note 04: in here, life is beautiful ✨
cabaret and the global legacy of cruelty
Content Warning: Genocide, hate speech, spoilers for Cabaret
🎙 life is a cabaret
Last week, I watched the Broadway revival of Cabaret, and it was, predictably, dazzling.
For the uninitiated, Cabaret is set in the twilight of Berlin’s Jazz Age, in the sordid nightlife underworld of the Kit Kat Club starring English chanteuse Sally Bowles (Auli’i Cravalho), against the backdrop of the rise of the German Reich. The club itself (more explicitly named the Kit Kat Klub in other productions) is a metaphor for the degradation of social fabric as the Nazis come to power, presented by the mysterious Emcee (Adam Lambert).
Reimagined as CABARET at the Kit Kat Club for its immersive qualities, the production opts out of the typical theater lobby entrance, instead directing patrons to a fluorescent-lit tunnel that spits you out into a side door, and the show begins the moment you step through the velvet curtains. You’re offered a shot of schnapps and instructed to cover your phone camera with a sticker—“This is an experience for your eyes only,” the website winks.
The August Wilson Theatre is unrecognizable from its turn as home to Funny Girl just last year. At time when many Broadway shows are lackluster in production value, CABARET at the Kit Kat Club is lush and gorgeous. In the richly lit and glittering world of the Kit Kat Club, all gold and velvet and mirrors, you are instantly transported to 1920s Berlin, and this is exactly the intention—the “disorienting funhouse” feel of the club, with a separate cast of dancers and musicians, is designed to envelop you in another world. Like the show itself, the glamorous façade masks ominous themes. The show’s scenic, theater, and costume designer Tom Scutt noted that he made the eyeball motif a focal point of the decor “because of the obvious themes of voyeurism and paranoia.”
Inside, the traditional proscenium stage is replaced by additional seating and a mezzanine where the orchestra plays, and all of the action happens on a roundabout stage in the middle.
While draped in luxurious trappings, the circular design of the theater evokes an austere paragon of surveillance: the panopticon, an 18th-century prison design created by English philosopher Jeremy Bentham. If his name sounds familiar, it’s because he also developed the theory of utilitarianism, the idea that the best course of action is the one that makes the most people the happiest, no matter the other costs. And the panopticon is indeed utilitarian—historian Shirley Letwin called it “a device of such monstrous efficiency that it left no room for humanity.”
We are encouraged not to think about that as we enter the dreamworld, lured in by the promise of escapism and entertainment. Panem et circenses—bread and circuses—to keep the masses occupied and their eyes away from the horrors. The Emcee continues singing even as the Nazis take over around him, lulling the Kit Kat Club patrons into a false sense of complacency:
“In here, life is beautiful, the girls are beautiful, even the orchestra is beautiful...we have no troubles here.”
The revival makes this point even more emphatically, particularly in the choreography of the opening number—in Eddie Redmayne’s creepy, haunted-marionette performance at the 2024 Tony Awards, the Emcee jerkily contorts his limbs into the shape of a swastika as he sings.
But Cabaret is a masterclass of the bait-and-switch, unmistakably implicating its own audience in its enjoyment. It’s all fun and games until it flips the script. The score is a perfectly crafted example—“Willkommen” and “Cabaret” are upbeat, jauntily lilting songs in B♭ major and A major, respectively, evocative of calliope music, with a sardonic undertone.
The show ends the same way it begins—with the Emcee welcoming us to the club, promising us that “we have no troubles here!”—but this time the song is chaotic, discordant, and ominous; we can sense that something has shifted, something is not quite right.
In the finale of the 1993 revival, the Emcee (Alan Cumming) finishes his rendition with a coy smile, slowly removing his leather coat to reveal striped pajamas, the uniform of Jewish prisoners in concentration camps during the Holocaust, emblazoned with a yellow Star of David and pink triangle (representing homosexuality). From the New Line Theatre blog:
At the very end, the Emcee briefly reprises “Willkommen,” perhaps an ironic welcome to the new Germany Ernst and the Nazis are building, but the Emcee doesn’t finish the final phrase; the song stops, unfinished, and he disappears. We know the story is not over. Herr Schultz will undoubtedly be put in a concentration camp and murdered ... As the show ends, is the Emcee saying goodbye to us or Cliff, or both? Or is he saying goodbye to the good times in Germany? It’s interesting that in the opening song, “Willkommen,” the Emcee repeatedly delivers his message in German, French, and English (for example, “Willkommen, bienvenue, welcome.”). But here at the end of the show, he says goodbye only in German (“auf wiedersehen”) and French (“á bientôt”). There is no English goodbye. The melody doesn’t end and neither does the lyric. The Emcee doesn’t finish his farewell.
