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

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good question: if there is, the ramifications cut both ways of course

― mark s (mark s), Sunday, 16 November 2003 22:53 (twenty-two years ago)

brecht was making way bigger claims for himself - that's a by-product of "political commitment" i guess - so he falls a lot further possibly?

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

― mark s (mark s), Sunday, 16 November 2003 23:00 (twenty-two years ago)

wasnt mime popularized by french radicals who wished to communicate w/o language ?(ie mime might not be a joke)

― anthony easton (anthony), Sunday, 16 November 2003 23:03 (twenty-two years ago)

act out the following using no words:
"i'm trying to communicate w/o language! why don't you take me seriously?"

― mark s (mark s), Sunday, 16 November 2003 23:06 (twenty-two years ago)

But whatever happened at the end, Brecht was anti-fascist for most of his career, and had to slip and dodge to get away from Nazis here, McCarthyites there. He certainly protested when the East German regime crushed uprisings (here on my very street, the Stalinallee, in 1953, there was one which prompted a wryly devastating Brecht poem). He leaves a technique and an oeuvre that is strongly anti-authoritarian and, until socialism really does become an orthodoxy somewhere, utopian.

― Momus (Momus), Sunday, 16 November 2003 23:12 (twenty-two years ago)

It is odd that this thread has popped up after last night seeing a performance (or three) of Brecht's "The Exception And The Rule" -- three versions of it by three different experiemental theatre directors. I don't necessarily have anything to add on the topic except this oddness.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Sunday, 16 November 2003 23:19 (twenty-two years ago)

That's his most unbendingly didactic, Maoist piece. I'd like to have seen what those directors did with it.

― Momus (Momus), Sunday, 16 November 2003 23:21 (twenty-two years ago)

Oh wait, I'm thinking of 'The Measures Taken'.

― Momus (Momus), Sunday, 16 November 2003 23:22 (twenty-two years ago)

did brecht consider the type of acting required for his plays a method (or counter-Method) applicable to any play ever, or just to his stuff (does this matter?)? that seems like the prob with your Annoying Book, mark, whoever wrote it seems to be equating all outside-in or gestural or representational styles of acting with him. It's the systematized psychology of the Method which is the wierd anomaly in theater's history, i think. but now that's just 'acting' and anything else is 'brechtian'

(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.)

― typo acapulco (gcannon), Sunday, 16 November 2003 23:22 (twenty-two years ago)

From a biog, Brecht on Hollywood:

'"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.)

― Momus (Momus), Sunday, 16 November 2003 23:30 (twenty-two years ago)

I believe the other project he tried to sell, unsuccessfully, to Hollywood was a film of his novel 'The Business Dealings of Mr Julius Caesar'. Just think, they could have cast Sid Caesar as Caesar!

― Momus (Momus), Sunday, 16 November 2003 23:37 (twenty-two years ago)

There's also a mention here of a film project called 'Mysteries of a Hairdressing Salon', which sounds fantastic.

― Momus (Momus), Sunday, 16 November 2003 23:44 (twenty-two years ago)

no typo, the book is irritating mainly in its spinelessness towards the idea of the Artist-as-Rebel: it sucks up to various icons of the left until they disagree w.one another, then waits until some vague mainstream pulse of popular opinion arrives to help choose between them

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)

― mark s (mark s), Monday, 17 November 2003 00:23 (twenty-two years ago)

This x posts with you, Mark, but it might be relevant, because it's about how people who 'think different' are treated if they really do.

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.

― Momus (Momus), Monday, 17 November 2003 00:31 (twenty-two years ago)

http://www.troma.com/movies2/surfnazismustdie/images/cover.gif

― mark s (mark s), Monday, 17 November 2003 00:34 (twenty-two years ago)

brecht cd have worked with troma!!

― mark s (mark s), Monday, 17 November 2003 00:34 (twenty-two years ago)

i think ppl get their faces blown off possibly tho

― mark s (mark s), Monday, 17 November 2003 00:35 (twenty-two years ago)

see i think the 80s straight-to-video hinterland wd have allowed him a lot of what he needed

(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?)

― mark s (mark s), Monday, 17 November 2003 00:41 (twenty-two years ago)

godard et al had such a lot of time for

'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).

