Re-Thinking Dutch Cabaret: The Conservative Implications of Humour in the Dutch Cabaret Tradition
MA Thesis Kunstwetenschappen / Art Studies University of Amsterdam
Dick Zijp (5844029)
Supervisors: Prof. dr. Maaike Bleeker and Dr. Bram van Oostveldt December 2014
Table of Contents
Introduction 4
Questioning Dutch cabaret 5
Procedure 6
Chapter 1: The Critical Reputation of Dutch Cabaret 9
Early history: Wim Ibo 9
The 1990s: engagement vs. authenticity 13
Jacques Klöters 14
Hilde Scholten 17
Van den Hanenberg and Verhallen 19
The 2000s/2010s: new forms of engagement 21
Robbert van Heuven 22
VSCD Cabaret Prizes 23
The question of humour 24
Example #1: Lurelei - Arme ouwe (1966) 25
Example #2: Youp van 't Hek - Buckler (1989) 27
Example #3: Theo Maassen - Crucifix (2005) 29
Chapter 2: The Conservative Implications of Humour 32
Billig and humour studies 32
Billig and classical theory 34
Billig and Bergson 36
Billig and Freud 40
Billig and conservative humour 42
From function to strategies 44
Chapter 3: Re-Thinking Dutch Cabaret: Micha Wertheim's Deconstruction 46 of the Dutch Cabaret Tradition
A joke about joking 47
Wertheim steps out of his role, or doesn't he? 51
Dissecting visuality 52
Ridiculing Facebook 57
Re-thinking Dutch cabaret 59
Conclusion 63
Looking back: conservative implications 63
Looking forward: new critical possibilities 64
Introduction
In December 2010, I attended a performance by the Dutch comedian Micha Wertheim, titled Micha Wertheim voor de zoveelste keer (Micha Wertheim for the Umpteenth Time).1I was already familiar with Wertheim's work at the time, and I knew that he was an experimental comedian who often played with the expectations of the spectator and addressed his audiences in unexpected ways. Yet this performance initially seemed to be more conventional in
structure than Wertheim's earlier performances: Wertheim, standing behind a microphone on an almost empty stage, presented us with a succession of jokes, grouped around a series of personal stories and observations. However, after some forty minutes, something unusual happened. In the middle of a personal commentary upon Facebook, Wertheim suddenly took one step back from the microphone. At this moment, a recording of Wertheim's voice came in, and continued the story that Wertheim was telling live. Wertheim, who had been standing behind the microphone from the beginning of the performance, now left the microphone, took a chair and sat down at the front of the stage to listen to the voice-over. After a while, he unplugged the cord of the microphone. The voice-over immediately stopped. Next, Wertheim started to reflect upon the Facebook commentary. He told us that this seemingly personal commentary upon Facebook did not reflect his personal opinion, but was actually made up. It was 'staged'. Furthermore, Wertheim revealed that he was not making fun of Facebook because he found it important to make a critical statement about it. Rather, as he put it, I did it because it "worked", because I wanted you to believe me to be truly "angry" about this.
Watching Wertheim's performance was an uncomfortable experience. I felt a little bit unsettled, troubled, when Wertheim revealed this seemingly authentic moment of
self-disclosure to be 'just an act'. I began to wonder where this discomfort and this confusion came from. To understand this, it seems first of all important to recognize that Wertheim unsettles common expectations about authenticity. Cabaret performers and stand-up comedians are generally expected to be themselves on stage, to be 'authentic' (Klöters, "Even samenvatten", 37). When comedians are sometimes not 'themselves', they normally communicate to the audience that they are 'playing a role' by using props, theatrical costume, or adopting a silly voice. In line with this, comedians are expected to be 'sincere', to present an audience with personal stories and opinions (Heuven 82). Wertheim refuses to perform according to these
1
Micha Wertheim voor de zoveelste keer, De Kleine Komedie, Amsterdam, 12 Dec. 2010. For the detailed
analysis of Wertheim's performance conducted in Chapter 3 of this thesis, I have made use of the television registration of this performance: Wertheim, Micha. "Micha Wertheim voor de zoveelste keer." Npo.nl. Web. 19 Nov. 2014.
conventions of authenticity. He does initially not communicate to the audience that his commentary upon Facebook is 'just' an act. Rather than adopting a silly voice to comment upon Facebook, and then switching back to his 'own' voice, Wertheim keeps speaking within the same voice, while also indicating a change by 'doubling' his voice and stepping out of the story to reflect upon it, thereby confusing the clear-cut distinction between self and role and confusing our expectations of the authenticity of the comedian.
By playing with and making us aware of these conventions of authenticity, Wertheim also confronts us as spectators with general assumptions about what counts as 'critical' cabaret, and points us to the fact that strategies of authenticity can be used to mask the conservative implications of what seems to be a very critical use of humour. Namely,
Wertheim reveals to the audience that he did not make fun of Facebook because he wanted to make a personal statement about it, but rather because he knew that the audience would recognize 'Facebook' as a heavily debated topic worthy of critique: for although Facebook is indeed a very popular medium, it has also stirred critical debate. As Wertheim goes on to demonstrate, precisely by reiterating this familiar critique of Facebook, he was able to make it seem as if he was truly angry about it.2However, reiterating a very familiar critique is not very challenging; doing so, one merely confirms what most people think, and this is actually a very conservative thing to do. Yet, as Wertheim demonstrates, precisely because it is a cliché recognized by many people, the comedian ridiculing Facebook is perceived by the audience as 'authentic', as 'truly' angry and critical. In this thesis, I set out to theorize these conservative implications of humour explored by Wertheim in his performance, as well as the strategies of authenticity used by comedians to mask these conservative implications of humour.
Questioning Dutch cabaret
By pointing to the role of strategies of authenticity in masking the conservative implications of humour, Wertheim raises urgent questions about Dutch cabaret as a cultural tradition. To make this point clear, I will first provide some background information about the Dutch cabaret tradition. In the Dutch context, the term 'cabaret' refers to a very popular form of theatrical comedy. It has thus nothing to do with the cheap nightclub entertainment that the term 'cabaret' refers to in the Anglo-American context. Rather, Dutch cabaret is a form of comedy that can be traced back to the European cabaret movement of the late nineteenth and
2
Wertheim's Facebook story presents a critique of the idea of digital friendship. People on Facebook, says Wertheim/the voice-over, may think of themselves as very 'social' and 'connected', but they are actually very lonely. They believe they have made 'real' friends, but actually they are sitting all alone behind their computer screens.
early twentieth century. In his classical historical overview work on Dutch cabaret, Wim Ibo has demonstrated that Dutch cabaret can ultimately be traced back to the late nineteenth-century French cabaret-artistiques, the artistic cafés in which French artists, poets and writers experimented with a new form of satirical comedy (see Ibo, Chap. 1). Although Dutch cabaret was initially very strongly influenced by the French as well as by the German cabaret
tradition, in the course of the twentieth century it developed into a distinct form of comedy which is often conceived as 'typically Dutch' (Hanenberg and Verhallen 10). Today, the typical cabaret performance is a solo performance of a comedian who presents (semi-)personal stories and observations interspersed with jokes, often combined with social and political commentary.
This element of social and political criticism is especially important. Dutch cabaret has a strong reputation as a critical and progressive form of comedy. In his standard work about cabaret, Ibo has typified cabaret as "protest against conventions, traditions, and dogmas" (21).3Furthermore, many authors have pointed to the important role of engagement in the Dutch cabaret tradition (Scholten). Moreover, it has often been suggested that the political and social criticism provided by comedians has a personal flavour: comedians are 'authentic', they stand on stage 'as themselves', and they directly address the audience to tell about their personal problems and struggles with the world around them. In the 1990s, the concept of 'personal engagement' has been coined to emphasize this strong relationship between social and political criticism and the personal life of the comedian (Scholten 12). It is against this background that Wertheim's remarks about the conservative implications of humour, and the role of authenticity in obscuring these implications, must be understood.
