Professor David Peimer
Satire vs. Evil, Part 1: Kurt Weil/Brecht, Hitler’s Mein Kampf

Professor David Peimer - Satire vs. Evil, Part 1: Kurt WeilBrecht, Hitler’s Mein Kampf

- We are going to look at this idea of satire versus evil in two parts. Today I’m going to look at a whole lot of different aspects of satire, most in relation to Germany specifically, and a satirical response in the different ways of understanding satire and different ways that artists and writers have found and filmmakers of how to satirise. So it’s not just one way or one thing only. Going to look at ideas of fascination and humour and irony and so on. And then next week, I’m going to look more specifically at Mein Kampf and Hitler and more specifically and other aspects as well. But I’m leaving out Hitler mostly for today in terms of, except for two little clips, which I think are very profoundly, are very strong, quite shocking, the one and the other, very provocative to be honest, because in the spirit of satire, one does provoke and one provokes many thoughts, many feelings, and one evokes. And I think the whole spirit of satire needs that, requires it. Of course, it becomes dated over a period, and depending on the audience, et cetera, that’s all contextual. But in looking at what is satire and how it works, I think some of these pieces, and some everybody will know, some will be less known. It’ll give us an idea of the extraordinary range of satire, and of course, why power and those in authority usually want to censor it or kill the artist or the writer, or imprison or do all sorts of other terrible things because satire, in the end, does pull authority down, you know, to a human level.

So, and we’ll look much more at bits of Mein Kampf and other things next week to do specifically with Hitler. So if we can go on to the next slide, please. This is one of the most ancient pieces of satire ever found by archaeologists, and this comes from ancient Egypt, and it goes back quite a few hundred years, BCE. And we’re not exactly sure it’s on papyrus, but there’s a sense. It’s at least probably three, four, maybe 500 years, BCE. So what is this as a piece of satire on papyrus? Interesting. And what it’s meant to be is that the idea is that scribes are not only useful but also superior to ordinary people. If one looks at it, you can see they’re playing what I suppose for us would be a kind of like a board game, a chess game. But are they donkeys? Are they some kind of animals? Are they mules, deers, antelopes? It’s animals. You know, it’s a parody of humans. It’s a parody of, you know, who has the more useful work, who has the more beneficial work for a society. And it’s a parody on the scholarly scribe and a parody on the ordinary worker, you know. Who’s the donkey? Who isn’t? Who is the animal? Who isn’t? It’s been interpreted in quite a few ways, and this is the oldest known piece coming from that whole area. And it might even be much older than what I’m saying, but it gives us a sense in visual terms of how ancient satire obviously is in recorded history. And obviously going back thousands of years, I’m sure it was, you know, always in oral storytelling and history. So, and it’s also, who’s tired of studying, some of them are tired, some are meant to be teachers, you know, the papyrus goes on and shows longer and more images. Okay, so to get back to the original question that I asked. What exactly, we will hold this picture for a moment. What exactly is satire? And it’s obviously, it’s about, I think the word ridicule is probably the most important word, and it uses comedy and humour. Satire is not just comedy. Comedy can just be laughing at something or enjoying the wit and the humour, the clever wordplay, wit of many kinds is more comedy. But satire has got a political or social edge.

And with satire, we are ridiculing human foibles. You know, somebody, maybe a personal authority of any kind, maybe in politics, maybe in business, maybe in an institution, in the family, any kind of authority is shown up to be absurd, is shown up to be in the end, we are all humans. And Bob Dylan’s great line, “Even the president of the United States must have to sometimes stand naked.” So it’s meant to, through humour, through laughter, through wild laughter at times, to ridicule, to reduce those in some sort of power, whatever the power position is in a society, down back to the basics, you know, to remind us all. And what I love about it is that it is that reminder. It’s also a reminder of the absurd in life and, you know, just a quick witty awareness. You know, however much we get obsessed and get serious about this or that or something, you know, there is another ironic side to it. And of course, we’ve all known and loved the Monty Pythons, the Marks Brothers. You go on and on the list, Charlie Chaplin, so many. Another aspect of satire is the old cliche of speaking truth to power. But it’s done in an ironic and usually very witty way, which is quite different from a much more serious or earnest speaking truth to power. And it makes power feel uncomfortable because it’s telling the truth. It’s reducing the authority figure to just another ordinary person. You know, we’re all human. We all have mortality and taxes as they say, you know, in the end. So it’s poking fun. And also the other part of satire is it will often quite savagely ridicule the lies, the lying going on in any society, totalitarian, democratic, mixtures of the two. Another aspect of satire, it’s about subversion, which is also what makes it so threatening, I think, to those in authority because it’s subverting what has become everybody, you know, the sort of accepted status quo of values or belief systems, which may be religion, it may be ideology, it may be political, politics, it may be economics, it may be a social value, a family value.

It can be anything where the status quo is not accepted. What is set up as the normal or the norm is up for shown to be absurd and ridiculed. In Shakespeare’s great lines, “There’s nothing, neither right nor wrong, Horatio, but thinking makes it so,” from Hamlet. And Shakespeare’s other great line, “Dressed in a little bit of authority.” And I love that phrase, “Dressed in a little bit of authority,” because we see so many, again, authority of any kind. It can be from the family through to the macro level of social, political, religious, whatever leadership, you know, how certain individuals costume themselves, their bodies, their beards or not, or their clothing, you know, all to project an image of authority of some kind from the micro to the macro, social, family and level. And it’s all about dressed in a little bit of authority, but take that away, you know, we’re all as human as the next person, is an element of risk taking, which I think is so important in the satirists because it is scary. And we know many examples throughout the world where satirists, certainly in Stalinist, either in Russia, just think of more recent times, Stalinists, obviously during the Hitler period. But in democracies, many countries will not allow satirists or ban them or subvert them or at least have censorship of some kind. I’ve spoken about Godel when we looked in Russian literature. You know, for me, one of the great satirists of all time, when you read those plays, they’re remarkable. Satirising the authority of the tzar of the state and political authority all set in little provincial tones. Milos Forman in the great movie of his, “The Fireman’s Ball,” one of his very early films in the late sixties.