― Momus (Momus), Monday, 17 November 2003 00:46 (twenty-two years ago)

But I do think even Troma would baulk at 'The Production, Distribution and Enjoyment of Bread', which makes Brecht considerably more radical than McLaren -- a much bigger threat to the system. I mean, heavy metal surf nazis, that's just the system's own silly fantasy turned up a couple of notches. But 'Bread' -- that's real. It might get people thinking about... bread! Which could lead to them thinking about hospitals, pensions, insurance, minimum wages and all sorts of terrifically dangerous things.

― Momus (Momus), Monday, 17 November 2003 00:54 (twenty-two years ago)

yes ok, but what i mean is: cahiers specifically admired the films that that system (the "do it our way" system) produced, bcz i guess "do it our way" actually allowed a lot of latitude for CINEMATIC modes of expression to develop in all the aspects of movies which the producers didn't (yet) keep their thumb on (that's what i meant above by "the sheer density of layers of cultural production" btw): ie nicholas ray's auteurship as it manifests not in SCRIPTS (above-the-line story-and-moral) but in MISE-EN-SCENE etc (below-the-line film-ness)

"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

― mark s (mark s), Monday, 17 November 2003 01:00 (twenty-two years ago)

(they admired SOME of the films that system produced)

― mark s (mark s), Monday, 17 November 2003 01:01 (twenty-two years ago)

I group that stuff in 'reception theory': Cahiers critics-turned-directors were actually creating a lot of the richness they reported finding in Howard Hawks et al.

― Momus (Momus), Monday, 17 November 2003 01:07 (twenty-two years ago)

being more radical than mclaren = MAKING the bread film, not failing to make it

(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)

― mark s (mark s), Monday, 17 November 2003 01:10 (twenty-two years ago)

In fact, the more I think about it, the more I wonder if 'The Production, Distribution and Enjoyment of Bread' was a brilliant joke on Brecht's part, on a par with Mel Brooks' sure-fire loser 'Springtime For Hitler'. Except that there are ways (and Brooks imagines them) for 'Springtime' to get made and become a hit, whereas there just aren't any imagineable for 'The Production, Distribution and Enjoyment of Bread', unless you paraglide into a parallel universe of utter fabulousness, where cinemas are populated by Mr Spock-like Marxians puffing cigars.

― Momus (Momus), Monday, 17 November 2003 01:13 (twenty-two years ago)

And what I love about that biog is the way you get Brecht 'innocently' proposing the one thing the capitalist entertainment system could never, ever countenance, even though it seems like the most sensible and innocuous thing in the world, and then in the next sentence you get him called up before the UnAmerican Activities Committee, as if 'the bread word' itself had hit their panic buttons.

― Momus (Momus), Monday, 17 November 2003 01:18 (twenty-two years ago)

"I group that stuff in 'reception theory': Cahiers critics-turned-directors were actually creating a lot of the richness they reported finding in Howard Hawks et al."

Hollywood one, Brecht nil, in that case, as regards "anti-authoritarian" art. Hawks allows his audiences to interact imaginatively, FREE from having to identify with the demands of the story - Brecht requires you fit in with his (and Stalin's) programme of asking certain questions but not others.

― mark s (mark s), Monday, 17 November 2003 01:23 (twenty-two years ago)

Agreed... that goes back to the 'iconoclasts become icons' paradox. It applies to Cage or anyone. But it doesn't mean that 4'33'' is no more liberating or subversive than Liberace.

(This was written before I got to your post):

The paradox is that Brecht's motto, 'truth is concrete', is still so shocking when you apply it. It still cuts away all the theory, all the swords and sorcery and just says, bluntly, 'food is the first thing, morals follow on / So first make sure that those who now are starving / Get proper helpings when we all start carving'. ('What Keeps Mankind Alive?')

My favourite anecdote about Brecht is that he visited the ailing Schoenberg in Hollywood. They talked for an hour or so, but found little in common. But one thing Schoenberg said appealed to Brecht. He described how he'd observed how donkeys climb hills in zigzags rather than by trying to walk straight up.