Procedure
In this thesis, I will use Wertheim's performance as my theoretical object4to re-think a Dutch cabaret tradition that is generally perceived as critical and progressive, and to re-direct attention to the more troubling political implications of humour within this tradition. My main aim is to theorize the conservative implications of humour within Dutch cabaret and thereby to problematize a dominant and rather one-sided understanding of cabaret as critical and progressive.
3
My translation. Ibo argues that cabaret always has the form of a "protest" and adds to this: "het stelt [...] betrekkelijkheid tegenover conventies, tradities en dogma's".
4
I take the notion of theoretical object from Maaike Bleeker (Visuality 8). With this notion, Bleeker argues for an approach in which the reflexive nature of cultural objects is taken seriously, and in which these objects are not used as mere illustrations of theory.
To re-think the Dutch cabaret tradition, we first need to understand how this tradition has traditionally been perceived, and what the problems of these traditional views are. This is what I aim to do in Chapter 1. Within this chapter, I present an analysis of popular texts on Dutch cabaret. I argue that there are two dominant ideas about Dutch cabaret, which have in current discourses become deeply intertwined: first, the idea that cabaret is a critical and progressive form of comedy, and secondly, the idea that cabaret is about authenticity and personal expression. To further unpack these ideas, as well as to understand their
intertwinement in today's discourses on cabaret, I trace them back to older texts, in which they are more clearly separated. This short history will lead me from the early 1970s, via the 1990s, to the present. Next, I problematize the traditional understanding of cabaret as a critical and progressive form of comedy by looking into three famous examples of so-called critical cabaret: Cabaret Lurelei's mockery of Queen Juliana (1966), Youp van 't Hek's critique of the non-alcoholic beer Buckler (1989) and Theo Maassen's intense kissing of a crucifix (2006). Within a close analysis of these examples, I demonstrate that the supposedly critical humour of these comedians has actually quite conservative implications.
In Chapter 2, I further theorize the conservative implications of humour by providing a close reading of Michael Billig's book Laughter and Ridicule: Towards a Social Critique of Humour (2005). In the book, Billig argues against a dominant ideology according to which humour is good-natured, warm-hearted and rebellious, and re-directs attention to the conservative functions of humour in social life. Within my reading of Billig, I first
demonstrate how Billig's theory draws upon and combines elements from the humour theories of Bergson and Freud to arrive at his thesis about the conservative functions of humour. Next, I re-read Billig's critique of humour and ideology through Freud's arguments about the
rhetoric of joking. By doing this, I aim to demonstrate that Billig's theory raises interesting questions about how humour can be used to co-construct or to contribute to ideology.
In Chapter 3, I use Micha Wertheim's performance Micha Wertheim voor de zoveelste keer as a theoretical object to think about the strategies used by Dutch comedians and how these strategies work on an ideological level to construct humour as 'positive', 'good-natured' and 'rebellious' and to mask the conservative implications of humour. It is especially
Wertheim's artistic reflection upon the comedy of Toon Hermans and Youp van 't Hek that helps me to articulate an alternative history of Dutch cabaret, in which more attention is paid to the conservative implications of humour. I propose to re-read Wertheim's artistic reflection upon humour in the Dutch cabaret tradition through Maaike Bleeker's theory of visuality. This
theory helps to explain the important role that authenticity plays within the strategies of humour analyzed by Wertheim in his performance.
In the Conclusion, I argue that my reading of Wertheim's performance, framed through Billig and Bleeker, allows for a critical re-thinking of Dutch cabaret in terms of the
conservative implications of humour in this tradition, and also contributes to Michael Billig's reflection upon humour and ideology. Furthermore, I point to the new critical possibilities that I have encountered in the work of Micha Wertheim and others, which present interesting new questions for future research.
Chapter 1: The Critical Reputation of Dutch Cabaret
In popular discourses on Dutch cabaret, we find two dominant ideas: the first one is that cabaret is essentially a critical and progressive form of comedy, that the comedian is critically engaged with society; the second one is that cabaret is about authenticity and personal
expression, that comedians are 'themselves' on stage and present the audience with personal stories and opinions. The aim of this chapter is to analyze and to destabilize this traditional view of cabaret.
In the first part of the chapter, I present an analysis of popular discourses on cabaret. In today's discourse on cabaret, notions of authenticity and engagement have become deeply intertwined. To further unpack these notions and to study their relationship, I will trace them back to older texts, in which they were more clearly separated. This historical exploration will lead me from the early 1970s, via the 1990s, to the present. The idea that cabaret is a critical and progressive form of comedy will be traced back to Wim Ibo's classical historical
overview work about Dutch cabaret: En nu de moraal van dit lied: 75 jaar Nederlands cabaret, which was first published in 1970.5The idea that cabaret is about authenticity and personal expression will be traced back to cabaret discourses from the 1990s.
In the second part of the chapter, I question the dominant idea that cabaret is critical and progressive by addressing the role of humour in three classical examples of supposedly critical cabaret: Cabaret Lurelei's mockery of Queen Juliana in the song Arme ouwe (1966), Youp van 't Hek's critique of the non-alcoholic beer Buckler (1989) and Theo Maassen's intense kissing of a crucifix (2006). It is important to remind the reader at this point that the aspect of authenticity, already emphasized in my reading of Dutch cabaret discourse, is further questioned and made productive for a critical analysis of Dutch cabaret in Chapter 3 of this thesis.
Early history: Wim Ibo
In 1970, writer and producer Wim Ibo published an historical overview work on Dutch cabaret, which has become a classical work in the field. His En nu de moraal van dit lied: 75 jaar Nederlands cabaret presents an overview of Dutch cabaret in the period 1895-1970. Ibo was not a professional historian; he was an amateur, who began his career as a cabaret artist,
5
I do not claim that the idea that cabaret is critical originates with Ibo, quite the contrary: I will demonstrate that Ibo responds to - and tries to resist - dominant ideas about the role of social criticism in Dutch cabaret. However, Ibo's text is the first systematic overview work about Dutch cabaret, therefore it explicitly addresses the critical nature of Dutch cabaret.
but became successful as a producer of records and radio/television programmes on Dutch cabaret. Although Ibo was not the first cabaret historian, he was the first to present a
systematic overview of the history of Dutch cabaret, and to provide a definition of the genre based upon extensive historical research.
Most relevant for our discussion is the first, introductory chapter of Ibo's book. Within the introduction, Ibo very explicitly reflects upon the 'nature' of Dutch cabaret. Ibo's
suggestion in this chapter is that, to be able to understand cabaret as an artistic form, as well as to provide a definition of the genre, we have to trace it back to its origins. He finds these origins in late nineteenth-century Paris, where a new form of satirical entertainment arose for which we now use the term 'cabaret'. As Ibo points out, the French term cabaret was, at the time, used in a slightly different sense. In the late nineteenth-century, the term cabaret referred to a public café, a night club or a restaurant. Although these public cafés or
restaurants sometimes provided entertainment, this was not the type of satirical entertainment that we now call cabaret. Cabaret, as an artistic form, was the product of artistic experiments that did not take place in the public cafés, but rather in artistic cafés, the so-called cabaret-artistiques, which were only open for members, usually writers and artists. According to Ibo, the new form of comedy invented in the cabaret-artistiques was the direct precursor of Dutch cabaret. There was one artistic café in particular which played a very important role in the popularization of this new form of comedy. This was the famous café Le Chat Noir on Montmartre, the first cabaret-artistique which was open for non-members as well. The commercial entrepeneur Rodolphe Salis, who was the manager of this café, decided to make Le Chat Noir a public café so as to attract a larger audience, and thus to make more money. In 1881, Salis opened his café for the curious crowds on the streets. Le Chat Noir became immediately successful. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, French cabaret spread across Europe. Whereas some artists travelled to Paris, the performers of Montmartre also played in other European countries. This led to the establishment of artistic cafés à la Le Chat Noir in different European capitals, a.o. Berlin, Copenhagen, Vienna and Amsterdam.