🍉 “you mean—politics? but what has that to do with us?”
One of the main motifs of the show is the paradox of tolerance—the idea that unlimited tolerance facilitates the dominance of intolerance.
It is impossible (short of intense cognitive dissonance) to watch Cabaret in 2024 and remain detached from current events. We have watched, with our own eyes, one year of relentless brutality committed by the IOF under the guise of “eliminating terrorists,” during which at least 41,700 Palestinians (a conservative estimate, but this puts it in perspective nicely) have been ruthlessly slaughtered, most of whom were civilians.
So it’s even more shameful that, in 2024, Israel is weaponizing the very real threat of antisemitism to justify systematically eliminating civilians in the same ways that Jews were during the Holocaust. Zionists plead “bring them home” and then celebrate as the places that hostages could be held are bombed. It was never about the hostages. As Israel continues this siege, most recently firing at UN peacekeepers in Lebanon, it’s clear that Israel is not interested in “defending itself” but categorical terrorism: “the calculated use of violence to create a climate of fear.”
An open letter from American professionals that served in Gaza addressed to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and updated on October 2nd estimates that, “It is likely that the death toll from this conflict is already greater than 118,908, an astonishing 5.4% of Gaza’s population.” Proportionally, that’s like if the populations of Nebraska, Idaho, West Virginia, Hawaii, New Hampshire, Maine, Rhode Island, Montana, Delaware, South Dakota, North Dakota, Alaska, Vermont, and Wyoming were killed (5.278% of the U.S. population in 2020).
Ignorance is no longer a valid excuse. We have had one full year to decide where our loyalties lie. This revival of Cabaret has been revered, has won awards, and yet the irony is lost. The fact that it is easier for many people to empathize with fictional characters than it is with real people under occupation is exactly the point.
One year later and it is still jarring to scroll on TikTok, to see, sandwiched between makeup tips and cute animal fancams, videos of Palestinians trapped in Gaza co-opting popular slang and viral content, trying to command every last scrap of attention, people who have clearly learned English for the express purpose of begging for their lives, reading off the same script, imploring us to care, not to skip their videos. Meanwhile Zionists perform cheeky dances with catchy songs, make “A Day in My Life: War Edition” videos on TikTok in which they deliver gluten-free baked goods to IOF soldiers (yes, this was a real video and no, I’m not linking it). The cruelty is the point. And it is an indictment of our present state that they have to beg for literal pennies from the TikTok algorithm while our government pours billions of dollars into a foreign country’s genocidal efforts. A ProPublica (an independent, non-profit newsroom) investigation into the U.S. State Department’s weapons pipeline to Israel reported that:
In the months that followed, the Israeli military repeatedly dropped GBU-39s it already possessed on shelters and refugee camps that it said were being occupied by Hamas soldiers, killing scores of Palestinians. Then, in early August, the IDF bombed a school and mosque where civilians were sheltering. At least 93 died. Children’s bodies were so mutilated their parents had trouble identifying them.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the legacy of genocide lately; I revisited a blog I wrote while I was working in Singapore, when I was feeling despair after the 2016 election, and then took a trip to Cambodia. The parallels in the language used by genocidal dictator Pol Pot and Donald Trump were startling. Insistence that they were “regular people” fighting against the “corrupt elite.” Promising to make their countries great again and alienating foreign allies. Cultivating fear and hatred that led people to believe that reporting on their neighbors and committing hate crimes was their civic duty.
The Cambodian Genocide happened in the 1970s and only concluded its tribunal in 2022. Several of the people responsible are still alive today, and many of the survivors are only in their 80s. From the Cambodian Children’s Fund:
The Khmer Rouge were in power for four years. During this short period they were responsible for one of the worst genocides of the 20th Century, resulting in the deaths of over 1.5 million people. This was nearly a quarter of Cambodia’s population at the time ... an entire generation was lost to torture, execution, starvation, untreated disease, and overwork.