It’s a brilliant satire on the authority and power of little people in small towns. Vaclav Havel, although it’s such a serious message to satirise totalitarianism and the police state but the way of doing it is everything is up for ridicule. The structure of power, authority is ridiculous. In the main play of his, “The Garden Party,” the main character, Hugo, plays chess with himself because then he can never lose. So Havel is setting up already a situation of the opportunist and how he’s going to climb up the snakes and ladders of authority, power, and money. And he’s playing chess with himself. You know, he can’t lose. That’s the opportunist, you know, they’re not going to risk it in those other ways. So we have a sense of, and in Havel’s plays, there’s always somebody in a box who’s hidden as a witness, but it’s done in a very humorous, comic way. It’s a satire, obviously of the eavesdropper, the informant, the collaborator with the system. But he stages it in a way that you obviously see the person at back of the stage in a box, you know, and you know that they’re there. They know that you’re there and the characters in the office know, everybody knows, and everybody goes along with it. Shakespeare has the fool who has insight but no agency. So the satirist is very different in the Shakespearean tradition where there’s insight, there’s intelligence, there’s wit, which always reminds us of a common humanity. The humanness, whether it’s, you know, King Lear brought down to nothing. There’s insight but no agency to change events, no agency to make decisions which will influence the action of the main characters. And that’s what changed with Godel and with the role of the fool, the clown, or the trickster with Dario Fo and others. And a lot of the South African protest theatre against Apartheid, where the character of the fool, the trickster, the clown, the satire character who embodies, physically embodies the ironic comic wit in a play doesn’t have agency.

But it changes with all these examples where the main character has agency to decide to influence and change events of the story and therefore of society. And that’s a huge difference, which goes way back to Aristophanes of the ancient Greeks coming up to, you know, the much more contemporary period. In some of Aristophanes’ great plays, the play “Lysistrata,” and for those of you who don’t know it, perhaps Lysistrata gets all the women together ‘cause there’s endless war between Sparta and Athens. And the only way to stop it is that she gets all the women of Athens together and says, right, we’re going to deny all the men’s sex until they stop the war. And they do it. And then of course, all the shenanigans happen, who creeps out and has sex with somebody else and who doesn’t. And the women go out and men and you know, they sneak and they find each other behind trees, behind buildings, et cetera. But in a very satirical way, it’s a satire on the savagery of war and a way to try and stop it. “Animal Farm” we all know it’s a different kind of satire. It’s not so much a laughing comedy. The overall idea is comic, which brings me to a novel, one of the great novels for me of all time of the century, “Catch-22,” where it’s so brilliant, “Catch-22, but it’s not a belly laugh. It’s a very different kind of satire. It’s serious, but it’s got that ironic twist and glint in the eye. It’s not a belly laugh. And that also goes back to Aristophanes of two and a half thousand years ago, you know, in the ancient Greeks. 11 of his plays survived, and he was regarded as the originator of written satire in theatre and in literature. And every one of his plays are savage attacks on the authorities and the leaders of his times. And it was loved. During the festival of Dionysus, they were all drinking and watching these plays and then voting in the Dionysiac spirit.

And with Aristophanes, the ancient Greeks, I mean they would watch three or four players a day and get, but they’d be totally drunk by the end. And they’d vote on which one would be the best of that day and go on. And it was expected to completely ridicule the leaders. And the leaders would often sit in the very front row of Athens. They would sit in the front row and watch and laugh and laugh at being laughed at with thousands of Greeks behind them, laughing at them at how ridiculous they’d been during the last year. Their decisions, their way of dress, their way of talking, it’s all in his plays. And when you, when one looks back at it, we see it’s so much bolder and more risk-taking than I think anyone would try today. So this to me, a sad comment in democratic societies today. And it was loved by the leaders. That’s the difference. We have recording, evidence rather, that the leaders loved it. They appreciated why it was being done. The other very important point is that exaggeration and irony is used in satire. You cannot do it without irony and showing the shortcomings or the foibles of humanity showing up. There’s the ultimate greater purpose to satire, which is to act as social critic or social insight. And through the attack, criticise or challenge at the very least, the status quo of ideas, values, beliefs. And the great phrase by the American literary critic, Northrop Frye, he said that "In satire, irony is militant.” And I think that is a brilliant phrase by Frye where he captures it.

“In satire, irony is militant. It captures for me everything I’ve been trying to describe of the spirit of the satirist. And then it went all the way through from the ancient Greeks to of course Horace, Juvenal, and other Roman writers, many, many others. There’s one important point which I want to make, which we’re going to look at a little bit in one or two of the clips. How does satire relate to fascism? And what I want to suggest when we look at one or two of the clips, besides the obvious ideas I’ve mentioned, is that satire tries to ridicule or at least make us very aware of the fascination with fascism. And I think that’s something that speaks to me for today’s, our times, not only the media, but the Internet. You know, we live in such a visual culture, but the fascination with fascism is so powerful and so, it’s almost irresistible. And of course, Gobel and the others understood it completely. And then how do you satirise that? How do you actually satirise how people are fascinated and get hooked on and caught in becoming almost hypnotised, trance-like with the masses? And they almost change in front of our eyes, Jekyll and Hyde stuff, almost change to become something else, you know? And I think that to me links so much to the German history and the period and our period echoes in our period that we live in today. And then of course, how do you subvert it? And it’s not necessarily with laughter, but it’s subverted with irony and subverted by showing it for what it is and be almost like an internal saboteur, in Frye’s phrase "militant irony.”

Okay, so I want to start with the first one and if we can show the next slide please. So this is, you know, Henry Ford, who as we all know, many, many things. This is, he was responsible for the protocols of the elders of Zion by the leader of the Ford Motor Company International Jew. Look at that image. We all know it only too well. I’m not going to comment on it 'cause we know it inside out and backwards. There’s Ford himself and, you know, he sent the Fuhrer $50,000 every year on his birthday. General Motors produced the Opal Brandenburg plant, produced the trucks, part of the aircraft, the landmines, torpedo detonators for the Nazis. Albert Spear is well known for saying that Germany could never have attempted the 1939 blitzkrieg on Poland without the technology provided by General Motors. Ford trucks are what transported the German troops and so on and so on. Standard oil shipped fuel through Switzerland into Nazi occupied forces in France. So we have all these ideas around what is going on and how are we going to take someone like this on to satirise? What are we going to do with somebody dressed in a little bit of authority with enormous power? Okay, can we go on to the next slide please? So to go on to Brecht, and I’m going to look at Brecht and Kurt Weill to start with. Brecht is one of the great satirists and great dramatists of the 20th century. I’m sure many people know the story. He’s German, not Jewish, and he’s writing satires, musical theatre primarily and also theatre. I’m not going to go into his theories now, but Bretcht was so aware of what was happening and he had to flee, obviously once the Germans, once the Nazis got into power in 1933, he has to flee Germany.

