{"id":13559,"date":"2013-03-21T02:20:42","date_gmt":"2013-03-21T02:20:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/?p=13559"},"modified":"2013-03-21T05:21:31","modified_gmt":"2013-03-21T05:21:31","slug":"brecht-and-bowie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2013\/03\/21\/brecht-and-bowie\/","title":{"rendered":"Brecht and Bowie"},"content":{"rendered":"

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While David Bowie is still making the news it\u2019s worth revisiting Baal<\/em><\/a>, an hour-long BBC TV adaptation of the Bertolt Brecht play broadcast in 1981. Bowie stars as the title character, a thoroughly disagreeable poet and caf\u00e9 singer who ruins the lives of those around him. This caused a stir at the time more for Bowie\u2019s presence than for the content although Brecht wasn’t exactly a popular choice for evening entertainment. Prior to this most of Bowie’s acting had been in films, with his television appearances being limited to song performances or chat show discussions. The Man Who Fell to Earth<\/em><\/a> aside, I\u2019ve been somewhat dismissive of Bowie\u2019s acting at times, his accent and the sheer weight of his musical persona overwhelm whatever role he\u2019s given, but he\u2019s good in this. He throws himself into the role, and is more convincing than I remember him being a couple of years later in Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

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For many people Bowie will be the sole attraction in Baal<\/em> but for me there\u2019s also the presence of the great Alan Clarke<\/a> as director and co-adaptor (with John Willett). Clarke directed the cult TV play Penda\u2019s Fen<\/em><\/a> in 1974, and was later responsible for a handful of other notable TV films including Scum<\/em>, Made in Britain<\/em>, Road<\/em>, Elephant<\/em> (1989), and The Firm<\/em>, all of which are distinguished by a singular intensity and dramatic power the likes of which is usually only found in the best feature films. Compared to those plays Baal<\/em> is a minor piece, filmed entirely in the studio, and made deliberately stagey to honour Brecht\u2019s Verfremdungseffekt<\/em><\/a>. The cameras keep their distance from the performers, and Brechtian distance is also achieved by the use of split-screen, title cards, and Bowie\u2019s direct addresses to the viewer. If this seems like challenging material for a general audience (never mind the singer\u2019s fans) consider that Baal<\/em> was broadcast in primetime on BBC 1 when there were only three television channels in the UK. This would not happen today.<\/p>\n

Previously on { feuilleton }
\n\u2022 Penda\u2019s Fen by David Rudkin<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While David Bowie is still making the news it\u2019s worth revisiting Baal, an hour-long BBC TV adaptation of the Bertolt Brecht play broadcast in 1981. Bowie stars as the title character, a thoroughly disagreeable poet and caf\u00e9 singer who ruins the lives of those around him. This caused a stir at the time more for … Continue reading “Brecht and Bowie”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7,3,19,46],"tags":[1115,4639,1301,1114,4640,1117,4317],"class_list":["post-13559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film","category-music","category-television","category-theatre","tag-alan-clarke","tag-bertolt-brecht","tag-david-bowie","tag-david-rudkin","tag-john-willett","tag-pendas-fen","tag-the-man-who-fell-to-earth"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pq7rV-3wH","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13559"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13559\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}