The Power of Figurative Language
The musical numbers inside the Kit Kat Klub are all social commentaries on the narrative events taking place outside the club. They present a symbolic interpretation of the literal actions and concepts; sometimes in an ironic way and sometimes in manner that allows for messages to be communicated that might prove dangerous if communicated literally. The line drawn between what is happening outside and the figurative reinterpretation inside is a very powerful demonstration of how metaphor, symbolism, imagery and allusion can help create a secret language that under the right circumstances can result in a revolution without most people even being aware a revolution happened.
Distraction and Denial
Those circumstances that can help a minority communicating a secret language are ones in which the majority are at first distracted from what is happening around them and then compound that sin with denial of the potential for they let happen while distracted. At first the Nazi in the film are objects of scorn and ridicule. Then, as they begin to proliferate to a more pervasive degree, they are ignored with the assurance, as one character put it, “we’ll be able to control them.” This pattern of distraction represented by the decadent entertainment at the cabaret and denial represented by naïve assumption that such a force of violence can be contained is never given full expression in terms of what it leads to. Because we all know what it leads to. Until it starts happening around us and the pattern simply repeats again.
The Link Between Fascism and Established Social Norms
Lying just beneath the veneer of the two (or three) love stories in the narrative and the entertaining interpolations upon the narrative is the linear progression of influence being enjoyed by the fascist ideology of the Nazis. It is not by accident that the Nazis were able to gain ground at a time when traditional values and established social norms were collapsing under the weight of a surrender to decadence as the relief many Germans could find from the crushing consequences of surrendering to end the Great War. It is also not by accident that the love stories in the film touched upon progressive liberal attitudes bent on destroying those values and norms: marriage between Jew and Christians (if only by misunderstanding in this case), homosexuality, bisexuality, premarital sexual relations. And, of course, inside the cabaret and joyously open musical exhibitions of sadism, masochism and every other vice. All these assaults upon the traditional values were seen not as a progressive of civilization, but as evidence of its moral decay under the terms of fascist ideology. This link between the mainstreaming of extreme right-wing political views and the loosening of long-held social norms has since the film’s setting in the early 1930’s firmly established that it was hardly a “German thing” but rather an almost predictable outcome of such circumstances around the world. Cabaret artfully conveys this link by once again using the forceful power of symbolism and metaphor.