And he ends up in America and working in LA and Hollywood for a while and other parts of America. And those are the dates of his life. At the end of the war, he goes back and he ends up in East Germany. He is a communist and so on. But most importantly about Brecht are his plays and his poems and stories which involve satire and militant irony all the time in a very witty way to try and show up the fascism that he’s living through of his own times in the Germany of the first half of the 20th century. Okay, if we can go on to the next slide, please. And then of course the great Kurt Weill, you all know Jewish and worked with Brecht who wrote the music for many of Brecht’s songs. I’m going to play a couple of them coming now. Wrote the music for many of the songs in the plays that Brecht did and Lotte Lenya, you know, the two of them, his wife, who was the great actress and singer who performed in many of the plays that Brecht and Weill worked on together. Those are the years of his life. And you know, he got to New York and survived and lived there and carried on, influenced by African American jazz and other American forms of music. Okay, the next piece I’m going to show is from, is Henry Goodman doing, sorry, go on to the next slide, please, before that. Thanks. So these are some of the main musical satires of Brecht, “The Threepenny Opera,” which includes these great songs, “Mac the Knife” and “Jenny.” “Mother Courage and her Children,” you know, Thirty Years’ War in Germany. But he’s using it to satirise the idiocy, the madness of war and the business and the financial side of war. And what is courage?

What is it to stand up to adversity and just survive, you know, to get through every day to endure terrible suffering? “Fear and Misery in the Third Reich,” it’s obvious in the title and then the “Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui,” this is one of Brecht’s great plays, and I’m going to show a clip in a second of Henry Goodman physically transforming himself in the costume room into playing “Arturo Ui.” And Brecht wrote it as using Chicago gangster Al Capone type of character as a satire on the rise of Hitler. And it’s a Chicago gangster, and he rises to power, captures it, and you know, all the ways of dealing with other mafia gangsters. So he uses the metaphor of that world, of the mafia in Chicago as a satirical metaphor on the rise of Hitler. It’s not belly laugh funny, but it is a savage, militant, ironic satire on the rise of Hitler. Okay, if we can show it, please. So I wanted to show it because we can see how brilliant the actor, I think he’s one of the, he’s fantastic, Henry Goodman, transforming himself into this figure, which he does to me so accurately with such detail. It’s extraordinary. And it’s in a way to show, this isn’t in the play, but it’s showing if we were to satirise, how we could, and there’s a scene in the play where, you know, the character of Hitler, of Arturo Ui is shown being taught by a hack actor, how to act the authority and power, you know, and scream and shout in all the ways that Hitler was doing and use the hands, the arms. So Brecht intentionally shows an actor in rehearsal how to become that performance figure of Hitler in a way. So it’s satire, but it’s not great laughter. It’s a terrifying satire almost, but it’s satirical because it’s meant to subvert the authority figure of terrifying power. Okay, in the next little clip is, this is Helene Weigel, who was Brecht’s wife, and she’s going to talk just briefly about what he tried to do, I think, in his theatre. She acted in many of his plays. And the ultimate aim, when one sets aside many of this, the more academic theories about Brecht, what he’s really aiming at.

• I think people are intelligent and looking the place who are intelligent, they understand them and understand too that it’s not destiny, deity, or kings who have the absolute power to change their life. Looking at smaller people like we do, like we play them in our theatre, maybe they learn a little bit to behave like thinking human beings.

• Just in this tiny little clip, for me, she captures the essence of not only of the bigger picture of Brechtian theatre, but she captures the, a very contemporary idea and how satire is trying to work is ultimately not only social criticism or irony but wake people up. You don’t have to believe in this madness of a Hitler or whatever it is, whatever extreme evil that has been that has been presented as reality. But actually a little bit of thinking is all it takes to become aware, you know, and that’s why I wanted to show that clip of Henry Goodman transforming himself because I think so many dictators and others in authority, you know, transform and present and perform an image, not necessarily their core, but they become a performance. And it’s extraordinary that for me, the vocabulary of performance is the vocabulary of our times. You know, we talk about how well does a car perform? How well, how’s the stock market performing? What’s it, we use the language, the vocabulary of theatre to describe daily life. And I think in the same way, it’s how the individual changes to become a performance of themselves rather than anything authentic internally. And that can be satirised. And that to me is what Brecht tries to do. It’s the deeper stuff inside his plays to show the, just the ordinary human. And what she’s saying is that a little bit of thinking, it’s not deity or god or destiny, even necessarily that determine, we can, even if it’s on a small scale, make little shifts in life. And I think satire tries to aim at that through pointing out these through being ironic and satirical. Okay, the next piece is from a high school in England from 2014. And just before we show it, it’s from King Edward High School. And these are high school students who wanted to perform something where they try to show their horror and attack on the fascination with evil. And this was the opening of their play.

• Yeah, if we could hold it there. So. Thanks. So this is how these high school kids chose in 2014 to try, again, what is the fatal fascination with evil? How people get so hypnotically caught up in it and how does the attempt to satirise it post Brecht, post the writers of the earlier part of the 20th century. How do people today try and take on that very idea? Because I think that is one of the most important things that we learn is it’s a fatal and terrifying, yet powerful fascination with the horror of evil. You know, and they chose this at the beginning, and you’re sitting in this quite a small theatre so that suddenly that face is insanely overwhelming. That voice, you’re not, you know, thousands, part of thousands and thousands watching from the distance and far away and all that. It’s so close and you, it’s a strange relationship in a theatre and you feel the horror and you want to just kill. At the same time, there’s the fatal attraction. So it’s, you know, these students were trying to take that on, I believe. And then with the lighting at the beginning, and I’m not, I don’t want to talk about how much they succeeded or not, but they’re trying to take on the terrifying fascination with evil. And I think they succeeded because you come out and we can’t avoid these images, knowing that these are also high school kids doing this with that aim in mind.

And I think it’s important for all artists and writers of today, how are we going to take on the face of evil, having seen what we see go on in the past and we’re dealing with Germany historically, you know. How do we do it today for an audience, whether it’s high school kids or whoever? So it can provoke a whole different attitude that Helene Weigel talks about to think about, you know, the hypnotic fascination with evil. Okay, thanks. If we can go into, so the next clip is from a Brecht play, “Threepenny Opera.” And it’s a musical theatre piece. And this is Lotte Lenya with Kurt Weill’s music, singing the song of “Jenny.” Jenny is a working class, a servant, a cleaner, a maid, and from her perspective and how she’s trying to be ironic about her own life but real and ironic at the same time and about the structure of power, authority, and financial power, and her position at the bottom of the ladder. Okay, we can show it please.

