Cabaret and the fetishised infantilisation of women

[Ricecrispiesatsix]

I saw Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club last night and despite it being an impressive show in many ways one thing in particular just did not sit right with me. In Sally Bowles’ incredibly sexualised opening number “don’t tell mama” she is wearing a baby bonnet, puts on a baby voice and sucks her thumb.

The whole show was very on the nose (masturbating to Mein Kampf being another example of that, and “if you could see her” which was a punch in the gut) but the casual paedophilic undertones just really creeped me out. Is it that the show was trying to shock audiences that have become less and less shockable, or is it that there is so much societal acceptance of fetishes now that even that one has been normalised?

Personally I don’t want to live in a society where boundaries have become so eroded that paedophilia and the infantilisation of women is just another fetish, no big deal.

Firstly, my post was not a complaint, merely an observation. Secondly, Dinosours cannot remotely be compared to raunchy gay sexual imagery combined with extensive Nazi imagery and paraphernalia that were a notable feature of both productions.

Well no but, the point was that you should expect to see Nazi stuff in a musical about Nazis. Just like you'd expect to see dinosaurs in Jurassic Park.

Exactly grey. It’s like complaining Les Miserables is too focussed on the French Revolution.

The play is and always has been about inter war debauchery in nightclubs and the rise of nazism. It’s therefore bonkers to buy tickets then complain this is what it’s about!

Ok. I saw it in Denmark recently. At the end the characters walked glassy eyes across stage holding their shoes, put them in a pile at the front, then walked off through another door. The compere came forward. Took off all his clothes and walked start bollock naked to the entry at the back of the stage. The lights went red, and the smoke machine started. The lights went down.

I found that really hard to watch. Anyone else?

Ha, That was me about 20 years,aho watching it on Broadway, hadbt seen the film or read up about ut, slowly twigging as the yellow stars appeared, my pal and I felt rather dim not to have realised that something set in 1940s berkin would have nazi's in it!

We saw it recently and thought it was incredible
Like others have said, inter-war Germany was full of cabaret clubs, debauchery, gay men and so on. I didn't see Sally's baby doll dress as representing anything other than her being young and naive.

When I watched the film I found it so upsetting and disturbing when one of the Jewish characters found that her pet dog had been killed by some Nazis. Just one of many unsettling moments in a movie set in pre Hitler Berlin.

Yes, all of this.

I think it partly attempts to pull in the audience (same as the original Weimar cabaret would have done) with the promise of 'Ooh, sexy, glamorous, progressive, come and look...' and the implied flipside that people who couldn't cope with it were dowdy and inhibited. However, it's all a distraction and smokescreen for several things that were all too unstoppable, sinister, and barely disguised.
There are original songs from the writers of that time that do show the preoccupations and the desperation, really, about issues that did hit the average person. Many are frothy and intended as sexy but one or 2, not, such as sentiments about abortion potentially becoming legalised, and the one that most surprised me being 'Die Muschel von Margate' ('A shell from Margate') which - already as early as 1928 - skewers the oil conflicts and them being stepping stones towards war, as well as environmental damage.