In his characterization of the French cabaret of Montmartre, Ibo emphasizes the element of critique. Ibo points to at least three important characteristics of French turn-of-the-century cabaret. First, it was often anti-bourgeois. It was rooted in the socialist, realist, and naturalist movements of the late nineteenth century. However, there was also a more romantical tradition, which was anti-naturalist. Secondly, it was literary-musical entertainment. Song-singing played a very important role. The cabaret artists presented lyrical, but also satirical songs. The emphasis was on text, not on music; the music had to
support the message, which was often critical. Thirdly, the cabaret artists performed in the intimate setting of an artistic café for an intelligent audience. The cabaretier directly addressed, and often insulted, the spectator.
According to Ibo, Dutch cabaret was directly influenced by the French tradition. Eduard Jacobs, generally seen as the first Dutch cabaretier, had even worked as a pianist in Le Chat Noir. Jacobs was an Amsterdam diamant polisher who had tried his luck in Paris, and found work in the entertainment industry. Back in the Netherlands, he presented solo
performances, mainly consisting of Dutch translations of French cabaret songs. For Ibo, Jacobs's first solo performance in Amsterdam marks the 'birth' of Dutch cabaret. On 19 August 1895, Jacobs presented his first cabaret performance in a night pub in the Quellijnstraat 64, De Pijp, Amsterdam (Ibo, Chap. 3)
Not only Jacobs, but also other early Dutch cabaretiers were inspired by the French cabaret artists of Montmartre. The French influences came in particular from Aristide Bruant, whom Ibo calls the "father" of Dutch cabaret (12). Next to French cabaret, German
cabaretiers like Ernst von Wolzogen and Rudolf Nelson have had a considerable influence upon the Dutch cabaret scene. Whereas the French cabaret of Montmartre presented solo performers as part of a larger programme, German cabaret mainly consisted of cabaret ensembles (53). Both forms existed in the Netherlands. Whereas early Dutch cabaretiers like Koos Speenhoff and Eduard Jacobs were inspired by the French cabaret of Aristide Bruant (47), the ensemble cabarets of Wim Kan (the famous ABC Cabaret, established in 1936) and Wim Sonneveld (Cabaret Wim Sonneveld, established in 1943) were directly inspired by the German Nelson Cabaret (55).
By tracing Dutch cabaret back to its origins in late nineteenth-century France, and by pointing to the many influences of French and German cabaret upon the Dutch tradition, Ibo's history of cabaret emphasizes continuity. Dutch cabaret as a tradition has, according to Ibo, always been faithful to its origin. Its 'spirit' or 'essence' has not considerably changed. Hence, Ibo proposes a definition of cabaret which is in line with his observations about the original French cabaret of Montmartre: "Cabaret," Ibo writes, "is professionele literair-muzikale theaterkleinkunst in een intieme omgeving voor een intelligent publiek." (16) Ibo's
characterization of cabaret as a "literary-musical" form of theatre, which is presented in an "intimate setting" for an "intelligent audience", matches his observations about the French cabaret of Montmartre. Yet what seems to be remarkably absent from this definition is the satirical or critical aspect of cabaret, which did have a prominent place in Ibo's account of the Parisian cabaret of the late nineteenth century. As it turns out, however, the element of social
critique is implied within the idea that cabaret is a "professional" and autonomous artistic form. Ibo elaborates upon this point on the pages following his definition. Here, Ibo opposes his view of cabaret as an autonomous artistic form to the idea of engagement, which, as the author writes, is too often seen as a prerequisite for critical cabaret. He states:
Bij beschouwingen over cabaretprogramma's [...] schijnt men vooral de laatste jaren steeds meer behoefte te hebben aan het uitpluizen van de politieke richting van de kleinkunstenaar, alsof dat de voorwaarde is die iemand tot cabaretier stempelt [...] Wie de arrogante pretentie heeft solisten en groepen op demagogische wijze te veroordelen omdat ze niet 'geëngageerd' (in de zin van 'getuigend') zouden zijn, geeft blijk van een intolerantie die het wezen van het cabaret raakt, omdat deze kunst de individuele vrijheid van de ongebonden kunstenaar impliceert (20).
According to Ibo, to say that cabaret is about engagement is to suggest that cabaret can be reduced to one political programme or ideology. However, the cabaretier is a professional artist, which means that he or she is independent, and does not commit him or herself to one political ideology. It is precisely this autonomy or independence of any political ideology or any direct political goal which enables the cabaretier to be truly critical. Accordingly, the idea that cabaret is necessarily left-wing is, according to Ibo, not correct: "Ook de stelling dat cabaret niet anders dan links gericht kan zijn, berust op een misvatting" (Ibid.). Cabaret is not necessarily left-wing or right-wing; however, it is always critical: "Want de cabaretartiest heeft ons altijd iets te zeggen: wat hij doet en hoe hij dat ook doet, hij protesteert [...] Cabaret is protest in de meest ruime zin van het woord, het stelt kunst tegenover kitsch, eenvoud tegenover glamour, oprechtheid tegenover hypocrisie, verdieping tegenover vervlakking, betrekkelijkheid tegenover conventies, tradities en dogma's." (20-1)
Ibo's characterization of cabaret as a form of protest is interesting because it tells us something about the reputation of cabaret in the early 1970s. First, Ibo's text suggests that cabaret, at least in the 1970s, had a strong reputation as politically engaged and explicitly left-wing, even though Ibo himself rejects this view of cabaret as leftist and politically engaged. Ibo cites many authors who believe cabaret to be explicitly political and (sometimes also) explicitly left-wing: "Een cabaret, as Jan Musch writes, "wil het aan zijn doel beantwoorden, moet politiek zijn of zal niet zijn." (Musch qtd in Ibo 15) "Cabaret", as Johan Verdoner adds to this, "kan niet anders dan progressief zijn en moet dus een linkse indruk maken. Een behoudend cabaret is onvoorstelbaar." (Verdoner qtd in Ibo 15) Furthermore, although the authors disagree about the extent to which comedians need to be politically engaged, the idea that cabaret is a critical form of comedy seems not to be under discussion. Both Ibo and the
authors to whom Ibo refers seem to agree about this. It is only the form of this critique about which the authors disagree: whereas Ibo believes that a truly critical comedian is not
politically engaged, the generally accepted idea seems to be that critique of the comedian is motivated by his or her political engagement. Finally, although Ibo argues against the dominant idea that cabaret is oriented towards the left, he actually reinforces the dominant idea that cabaret is 'progressive' by characterizing it in terms of a "protest against conventions, traditions and dogmas" (qtd above)
The 1990s: engagement vs. authenticity
In the decennia after Ibo published his classical overview work, a new idea about Dutch cabaret arises: the idea that cabaret is about authenticity and personal expression, i.e. that comedians are 'themselves' on stage and present the audience with personal stories and observations. This idea is very strongly embedded within cabaret discourses from the 1990s, to which I will take a closer look in this section. The emphasis upon authenticity in cabaret discourses from the 1990s reflects some important changes that have taken place in the cabaret landscape in the 1980s and the 1990s. Most importantly, in the early 1980s, the personal life of the comedian began to play a more important role in the performance. Authors use different, and often pejorative, terms to characterize these new, more personal, forms of cabaret: they speak of 'ego-cabaret', 'ik-tijdperk', 'authenticiteit' and 'persoonlijk engagement'.