My friend sent me an article from The Atlantic called “How Do You Forgive the People Who Killed Your Family?”, about the aftermath of the 1994 Rwandan Genocide. I knew very little about it, aside from watching Hotel Rwanda in the 7th grade.
I did not know, for example, that both Germany and Belgium had colonized Rwanda, and that they were mainly responsible for cementing the class boundaries of Hutu and Tutsi. It always goes back to colonialism.
I cried reading this article, because I always forget that it was so recent, and that we’ve learned so little. The weight of the unfairness is staggering. 79 years after the Holocaust ended in Germany, and Zionists are using the same rhetoric used against Jewish people—that of scheming “human animals” that were murdering children for religious rituals and secretly conspiring to dominate the world—to justify the mass murder of Palestinians. Knowing what the Jewish people have survived throughout history makes the lack of empathy on the part of Zionists even more mystifying.
Survivors’ recollections of those horrifying days are at once fresh and fading. Questions of whom and how to forgive—of whether to forgive at all—still weigh heavily.
Thirty years after the genocide in Rwanda, the Hutu and Tutsi live side by side, the perpetrators and the victims. Those accused of genocide participated in gacaca trials (roughly translated: “justice on the grass”) which historically were trials administered by the communities and villages to settle interpersonal conflicts but now were transformed to pick up the pieces of the horrific events that had transpired. It was an imperfect system—because 85% of Rwandans were Hutu, the judges were overwhelmingly Hutu, and many witnesses felt uncomfortable speaking up—but for a decade, from 2002 to 2012, more than 12,000 gacaca courts had tried more than 1 million people.
...he saw it as the most practical and efficient way to achieve a semblance of justice on a reasonable timeline. He also appreciated that it drew on traditions and practices that were created by Rwandans rather than relying on judicial mandates imposed by outsiders. “Gacaca taught us that our traditions are rich and our values are strong,” he said.
After the genocide, the ruling political party in Rwanda “effectively outlawed ethnicity,” eradicating the categories of Hutu and Tutsi, claiming that they were arbitrary differences imposed upon Rwandans by colonial powers. It’s reminiscent of the imperfect “melting pot” analogy often used to describe the United States, stripping people of their individual identities and encouraging assimilation, rather than cooperation. But the divides remain—many Rwandans still think in terms of Hutu and Tutsi, and there is deep distrust from both sides.
“Naturally, Tutsi and Hutu are not the same in their hearts,” he continued. “You will see. We are not the same. They have something bad in their hearts. They are naturally doing bad. That’s how they are ... Thirty years is not enough to trust them,” he continued. “We work together. We live together. But we don’t trust them.”
The piece ends on a meditation on the function and possibility of forgiveness, and notes that many people in Rwanda simply don’t talk about the genocide as it was too painful (this was also common in Cambodia). Selective memory as a method of self-preservation.
And while it is not for us as outsiders to determine how it should be spoken about, it’s important to note that the healing takes an enormous amount of time and active effort; it takes recognition of past evils and a commitment to preventing the conditions that led to them.
Just 20 years earlier, across an ocean in Cambodia, the German Ambassador at the time said in a speech about Germany’s efforts to help build the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh:
“It reminds us to be wary of people in regimes who ignore human dignity. No political goal or ideology, however promising, important, or desirable it may appear, can ever justify a political system in which dignity of the individual is not respected.”
And yet, police in Germany shut down pro-Palestine protests out of claims of antisemitism, while simultaneously providing no support for those affected by Islamophobia.
It is disheartening and morally unconscionable to see Zionists using “never again” as a battle cry while committing similar atrocities against Palestinians on a truly unfathomable scale, both an ethnic cleansing and a genocide by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s own definition. Israel likes to say it is “at war” but it is a war between one of the most powerful armies in the world and a small group of terrorists, and it is treating citizens as collateral damage, which is unequivocally a war crime. The ICC has issued arrest warrants for crimes against humanity by leaders of Hamas and Benjamin Netanyahu. And even then, it is not equal in casualties, not even close.
