Professor David Peimer
Satire vs. Evil, Part 2: Kurt Weil/Brecht, Cabaret, and Others
Summary
Can you ridicule or satirise Hitler and his evil? Can you ridicule peoples’ fascination with him and nazis as well?
Professor David Peimer
David Peimer is a professor of theatre and performance studies in the UK. He has taught at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, and New York University (Global Division), and was a Fulbright Scholar at Columbia University. Born in South Africa, David has won numerous awards for playwriting and directing. He has written eleven plays and directed forty in places like South Africa, New York, Brussels, London, Berlin, Zulu Kingdom, Athens, and more. His writing has been published widely and he is the editor of Armed Response: Plays from South Africa (2009) and the interactive digital book Theatre in the Camps (2012). He is on the board of the Pinter Centre in London.
Well, what they show in the film is the kindness to the dog, kindness to the secretaries and some others and to children. So there is that side, which is a performance I think. I don’t think it’s genuinely felt. And I think I would go along with Bruno Ganz, that this is, to act a character who is completely without heart. Hitler called Hydrick the Man With the Iron Heart. And I was going to show a little stamp that the Nazis made in 1942 to Hydrick after he was assassinated in Prague. And it’s, for me, he called Hydrick the Man With the Iron Heart, but he himself knows that Hydrick is merely an example of himself, that his heart is iron. Whether turned to iron or always was is a debate for another time. But if there is iron there, there is no compassion, no empathy, no pity. And that’s an entirely different kind of individual.
Well, I mean, why is it also going to make money? Otherwise they wouldn’t do it. So therefore they know there’s going to be a massive audience. So, great question. I would flip the question to why there’s not so many people in the entertainment world will make it, they’re making it because they know they’re going to make money because there’s a huge audience out there in satirizing Hitler. And I think it’s far better than glorifying or romanticizing that individual.