Fritz Lang's 1931 M is one of the great films of the early
sound era. It tells the story of a hunt for a child-murderer,
originally by the police but eventually by the criminal underworld itself.
When they finally do capture Hans Beckert (played by Peter Lorre), they
manage to wring a confession out of him — a confession which
comprises the last reel of the film — though not perhaps the
confession
they expected:
Squaring the dark-suited, professorial librarian of Paris
with the first-person narrator of Story of the Eye or, for that matter, the
philosopher of Erotism or The Accursed Share is an
instructive affair. The wild imaginings of these writers are hard to find
in the demeanor of the interviewee. It points to a paradox of ecstasy and
reserve in the most radicalized of writers. If one aspires to explore the
farther reaches of imagination, it seems to suggest, one is
well-advised to keep one's nose clean: to avoid offense in appearance
or manner, in order to clear the way for the private imaginings conducted
behind closed doors. But this is not all, for in the world of the casual
week, never mind the casual Friday, this care in appearance and behavior,
this leaning towards formality even in friendships, seems almost
ostentatious. And so it is. However, there is ostentation too in the
self-conscious self-presentation of the apparent democratic
populist, the friend of the working man and the oppressed: one sees it in
Brecht especially, though Brecht, at least, retained some of that cultural
radicalism and ambivalence. The same can't be said for the
blue-jeaned, running-shoed individual of our day, iPod clicking
in his ears and tweets running over his iPhone or Blackberry. Inevitably,
this behavior and costume betray a philistinism of which its subjects are
proud: it is moral and aesthetic authoritarianism clad in a t-shirt,
but authoritarianism nonetheless, partaking gladly of the offerings of the
Culture Industry (whose products include styles of fashion and demeanor),
subsuming a blind self in mad consumption. And thirsting for the
power, influence and money to messianically change the world, always
in his own image, and kill the autonomous individual human being through
ignorance and distance. This is, today, the status quo, especially of
theatre.
The pursuit of tragic experience, which takes us to the outer reaches
of imagination, paradoxically flourishes in this formal milieu, which in
the twenty-first century is subversive all on its own. The ladies and
gentlemen of tragedy, then: even as their behavior, manner and mien seem
to partake of high-bourgeois culture, it is a high-bourgeois
culture of almost a hundred years ago, and so radical in our time. It
denies the desire for power and influence, seeing through its transparency
and smilingly shrugging at its vanity. (Money it wants too — so do
we all — but earned rather than as its due merely for existing.) It
partakes of glamour and style, even in behavior: moderation and a
good-natured personability, a tendency towards self-control and
restraint (an absence from projects which create new forms of
individualized white noise, like virtual social networking within arenas
owned by corporations; besides, we need the time and silence for the work)
rather than an excess of personality; we keep our counsel; an eye towards
how we are seen. And not seen — we are gathered at cocktail parties
on the side. We are comfortable even in our uncomfortable though carefully
chosen clothes, our costumes which hint at the elegant bodies beneath; our
recognition of each other makes us community; our imaginations soar in the
tragic theatres we make. An elite, if self-elected for all that: but
there are enough of us.