It is white supremacist rhetoric, colonizer logic; a belief that the State of Israel should be preserved exactly as it is, which is an apartheid state. A recent New York Magazine profile of Ta-Nehisi Coates (which I highly recommend...Ta-Nehisi Coates is truly a once-in-a-generation writer and I’m sure it was immensely intimidating to attempt to characterize both his career and influence, but the writer does a beautiful job) for his recently launched book The Message, notes his comparisons of Israel to the Jim Crow South: “All states at their core have a reason for existing—a moral story to tell,” he told me. “We certainly do. Does industrialized genocide entitle one to a state? No.” Especially, he said, at the expense of people who had no hand in the genocide.” This logic spits in the face of Judaism, a religion that values love and compassion and community. Dr. Sabreena Ghaffar-Siddiqui wrote on LinkedIn:
Just as was done through slavery, lynchings, the Jim Crow era, the Holocaust, the British Raj in India and its many brutal colonies around the world, the Vietnam war, the Iraq war, the Afghanistan war...the list goes on. It’s the same story, on repeat ... If Israel didn’t exist, another white nation that upholds white supremacy in the Middle East would be created.
And yet, as the profile points out, Israel does not fit neatly into the “colonizer” box in the aggressor-victim narrative. But this is why the struggle for liberation is universal. None of us are free until all of us are free (a phrase coined, ironically, by a Zionist). And wrestling with that cognitive dissonance is an important part of preventing genocide. As former Director of the U.S. Department of State Josh Paul wrote, “never again” must mean “never again for anyone”—or it is meaningless.
There is no true justice after genocide. There may be reparations, there may be reconciliation, but there is a loss of trust, and a part of humanity that is irredeemably lost. That cruelty is forever a part of your legacy. Armenia, the Holocaust, Cambodia, Rwanda. And now Palestine. Someday this will be written about in the history books. It is important that we do not do nothing.
“If you’re not against all this, you’re for it...or you might as well be,” Sally’s lover says to her in Cabaret as he leaves Germany for Paris. She stays behind and sings her last song, “Cabaret” determined to living in carefree ignorance, as the Nazis take over around her.
Rabbi and activist Elliot Kukla, who survived the Holocaust, writes:
Present-tense Palestinian suffering is often eclipsed by Jewish historical triggers on a geopolitical stage. As a rabbi, I have a moral obligation to help my community grieve and heal so that we can bear witness to what is happening now.
I don’t believe in suffering in solidarity. I don’t think you shouldn’t enjoy things just because there are bad things happening in the world. But it is also our obligation as humans and fellow citizens of the world to acknowledge this privilege and speak up for those who can’t.
So many people rioted and marched in the streets when Trump was elected because of the potential horrors he could commit, but in fact, many of those people were unaffected by his policies, cushioned by privilege of race or class or gender or geography. And now they are silent, while citizens, journalists, healthcare workers are being murdered on our dime. We don’t have universal healthcare in this country, we can’t end homelessness, we can’t have countrywide public transportation, because it’s “too expensive.” But it’s not, it’s just deprioritized, in favor of bombing schools and hospitals and mosques in Gaza.
This is what it means being engaged in culture—not just observing from a safe distance and participating when it feels good, but truly appreciating and advocating for the humanity of others.
Such is the invention of compassion ... it is also about bearing witness, grappling with the complexities of another.
It means not assigning a value to people based on cultural production but acknowledging that their lives inherently have worth.
The cost of ignoring these things is our own humanity. And ultimately, that’s all we have. Your company does not care about you; it will not save you in times of hardship. It’s likely your government won’t either. But the humanity of others will.
Just two weeks ago, a fourth person self-immolated in protest of the United States’ role in the genocide. A dozen U.S. officials have quit the Biden administration in protest. This is not normal. We cannot let it be normal.
It is tempting to believe that Gaza does not concern us; tragedies happen every day, why should this be different? But it’s about what we lose when we become desensitized to horror, when we allow ourselves to forget. The Interpreter newsletter wrote in a dispatch called “Facts and feelings and genocide”:
It is true, then, when the critics claim that remembrance like the 1619 Project is a political act. It is, for the same reason that Tamil families remembering family members killed in the civil war with the Sinhalese-majority government is a political act; and that people in Spain petitioning to have victims of fascism exhumed from mass graves is a political act; and that counting Hutus murdered by Tutsi forces during and after the Rwandan genocide is a political act, and that acknowledging genocide happened in Guatemala is a political act.