• Jenny. Jenny? We’ve been talking about our families. You never told us about your family.

• Family? I never had a family. All I ever had was a dream.

♪ You gentleman can watch while I’m scrubbing the floors ♪ ♪ And I’m scrubbing the floors while you’re gawking ♪ ♪ And maybe once you tip me, it makes you feel swell ♪ ♪ In a ratty old town ♪ ♪ In a ratty old hotel ♪ ♪ And you’ll never guess to who you’re talkin’ ♪ ♪ You’ll never guess to who you’re talkin’ ♪ ♪ Suddenly one night, there’s a scream in the night ♪ ♪ And you yell, what the hell could that have been ♪ ♪ And you see me kind of grinning while I’m scrubbin’ ♪ ♪ And you say, what the hell’s she got to grin ♪ ♪ And a ship ♪ ♪ A black freighter with a skull on its masthead ♪ ♪ Will be comin’ in ♪ ♪ You gentlemen can say, hey girl, finish the floors ♪ ♪ Get upstairs, make the beds, earn your keep here ♪ ♪ You’ll toss me your tips and look out at the ships ♪ ♪ But I’m counting your heads while I make up the beds ♪ ♪ ‘Cause there’s nobody going to sleep here tonight ♪ ♪ None of you will sleep here ♪ ♪ Then that night there’s a bang in the night ♪ ♪ And you yell who is that kicking up around ♪ ♪ And you see me kind of staring out the window ♪ ♪ And you say, what’s she got to stare at now ♪ ♪ Then the ship, the black freighter ♪ ♪ Turns around in the harbour ♪ ♪ Shooting guns from the bow ♪ ♪ And you gentlemen can wipe off that laugh from your face ♪ ♪ Every building in town is a flat one ♪ ♪ Your whole stinking place will be down to the ground ♪ ♪ Only this cheap hotel standing up safe and sound ♪ ♪ And you yell, why do they spare that one ♪ ♪ And you yell, why the hell’d they spare that one ♪ ♪ All the night through with the noise and to-do ♪ ♪ You wonder who’s the person who lives up there ♪ ♪ Then you see me stepping out into the morning ♪ ♪ Looking nice with a ribbon in my hair ♪ ♪ And the ship, the black freighter ♪ ♪ Runs the flag at its masthead ♪ ♪ And the cheer rings the air ♪ ♪ By noontime the docks are swarming with men ♪ ♪ Coming off of that ghostly freighter ♪ ♪ They’re moving in the shadows where no one can see ♪ ♪ And they’re chaining up people and bringing them to me ♪ ♪ Asking me, kill them now or later ♪ ♪ Asking me, kill them now or later ♪ ♪ Noon by the clock ♪ ♪ And so still along the dock ♪ ♪ You can hear a foghorn miles away ♪ ♪ In that quiet of death, ♪ ♪ I’ll say, right now ♪ ♪ And they’ll pile up their bodies and I’ll say ♪ ♪ That’ll learn ya ♪ ♪ Then the ship, the black freighter ♪ ♪ Disappears out to sea ♪ ♪ And on it is me ♪

• Thanks, Emily. So just to hold that there. So what is this doing? It’s showing to me a satirical idea about, she’s obviously a maid, a cleaner, a servant. All she has is a dream. She has nothing else, no family, nothing. But it’s a satire on her own position and how she’s trying to, she can maybe have a dream of achieving something that’s going to happen, isn’t it? But the mere position of the character in the social class and then coming out so militant. And for me, it’s not the big laughing belly laugh, but it’s a different, it’s again, going back to Northrop Frye’s phrase, a brilliant phrase, “In satire, irony is militant.” It’s ironic because of her position. Can she ever really achieve anything like that? No, probably not. But there’s a militancy. Okay, we can go to the next piece, please. And of course the great music, which is dream militant. So these are just a couple of short extracts from some of Brecht’s poems. 'Cause I want to show how he’s writing where he’s subverting sort of very romantic poetry of Schiller and some of the other great German romantic poets and others. And in his own times, he’s writing in the first part of, in the Hitler period in Germany, satire at evil. “If we could really look, we’d see the horror in the heart of farce. He nearly had us mastered. Don’t yet rejoice in his defeat. Although the world stood up and stopped the bastard, the bitch that bore him is in heat again.” From “Arturo Ui.” So it’s although the world stood up and stopped the bastard, the bastard being Hitler and the extreme fascism, the bitch that bore him is in heat again. What if he’s just reminding us, he nearly had us mastered. Don’t yet rejoice. And he’s just reminding you always have to keep a vigilant eye when nationalism turns to the extreme and the mad race theories, et cetera.

In a character like Hitler in fascism of any kind, we have to, the horror in the heart of the farce, twisting language, twisting ideas, never forget. It’s a little warning. But for me, framed in a poetic of Brecht you know, that these are unforgettable phrases that burn into our imagination, I think. And make us just pause to think. And this is the militancy of satire and irony, the very way he’s writing. Okay, can we show the next poem, please? “In the dark times will there also be singing? Yes, there will be singing about the dark times.” In four lines, he gets it. It’s more than a witty aphorism. There’s a bit of wit. It’s satirical against evil. Of course there’s always singing, but it’s about, so it’s not that does the singing voice stop? It’s what does it sing about that we have to listen to and maybe change our minds a bit. So it’s not a belly laugh satire. It’s one that’s almost like a dagger going into the heart. Different kind of satire against the horror of dark times. Can you show the next one please? So this is one of Brecht’s, also one of his many, many great poems. I mean, he wrote so many. “The Burning of the Books.” “When the regime commanded the unlawful books be burned, teams of dull oxen hauled huge cartloads to the bonfires. Then a banished writer, one of the best, scanning the list of excommunicated texts, became enraged. He’d been excluded! He rushed to his desk full of contemptuous wrath to write fierce letters to the morons in power. Burn me! He wrote with his blazing pen. Haven’t I always reported the truth? Now here you are treating me like a liar! Burn me!”

