CABARET

The Bohemian Days of Early Parisian Cabaret

By Maximillien de Lafayette, Monthly Herald Editor-in-Chief

In the closing decade of nineteenth century Paris a new period retrospectively christened La Belle Epoque (The beautiful period) was born. As its name suggests, the Belle Epoque was characterized by relative calm, prosperity, enterprise and social freedom. Most importantly for our story, the Belle Epoque gave birth to a new culture of entertainments immediately recognizable as modern. To mark the centenary of the French Revolution, a revolution against privilege and inequity, Paris staged the Universal Exhibition of 1889. Here, a variety of amusements and new technologies serviced wondrous worker and bourgeois alike. This 'level of enjoyments' as one contemporary called it, marked a democratization of leisure that heralded the 20th Century's invention of mass culture. As Paris raced toward the end of the century, automation and mass production brought heady rewards. There was more bread, wine, books, textiles, fashionable garments and new concept Parisian department stores to buy them in. Above all, the populace made a dizzying start on the twentieth century's love affair with new technologies. The invention of the telegraph, the telephone, the elevator, the bicycle, hand-held cameras, the first automobiles, the electric light and the first mass produced typewriters - not to mention advances in both public hygiene and in surgery, spawned an optimism at once practical and utopian.

Photo: Kiki Heessels, a modern times European Cabaret Star

For the Bohemians of Montmartre, who in our story called themselves” Les Enfants de La Revolution” (The Children of the Revolution), the promise of 'Truth, Beauty, Freedom and Love!' of a better world, seemed germane in these unprecedented new technologies. But it wasn't all unalloyed progress and joy. Along with the benefits of the machine age came bitter social dilemmas. Paris drank as never before, increasingly as a social past-time, spawning a new social disease: alcoholism. Tuberculosis, organized prostitution, the spread of syphilis, and overcrowding as the promise of regular income beckoned those from farming communities to the ever-swelling cities, abounded. Still, evidence of a new mood afoot is wittily immortalized in a contemporary pamphlet attacking the work ethic and the misery of workers in capitalist industry - and entitled 'The Right to be Lazy.' Here, author Lafarge condemns the 'dogma of work,' chastises French workers for 'vegetating in abstinence' and recommends work be confined by law to three hours a day in favor of a new healthful 'regime of laziness”. With the rise of organized mass labor came the new concept of 'leisure hours' and a demand for mass entertainments. Typical French, folks, typical French!

The article continues on the following pages.