All of those memorials, all of the reckonings they might trigger, are political. But that’s only because forgetting is a political act too.
🔗 open tabs (recent reads)
“Beetlejuice lips and anti-Botox make-up: are we finally sick of tweakments?” (Dazed): Shoutout to Christina Monroe of All Caught Up. As a recovering makeup/skincare obsessive, I’m very interested in the ways in which we negotiate the distinctions between “self preservation” and “vanity” that comprise “self care.” This is a beautiful little reminder of what a natural face can do (and that we have to re-orient ourselves to be used to a natural face) and also that fillers never fully dissolve!
“TikTokker slaps rival content creator with lawsuit that could ‘change the influencer game’ as we know it” (New York Post): Kudos to both After School by Casey Lewis and Taylor Lorenz for surfacing this. Accusations of copying are a consequence of the attention economy and the monetization that accompanies it, and often it reads as a reach—like of course all beige-loving, Aritzia-wearing, Amazon storefront-hawking (my personal immediate ick 🤮 literally no one needs trash from Amazon in the year 2024) influencers have similar aesthetics and the exact same sense of style. But the side-by-side photo evidence is extremely damning. The poses, the product set-ups, even the captions are similar. Another TikToker recently made a video about a serial content stealer—shameless, unmistakable stealing, like word for word, mannerism for mannerism. It’s absolutely wild. Intellectual property and inspiration is always a tough battle—there was a trend a while back of recreating Pinterest photos for Instagram content, which Pinterest then encouraged. But someone creative directed those original photos, and they’re not receiving credit. I’m always so interested in the legal aspect of these cases because so much of it is about reasonable proof of influence, which is so subjective and difficult to prove.
“Eating With Our Noses: On Gourmand Perfumes, Diet Culture & the Danger of Smelling Sweet” (Highsnobiety): A really interesting study of how the gourmand scent trend is linked to diet culture (and often, disordered eating). We can trace the contours of the trend against attitudes about eating, and now that heroin chic is coming back (the “party girl” ethos is often associated with cigarettes and black coffee as meal replacements), gourmands are popular again. As a millennial, I remember the days of Yoplait Whips and 100-calorie packs (thankfully I did not subscribe to diet culture and would simply eat five of them to compensate). I’m fascinated by perfume culture, because I’m so sensitive to scent that I would never buy a perfume just because it’s trendy or because it communicates something about me, but I’m really curious about people who do.
“is anyone else noticing fast fashion is...back?” (angel cake): I’ve noticed this recently and I’m glad someone else did too—there was a lot of criticism of H&M and Zara a couple of years ago, which it seems that people have mostly forgotten or ignored with the companies’ rebranding efforts which is exactly what they want: “What I want is for everyone to think a little more critically about our shopping habits, why we’re buying something, the intended lifespan of an item and for whom we are really buying it for ... unfortunately, it is a lot easier to fill your mind with the person who are about to become when you slip on that new polyester sweater that looks exactly like the TOTEME one you’ve been eyeing than it is to consider the cost it took to get you there.”
“why aren’t romcoms “romantic” anymore?” (Mina Le): An excellent video essay (and I rarely watch video essays) that may give you a hint about an upcoming project of mine 👀.
💎 little gems (recent favorites)
Dookie Demastered: This is one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen (or maybe I’m just a nostalgic millennial)—while most bands release remastered versions of their albums for anniversaries, Green Day “demastered” their iconic 1994 album, Dookie, releasing each one of their 15 tracks on a different vintage item (a floppy disk, a toothbrush, a Game Boy cartridge, a Big Mouth Billy Bass, a Fisher Price record, and a music box), “the way it was never meant to be heard.” An incredibly creative idea. I immediately went for the HitClip (obviously), but the drawing for it was already closed 🥲.