This for me, is classic satire of contemporary times, coming from a short poem by Bertolt Brecht. All, the morons in power burned, censored, cut, killed, banished writers, but he’d been left out of the list. What are you calling me, a liar? I spoke the truth. Brecht turns everything upside down. He turns ideas, he turns ideologies, religions, obsessions with nationalism taken to the extreme, he turns everything upside down and almost gives us a punch in the gut to make us think in another way. And this is what he does in his plays, in his poems and his short stories. And for me, this one short poem just captures it so beautifully, the ironic twist in the writing itself, which becomes unforgettable. And of course he’s referring back to the great Heiner that I spoke about in one of the other talks, you know, who came up with the phrase that we all know, “Where they’ve burned books, they will then later burn people.” So he’s obviously echoing Heiner in the German literary tradition. This to me, is a classic example of what I mean by an ironic satire for our times coming from his own extremely dark times, Germany at the time. Okay, the next piece is one of the great songs of all time, Kurt Weill and Brecht, also from “Threepenny Opera.” And it’s the great Bobby Darin, who for me sung the best version of “Mack the Knife,” which is a Chicago gangster from “Threepenny Opera.” I think we feel all the things that we’ll see in it from the Ed Sullivan show in the late fifties.

• Bobby Darren singing “Mack The Knife.” Let’s have a nice hand for him. ♪ Oh the shark has such pretty teeth, dear ♪ ♪ And he shows them pearly white ♪ ♪ Just a jackknife has old Macheath, babe ♪ ♪ And he keeps it out of sight ♪ ♪ You know when that shark bites with his teeth, dear ♪ ♪ Scarlet billows start to spread ♪ ♪ Fancy gloves though, wears old Macheath, babe ♪ ♪ So there’s never, never a trace of red ♪ ♪ On the sidewalk ♪ ♪ Ooh Sunday morning uh-huh ♪ ♪ Lies a body just oozin’ life, eek ♪ ♪ And someone’s sneakin’ ‘round the corner ♪ ♪ Could that someone be Mack the Knife? ♪ ♪ There’s a tugboat down by the river don’t you know ♪ ♪ Where a cement bag’s just droopin’ on down ♪ ♪ Oh that cement is for, just for the weight, dear ♪ ♪ Five’ll get you ten ♪ ♪ Ooh Mackie’s back in town ♪ ♪ Now did ya hear ‘about Louie Miller ♪ ♪ He disappeared, babe ♪ ♪ After drawin’ out all of his hard-earned cash ♪ ♪ And now Macheath spends just like a sailor ♪ ♪ Could it be our boy’s done something rash, hoh ♪ ♪ Now Jenny Diver, yeah ♪ ♪ Ooh Suky Tawdry ♪ ♪ Look out, Miss Lotte Lenya ♪ ♪ Not to mention old Lucy Brown ♪ ♪ Ooh the lines form on the right, babe ♪ ♪ Now that Mackie’s back in town ♪ ♪ One more verse ♪ ♪ I said Jenny Diver, Suky Tawdry ♪ ♪ Look out ol’ Lotte Lenya and Miss Lucy Brown ♪ ♪ Yes, that line forms on the right, babe ♪ ♪ Now that Mackie’s ♪ ♪ Back in town ♪ ♪ Look at ol’ Mackie back in town ♪ ♪ Yeah, whoo ♪

• Bobby, come back here and take a bow. What do you think of this guy, huh?

• Okay thanks, and you can pause it there. For me, Bobby, he’s so young and he has such a subtlety and he’s almost completely out of place. But it is just a subtlety. He’s trying to be this gangster and sing the song “Mac the Knife.” It’s got, it’s subtle. It’s fragile, but he’s trying to be this big shot gangster and it’s classic Brecht, show us both sides of the character. Never just, you know, with the Hitler thing, it’s just the one image of the screaming loud lunatic and everything, et cetera, and trying to hypnotise the masses. It’s one image, one idea, pushed. With Brecht, he’s always trying to play with the double where this is a fragile little young guy, but he’s trying to be a big shot gangster in Chicago in the play. The Henry Goodman character is trying to capture that. But he’s actually, you know, a small time crook mafia guy becoming a big shot. So Brecht’s trying to show us the combination between the human and the performance of the authority image, if you like, and the horrors of fascism. And I think the young Bobby Darin and the voice just gets it for me, whether conscious or not, doesn’t matter. He gets it. Okay, I want to go on to, the next piece is, if we can go on to number 16, please, Emily. And this is a piece that we all know so well, but what’s so important for me is that it shows the attempt to satirise in “Cabaret,” the fascination with evil.

And which I think is a really important topic for our times. And obviously, coming out of these times in Germany and the allure, the hypnotism, the attraction, and repulsion and how in this clip from the film, we see the attraction and the repulsion at the same time. And we, I think experience it as the audience. And in that way we capture what Helene Weigel is trying to talk about with Brecht, where we think about what we’re actually seeing. We don’t just let our stimulus get hooked into being hypnotised by evil. Okay. If we can show it please.

♪ The sun on the meadow is summery warm ♪ ♪ The stag in the forest runs free ♪ ♪ But gather together to greet the storm ♪ ♪ Tomorrow belongs to me ♪ ♪ The branch of the linden is leafy and green ♪ ♪ The Rhine gives its gold to the sea ♪ ♪ But somewhere a glory awaits unseen ♪ ♪ Tomorrow belongs to me ♪ ♪ The babe in his cradle is closing his eyes ♪ ♪ The blossom embraces the bee ♪ ♪ But soon says a whisper, arise arise ♪ ♪ Tomorrow belongs to me ♪ ♪ Fatherland, fatherland, show us the sign ♪ ♪ Your children have waited to see ♪ ♪ The morning will come when the world is mine ♪ ♪ Tomorrow belongs, tomorrow belongs ♪ ♪ Tomorrow belongs to me ♪ ♪ Oh fatherland, fatherland, show us the sign ♪ ♪ Your children have waited to see ♪ ♪ The morning will come when the world is mine ♪ ♪ Tomorrow belongs, tomorrow belongs ♪ ♪ Tomorrow belongs to me ♪ ♪ Tomorrow belongs, tomorrow belongs ♪ ♪ Tomorrow belongs to me ♪

• You still think you can control it? ♪ Oh fatherland, fatherland show us the sign ♪ ♪ Your children have waited to see ♪ ♪ The morning will come when the world is mine ♪ ♪ Tomorrow belongs, tomorrow belongs ♪ ♪ Tomorrow belongs to me ♪ ♪ Tomorrow belongs ♪