The many pejorative terms used to describe these new forms of cabaret demonstrate that authenticity and personal expression were not always seen as very positive. This is explained by the fact that many authors in the 1990s believe the new, personal forms of cabaret to pose a challenge to cabaret's critical nature. Within the following, I will analyze the idea of authenticity, as well as the perceived tension between authenticity and critical
engagement. I argue that by criticizing the trend of personal cabaret, authors often reinforce the traditional idea that 'true' cabaret is critical. I will start by looking at three shorter texts which are among the very few which provide a more or less systematic historical discussion of how cabaret has developed and changed as an artistic form (see also Krans 134-6, Otte and Verboeket 131 ff). In the three texts discussed here, the idea of authenticity is explicitly addressed and reflected upon. The first two texts are written by cabaret historian Jacques Klöters (1997, 1999), the third text is written by theatre researcher Hilde Scholten (1995). Next, I discuss Patrick van den Hanenberg and Frank Verhallen's overview work Het is weer tijd om te bepalen waar het allemaal op staat: Nederlands cabaret 1970-1995 (1996). The book by van den Hanenberg and Verhallen is the only historical overview work which has
been published after Ibo's classical study, and covers the period from 1970 to 1995. Although this book is more oriented towards individual comedians than the shorter texts discussed in this chapter, its reading of the history of cabaret, including the role of critical engagement and authenticity, is in many ways similar to the readings of Klöters and Scholten, as will be further demonstrated below.
Jacques Klöters
In 1997 and 1999, theatre historian Jacques Klöters published two short essays on Dutch cabaret in Sketch, a specialized journal on popular theatre in the Netherlands.6The first of these essays, "Cabaret dankzij de provincie", appeared in a special issue of Sketch, published in March 1997. This issue was dedicated to cabaret historian Wim Ibo, and all articles published paid tribute to Ibo by addressing a topic that Ibo was interested in, personally or professionally. In his tribute to Ibo, Klöters wrote about the history of cabaret, and remained, not surprisingly, very close to Ibo's reading of this history. In the essay, Klöters emphasized the critical nature of Dutch cabaret. In his second essay, however, Klöters chose a different path: in "Even samenvatten...", published two years later in Sketch 16 (1999), Klöters argued that present forms of cabaret are often not so critical anymore when compared to cabaret performances from the 1960s and 1970s.
Let us first take a closer look Klöters's earlier essay. In the essay, Klöters provides a short history of Dutch cabaret, focusing upon cabaret's origins as a marginal artistic form in the late nineteenth century and its development into a form of mass entertainment in the decennia after the Second World War. Following Ibo, Klöters argues that the origins of Dutch cabaret lie within the French and German cabarets of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. This original form of cabaret, Klöters explains, was not popular. Rather, cabaretiers were "onmaatschappelijken" (44), operating from the margins of society, and ridiculing the norms and conventions of that society. Cabaret was transgressive, it was a form of protest, a protest against social norms and conventions. In the Netherlands, cabaret lost some of its radicalism, and after the Second World War, developed into a form of mass entertainment. This loss of radicalism, however, did not lead to a situation in which cabaret became pure entertainment. Like Ibo, Klöters argues that cabaret is always more than entertainment, and
6
In 1987, Klöters published a more extensive historical overview work about Dutch popular theatre: 100 jaar
amusement in Nederland. In this section, I do not discuss this work. Although Klöters dedicates part of this book
to the history of cabaret, the book mainly provides a documentation of the works of individual comedians and ensembles. In the two shorter texts published in Sketch, Klöters takes a more analytical perspective, and provides a more explicit reflection upon the role of authenticity and engagement in Dutch cabaret.
has always remained faithful to its origin: "wat gebleven is," Klöters writes, "is de protesthouding. Het cabaret is tegen." (50)
In the essay published two years later, Klöters presents a rather different history of cabaret. Whereas Klöters, in his tribute to Ibo, emphasized that postwar cabaret continued to be critical, in the other essay Klöters suggests that postwar cabaret marked a new beginning, the beginning of what he calls "zelfportretten-cabaret" (37):
In het naoorlogse Nederlandse cabaret is er een typische vorm ontstaan, de
zogenaamde 'one-man-show'. Toon Hermans, Wim Sonneveld en Wim Kan en in hun voetsporen talloze anderen gingen alleen het toneel op en voerden een programma op waarin (zogenaamd?) ook hun eigen biografie behandeld werd (36).
Klöters continues to argue that this 'zelfportretten-cabaret' developed into the dominant form of cabaret throughout the 1980s and 1990s, a form of cabaret that is not at all critical:
Dat de eigen persoon centraal gesteld werd, was normaal geworden. Men gaat tegenwoordig niet meer naar het cabaret om te horen wat iemand van iets vindt, maar om mee te maken hoe iemand is. De vragen die de huidige cabaretier zich in z'n programma lijkt te stellen, zijn: 'wie ben ik, wat wil ik, wat houdt me tegen, wat vind ik, hoe voel ik me, en wat moet ik doen.' Het engagement met de samenleving dat in de jaren zestig en zeventig zo opvallend was, is in de periode daarna opgevolgd door speelse nonsens, ironie en therapeutisch aandoende ik-gerichtheid. Ik durf te stellen dat het zelfportret het belangrijkste genre is geworden in het cabaret (Ibid.).
Klöters is not very positive about the new, more personal forms of cabaret that arose in the 1980s and 1990s. He speaks, quite pejoratively, of "therapeutisch aandoende ik-gerichtheid". Furthermore, he opposes the personal cabaret from this period to the political engagement of the 1960s and 1970s. This is not a neutral comparison: rather, by denouncing the personal cabaret from the 1980s and 1990s as "therapeutisch aandoende ik-gerichtheid" and by comparing it to the 1960s and 1970s as an era of political engagement, Klöters presents the critical, political cabaret of previous generations as a norm, and applies it to present performances, thereby suggesting that 'good' cabaret is critical.
It would not be fair, however, to suggest that Klöters simply denounces the idea of authenticity. Within the second part of his essay, Klöters presents a more nuanced analysis of the important role of authenticity in Dutch cabaret. Within this part of the text, Klöters explicitly uses the term 'authenticity': "Bij cabaret," Klöters writes, "verlangt het publiek van de speler integriteit en echtheid oftewel authenticiteit." (37)
Within Klöters's essay, the concept of authenticity seems to refer, first and foremost, to the idea that the comedian is 'him or herself' on stage. Klöters points here to the distinction between comedy and drama: "Een toneel-acteur representeert meestal een door een ander bedachte rol die ook in het verleden kan spelen of in een ander land […] Maar een cabaretier presenteert voornamelijk zichzelf in het hier en nu op deze avond." (Ibid.) This does not mean, however, that comedians never play roles. On the contrary, comedians very often use role-playing as part of their act. Yet comedians never disappear into the roles they are playing. According to Klöters, comedians always remain visible as 'themselves' behind the role they are playing, and they may at each and every moment step out of their role to comment upon it. The comedian plays with the boundaries between self and role: "In het cabaret wordt fictie opgebouwd maar ook voortdurend onderuitgehaald. De speler valt uit zijn rol of speelt meerdere rollen tegelijkertijd [...] Zijn vermomming is rudimentair en nauwelijks
geloofwaardig." (Ibid.) However, this play with the boundaries between self and role never leads to actual confusion: we always know when the comedian 'pretends' and when he or she does not:
Paul de Leeuw bijvoorbeeld speelde een theaterprogramma waarin hij begon als de bekende cabaretier, vervolgens uit zijn rol viel en privépersoon werd, daarna onder andere een meisje speelde dat hem zeer bewonderde en voor hem een imitatie gaf van zijn bekende creatie Bob de Rooy. Al deze gedaantewisselingen werden door het publiek begrepen en kwamen zonder veel scènische middelen tot stand (Ibid.).