― Momus (Momus), Monday, 17 November 2003 01:27 (twenty-two years ago)

"a parallel universe of utter fabulousness, where cinemas are populated by Mr Spock-like Marxians puffing cigars" = ie yr acknowledging that the reason it didn't get made isn't because it wd have made audiences think, but because audiences wouldn't have gone to see it. The only threat it wd have posed the financiers = they would assume it was boring and would bomb

I agree it was almost certainly a gag suggestion, to not get made to prove a point: but the point it proves isn't a very amazing or political one - if you present something deliberately boringly, then ppl may be fooled into thinking the result will be boring.

― mark s (mark s), Monday, 17 November 2003 01:30 (twenty-two years ago)

But it's not boring! It's vital and fascinating, and I've never seen it on a screen!

Schoolboy Brecht, set an essay theme on 'What draws us to the mountains?' wrote 'funicular railways'. Would you prefer him to say (a la Leni Riefenstahl) 'Man's eternal quest to conquer the lofty peaks?'

― Momus (Momus), Monday, 17 November 2003 01:33 (twenty-two years ago)

(Or more accurately, as Leni starred as the mountaineer in her own film, 'Woman's eternal quest...')

― Momus (Momus), Monday, 17 November 2003 01:34 (twenty-two years ago)

"truth is concrete" is good - i like that sour, anti-idealistic side to him - but the concrete nature of food is much easier to grasp than the concrete nature of relationships... and that's the area where i think the retreat from identification and psychology etc gets screwed up a bit

― mark s (mark s), Monday, 17 November 2003 01:38 (twenty-two years ago)

I think he's a protestant who disguised himself as a Marxist. Augsburg boasts two famous sons; Brecht and Luther.

― Momus (Momus), Monday, 17 November 2003 01:40 (twenty-two years ago)

'Galileo' bashes the Catholic church with the simple but inadmissible truth that the earth goes round the sun. Brecht has Galileo demonstrate it with a bucket of water.

― Momus (Momus), Monday, 17 November 2003 01:42 (twenty-two years ago)

gah i've just noticed it's the middle of the night!! brecht is not boring anyway - not that i thought he was

― mark s (mark s), Monday, 17 November 2003 01:46 (twenty-two years ago)

gah i've just noticed it's the middle of the night

Further proof that Galileo was right!

― Momus (Momus), Monday, 17 November 2003 01:50 (twenty-two years ago)

w/r/t the orig. question coz i don't have time to read the whole thread right now -- there's a great scene in Showboat which is a k-brill gloss on old-style vs. modern acting.

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Monday, 17 November 2003 03:20 (twenty-two years ago)

in dancer in the dark, the directing seems epic but bjork's acting seems dramatic, except maybe it works out anyway because she's not someone the average person could easily identify with.

in vivre sa vie, i remember anna karina's (natural?) modesty when she was being interviewed in a cafe and in and around her rooms when she was working, but now that i think about it, maybe it had to do with where the camera was pointing: the sides of tables and chairs and mirrors in wardrobes and hallways and only obliquely on her (at those times, not at other times when she was not a prostitute: i just remembered her at her other job in a record store).

― youn, Monday, 17 November 2003 06:50 (twenty-two years ago)

"I can't imagine why you want to write a play about the railways. It's an incredibly boring subject." So says a Treasury mandarin in David Hare's The Permanent Way, which deals with railway privatisation. But not only is the subject fascinating, it opens up endless lines of enquiry about the state of Britain - and kept a packed house at the Theatre Royal, York manifestly rapt.'

The Guardian

But did the actors use their whole bodies as they impersonated civil servants and executives? Michael Billington doesn't tell us.

― Momus (Momus), Monday, 17 November 2003 07:39 (twenty-two years ago)

Also mark I think you are being somewhat hard on brecht in that cutting away ppl-stuff to present ideas more starkly DOES present them to the audience for their own consumption -- i.e. I don't see what's particularly more "controlling" about his method (vis a vis the audience at least)?

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Monday, 17 November 2003 07:40 (twenty-two years ago)

auteurism = truffaut's baby anyway, more than godard's

caheirs wasn't known for its leftist sympathies; but i'm sure they liked 'hangmen also die' just the same. which irritating book is it you're reading? i nearly died reading colin maccabe's godard: sound: images: politics, but it was worth it in the end.

