a question abt BRECHT (tracer hand to thread among others)

'The dramatic theater's spectator says: Yes, I have felt like that too-- Just like me--It's only natural-- It'll never change--The sufferings of this man appall me, because they are inescapable--That's great art; it all seems the most obvious thing in the world--I weep when they weep, I laugh when they laugh.

The epic theater's spectator says: I'd never have thought it -- That's not the way -- That's extraordinary, hardly believable -- It's got to stop -- The sufferings of this man appall me, because they are unnecessary -- That's great art; nothing obvious in it -- I laugh when they weep, I weep when they laugh.'

A gneral reason why it feels unfair: we are not mistresses of our fates; we are baked beans in the guts of the living.

But more specifically: one thing that BB was (I do *not speak of JLG here) was "politically canny". And one aspect of that, I think, was that he knew that the ultimate fate of eg. his work would not be determined by the way he wrote it, how many verses he put in, etc -- but by World History or smaller and more local variants thereof.

The despised TE taught me some of this, ten and a half years ago. In a way I still think he was right; unsurprisingly no doubt.

Possibly it is necessary to step back and see what we, or you, or I *can* get out of poor BB, rather than enumerating all the things that we think we cannot.

I don't believe this distinction still operates though. Epic-theatregoers are (70 years after the arrival of the genre in this form) surely confirmed in their expectations, not confounded: caused to feel smug about things they already always knew, not question or puzzle or think for themselves?

gneral = general

*not = *not*

Breaked = Brecht

Tweaked = Twecht

Speaked = Speight

Gannet = Garnett

Baths = Barthes

Godot = Godard

Verfremdungs = A

S = Z

pf i don't think BB is invalidated necessarily: I do think the specifics of technique may have lost their force (this is probbly one of the things jlg wz wrestling with)

(eagleton on the other hand can't be rehabilitated that easily)

Pinefox demonstrating canny 'alienation effect' posting there!

(ie in the thing on charles II on tv this minute one of CII's minister's is played by someone who was in THE OFFICE last year: this is a dimension of the "epic" aspedt which has become very tangly indeed)

There could be an argument that 'Kill Bill' uses a sort of Epic, and that Epic techniques overlap with postmodern tropes, and therefore fill The Simpsons etc. What these lack, of course, is Brecht's political commitment.

it's not so much "it depends how it's done" as "it depends how the audience use it": it's become much more chick-egg i suspect

(this is one of my long-standing objections to eagleton maybe: that i think his armatures of clarification constitute the return of the thing which he claims to be working to dispel)

(the dynamics of revolutionary pedagogy have always been a conundrum of course)

what would be the acting styles which reminded us to think of these forces also?

also: the sheer density of layers of cultural production in the us entertainment industry (even within a relatively monolithic and directly political org like murdoch's) makes the space for potential variety of contradictory effect greater... the stasi as an org was pretty much committed to shutting down everything across the board

(though i think there are stories of burbage having to be pissy and moody all day when he had to do the Dane or whatever.)

'"The intellectual isolation here is enormous," Brecht compained. "Compared to Hollywood, Svendborg was a world center." His ideas, such as "the production, distribution and enjoyment of bread," were not taken seriously by movie moguls. In 1947 Brecht was accused of un-American activities...

Am I the only one who would love it if Tarantino's next movie were about the production, distribution and enjoyment of bread? (Without anyone's face getting blown off in the process.)

i think it's quite learned and precise when it's distinguishing between different currents of thought in a very complex soup: it's just so hung up on trying to be "in with the cool guys" the whole time - like brecht, godard REALLY REALLY needs ppl writing abt him who don't just want to hold his coat

uncritical and passive kowtowing to artistic authority isn't anti-authoritarian, especially when the artist in question has entered mainstream history (which admittedly godard hasn't quite): it's either a betrayal of the anti-authoritarian dimension of the artist in question (they'd prefer you to fight them) or (more usually) a realisation of their pro-authoritarian aspect (they'd prefer you to shut up unless yr saying YASSUH!)

they want the audience to ask questions BUT ONLY THE QUESTIONS ON THE LIST PROVIDED PLEASE! (ok that's unfair except that sometimes it isn't)

Compare and contrast Brecht's experience in Hollywood with Malcom McLaren's, as sketched here:

'McLaren signed with CBS as a kind of ideas developer, and his salary was rumoured to be more than half a million dollars a year. CBS thought he had an original mind, which was hard to find in LA in those days.'

McLaren's ideas were films like 'Fashion Beast' and 'Nazi Surfers'. None of them got made.

(oddly enuff the hollywood that he had a hard time in wz the same hollywood which godard et al had such a lot of time for: eg is he really so far from directors like sam fuller?)