It is not only the specific use of role-playing that contributes to the authenticity of the comedian, but also the way in which the comedian addresses the audience. Direct audience address is an important element of "zelfportretten-cabaret": "Het zelfportret stapt in het cabaret voortdurend uit de lijst en houdt voortdurend contact met de waarnemer. Het cabaret doet niet aan de onzichtbare vierde wand." (38) Furthermore, the comedian combines fictional elements with stories from his personal life and explicit references to topical political and social issues: "Hij gebruikt verzonnen gebeurtenissen maar tegelijkertijd ook ware, er
figureren echte en verzonnen figuren in zijn verhalen. Er komen namen van reële personen in zijn tekst voor en gebeurtenissen die die ochtend in de krant hebben gestaan." And: "Hij [de cabaretier] neemt zijn persoonlijke geschiedenis mee het toneel op..." (Ibid.)
Within his analysis of the authenticity aspect in Dutch cabaret, Klöters actually poses a challenge to the strong opposition between personal expression and political engagement introduced at the beginning of the essay. According to Klöters, by playing with the boundaries
between self and role, the comedian poses a challenge to the conventions of role-playing. In this way, role-playing is used by comedians in a subversive way. Klöters writes: "Het cabaret spot met de eis van de consequent volgehouden identiteit van de fictieve figuur zoals dat elders bij toneel gebruikelijk is." (Ibid., emphasis added) Furthermore, comedians use role-playing to criticize the behaviour or opinions of the character they portray: "Zijn [De
cabaretiers] vermomming is rudimentair en nauwelijks geloofwaardig. Zijn taalgebruik is niet karakteriserend, maar vooral satirisch bedoeld" (Ibid.) Authenticity and engagement, as Klöters suggests here, are not necessarily opposites.
Hilde Scholten
Hilde Scholten also addresses the relationship between authenticity and engagement in her introduction to the book Cabaret in Nederland: Sociale en economische aspecten van het cabaretbedrijf (1995). While the book concentrates on the organizational structure of cabaret, the opening chapter provides a short introduction to cabaret as an artistic form.
At first inspection, it seems as if Scholten does not reinforce traditional views of cabaret as a predominantly critical form of comedy. At the beginning of her text, Scholten argues that cabaret is a "pluriform en kameleontisch genre dat continu verandert" (9) There are many different forms of cabaret, and new forms have been invented within the course of history. Scholten argues against the idea that Dutch cabaret is necessarily about political or social engagement. Comedians, Scholten writes, may also provide pure entertainment: "Een geëngageerde inhoud wordt door velen als vereiste voor cabaretprogramma's beschouwd: een cabaretvoorstelling moet getuigen van de maatschappelijke betrokkenheid van de cabaretier. Dit laat zich echter slecht rijmen met het even grote aantal voorstellingen - door de jaren heen - waarin niet het engagement, maar het amusement voorop stond." (11) It is important to keep in mind, however, that Scholten very much emphasizes the critical aspect of Dutch cabaret. Scholten argues that social criticism can be considered one of the "dominant" (10) elements of Dutch cabaret (next to the conference, the song, and direct artist-audience communication). She also points out how breaking taboos has always played an important role in the work of Dutch comedians (14).
But although Scholten on the one hand reinforces traditional views of cabaret as a predominantly critical form of comedy, she also suggests that social criticism and taboo-breaking have, in recent years, lost some of their importance for the Dutch cabaret tradition. Like Klöters, Scholten points to the 1980s as a period in which critical forms of cabaret
largely disappeared, and in which the personal life of the comedian began to play a more important role in the performance. She observes:
Vanaf de jaren tachtig ondergingen de thema's binnen het cabaret een aanzienlijke verandering. Protest, maatschappijkritiek en politieke betrokkenheid, waar men in het cabaret jarenlang van had getuigd, verdwenen grotendeels. Er kwam een meer
autobiografische inhoud en een persoonlijker engagement voor in de plaats (12).
In line with Klöters, Scholten opposes the 'old' cabaret of "protest, social critique and political engagement [politieke betrokkenheid]" to the non-critical, "autobiographical" cabaret of the 1980s and 1990s. But compared to Klöters, Scholten's tone is different. She does not denounce the personal cabaret of recent decades as "therapeutisch" (Klöters, qtd above), but characterizes it, more positively, in terms of an "autobiografische inhoud" and "personal engagement". Furthermore, although there is still a tension in Scholten's text between the idea of social engagement and the idea of personal expression, by using the concept of 'personal engagement', she does at the same time undermine or destabilize this opposition. By articulating personal cabaret in terms of 'engagement', Scholten suggests that the personal cabaret of the 1980s and the 1990s is somehow still critical. Scholten makes this explicit when she points out that the boundaries between personal and political engagement are never fixed:
Maatschappelijk en persoonlijk engagement blijken niet strikt van elkaar gescheiden te zijn. Lenette van Dongen vond in haar eerste solovoorstelling Mag het wat zachter een gemiddelde tussen beide. Kleine, dichtbij gelegen zaken werden door haar
doorgetrokken naar grote wereldproblemen (Ibid.).
Personal expression and political engagement, it turns out, cannot be clearly separated.7 According to Scholten, the personal cabaret of the 1980s and 1990s is not only
different from the political cabaret of the 1960s and 1970s in the themes it addresses, it is also different in form. Whereas traditional cabaret performances are composed of separate acts which bear no necessary relationship to each other, giving the comedian the possibility to play
7
The notion of personal engagement is quite common in the cabaret discourse of the 1990s. It is not always very clear what the term means. It definitely refers to a form of cabaret in which the personal life of the comedian plays an important role, but it is not always very clear why authors speak of 'engagement'. Otte and Verboeket, for instance, use the term in their short history of cabaret to emphasize the shift from social criticism to personal expression, but they do not indicate to what extent this new form of cabaret is critical. In the 1980s, as they write, "wordt het maatschappelijk engagement grotendeels vervangen door persoonlijk geëngageerde soloprogramma's en nonsens-cabaret; de privépersoonlijkheid van de cabaretier wordt belangrijker dan de maatschappelijke context." (154)
many characters during one night, the cabaret of the 1980s is characterized by a continuous story with a single character. Yet the comedian, as Scholten emphasizes, does not want to make the spectator forget that he or she is looking at a theatre performance. Like Klöters, Scholten points in this context to the distinction between comedy and 'straight acting'. Unlike the actor, the comedian does never disappear into the roles he or she plays:
De cabaretier is - doordat hij af is van het mozaïek van losse nummers - voortaan in staat zijn rol uit te diepen tot een karakter met meer reliëf. Maar het wordt niet zijn doel om daarmee een ingeleefd personage neer te zetten, zoals een acteur dat doet. De cabaretier blijft de illusie heel bewust doorbreken door uit zijn rol te stappen - om commentaar te leveren, een andere rol te spelen of een liedje te zingen - en het publiek direct aan te spreken (16).
Scholten's analysis of role-playing in Dutch cabaret neatly fits in with Klöters's analysis of the relationship between role-playing and authenticity. Comedians never disappear into the roles they are playing; we always see the comedian behind the role. Furthermore, comedians often step out of their role and become 'themselves' again. When comedians are 'themselves', they usually directly address the audience and present this audience with a personal commentary or a song. To sum up, the cabaret of the 1980s and 1990s is not only characterized by personal storytelling, but also by the visible presence of the comedian 'him or herself' behind the roles that he or she plays.