• So what I think is extraordinary, ‘cause for me this remains one of the all-time greatest scenes in any film or any stage, whatever, any form ever made. So many things about satire and evil here, that sweet little innocent voice, that sweet little innocent face at the beginning. And we see it with that beautiful voice. There’s the face. Then we see slowly it becomes more militant. There’s one point in particular, it suddenly turns and starts to become more serious, more determined, the eyes, the jaws, similar to what Henry Goodman was doing when he’s playing Arturo Ui where we see those looks, those glances. So the transformation in the little boy from this sweet, apparently little innocent kid, to suddenly becoming this militant, you know, hating, caricature creature almost. We see that transformation in front of our eyes. And that’s what gives us the satire. We see the double of the little boy, the innocence versus the emerging young fascist. And then secondly, everybody needs to belong. We need to belong to an idea, belong to a nation, belong to a belief in extreme, in religion, in nationhood of extreme or whatever it is. We are superior. We are the best. Tomorrow is us. We are the only ones, you know, we are by far most superior to everyone in the classic theory of self and other. And the other is way, way down on the human scale. It starts to emerge as they want to belong to this idealised fantasy, this mad fantasy of racial purity of Germanic ancestry. And, you know, and Aryan hierarchy. It’s an extraordinary image in just a little kid with a costume, as I said before, dressed in a bit of authority and with all these people around in a small little village somewhere out in the rural parts of Germany, everybody starts to stand and gets caught up in the mass hypnotism, you know, in Wilhelm Reich’s phrase, “the mass psychology of fascism.”

So for me, it’s so powerful, that sense of belonging to that one idea. When ideas about life and society and beliefs of religion, of society, of human nature get reduced to one or two main ideas, everybody becomes caught up in it, can be almost this mass hypnosis going on. You don’t need the screaming Hitler of that, the childrens’, the high school kids’ play even. You can have that, but you can also have this. It’s the same image being propagated, the same one idea, one persona being performed and how to satirise the evil by showing how it comes about. We see the transformation in the couple of minutes in this film clip. And we see the old man there with his head holding it like god, saw it in the first World War, seen it before, seen this mass hysteria for nationalism. Another war, another lunacy coming, you know, within 20, 25 years of the last one. That old guy, just that image cutting in on him once or twice. And then at the very end, Michael York’s character, “You think you can control him?” And the other, the German character shrugs his shoulders. “Who knows?” He doesn’t care. He’s an opportunist. But Michael York isn’t an opportunist. He is saying, “You think you can control this? Forget it.” So it, for me, it’s an extraordinary and subtle, but because it’s showing, it’s the thinking, showing the transformation into the fascist. That is militant satire of today’s times for me. There’s no humour and laughter. We feel the irony because we see the change and the twist and we are, it’s horrifying. But the fact that we become horrified, we don’t become seduced into the fatal fascination with evil is the way that the artwork can be so powerful. Okay, I want to show one last piece for today and if we can go, please Emily, to this very last piece is very little known. And this is a private home movie of Mel Brooks, the great, great Mel Brooks.

• [Person Offscreen] Is that who I think it is?

• [Person Offscreen 2] Yes, Adolf Hitler in a home movie.

• [Person Offscreen] Looks a little like Mel Brooks. Who’s taking the picture?

• [Person Offscreen 2] Oh, Eva, Eva Braun. And not too many people know it, but he was a secret admirer of Charlie Chaplin. Now this is extremely rare footage. It’s with sound.

• [Person Offscreen] Well I see Eva there, Who’s running the camera this time?

• [Person Offscreen 2] Rudolf Hess.

• Hello, sweetie. Kiss my .

• Aw, .

• Oh.

• Yeah.

• Yeah.

• What is in that?

• Applessauce.

• Applesauce oh. Applesauce pass it, will you? Danke. Danke.

• [Person In Dress] Bitte.

• Who cooked this? Must be . There’s something in here.

• Nothing.

• No. There’s a spice in here! Don’t tell me nothing! There’s something in here! Oregano?

• It’s not a oregano.

• Parsley, oregano, thyme? Oh?

• Just a little cinnamon.

• Cimma-nom! That’s what it is, cimma-nom! You tried to get cimma-nom past my schmeka? Never. What did you do?

• It was a bug.

• A bug? You killed a bug. A bug, a living thing, you just take its life away? Poof, its life’s over? Poof, it was here for some reason. You just don’t kill things. What’s the matter with you?

• Forget about the bug, Addy, why don’t you have some mashed potatoes?

• Why don’t you ask the bug’s family to forget about it? Hey. Have some mashed potatoes. You know, it always makes you feel better.

• I don’t want mashed potatoes.

• Oh, come on, Addy.

• I don’t want it.

• Yes, you always love your mashed potatoes.

• No, no, no, no.

• Come on, Addy, come on. Open up, eat it.

• No, no, no.

• Open, oh Addy just loves it.

• What the heck is that? What the heck is that? Someone’s taking pictures? Why is there pictures here? I told you when we’re eating, we’re eating. We’ll save the film for the gags. Later we’re having fun with Marty Borman in the cellar. Then we take pictures, not when we’re eating! Disgusting. Rudy, Rudy, you’re gone. You only have half of me. I can see in the glasses you only have half of me. Look, I’m going to do my famous heil and you’re not going to, you’re not going to get my arm in. Heil me, heil me, heil me, heil me. I’m not in, just this part. Look, I got to get myself a closeup since they’re taking pictures. I should get something cuter. All right, now we are going to go for a big fade. Hide into my moustache just the way they would do in a real moving picture. Here comes the moustache. Here is the fade. Slow fade, slow fade.

• Okay, so in this last piece, what I wanted to show was Mel Brooks in his brilliant approach to satire ‘cause it is satire, is ridiculing, he’s showing the absurd. He’s showing the horror. And then at the end, is that terrible fascination, that extreme fascination with that look, that face, the eyes, the moustache, you know, the whole formed image is playing, I think he’s trying to show with both, but trying to subvert, trying to be a saboteur to, you know, the idea of this fascist leader with such extreme authority and showing, you know, the earlier images as well. I mean, he’s walking a razor’s edge, Mel Brooks, between tasteful and tasteless. And we can debate that, you know, whether it should be shown, whether it isn’t. And it’s obviously a private form of his, but at the same time, it shows the approach of the satirist in trying to ridicule, you know, horror and evil and it’s not necessarily huge belly laughs for us today, I don’t think. I mean this is their laughter is laughter that is thrown in for a different audience. But today, we step back from it. But it’s the impulse of the satirist to ridicule, to pull down to earth, to show the absurd lens to which the, you know, the authoritarian leader image needs to be shown in all its ordinary messiness and muddiness of human life. So Mel Brooks is one example and going all the way through, what I’ve tried to do is show different approaches to satirising evil and satirising evil in our, of those times in Germany and how we might think of it today. Okay, thanks very much. And I can take some, we can do some questions. Onward. All right, let me just get it up here.