'Time for' and 'time in' are very different things. One's about consumption (wide latitude of interpretation), the other about production (do it our way or we get another director!)

For example, I have a lot of time for French variete, but my time in Paris led to no completed projects for french labels (though we talked).

"what you can get away with" evolves into something very strong and evocative bcz it's outside the politically sensitive and policed zone of the overt story

also cf manny farber on certain below-the-line actors in hollywood movies: neither brechtian NOR psychological, just weird buzzy excrescences of their own specific material

(he didn't make it in east germany either: it would have exactly as radical a threat to the system there of course, had it been made)

Never seen a Brecht play (or engaged with him besides the poetry) but I think where I've seen non hero deployed best was in Potemkin? Its been a few years since I watched it but it felt like a process (revolution) was being detailed where things happen to individuals but also groups.

yes. and the films of Tati, while they have a protagonist, are concerned with groups and crowds. and they reject the kind of POV film grammar that puts you “in his shoes”

I saw Mother Courage once (w/ Glenda Jackson), which was great and had a fair few laughs in it too. Oh and Life of Galileo (w/ Simon Russell Beale). I don't like the theatre much though.

While Brecht often reduced 'feeling' and 'rational logic' to binary opposites in his theoretical writings (such as his notes on "The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny"), this is in part due to him being a canny self-publicist who understood the PR benefits of oversimplification.

In practice, his plays from the 1930s and 1940s toy with the audience's emotions like a concertina, drawing you into empathising with a protagonist from time to time only to distance you again at the end of a scene. Works such as 'The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui', for example, are eminently watchable with a lot of comic potential. I saw Robin Askwith in the lead role of Ui at Warwick University back in the day, and his casting in the role (encouraged by Leonard Rossiter, no less!) cleverly made use of Askwith's charisma to which the audience are occasionally invited to succumb before snapping out of the spell.

If Brecht's theatre has now fallen out of favour - although there was a fairly long critical legacy in the works of Heiner Müller, Volker Braun etc. -, it's in part due to Brechtian theory being underpinned by a belief in the inherent 'Veränderbarkeit' ('changeability') of society, and that prioritising critical reflection over 'Einfühlung' as an audience reaction could help to bring this about. Writing against the backdrop of exile and National Socialism, Brecht was more often than not trying to convince himself as much as his audience that social change was inevitable, and his private writings were invariably much more pessimistic about this.

Rainer Werner are you there?

xp great post

Agreed. Longtime lurker and theatre person here. Brecht’s playwriting has a lot in common with Shakespeare, another manipulator of emotional identification and distance, and he admits as much in his more honest moments. There’s a big difference between Brecht as an artist and Brecht as a theoretician, as well as a difference between what he actually wrote and what’s been boiled down as “Brechtian” theory. There are also many camps of orthodox and heterodox Brechtians active, especially in German theater, where his influence is still massive.

Part of what makes Mother Courage powerful is that the audience does identify with her emotionally, while at the same time being shown how her choice to pursue profit during wartime above all things is literally monstrous, it leads directly to the deaths of her three children. She’s like a proletarian, foul-mouthed, singing King Lear, who similarly provokes sympathy and revulsion from audiences.

On that note, don't pass up The Threepenny Novel, which is also an account of ruthless and uselessly destructive stockholder capitalism in wartime. I found it as effective as any of the plays, tbh.

The Brecht songbook is also slept on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-d2-EBkfBBU

lots of good posts itt, thanks all

I think where I've seen non hero deployed best was in Potemkin? Its been a few years since I watched it but it felt like a process (revolution) was being detailed where things happen to individuals but also groups.

One example I forgot to mention is Rene Clement's Battle Of The Rails, filmed a few years after occupation, about the railway's involvement in the resistance. Shot mostly with non-actors who were there, I don't think you even catch anyone's name, it is entirely about the Railways as a collective.

Thing is though both with that and Potemkin words like "distance" and "alienation" feel wildly out of place - these are highly emotionally charged works that carry you along with them and could not I think be accused of making viewers think too much...you are fully invested in the protagonist, it's just the protagonist is the Working Class and The French Resistance, respectively.

Eisenstein is pre-Brechtian or at the very least an early contemporary, and his theory aiui is based more on the affective emotional power of montage, that quick cuts could produce a pseudo-Pavlovian response in audiences. But he studied theater under Mayakovsky and there’s a common lineage between Brecht, Mayakovsky, Eisenstein, Tretiakov and Russian formalism. Brecht is similarly attracted to the fragment but he deploys it in a totally different way and for a totally different purpose than Eisenstein.

That difference is also why Eisensteinian film grammar was so easily appropriated by Hollywood - most obviously in the Untouchables by De Palma - whereas Brechtian gestures remain mostly arthouse or European.

really good revive