― enrique (Enrique), Monday, 17 November 2003 09:14 (twenty-two years ago)

no not that one, mccabe's biog of godard that came out two yrs ago

cahiers were v.anti the pcf line on aesthetics it's true: some of them were v.left themselves tho (kast for example, and rivette later on) (and bazin's entire pedagogic project was intrinsically v.leftwing i'd say)

sterl i wz bending the stick!! i think the interraction between artist and audience is much more complicated than that "if/then" post suggests - i don't like the audience part of the dealy being swept dismissively up into "reception theory"

haha i wd rather die than see a play by david hare - most boring playwrite evah!! - but i quite like his theoretical writing, he did a great piece on noel coward and subversion!

― mark s (mark s), Monday, 17 November 2003 09:41 (twenty-two years ago)

two years ago for maccabe? i thought it was nu? bllomsbury? anyhoo -- i suppose cahiers was sort of split; rohmer and chabrol weren't terribly left-wing; at least not compared with the positif lot or ppl like marker, resnais, varda. mind you chabrol calls 'la ceremonie' the 'last marxist film'.

― enrique (Enrique), Monday, 17 November 2003 09:46 (twenty-two years ago)

marker and resnais are cahiers-by-adoption!

oh yeah, it came out just this year! the person who lent it me has removed the dust jacket (why?) (i'm v.careful w.books!) so it looks older

― mark s (mark s), Monday, 17 November 2003 09:51 (twenty-two years ago)

in fact, i haven't seen a copy yet. am salivating. but -- have you ever seen a review of an actual brecht perf from like 1931? i'd like to know if anyone had the intended experience. i think that the 'brechtianism' of fassbinder is really an alibi for left-wing bougies to enjoy melodrama -- i fee no 'distance' watching 'fear eats the soul'; it's very moving. i'm comfortable with that.

― enrique (Enrique), Monday, 17 November 2003 09:58 (twenty-two years ago)

"brechtianism" is the old "ironic appreciation"!!

i don't really know much abt brecht, that's why i started the thread - i wz confused at the various difft ways 'brechtian' wz being thrown about, which didn't add up

haha, maccabe quotes someone as saying that godard only ever reads the contents page of any book, and maybe page one: same as RICHARD JOBSON then!!

― mark s (mark s), Monday, 17 November 2003 10:06 (twenty-two years ago)

oh man i so want to contribute to this in a meaningful sensible way, we have so few threads about theatre. however, it is early in the morning and all i can think is "BUT THEATRE IS ALL DICK!!!!"

brecht is as much a loser as williams/miller/stringberg, because, as mark rightly points out above, it's all about LOOK, THIS IS WHAT WE WANT YOU TO FEEL, whether this is by directly saying, "Look, man is sad, feel sad too" or "look i am a man. according to the script i am sad now, perhaps you'd like to think about feeling sad." it's all so controlling. the true joy of theatre (oh-oh, here he goes) is watching OTHER HUMANS DOING STUFF in front of you, hey! they could come and touch you and everything! and the reliance on character/plot/"naturalism" is so demeaning to an audience. this is why pantomimes are pretty much the only living theatrical form left for me...

(apols for gibberish, i hope it makes at least a little sense)

― CarsmileSteve (BA Performance Art) (CarsmileSteve), Monday, 17 November 2003 10:14 (twenty-two years ago)

can we call this "stringberg theory"?

― mark s (mark s), Monday, 17 November 2003 10:17 (twenty-two years ago)

http://www.forced.co.uk/archive/portrait.html

ooh, anyone fancy a fortnight in frankfurt? this is what i call performance, forced ents kick serious theatre ass.

― CarsmileSteve (CarsmileSteve), Monday, 17 November 2003 10:29 (twenty-two years ago)

i went to The Bourgeois Theatre last week to see a play by von Horvath, a contemporary of Brecht in late twenties/early thirties berlin. 'tales from the vienna woods' (with an actor from 'spooks'). anyway, i didn't think it much cop, even though it's a pet sujet; but i think it might have been an attempt at brechtian technique -- v simple romance tricked up to allegedly indict the viennese bourgeoisie for proto-nazism. it was an updated version of the play, so in a sense hard to read.

but it was no 'cabaret'.

― enrique (Enrique), Monday, 17 November 2003 10:30 (twenty-two years ago)

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