Van den Hanenberg and Verhallen
In 1996, Patrick van den Hanenberg and Frank Verhallen published an historical overview work about Dutch cabaret, covering the period 1970-1995: Het is weer tijd om te bepalen waar het allemaal op staat: Nederlands cabaret 1970-1995. The book is presented by the authors as a sequel to Ibo's history of Dutch cabaret, and it is the last systematic historical overview work on Dutch cabaret that has been published.8The focus of the book lies upon detailed descriptions of the works and careers of individual comedians and cabaret groups. Van den Hanenberg and Verhallen, unlike Klöters and Scholten, do not explicitly address questions of authenticity, role-playing and personal expression. However, we do find a strong opposition in the book between personal expression and political engagement. This
opposition, as I will demonstrate in a reading of van den Hanenberg and Verhallen's chapter on political cabaret, works to promote the idea that 'good' cabaret is critical.
8
Like Scholten, van den Hanenberg and Verhallen start from the observation that there are many different forms of cabaret, which cannot be captured by one definition. In the introduction to the book, the authors criticize Wim Ibo for providing a single and very strict definition of cabaret:
Wim Ibo heeft in zijn beschrijving van de eerste 75 jaar van het Nederlandse cabaret tamelijk traditionele grenzen aangehouden [...] Wij behoren tot de rekkelijken. We zien vele verbindingslijnen tussen allerlei theateractiviteiten, zoals show,
entertainment, muzikale grappen, podiumliteratuur, toneelcabaret en fysieke clownerie, die samen het brede web vormen van... cabaret (10).
The thesis of van den Hanenberg and Verhallen, which is worked out in more detail in the different chapters of the book, is that the cross-pollination between cabaret and other genres, e.g. literature, (pop) music, and theatre, has led to the rise of many different, often hybrid, forms of cabaret. Consequently, cabaret is not necessarily critical: "socially engaged" [maatschappijkritisch] cabaret is only one form among others (263).
In this context, the authors also point to some important changes in the cabaret scene throughout the 1970s and the 1980s. Critical cabaret, as the authors recount, lost much of its importance at the end of the 1970s. At this time, there was a 'crisis' of cabaret: audiences lost their interest in the critical comedy of the 1960s and 1970s. In the 1980s, a new generation of comedians, providing entertainment rather than social criticism, caused a 'revival' of cabaret (169). This so-called 'nonsense cabaret' (see Otte and Verboeket 154) did not wholly replace the critical cabaret of the 1960s and the 1970s; rather, in the 1980s and 1990s, critical and non-critical forms of cabaret existed next to each other.
Yet the critical cabaret of the 1980s and the 1990s was less explicitly critical than the cabaret of the 1960s and 1970s. In a chapter on political cabaret, the authors contrast the explicitly political cabaret of the 1960s and 1970s with the critical cabaret of the 1980s and 1990s.
Halverwege de jaren tachtig, met de komst van Jack Spijkermans Dubbel & Dwars, en even later Lebbis & Jansen, wordt links cabaret weer salonfähig. Maar dat betreft cabaretiers die intuïtief links zijn. Zij achten een gedegen studie van de socialistische grondbeginselen geen voorwaarde om progressief cabaret te maken (113, italics in original).
First, it is important to note that the comedians dealt with in van den Hanenberg and
den Hanenberg and Verhallen thus reaffirm the traditional view that cabaret is a critical and progressive form of comedy. Yet the cabaret of the 1980s and the 1990s is not explicitly left-wing and critical anymore. According to van den Hanenberg and Verhallen, political
engagement in the sense of a commitment to a particular political ideology does not exist anymore within the 1980s. The authors refer in this context to the work of Lebbis & Jansen, who presented their first performances in the late 1980s:
Ze [Lebbis & Jansen] maken maatschappijkritisch cabaret, maar er spreekt geen diepgeworteld engagement uit […] Een voorstelling zal bij hen nooit een politieke bijeenkomst worden, zoals bij de felrode cabaretiers in de jaren zestig en zeventig. De oude idealen zijn verdronken in het ik-tijdperk, zonder dat ze oppervlakkig worden […] Voor de nieuwe generatie lucht het al genoeg op om even een mening te spuien, zonder moraal (136).
In line with Klöters and Scholten, van den Hanenberg and Verhallen construct an opposition here between the political engagement of the 1960 and 1970s and the personal cabaret from the 1980s and 1990s. They argue that the political cabaret of the 1980s, of which Lebbis & Jansen provide an example, was less preachy than the political cabaret of the 1960s and 1970s. It is more about expressing "opinions" than about "political engagement". The notion of 'opinion' used here emphasizes the personal aspect of cabaret: the cabaret of the 1980s is more about personal expression than about explicit political criticism.
Although the authors write that the political cabaret of the 1980s is not
"oppervlakkig", they also use the notion of the "ik-tijdperk", a negatively connotated term which is generally used to refer to the 1980s as an era of narcissism. Furthermore, by suggesting that cabaretiers in the 1980s "meningen spuien", the authors suggest that the political cabaret of this time was quite "oppervlakkig" after all. In this way, the authors construct an opposition between the 1960s and 1970s as an era of 'true' political engagement and the 1980s as an era of narcissism and personal expression. They seem to take the political cabaret of the 1960s and 1970s as a norm, and to apply it to the cabaret of the 1980s. In the light of the explicit political criticism of the 1960s and 1970s, the 1980s can only appear as 'ik-tijdperk', as an era of narcissism and navel-gazing. 'Good' cabaret, as the authors suggest within their analysis, is explicitly critical.
The 2000s/2010s: new forms of engagement
In recent discourses on cabaret, the ideas of authenticity and personal expression have become widely accepted. The strong opposition between personal expression and political
engagement, so typical of the 1990s discourse, has been broken down. Authenticity and personal storytelling are no longer believed to pose a threat to the critical nature of cabaret. On the contrary, authors in this period begin to emphasize the direct link between the authenticity of the comedian and his or her critical engagement with society. The idea of a personal engagement with society, coming up in the 1990s, is central to the cabaret discourse from this period.
Within the following, I will analyze this idea of personal engagement as emphasized in discourses from the 2000s and 2010s. Unfortunately, no overview works have been published in this period. Hence, no books are available in which authors look back at the personal cabaret of the 1980s and 1990s or closely analyze present forms of personal engagement. However, there has been published an interesting short text, written by Robbert van Heuven, which analyzes the personal cabaret of the Dutch-Moroccan comedian Najib Amhali. Van Heuven's essay will be my starting point in this section. In addition, I look at the jury reports of the VSCD Cabaret Prizes, two prestigious prizes annually awarded by the Vereniging voor Schouwburg- en Concertdirecteuren (VSCD).9These jury reports are interesting because they make explicit the criteria used by the jury to evaluate cabaret performances. The jury reports thereby give a good impression of what professionals in the field (cabaret critics,
programmers, directors, etc.) consider as 'good' cabaret and why.10
Robbert van Heuven
In his academic essay "'Dat mag je dan weer niet zeggen over eskimo's': Het interculturele cabaret van Najib Amhali", theatre scholar and journalist Robbert van Heuven analyzes the work of the Dutch-Moroccan comedian Najib Amhali, emphasizing the role that Amhali's cultural background plays within his performances. To theorize the distinctive ways in which Amhali, as a comedian, is able to play with his cultural background on stage, van Heuven starts by making a general observation about the important role of authenticity in Dutch cabaret. Like Klöters and Scholten, van Heuven does this by drawing a distinction between cabaret and 'straight acting'. He argues that the comedian, unlike the actor, is 'him or herself'
9
The two Cabaret Prizes awarded by the VSCD are the "Poelifinario" and the "Neerlands Hoop". The
Poelifinario is a price for the best cabaret performance of the season. The Neerlands Hoop was initially meant for promising comedians at the beginning of their career. Today, it is meant for comedians who have shown an interesting artistic development (but these comedians need not necessarily be at the beginning of their career). The name Poelifinario refers to a famous sketch from comedian Toon Hermans, in which he imitates the sound of fictitious birds. The Poelifinario is one of these birds. Neerlands Hoop is the name of a famous Dutch cabaret duo from the 1970s, consisting of Freek de Jonge and Bram Vermeulen.
