AS I AM MAN, AS I AM WOMAN
Katie Couric had her first go on the CBS evening news tonight. There was a lot of commotion about it. Something to the effect of, “One small step for woman ...” There have been a number of allusions to the residual sexism in society, all of which made me want to take a few sleeping pills and eat lead; not from opposition, but from boredom. Yes, yes, double standard – we heard you the first time. Yes, yes, destructive body image – the Girls Next Door and Tyra Banks took notes, we promise. We've been brushing cobwebs off our familial notions since the 1950's, and the broken record has been welded together more times than I can count.
You know what? I don't mind the double standard. There is magic in it. There is an oft-ignored role that women play better than men. No, I am not talking to you about childbirth or homemaking or cooking. I am talking to you about Cabaret.
Liza Minelli, with her hoarse, unfortunate timbre, thrusting through a curtain of musk and bravado to show off her vulnerability. Marilyn Monroe in her pink sheath, chin jutting forward, whispering the melody so that the whole orchestra hushes for her. Most recently, Joan Morris, tremulous and dark, obsessed with poetry and erudite in her expressions. Oh, yes: Women rule the cabaret. Drag queens are monarchs by proxy, imitating the motions of exposure that make theater of music and legends of women. Men fall into a deficient category: Frank Sinatra becomes famous for his curt crooning, his ultilitarian take on song – Rex Harrison forsakes music completely for accompanied speak – the traditional crooners get drunk and smoke as they sing ... they cannot complete with their female counterparts because they are not allowed to expose themselves, in any sense of that phrase.
(Suck it, boys.)
I'm learning a set of cabaret pieces written by Schoenberg. If you think the words “cabaret” and “Schoenberg” are odd together, you are not alone in the sentiment. Odder still, all the poetry is written from a man's perspective, and yet the music is set for soprano. It is German cabaret, a genre that requires a certain gender ambiguity – tophat and heavy mascara, necktie and lingerie – and yet not true ambiguity, for it is feminity, that exposure, that gives woman the edge in raw, unairbrushed cabaret. Schoenberg makes that feminine element grotesque with references to cunnilingus or a man with a thousand female lovers – the singer of these songs turns a blind eye to her own objectification, and in doing so owns both the pain and the guilt – the angsty fuel that makes the theatre world turn and the real world gag a little.
One piece in the set stands apart. “Little girl, little girl, don't be dumb – be aware, and keep your eyes open ... don't lose your rosebud years, but think a little ... think a little”. This is the gist of “Mahnung”, or 'Warning' – it is by turns dark and husky (Liza Minelli) and keening (Ella Fitzgerald). It never feels like a man's piece, or like a woman's piece. It feels utterly isolated, utterly genderless ... it feels like middle age. Whenever I sing it, it gets a little creepier because I see in the performance an apparition of myself looking terrifyingly like Oliver Twist.
What does it mean to waste your youth? What does it mean that women can manifest themselves as grotesque men without losing their feminity, but men can only grasp at being female by losing their manhood? What does it mean to be without a man, without a home or a safety net? What does it mean that Schoenberg's warning is so dark, so chilling, in this age? What the hell does it mean to waste your Rosenzeit on ideals? I mean, c'mon -- ideals do not get one laid.
Will there always be that loneliness, that stigma of vulnerability attached to females in Cabaret -- and what, exactly, is our sadistic attraction to it?
Katie Couric has these strange powers of cabaret at her disposal and doesn't even know it. And that's sad, because we all put up with a lot of shit for these small, subtle priveleges.
Rohin sent me this last night while he was drunk ... it's a strange, multicultural reference to the type of cabaret I mean ... the kind of cabaret that makes you aware of your mortality even though that is TOTALLY not it's purpose.
I am the man: if it be so, as 'tis,
Poor lady, she were better love a dream.
Disguise, I see, thou art a wickedness,
Wherein the pregnant enemy does much.
How easy is it for the proper-false
In women's waxen hearts to set their forms!
Alas, our frailty is the cause, not we!
For such as we are made of, such we be.
How will this fadge? my master loves her dearly;
And I, poor monster, fond as much on him;
And she, mistaken, seems to dote on me.
What will become of this? As I am man,
My state is desperate for my master's love;
As I am woman,--now alas the day!--
What thriftless sighs shall poor Olivia breathe!
-- Viola, Twelfth Night, upon being hit on by Olivia
posted by Uncle Monty: at
7:59 PM
3 Comments:
Katie made history tonight, and so did the princess in Japan who finally gave them a male heir to the throne. Sa-weet!!
The problem here is that the claim that women are more compelling performers is an old one, and it's one of the many that reproduce a misogynistic economy of meaning - eg women draw the male gaze, their role in narratives is more "interesting" and affecting because it's traditionally on them that the sadism of masculine-centered narrative creates changes. Women's bodies and souls attract us specifically *because* of the power of patriarchal demands, not in triumph over it; male performers don't magnetize us in the same way behind the staid affect and disengagement that are imposed on them by those same tyrannical matrices of gender-specific desire. Of course it's important that we're still able to be absorbed in the poignancy and drama that so many female performers succeed so well in evoking, but it comes at a price. The "feminine" (that's so often romanticized by people who are perfectly comfortable inhabiting a masculinist way of relating, ie nearly everyone on earth) *doesn't exist* outside of the conventions that force exactly the kinds of roles on both men and women that you naturalize and, ultimately, valorize. And that complication isn't just pique on the part of some musty, 30-year-old 2nd wave feminists - if anything, I think a critical eye enriches the poignancy of performance and it proves yet again why we still need that kind of critique, yes, constantly, over and over, because there has never been and never will be a moment in time or space where feminism is, as you suggest, obsolete.
Btw your writing is lovely - I hardly ever comment on other people's blogs, and I'm sure now I'll never be allowed to again. And as far as Katie Couric goes, I have to agree this once with my archnemesis, Maureen Dowd: as the owl of Minerva flies at dusk, so women are only allowed into the top tiers of certain professions after those professions are themselves socially degraded.
Yours.
Er, I meant that "Yours" at the end as a "Yours truly", not to suggest that your profession is socially degraded. Whoops...
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home