Kulfi Beauty Lassi Lips Staining Lip Oil: I’ve been on the hunt for a good lip stain since the Pixi Lip Blush I loved was discontinued years ago and I found out my most recent favorite was made by a Z*onist (sad). I was interested in Kulfi Beauty for a while, because we love an Asian American beauty brand! And so when they announced a staining lip oil, I immediately ordered. The formula is lovely—very lightweight yet moisturizing, and non-sticky—and imparts a lovely amount of color as it fades. I have the shades Caramel (peachy nude brown), Tamarind (mauve medium brown), and First Sari (berry) and they’re very true to the pictures—Caramel surprised me because at first it applied a very light brown, almost nude color that was completely wrong for me, but it transformed like magic into a beautiful rosy color that ended up being perfect. And the staying power is amazing, even after eating noodles. The girls that get it, get it.
The Outsiders: A New Musical: I was hesitant to jump on this hype train because to be honest, I was never a huge fan of the novel, and most of the musicals that have premiered lately have been quite mid (and I have the spreadsheet to prove it). I attempted to rush a Saturday evening show because even the back orchestra seats were $420 (the most I’ve seen for any show on Broadway, ever) and got to the box office at 7:45 am, which usually guarantees you the third or fourth spot in line, as most box offices open at 10 am. There were at least 30 people ahead of me. By the time I got to the window, there was only one ticket available and it was $330. Luckily I managed to get a solo matinee ticket for $45, and it was 100% worth waiting in the grimy streets of New York for two hours early in the morning. The show was fantastic—the music, the cast, the production (the rumble scene lives in my mind rent-free—rain onstage will never not impress me). Their performance of the rumble at the Tony Awards was incredible marketing, and judging by the ticket prices it seems like this show will stick around, which is a relief because it has been a game of musical theaters (ha) here on Broadway lately, with shows closing only after a couple of months (justice for Some Like It Hot, but at least there’s a national tour!). Highly recommend catching it if you can score a ticket. Also recommend not being above rushing, because most people I know aren’t in the tax bracket to casually drop $420.
“Perfect” by The Veronicas: I loved The Veronicas back in the 2000s, and it’s such a treat seeing them release the same top-quality music they did back then. They’ve still got it! It was never a phase, mom! Also: “Here to Dance” sounds like the kind of music Dua Lipa makes; I’m curious to know if they were an influence for her.
Anora: A friend of mine was in town a couple weeks ago and he loves movies, and one of the things he insisted on seeing while he was here was the New York Film Festival screening of recent Palme d’Or winner Anora, which meant buying ludicrously expensive express passes just for the opportunity to wait in line for an hour prior to the showing to buy tickets. We managed it, and I haven’t stopped thinking about it since. At the risk of spoilers, all of the ways in which the film was described by director (and writer and editor) Sean Baker and the NYFF Artistic Director Dennis Lim—”screwball,” “a love story,” and “about falling in love with the wrong person”—still did not adequately prepare me for this film. The prevailing comparison in the media is Pretty Woman (sex worker falling in love with a wealthy client), which sounds absurd until you remember that Pretty Woman was originally a gritty drama about prostitution in Los Angeles, and originally titled Three Thousand, after the amount of money Vivian and Edward agreed to. But there’s one particular parallel I find interesting—there’s a trope in comedy movies when, after the parties make a deal, each reveals that they would have settled for less (e.g. the mafia-esque negotiation scene in Just Go With It). This exchange is made more meaningful when the parties exist in different socioeconomic classes—it’s incisive commentary about the power dynamics inherent to this kind of relationship. In Pretty Woman, Vivian says, “I would’ve stayed for two thousand” and Edward replies, “I would’ve paid four.” In Anora, they agree to $15,000 for the week and Ani says, “I would’ve done it for 10” and Vanya replies, “If I were you, I wouldn’t charge less than 30.” At first blush, it feels like a twist on the trope, but as the plot develops, it feels more like a red herring. The movie is in theaters on October 18th, and I highly recommend it.
💖 jenny
A note to London, Paris, and Amsterdam friends—I’ll be visiting at the end of this month! Would love to meet up with some industry people IRL, so message me if you’re around :) recommendations also welcome.
✨ An exciting announcement: I’ll be hosting Sweathead’s The Do-Together this year! If you like strategy but hate boring traditional conferences, this is for you. The theme is “Refresh Your Fundamentals,” so we’ll be getting back to basics and exercising our brains together. You’ll get to work out with marketing icons like Grace Gordon (GG // goodgame), Steve Walls (Moon Rabbit), and Bonnie Wan (Goodby Silverstein & Partners). Early bird tickets are on sale now!
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