DIE SEWE DOODSONDES IN KABARETVERBAND / The Seven Deadly Sins in Cabaret

Abstract

Abstract This article maintains that the seven deadly sins (Anger, Avarice, Despair, Envy, Gluttony, Lust, Pride, Sloth) have been and will always be the basic theme of the cabaret writer, just as they are the natural themes of all writers and painters. The author refers to several writers, as well as a series which appeared in The New York Times Book Review of 1993 in which well known writers each explore one of me (deadly) sins, and shows that the depiction of the seven deadly sins in literature is an ongoing process which is increasingly being adapted within a secular context. The cabaret writer is attracted to the didactic element of the seven deadly sins. He is a moralist in disguise; a preacher in clown's make-up. The techniques and strategies which the cabaret writer uses to “sell” his message to the audience are also the same as those used for centuries by the church in depictions of the Seven Deadly Sins, especially visually, namely: exaggeration, simplification, stylization, alienation, irony, satire and allegory. Furthermore, the theological background of the sins is analysed and distinction made between cardinal sins and mortal sins. Three artists who created visual depictions of the deadly sins are used as illustration: the Flemish painter, Jeroen Bosch (1453?-1516), Otto Dix (“The seven cardinal sins”, 1933) and Paul Cadmus (born in 1904). The modern day satirist does not handle the theme from a formally religious standpoint. For example, Cadmus' motivation in creating the seven panels each depicting a deadly sin (1945–1949) is not conventionally Christian. As with Dix, it springs rather from an intense moral indignation. Cadmus' depiction is repugnant, but original: his figures are sexually ambivalent and every panel is presented as a mirror in which the viewer is confronted by a full length vision of the self. As the last example of a depiction of the Seven Deadly Sins, a piece of total theatre has been chosen: Die sieben Todsünden der Kleinbürger (Brecht/Weill, 1933)—a narrative ballet with songs. It is given as the apotheosis of the cabaret genre in which Brecht directly attacks middle class values as represented by the root of the capitalistic economy, namely the family. Middle-class morality can easily absorb all seven Deadly Sins as long as the well-being and security of me middle class is the object. Looking back over the ages it seems that depictions of the Seven Deadly Sins have occurred most frequently in “beroerelijke tijden”, times of religious fears such as the Middle Ages; with mans' fear of death, damnation and hell. In this century, fears are not necessarily connected to religion anymore, but rather to political and personal crises, with times of disruption and disillusionment. It is as if in these times of violence and sadness, people wish to return to fundamental questions. It is here that cabaret can play a role. If cabaret had not existed, the psychiatrists would eventually have invented it, because cabaret gives expression to collective violence and anger; to collective hatred and envy; to collective opportunism and pride; to collective land lust and greed; to collective gluttony and the inertia which it leads to. Or cabaret can be described simply as the deeply rooted need to exorcise private demons.