Q&A and Comments:

Q: Okay, Mark, does satire parody ever elevate the subject or always reduce?

A: That’s a great question, Mark. I think that it reduces. I don’t think, it can like we saw in the “Tomorrow Belongs to Me” from “Cabaret.” It can elevate and then in order to reduce, so it’s showing intentionally or the Henry Goodman is an intentional elevation 'cause it’s a performance. And then the reduction. When we consciously show in film or theatre that this is a conscience performance. It’s not an authentic self. And I think that’s the way that Brecht was pointing towards as a way of how contemporary satirists, certainly of his time and now, can try to take on this notion of extreme evil and how to, or evil, cetera.

Q: Romane, does ridicule carry its own authority?

A: Yes, I think it does. And I think whether it’s the fool in King Lear in Shakespeare, whether it’s the, you know, the ancient Greeks or whether it’s some of these people I’ve shown today, I think that ridicule has a very strong authority, precisely because of what it’s doing. You know, it’s reducing images of power to ordinary humanness. And power, people in power, never like that. They hate it. So it carries its own authority by being a kind of saboteur, you know, or Northrop Frye’s phrase, “ironically militant.” Betty Ray, the movie, “Don’t Look Up” is an excellent example. Great one, thank you. I’m going to show one or two examples from Kubrick and others next week.

Q: Heather, why did the leaders enjoy satires on them at their expense?

A: It was part of the tradition in ancient Greece. I mean, we’re going back two and a half thousand years ago. It was part of their tradition. We’re not sure exactly why, but it was the festival of Dionysus for the god of Dionysus, which was the guy who was the god of excess, wine, woman, and song, and to celebrate the excesses and sensualities of being alive. And they, according to all evidence that we find, the leaders would sit in the front and would laugh and love it. I think they saw that in the old adage, “Better to be talked about than not talked about.” You know, nothing worse than not being talked about if you’re trying to climb up the ladder of power.

Anne, I directed a short satirical play by Brecht which authorities gradually dismembered a guy called Mr. K, while continually assuring him this is all for his own good. That’s great. I don’t know that. I’d love to hear more about that. That’d be wonderful. It sounds fantastic, and it sounds classic Brecht. Going back to your very first question, elevated, set it up, in order to reduce it.

Q: So Sheila, do you think the ancient Greeks were fine with satire or perhaps they felt the humour provided an outlet for the masses?

A: Yeah, I think it did both. I think it gave like a Hyde Park corner where the masses could say anything about the leader and you know, free for all, go for it. And also, it’s only during the festival of Dionysus. It’s not outside of that period. So it, you’re right, it was a kind of an outlet, a safety valve release for the savage wit.

Q: Jack, would you consider “Wallace Shorns” a designated modern satire?

A: I don’t know that play of “Wallace Shorns.” I’d have to get back to you on that. Thanks for that.

Q: Sally, why wasn’t Henry Ford tried for treason?

A: Well, you know, great question. I suppose I wanted to use him as one example. There were many, many others in many parts of the world who may not have, you know, had the immense power and resources that Henry Ford did, but you know, others did as well. And you know, the great Arthur Miller play, you know, “All my Sons” and there’s so many around this theme, if one likes. And it’s a very complicated relationship between religion, commerce, power, authority, nationalism, you know, many, many complicated relationships in a way amongst those. And which I think goes back to the ancient Romans and it goes all the way.

There’s a great play by a Japanese writer called “My Friend Hitler,” which shows the relationship between Hitler, Krupp’s works, and Rohm, the leader of the stormtroopers who Hitler had killed in 1934, if I’m right, where he shows how he was prepared to jettison all of those, the storm troopers and Rohm and the sort of the mob in order to get Krup and the big business leaders and magnates on his side to help finance him. And it shows just through a subtle interplay of the three main characters of how Hitler is manipulating them in order to choose the one in the end. Elliot, it’s interesting that it’s a Japanese play.

Q: Now that we are in the world of AI, how do you see this technology?

A: That’s a great question. I think it’s a brilliant thing and I watched a piece recently where a couple of very eminent scientists in Britain were talking about yes, at some point AI probably, possibly will be able to. I don’t know enough about it. I’m not, you know, that knowledgeable. I’m an amateur, but it might. You know, already AI is writing essays and other things. That I need somebody’s advice who’s much more digitally attuned, but I think it could.

Dennis, Charlie Chaplin, yes, the absolute epitome of satire without a doubt. And I wanted to show, but I thought I’ll hold that maybe for next week or, but it also, so many know it so well, but it’s absolutely the epitome of satire and Charlie Chaplin intentionally, completely, intentionally doing it.

Q: Pamela, were Brecht’s books burned?

A: Yes, certainly by the, after the 1933 burning banned everything. I mean, he was hunted. He got out in time and Kurt Weill and many others, many other writers who, and Brecht obviously not being Jewish.

Q: Maria, who were the translators from the German?

A: There are quite a few. There’s, I think John Willett has got really good translations of Brecht’s poems and plays, but there are a lot. They’re many.

Q: Sandy, why is “Mac the Knife” considered satire?

A: I think because he’s trying to, he’s satirising, you know, Chicago gangsters and on the one hand he’s the, you know, the young guy’s trying to sort of bolster himself and show himself to be this real, you know, gangster who can shoot, can kill, can cut anybody up with his knife. And on the other hand, is this little kid. It’s again, that’s always that duality. So it shows the performance side and the real side. Whereas in non satire, we will, in the image that people show, they only try to show one side of their strong self. They never try to show the more vulnerable or the sensitive, whatever, other side of themselves. Yeah, we see that in leaders all the time. Just show the one side which is so strong.

Mark, the old man and Michael York in “The Cabaret.” Yeah, I think I tried to mention that there, where he is exactly the example of and the way he holds his head and he’s, we can imagine immediately he’s been through the first World War. He’s seen it. He’s seen all this before, not Nazism, but he’s seen extreme German nationalism and Aryan racial theory go to its extreme. “Tomorrow Belongs to Me,” singing something like that in 1914, 1916 and knowing exactly where it leads to, the horror and the slaughter. So I think that is the counterpoint together with Michael York and the opportunist German guy, the character. They’re the counterpoints to, well everybody gets caught up and that’s what makes us think as we are watching as well.

