University of Tennessee, Knoxville TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 12-2014 Insurgent Spectacles: Spring Awakening, Woyzeck, Mother Courage and the ‘New’ Broadway Spectacle Noah Porter Soltau University of Tennessee - Knoxville, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss Part of the German Literature Commons, Other German Language and Literature Commons, and the Other History Commons Recommended Citation Soltau, Noah Porter, "Insurgent Spectacles: Spring Awakening, Woyzeck, Mother Courage and the ‘New’ Broadway Spectacle. " PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 2014. https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/3169 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a dissertation written by Noah Porter Soltau entitled "Insurgent Spectacles: Spring Awakening, Woyzeck, Mother Courage and the ‘New’ Broadway Spectacle." I have examined the final electronic copy of this dissertation for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, with a major in German. Daniel H. Magilow, Major Professor We have read this dissertation and recommend its acceptance: Stefanie Ohnesorg, John Sipes, Maria Stehle Accepted for the Council: Carolyn R. Hodges Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School (Original signatures are on file with official studentecor r ds.) Insurgent Spectacles: Spring Awakening, Woyzeck, Mother Courage and the ‘New’ Broadway Spectacle A Dissertation Presented for the Doctor of Philosophy Degree The University of Tennessee, Knoxville Noah Porter Soltau December 2014 Copyright © 2014 by Noah Soltau All rights reserved ii Acknowledgements I would like to thank my dissertation committee for bearing with me through this long process, particularly Dr. Daniel H. Magilow for helping me correct the course this particular ship was taking, and teaching me which constellations could bring it to safe harbor. Without Dr. Magilow’s guidance and editorial savvy, this project would not be what it is. I am also deeply indebted to my wife, whose patience and understanding should be the envy of academics and writers everywhere. Finally, I would like to thank Burghard Dedner of the Georg Büchner Research Center at Phillips-Universität Marburg for the gracious use of his facilities and his valuable insights in the early stages of this dissertation. iii Abstract This dissertation explores the political and ideological work done by what I call "insurgent spectacles," which comprised a historical episode of American theater occurring primarily from 2006 to 2008. The spectacles had liberatory and redemptive potential not in spite of their identity as mass culture, but indeed precisely because of it. They functioned in a contested political and ideological space within the schema of mass culture. The insurgent spectacle is so-called because it superficially resembled other bits of Broadway fluff with its glitziness, over-production, and ham-fistedness that allow the audience to be intellectually disengaged. During this episode, it persisted (often unexpectedly) in delivering a subversive political or ideological message to the audience, both in its content and in its mode of expression. This mode of spectacularity did not conform to prevailing pessimistic notions of what a Broadway spectacle is, and the dissertation theorizes terms under which mass culture is not reduced to capitalist instrumentality, historicizes it, and offers readings of works that exemplify this mode of spectacularity from three revolutionary dramatists who are regularly discussed in the same critical breath: Frank Wedekind, Georg Büchner, and Bertolt Brecht. Adaptations of works by these playwrights are the primary examples that stood at the center of the movement toward insurgent spectacles. In particular analysis of the 2006 productions of Spring Awakening and Mother Courage and her Children and the 2008 production of Woyzeck add nuance to popular critical approaches to mass culture in current scholarship. iv Table of Contents INTRODUCTION: Insurgent Spectacles: A New Mode of Spectacularity……………………....1 CHAPTER 1: Tracking the Insurgent Spectacle: Theory and History…………………………..17 The Cultural Landscape of the Insurgent Spectacle: Sex, Violence, Death, and War.......21 The Political Origins and Stakes of the Insurgent Spectacle…………………………….25 The Spectacle and the Frankfurt School: The “Circus” of Art and Political Crisis……...28 The Risks of Art: The Insurgent Spectacle and the Culture Industry…………………....35 The Insurgent Spectacle in Everyday Life……………………………………………….39 The Insurgent Spectacle in Cinema: Politics Outside the Theater……………...