10
I have looked at the jury reports that were available on the website of the VSCD: these are the reports from the period 2007-2014.
on stage: "Een belangrijk verschil tussen toneel en cabaret is dat er bij toneel over het algemeen sprake is van door acteurs gespeelde fictieve personages [...] Bij cabaret is de cabaretier (als hij geen typetje speelt) zichzelf, of doet hij in ieder geval of hij zichzelf is." (81-2). Van Heuven's definition of cabaret in terms of self-presentation provides the starting point for his analysis of Amhali's work, in which van Heuven further emphasizes this authenticity aspect in terms of Amhali's embodiment of different cultures. Van Heuven writes:
Najib Amhali [...] heeft beide culturen [de Nederlandse en de Marokkaanse] in zich verenigd en ook de botsingen tussen die culturen zijn deel van zijn identiteit. Daarin is hij dus intercultureel en is zijn programma Freefight een intercultureel product. Hij laat daarin immers zichzelf (of in ieder geval zijn gespeelde zelf) in al zijn aspecten zien... (85)
Van Heuven's analysis not only emphasizes Amhali's work in terms of authenticity and self-presentation, it also establishes a link between Amhali's authenticity and his critical
engagement with society, thereby demonstrating that Amhali's work displays a strong personal engagement. According to van Heuven, Amhali's comedy poses a challenge to a dominant ideology of multiculturalism: by demonstrating that he himself embodies different cultures, Amhali challenges the multiculturalist idea that cultures are wholly separate entities, and that the tensions between different cultures can be resolved by forcing the cultural 'other' to adapt to 'our' national culture. By sharing his personal experiences and observations, Amhali questions prejudices and generalizations about 'Moroccans', and demonstrates that his cultural identity cannot be reduced to these prejudices and stereotypes.
VSCD Cabaret prizes
In the jury reports of the VSCD Cabaret Prizes, authenticity and personal expression have also been emphasized as important aspects of Dutch cabaret. In the most recent jury report (2014), authenticity is explicitly mentioned as a criterion: "Voor beide prijzen [Poelifinario en
Neerlands Hoop] is nauwkeurig gekeken naar authenticiteit en geloofwaardigheid." Furthermore, the jury has often explicitly made the link between the authenticity of the comedian and the comedian's critical engagement with society, often by using the concept of personal engagement. In 2008, for example, the jury mentions "persoonlijk of
maatschappelijk engagement" as important criterion for Dutch cabaret. In 2012, jury member Patrick van den Hanenberg gives a more detailed description of the different forms of
engagement in Dutch cabaret, and places a strong emphasis upon personal engagement: "Engagement heeft bij de genomineerden en de winnaars [...] altijd voorop gestaan. Soms is dat puur maatschappelijk engagement [...] soms wordt het algemeen menselijk tekort
gesignaleerd [...] en heel vaak krijgt het persoonlijke verhaal een algemeen maatschappelijke kleur." (Juryrapport 2012, 4).11To give one final example, the jury of 2013 gives a
description of the strong personal engagement observed within the work of a new generation of comedians: "Bij deze Sturm und Drang-groep hebben we worstelingen waargenomen over hoe je om moet gaan met de huidige, steeds snellere wereld en hoe je dat gevecht vorm kan geven op het podium. Een van de juryleden zag bijvoorbeeld voor de zomer bij de
Koningstheateracademie in Den Bosch twee afstudeervoorstellingen die bijna pijn deden, zo indringend persoonlijk waren ze. Zo heftig was bij deze twintigers de noodzaak om uiting te geven aan de moeizame ervaringen met de wereld." (Juryrapport 2013, 4) In contrast to the explicit political engagement of earlier generations, the comedians from the newest
generation, as emphasized here by the jury, use personal experiences to give expression to their engagement with the world.
The question of humour
Whereas the authors discussed within this chapter have emphasized authenticity and social criticism as important elements of Dutch cabaret, they have not explicitly thematized the role of humour in the cabaret tradition. The aspect of humour is already remarkably absent from Wim Ibo's definition of cabaret. Authors after Ibo who were discussed in this chapter did also not explicitly thematize humour as an important element of Dutch cabaret. However, looking more closely at the role of humour is important to reach a better understanding of the political implications of Dutch cabaret, for it is often by means of humour that comedians seek to challenge or to question commonly accepted ideas, norms and conventions. Many authors discussed in this chapter implicitly acknowledge this: in his paper about Najib Amhali, for example, Robbert van Heuven provides many examples of jokes which challenge prejudices about the cultural 'other' (Heuven 83). Furthermore, by using terms like 'satire', authors implicitly acknowledge that the humour of Dutch comedians is often critical (Ibo 20; Klöters, "Even" 37).
Within the following, I will analyze the role of humour in three classical examples of 'critical cabaret' so as to complicate the dominant idea that Dutch cabaret, and the humour of
11
The quote is taken from a lecture presented by van den Hanenberg on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the VSCD Cabaret Prizes in 2012. The text of the lecture has been published as part of that year's jury report.
Dutch comedians, is critical and progressive. The examples discussed here are: Cabaret Lurelei's Arme Ouwe, a song about queen Juliana (1966), Youp van 't Hek's critique of Buckler, a non-alcoholic beer from the Dutch brewer Heineken (1989), and Theo Maassen's kissing of a crucifix (2005). The examples represent three generations of comedians: Lurelei represents the controversial cabaret of the 1960s, characterized by a strong social and political engagement; Youp van 't Hek represents the 'critical' comedy of the 1980s and the 1990s; and Theo Maassen represents the comedians who emerged from the Dutch stand-up comedy circuit in the 1990s. Furthermore, the examples represent three favourite subjects of criticism in Dutch cabaret: the royal house, bourgeois life/consumerism, and religion.
Example #1: Lurelei - Arme ouwe (1966)
The first, and oldest, example presented here is taken from the work of Cabaret Lurelei, a cabaret ensemble established in 1958 by Eric Herfst, Ben Rowold and Kees Bergman, and based in Amsterdam. Lurelei has existed, within different formations, until 1968. Among its members were famous Dutch comedians like Jasperina de Jong, Gerard Cox, Frans Halsema and Leen Jongewaard. Initially, Lurelei did not display a strong political or social
engagement. However, during the roaring 1960s, the performances of Lurelei turned more political. This was also due to the influence of writer Guus Vleugel, who wrote many satirical songs for Lurelei in the course of the 1960s (Ibo 615). The explicit reflection upon and engagement with the protest culture of the 1960s has made Lurelei into one of the most important representatives of the political cabaret of the 1960s. In his history of cabaret, Wim Ibo called Lurelei the best cabaret ensemble of the era. Lurelei, Ibo writes, was engaged and especially the texts of Vleugel often succeeded in breaking taboos (Ibid.).
The example that I discuss here is the controversial song Arme ouwe, taken from Lurelei's performance Relderelderel (1966). In his history of Lurelei, Paul Blom has argued that Relderelderel was Lurelei's most political performance (417). It was also the most controversial one, and this was mainly due to the song Arme ouwe. This song, a mockery of Queen Juliana, has led to fierce protests among audiences, in Amsterdam and elsewhere. The song was seen as "republican" (Blom 425), and Lurelei has even been accused of lese
majesty, which led to an unexpected visit of the police during the opening night in Amsterdam.
