Political life is a Cabaret, old chum

I think the main reason I like Cabaret (1972, Bob Fosse) so much is it's one of the few mainstream films that really seems to "get" fascism. Aside from that, of course, it's a fantastically choreographed film, with some inspired shooting; take, for instance, the scene in Max's blue room, where Max, from our perspective stealing Sally away with consumate ease, and Brian, seething with repressed emotion, are seperated only by an elaborate clock. Or the event of the old man's beating, interspersed with the entertainment being offered inside the Kit Kat Klub. Heavy handed as it may be, it forces us to confront whether enjoying escapism, however satiric, is ever justified in times of such political turmoil. The Nazis don't march into the film, they seep in, scene by scene, and by the time of the wonderful closing shot, we're almost wondering how it happened.

Which leads me back to my original point. In 1935 Walter Benjamin in his seminal essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction wrote: "Fascism leads logically to an aestheticization of political life." Off the top of my head I can think of no better representative scene than that in the beer garden. A young boy, beautiful, with blonde hair and blue eyes, leads a chorus of the uplifting lyrical song "Tomorrow Belongs To Me." The camera slowly allows us to discover his Nazi uniform, immediately distasteful to us with the benefit of hindsight but completely innocent within the context of the other singers. Only Brian, Max and an old man who has seen it all before refrain from partaking.

"NOOOO! Don't tarnish us with politics, too! Please!!"

I can't help but think that old man should be unnecessary today in our culture of immediate information access. But really, all one has to do is take a piece of right-wing literature and to replace "Muslim" with "Jew" and "terrorist" with "banker/communist" and you're well on your way to being back in the late Weimar Republic. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink.

Indeed, the word "terrorist" has undergone an interesting etymological change in recent years (it would be fairly clumsy to say since 9/11). Whereas it once meant, more or less, the process of intimidating a population or government by attacking non-combatants, it has now become almost exclusively a term for guerrilla warfare undertaken by Muslims. I have too often heard the term "Islamists" on television to attribute it to a mere Freudian slip for those who mean "Islamofascists;" it has now become an acceptable synonym in some sections of the media for Middle Eastern terrorists/insurgents. Among (I think it was) Wafa Sultan's claims were that Muslim/Christian violence and Muslim/Buddhist violence are both one-way streets, with the Muslims being the aggressors. This kind of wilful ignorance, that seems to have no knowledge of the Muslims who are beheaded in Indonesia or mutilated by the Lord's Resistance Army or who go missing every year whilst "in custody" in Burma, seems pervasive. I suppose all those Muslims in Srebrenica shot themselves to make the Christians look bad, too.

"Praise Jesus," said Ochola John, after being treated so nicely by the Christians.

Perhaps I am simply attacking easy targets. But it took what would in any other circumstances be called a war crime for many people to stop sympathising purely with Israel in the recent Gaza fighting. Even Gordon Brown called the deployment of white phosphorus on a UN humanitarian aid centre to be "indefensible." In my ongoing quest to be outraged, I am eager to read the response from Fox News. But whatever the swing in opinion, I doubt anything will be done. The aestheticization of politics was once done by uplifting music and patriotic propaganda, now it actively feeds stupidity with slogans and pervades the language like the virus once attempted by William S. Burroughs. According to Benjamin, the response from the left will be to politicise art. Expect my first book to be filled with subtexual vitriol.