………..41 Funding the Insurgency: Making Progressive Politics Profitable………………………..46 The Monkey Wrench of Theater and the Machine of Permitted Consumption………….51 CHAPTER 2: The Kids Aren’t Alright: Steven Sater’s Spring Awakening as a Spectacle of Sex and Death………………………………………………………………………………...57 An Insurgent Manifesto: Historical Juxtaposition in Spring Awakening………………...59 “Like a Rocker in concert:” Staging the Insurgent Spectacle……………………………65 “I’ve Never Felt…Anything:” Sex and Violence in the Insurgent Spectacle……………71 “It’s the Bitch of Living:” Mortality, Power, and Politics in the Insurgent Spectacle......83 Insurgency, not Revolution: Capitalism Co-opts the Insurgent Spectacle………………95 CHAPTER 3: Cirque du Woyzeck: Gísli Örn Garđarsson’s Brutal Circus and Political Theater…………………………………………………………………………………...99 Building the Tent for Woyzeck’s Circus……………………………………………….106 Witnessing the Event: Art, Play, and Violence as Political Tools……………………...110 A Musical Carnival: Subversive Politics as Entertainment…………………………….118 v Music and the Carnivalesque: A Soundtrack for the Absurd…………………………..125 Carnival, Chaos, and the Tactics of the Insurgent Spectacle…………………………...133 CHAPTER 4: (Culture) War Profiteering: Tony Kushner’s Mother Courage and the Downfall of the Insurgent Spectacle……………………………………..…………………………..137 Ideology and the Insurgent Spectacle…………………………………………………..141 Celebrity as Political tool: Diffusing Cultural IEDs……………………………………149 Humor and Profanity: The Rhetoric of the Insurgency………………………………...155 Music and Critique: “Our Beautiful Song” About the End of the World………………161 Defeated and Entertained: “That’s the Bubbles”……………………………………….168 CONCLUSION: The End of the Insurgency: “Our Forces were Slight. Our Goal Lay in the Far Distance”………………………………………………………………………………..172 BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………………………179 VITA……………………………………………………………………………………………191 vi Introduction Insurgent Spectacles: A New Mode of Spectacularity New York City’s 42nd Street, between Times Square and 8th Avenue, was once infamous as a “porn-plagued, drug-infested, crime-ridden” warren of grindhouses and peep shows.1 Then, over the course of the late 90s, Disney’s Michael Eisner took on the project of awakening the sleeping and once-grand theaters of that neighborhood, and bringing them to life with vibrant spectacle, like a Prince Charming to NYC’s Sleeping Beauty. Now, the lighted signs for the myriad Broadway musical spectacles glitter to draw spectators into seats. About twelve million people a year frequent New York City’s dozens of Broadway and off-Broadway theaters. In a given week, the theatrical entertainment can vary from Shakespeare to a stage version of a Disney movie, and the major Broadway shows alone bring in an average of $19.2 million a week.2 The wide variety of productions available to the throngs of patrons can be classified under an equally large number of modes of spectacularity—that is, the means by which a spectacle is produced, distributed, and consumed. For the purpose of my argument and in keeping with the thinking of Guy Debord and Siegfried Kracauer, spectacles are mass cultural events that subsume social life into a relationship of commodities. They undermine the revolutionary and liberating potential of art and retard audiences’ social and political energy with distraction and consumption. This dissertation explores the political and ideological work done by what I call "insurgent spectacles," which I argue comprised a historical episode of American theater, occurring primarily from 2006 to 2008, that had liberatory and redemptive potential not 1 Rose, “Can Disney Tame 42nd Street?” 2 Financial data courtesy of The Broadway League. 1 in spite of their identity as mass culture, but indeed precisely because of it. They functioned in a contested political and ideological space within the schema of mass culture. The language of insurgency is particularly applicable to this project and these types of spectacles because of their political concerns and their staging during the heights of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. While the term “insurgent” was and continues to be used as a proxy for “terrorist” in the mass media, the reality of insurgency is that it indicates, if not covert, then at least not organized and official resistance to a governing power. Applied rhetorically, this governing power is the spectacle as it has developed under neoliberalism, and the insurgency is represented in part by the mode of spectacle