John Gay's (a friend of Jonathan Swift with a similarly acerbic sense of satire) Beggar's Opera, about the gentleman robber Captain Macheath, mocks both the idea that criminals are good guys revolting against society, while also suggesting that criminals and the ruling class practice the same profession.Brecht famously remade remade the opera as the Threepenny Opera (the two-bit opera), wherein the protagonist, Captain "Mac the Knife" Macheath is suggested to simply be a capitalist, although Brecht in his notes for the play says, >The bandit MACHEATH must be played as a bourgeois phenomenon. The bourgeoisie’s fascination with bandits rests on a misconception: that a bandit is not a bourgeois. This misconception is the child of another misconception: that a bourgeois is not a bandit. Does this mean that they are identical? No: occasionally a bandit is not a coward.
>>25224952Niggas really be named Gay
>The bandit MACHEATH must be played as a bourgeois phenomenon. The bourgeoisie’s fascination with bandits rests on a misconception: that a bandit is not a bourgeois. This misconception is the child of another misconception: that a bourgeois is not a bandit. Does this mean that they are identical? No: occasionally a bandit is not a coward.This means absolutely nothing to me.
>>25224993I realize that but it's because you probably haven't read either work
>friend of Jonathan SwiftJust fyi i do not consider swift in any way shape or form to be a trad so i don't easily buy into his bullshit
>>25224952>The bandit MACHEATH must be played as a bourgeois phenomenon. The bourgeoisie’s fascination with bandits rests on a misconception: that a bandit is not a bourgeois. This misconception is the child of another misconception: that a bourgeois is not a bandit. Does this mean that they are identical? No: occasionally a bandit is not a coward.Le Boojwar owned Epic-Style, robbers aren't real! Actually Boojwars are le real robbers! At least The real robber (who isn't real) will be brave when he robs you!
>>25226889>Criminals and gangsters aren't real>They aren't romanticized
>>25226889Businessmen subsist on ripping people off and will do it unrelentingly as much as they can so long as it is profitable. They are fascinated by professional rippers-offers as exotic because they don't realize that the only difference between them and a crimelord is that they're generally pussies.
>>25226889It's literally just the moral presented at the end of the Beggar's Opera: Whether gentlemen of the road [robbers] imitate fine gentlemen [the bourgeoisie], or fine gentlemen imitate gentlemen of the road, it is impossible to tell.
>>25226889The GW Pabst film is a favorite of mine and I would write a nice little essay defending the Brecht work if I cared enough at the moment. >>25227528Macheath is a bandit of the road who owns the police (chief Braun) as well as his bandit army the way that the mega rich own police, law and similar institutions.
>>25227159The play is about the rise of Nazi ideology in the 1920s when it was written. Instance, Kannonen song (ostensibly about British actions in India) is more about the Nazi war/ racial ideology that led to WWII.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bEKU70_7E8It's a very 1930s Germany play but transported to British society of 19th c and the criminal class of that time much like the later work, Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui.
>>25226889this sort of thing works in drama it worked for jean genet
>>25227576I have read Brecht's commentary on it and it has nothing to do with critique of Nazism, he sees it as a faithful continuation of the original Beggar's Opera and was a great admirer of Gay and Swift. The Kannonen Lied is about capitalist imperialism, which the Nazis mostly inflicted upon whites in all capitalism's brutality, which had previously been reserved for non-whites. Trying to reduce it to just Nazism is a way to neuter the play. In fact the reason Brecht chose to set it in Victorian Era Soho (not the period of the original, yet he chose not to place the remake in his own time and place) was, in his own words, to put it at a distance from audience so they could judge it with a clear head instead of as a mere commentary on contemporary politics..If Brecht wanted to condemn German militarism in Europe, WWI was right there. Communists all hated it and were the only anti-war group. They all thought it was a stupid war to enrich bankers. Brecht brought British imperialism in it because it is a more enduring motif of Lenin's theory of imperialism. No communist in Brecht time singled out German militarism as sone especially worse form. Remember ALL capitalist states then were obsessed with race. When America entered the War, black soldiers were still segregated from whites. This idea of Nazism as racism and the allies as anti-racist, is entirely new. The Soviet Union was anti-racist but everywhere else racism eas policy, Germany just inflicted that policy on other whites instead of non-whites, which traumatized Europe and, as Schmitt talks about in Nomos of the Earth, undermined the world order or civilized (white) and non-civilized (everyone else).
>>25227598Brecht is clearly agitprop for M-L ideas he espoused (Arturo Ui and Mother Kinder are most obvious examples). If you think 3penny is 100% divorced from the Nazi rise of the era it was written in and you actually believe his commentary on it then you are really obtuse.
>>25227602Calling me obtuse is a powerful argument. But there is zero reference to censorship, pogroms, or militarization throughout the play. The military is mentioned as Mac and the Sheriff's source of friendship, and that is about it. When polly cries about the people being murdered for their wedding gifts, Mac doesn't say ah they were degenerate, he critiques the decor and sees that as upsetting her, then condemns his employees for causing needless death. Brecht says in his commentary that Mac, like any good businessman, doesn't mind killing innocent people but only for business and never wastefully, and he considers wasting innocent life to be vulgar and low-class. That's hardly Hitlerist
>>25227576The play doesn't have those costumes in the original conception. Brecht said the actors are not to play their characters but to play beggars playing their characters. The original props and costumes were very ragtag in the spirit of this, just doing what could be obtained cheaply and easily or what was already had. The sheriff would therefore be like a beggar trying to dress like a sheriff for a play with other beggars, maybe with a paper badge or the like.
