Where there is change, there is tension, and where there is tension, critical thinking is particularly called for. Cabaret addressed the shifting sexual mores, the rising of the New Woman, the coming to the fore of the queer culture and of course the political shifting and turning, the aftermath of war and the consequences of the defeat. All sensitive matters that cabaret – at least the more self-conscious forms of it – addressed with a levity that made it hard core more acceptable – and so more relatable – to their audience.
Berlin cabaret was about life, about the experience, the feelings, the thoughts, the fears, the compromises. It was a mirror of real life #Germany #history Share on X
To this extent, cabaret truly is a oral history of a nation. It songs, its skits, his plays, his scripts tell us of what life was, looked and especially felt like in a particular time. It tells us of hope and fears, of likes and hates, of conflicts and compromises.
Cabaret is indeed a mirror of the society who produces it.
RESOURCES
Peter Jelavich, Berlin Cabaret. Harvard University Press, Harvard, 1993
Lisa Appicnanesi, The Cabaret. Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1975/1984
2 Comments
Birgit
I think of Noel Coward coming from this but in a more elegant style. I guess Cabaret was the voice of what the average person was thinking but not saying much like comedians of today.
jazzfeathers
My impression is that cabaret in its most meanignful form (and not all places that we’d call cabaret were ‘this’ kind of cabaret) were very much involved in social and political issues. And so they actually said a lot about their particular historical moment but also more universally about the human condition.