What the strong protests against Arme ouwe clearly demonstrate is that this song has been perceived as rebellious and subversive, as an undermining of authority. This idea neatly fits in with the reputation of Lurelei as a critical and progressive cabaret ensemble. However,
if we look at the political implications of humour within this example, a rather different image arises. Arme Ouwe is a song about a protester who wants to throw smoke bombs to the gilded coach, but makes up his mind because Queen Juliana remembers him of his poor old mother:
't Is Prinsjesdag vandaag
En alle andre provo's zijn vertrokken naar Den Haag. Maar ik ben d'r niet bij,
'k Ben netjes thuisgebleven, want ze hebben niks aan mij. Niet dat ik pro Oranje ben, ik haat de monarchie,
Ik kan wel kotsen als ik Trix of Claus of Bernhard zie, En Juliaan is ook niet veel, dat geef ik dadelijk toe Ze is volstrekt verwerpelijk, maar ze lijkt zo op me moe Die heeft ongeveer hetzelfde soort figuur,
Die heeft ook zoiets onzekers in d'r ogen, Die kan ook zo prutsen aan d'r brilmontuur Als ze bang is dat de mensen haar niet mogen... En in Den Haag had ik dus nooit
Een rookbom naar d'r koets gegooid, Ik had het echt niet opgebracht En enkel maar gedacht:
Arme ouwe blijf maar zitten op je troon.
Ach, wat zouden we jou daar nou af gaan douwen... Blijf maar zitten, net als vroeger doodgewoon, Arme ouwe, arme ouwe... (qtd in Blom 468)
On the one hand, the comparison between the Queen and the mother figure works to downgrade the Queen: she is portrayed as a poor old lady ("arme ouwe"), and thereby her authority is undermined. The song might thus indeed be taken as an example of critical and rebellious humour: humour is used within this example to mock the Queen, to reveal that she is actually just a silly old lady, and thereby to undermine her authority. At the same time, however, the comparison between Queen Juliana and the mother of the protester works to exonerate the Queen, to defend the status quo that it initially seems to attack. This is most evidently so in the chorus of the song: "Arme ouwe blijf maar zitten op je troon / Ach, wat zouden we jou daar nou af gaan douwen... / Blijf maar zitten, net als vroeger doodgewoon / Arme ouwe, arme ouwe..." Although the comparison between the Queen and the mother figure might be taken as very critical and progressive because Juliana is portrayed here as a poor old lady, the implication of this comparison is that the Queen, precisely because of her being a poor old lady, is harmless, so that we should not try to do away with her. The critical
and progressive humour of Arme Ouwe can thus be said to have quite conservative
implications, and in this sense the song is not so anti-establishment as it is often taken to be.12
Example #2: Youp van 't Hek - Buckler (1989)
My second example is taken from the work of the famous Dutch comedian Youp van 't Hek. Van 't Hek is especially well-known for his critique of the bourgeois way of life. He often ridicules the conventions and lifestyle of his middle-class audiences. His performances usually tell the story of a man who wants to escape his family especially his stupid wife -and his boring job to live a 'true' life. This story is normally interspersed with anecdotes -and jokes about consumerism and the latest trends embraced by the masses, e.g. the checked trousers and the Van Dyke beard (which van 't Hek called a 'talking cunt'13).
The example that will be discussed here is a short scene from Youp van 't Hek's Oudejaarsconference 1989 / New Year's Eve Show 1989.14It is van 't Hek's famous critique of Buckler, a non-alcoholic beer brought onto the market by the Dutch brewer Heineken in 1988. The Buckler example provides an interesting case study because it has become a classical example of subversive humour by a famous Dutch comedian. Its classical status is mainly due to the fact that van 't Hek's critique of Buckler is believed to have had severe consequences: it is commonly believed - although very hard to prove - that van 't Hek's critique damaged Buckler's reputation to such an extent that sales decreased dramatically in the months after the performance, eventually leading Heineken to take Buckler off the market. The Buckler affair has stirred a lot of media attention, and is still often referred to on television and in
newspapers. The affair has even inspired new words: Buckler-lul ("NTR"; Verdegaal; Voskuil 85), and Buckler-effect ("Het"; Wynia). The term Buckler-lul - although not used by van 't Hek himself - captures van 't Hek's critique very nicely, for this critique is not primarily directed at Buckler, but rather at the type of guy drinking this beer. Van 't Hek's critique actually only consists of a few remarks:
12
In his discussion of Arme ouwe, Ibo remarks that the protagonist of the song is a right-wing rather than a left-wing protester: "Bij dit brokje voorbeeldig cabaret toonden vele Nederlanders dat ze niet konden luisteren of lezen; hadden ze dat wèl gedaan dan hadden ze een rechtse provo ontdekt..." (618). However, Ibo does not explain what this means for the reputation of Lurelei as a leftist and progressive cabaret ensemble.
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The Dutch term is "pratende kut". The term was used by van 't Hek in his Oudejaarsconference 1989, the same performance from which the example of Buckler is taken.
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The oudejaarsconference (probably best translated as New Year's Eve Show) is a subgenre of Dutch cabaret. It is a special show performed during the last weeks of the year, in which the comedian provides a satirical commentary of that year's most important events (mostly political events and other news events). The
oudejaarsconference is broadcasted on national television on New Year's Eve and usually attracts a lot of
viewers. Next to regular performances, van 't Hek has presented six oudejaarsconferences. At the moment of writing, van 't Hek is preparing a new oudejaarsconference, which will be broadcasted on television in December 2014.
Buckler, dat kent u wel, dat is dat gereformeerde bier hè, dat kent u wel hè? Buckler-drinkers, daar heb ik nou een hekel aan, Buckler-drinkers. Van die lullen van een jaar of veertig die naast je in het café staan met die autosleutels...rot 'ns op, jongen! Ik sta hier een beetje bezopen te worden, ga weg, gek! Ga in de kerk zuipen, idioot, hè! Ja, zuip dan niet, idioot! Buckler-drinkers!
At first inspection, van 't Hek's critique of Buckler seems to confirm the dominant perception of Dutch cabaret as a critical and progressive form of comedy. The Buckler example seems to be in line with van 't Hek's anti-bourgeois rhetoric. Van 't Hek ridicules the lifestyles and conventions of the middle class by portraying the Buckler drinker as a pathetic family man, who does not want to drink alcohol or to get drunk because he still has to drive home to wife and kids. Van 't Hek is critical and progressive here in the sense that he does not reinforce, but rather questions and undermines dominant norms and conventions.
However, although van 't Hek indeed uses humour to mock the conventions and lifestyle of a particular group, and thus seems to criticize the norms and conventions of this particular class, he does this by appealing to another dominant norm. Van 't Hek's humour is normative because it appeals to dominant ideas about how men should behave within the setting of a bar. In a bar, van 't Hek suggests, we drink beer. This 'we' is constructed as male: both van 't Hek and the Buckler drinkers are men. Van 't Hek's critique of Buckler actually reinforces dominant ideas about what it means to be a 'true' man. 'True' men, van 't Hek suggests, drink beer, and get drunk. Van 't Hek himself embodies this norm: he tries to get "bezopen" but is hindered by the Buckler drinker. The Buckler drinker is the one who does not comply with the norm. Interesting in this respect is that van 't Hek's critique of Buckler is embedded in a story about Ria Lubbers, the wife of that time's Prime Minister Ruud Lubbers. Van 't Hek mocks Ria Lubbers for trying to be more than the Prime Minister's wife:
Ria Lubbers, ...oh, daar ben ik dus allergisch voor, Ria Lubbers. Op de meest intieme plaatsen krijg ik pukkeltjes als die op de buis komt. Ik wil openlijk m'n netvlies laten transplanteren als die geweest is, echt waar. Ria Lubbers, o, die wil ook altijd: 'O, ik ben helemaal niet de vrouw van de premier, ik ben gewoon een Rotterdams meisje.' Laatst ook weer: 'Ik zou het liefst een kroegje beginnen.' Als die een café begint, binnen een uur is de hele bar aan de Buckler, absoluut!
Although it is not completely clear why the presence of Ria Lubbers makes the visitors of the bar want to drink Buckler, the joke is rather conservative, not only because it suggests that Ria Lubbers should not try to escape her passive role as the Prime Minister's wife, but also
