In 1926: living at the edge of time - Monoskop

REVUES 195
thing [das Echteste]. She is blackness at its purest ... She imparts
rhythm, which comes from her blood, from the jungle. She takes us back
to our childhood, when, visiting black neighborhoods, we were whipped
up by the beating of the kettle drums, with blacks crying out strange
prayers and moving their limbs. This is what the revue is all about!"
(Berliner Borsen-Zeitung, January 3; see Schrader and Schebera, 114-
115) . [see Authenticity vs. Artificiality] Several loops of strange associations
underlie whites' enthusiasm for black bodies. The otherness of
these bodies opens a path back to an imagined source of white cultural
(or racial?) identity, and when spectators concentrate on the surface
perceptions offered by black dancers, they have the illusion that they are
attaining some deep level of authenticity. Jazz is the appropriate music
for such images, and its rhythms add to the speed which characterizes
the staging of the revue. [see Present vs. Past] This speed, in turn, is part
of a general effort at condensation. Since most revue theaters do not offer
sufficient space for the hundreds of fast-moving bodies-the stage of the
Folies-Bergeres, for example, is only 9.3 meters wide and 7.2 meters deep
(Schafer, 38; Klooss and Reuter, 33)-stairways become a necessary
component of the sets. In addition to accommodating a greater number
of actors and dancers, stairways dramatize the appearance of the star as
a gigantic, colorful event that brings a resplendent body and its aura
close to the spectators. [see Jazz, Stars, Center = Periphery (Infinitude)]
Speed and condensation, however, merely counterbalance the revues'
essential heterogeneity; they never neutralize it. As the various numbers
are performed, the visual and acoustic effects accumulate but do not
complement one another in any overarching plot structure. Though
revues are frequently organized as a series of historical tableaux or exotic
landscapes (Jelavich, 3, 168; Schafer, 34), neither the shared element of
temporal and spatial alterity nor the thread of the emcees' words and
jokes can provide a definitive impression of unity. For Siegfried Kracauer,
"the surface glamour of stars, films, revues, and production values" lies
in their capacity to present "in a precise and undisguised manner to
thousands of eyes and ears the disorder of society. This is precisely what
enables such shows to evoke and maintain that tension which must
precede inevitable and radical change. In the streets of Berlin, one is often
struck by the momentary insight that someday all this will suddenly
burst apart. The entertainment to which the general public throngs ought
to produce the same effect" (315). Revues reflect a world that is con-