Susan. During the song, everybody stands except the old man. Exactly, you understand, exactly, Susan. I think you’ve fit the nail brilliantly, completely. He’s the only one who totally gets it. Besides the Michael York character.

Q: Julius, Susan, are you related to Wole Soyinka, the brilliant playwright?

A: I’m just seeing your surname. Yeah, that would be incredible. I mean, one of the great, amazing playwrights. Brilliant.

Thank you. Julius, it’d be fantastic if you could make contact, would be amazing. What an extraordinary thing, lockdown is.

Q: Julius, is the private movie of Mel Brooks available on YouTube?

A: Yes, well that’s where I found it. And if not, then I can always, you know, email it if you would like, Julius.

Michael, George Orwell’s “Animal Farm.” Totally. It’s brilliant satire. It’s, and again, it’s not big belly laugh satire. It’s militant irony. It may be a smile and maybe a smile of recognition, but it’s not necessarily big laughter. So the idea that satire is only comedy and humour, it’s not. You know, satire is a big umbrella with many, many genres underneath it.

Q: Philip, did Lenny Riftonstar ever comment on?

A: That’s a really interesting question. I don’t know. I’m going to have a look. Thank you.

Q: David, besides “The Life of Brain,” is there any satire on the myth of Jews killing Christ?

A: Sure. That’s a great question. I don’t know, David. We need to have a look about Jews killing Christ. That’s interesting. I would need to have a look, thank you.

Allison, “The Producers,” absolutely, huge controversy and I’ll show one or two clips next week and talk about that exact controversy, you know, which it still evokes today all these decades later.

Sally, SA Nationals politicians enjoyed Peter Duke. Hey, exactly, maybe because he was a white guy, but also he’s playing drag. He’s using drag, gender he’s playing with, Peter Duke is, brilliantly, fantastic performer, writer, and comedian Peter Duke is, and you’re absolutely right. They loved it. You know . Rather be talked about than not talked about. Nothing worse. And they allowed maybe certain areas, market theatre and others that everybody knows to be where, you know, certain criticisms of the apartheid state could happen.

“Was it Albert,” you know, “Was it Albert,” is basically what would happen if Jesus Christ came to apartheid South Africa. The very idea is satire. And then it’s just a whole lot of scenes imagining Christ in different situations in Johannesburg and Soweto and other parts of South Africa. It’s such a simple idea. Like therein, lies the satire and the irony, the belief in the Christ, the religion, Christianity, but with another context of the whole meaning.

Catherine, in some prehistoric cave paintings, human figures were depicted with animal heads. That is, this is such an interesting idea, Catherine. I don’t know, but maybe you could be the first to notice that maybe it was meant to satire. Maybe it wasn’t meant as some sort of humans trying to aspire to godlike characteristics coming from a lion or from a bull’s head on the human body. Maybe it was satire like the ancient Egyptians. That’s a fantastic idea. Judy, isn’t there a turning point where the satirist goes too far and fury descends on him and in Trump playing good sport to Jimmy, yeah. It could well be. And we always have this debate and it goes way back to ancient times as we were talking even about the Greeks. Does the satirist go too far? What is too far? What should happen? Should the satirist be censored, banned? Should the works be burned, worse? The satirist imprisoned? Lenny Bruce, many others, what do we do? You know, the great story of Monty Python is when they were filming “The Life of Brian,” and it was either EMI or the BBC maybe both who were going to fund it. And four days before it, I mean all the actors, thousands of people, the people that were in Tunisia where they filmed it and they’re all ready and the sets were built and all that. Four days before the money was pulled, it was EMI and BBC 'cause they were scared 'cause it’s such a satire on the life of Christ. So George Harrison was phoned by the Monty, one or two of the Monty Python team who happened to be friends with George Harrison and George Harrison said, without even seeing the script, he sent the money. Without him and without that little story, the “Life of Brian” would never have been made. So we go back to how far do you push it? When people pull the funding out with “The Life of Brian,” what would’ve happened? What might not have happened if George Harrison hadn’t stepped in at the last minute? You know, when is it too far, the satire? Because I’ve watched a lot of pieces afterwards on the BBC where John Kleese, Michael, all of them, Michael Palin, were pretty heavily attacked by religious leaders in Britain for their portrayal of Christ.

Sandy, Voltaire, great satirist. Absolutely.

Yeah. Myrna, Roger Rabbit, yep. A lot of people didn’t get it. I agree.

Q: Melena, Thomas Mann ever indulge in satire?

A: I don’t think so. Not that I know of.

Q: Robert, no satire yet of Putin?

A: Well, that’s a great question. There are some performers in Russia who tried, and of course, were arrested. There was that young female group, Pussy Riot, who tried to satirise Putin, you know, and they fled. Well, this is way before the invasion of Ukraine. They got out. So I’m sure there is maybe in the underground circuits in parts of Russia, but a very, a great question. Nobody has yet gone to investigate and it isn’t yet happening in the West. You know, when you see that image of him, I just never forget it. We all can’t with that massive table, you know, whether it’s Macron or whoever it is, sitting right on the other side. And you know, he’s so unconscious. He thinks it’s an image of such authority and power. But it’s complete satire when we look at it, you know? But it’s scarily not for people who’re caught up in the horror.

Peter, satire goes too far, Charlie Hebdo. Yep, it can. But then, you know, what society do we want? How much do we want to allow satire? Don’t we? I think it’s an endless tug of war between the satirists and the authority, between the believers and the satirists again. How are we going to position satire in a democratic society? You know, like France or Britain, wherever. Britain, wherever. Where are we going to? Oscar Wilde, many other examples come to mind. And I think it’s an eternal tussle between the artist and the satirist, the writer, the filmmaker, and the belief of the society at a time in history. And I think, you know, what’s fascinating to me is to watch that shift always.

Rita, today’s April Fools Day. You’re absolutely right. Some historians speculate that April Fools Day dates back to 1582 and France switched from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar. Council of Trent, thank you for this. This is brilliant. People who were slow to get the news or fail to recognise the start of the new year had moved to January the first. In the the brunt of jokes became April Fools. This is fantastic. Rita, thank you very much. I’m going to dine out on that over the weekend, if I may.

Philip. “Felix Krull” is to an extent satirical. I don’t know that well enough, Oo I’m going to hold on that if I may.

Okay, so Emily, thank you very much and thanks so much to everybody and hope you have a great weekend, rest of the weekend with a little bit of humour.