Hitler Cornell

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For a brief, shining moment circa 1993, the name “Stallion Cornell” was in popular parlance at the University of Southern California School of Theatre, which severely irked a real-life theatre school professor with the surname Cornell, who thought I had chosen the name to make fun of him.

I hadn’t, but I often wish I had.

During my senior year, “The Other Cornell,” as I like to think of him, taught a class on directing that explained to actors who had spent almost four years in an intensive conservatory-style classroom setting how to use terms like “stage left” and “stage right.” One of his exercises involved putting a group of actors on stage and then using flash cards to direct them how to go. Should they go stage left? Stage right? Maybe “upstage?” Or “center stage?” So many pointless options.

And then…

“Go stage right!” he would read from his flash card.

Bam! Sure enough, the students on stage would then amble toward their right. That’s how it works. Because “stage right,” you see, is to the right of the person standing on the stage, although it would seem like left to the audience, which is looking at the action head on. It can be a very, very tricky business unless you, you know, think about it for a microsecond. Still, it was good that we were finally learning such things, as we had only been involved in a few dozen productions and about a zillion rehearsals and classes where the basics of theatrical rights and lefts were as rudimentary as which shoe goes on which foot. (The rule is “left shoe; left foot,” regardless of where you are standing on the stage.)

It wasn’t until after I graduated that I got a chance to really see these skills in action. My friend Ed and I returned to USC’s Bing Theatre in 1994 to watch their production of Cabaret, directed by none other than The Other Cornell. As we watched, people were unfailingly going left and right all over the place. Those flash cards really seemed to pay off.

If you’ve not seen Cabaret, a few plot points are necessary for you to appreciate the stupidity of what Ed and I experienced as we watched The Other Cornell’s uniquely boneheaded interpretation thereof. The story follows an idealistic American writer ensconced in Berlin during the early 1930s as the Nazis are rising to power. At one point, a collection of fresh faced youngsters come center stage and sing a pleasant little tune about deer and sunny meadows and birds and bees called “Tomorrow Belongs to Me,” which becomes chilling when you discover that these seemingly nice kids are actually the Hitler Youth, and the tomorrow they’re dreaming about is one where the world is under the jackboot of the Third Reich.

Here’s the movie version, which is, indeed, genuinely disturbing.

In “The Other Cornell’s” version, the song was performed in front of a slideshow of Hitler snapshots and photos of Nazi atrocities. There’s the concentration camps. There are the book burnings. And then… there’s Ronald Reagan!

Ed and I looked at each other, bewildered. We were both thinking precisely the same thing – what’s Reagan doing up there?

Oh, look! Now it’s Clarence Thomas!

I think this is when we both burst out laughing. Really? Reagan and Thomas rounded up six million people and slaughtered them because of their race? Isn’t that, I don’t know, kind of ridiculous?

The juxtaposition of Hitlerian horrors with modern-day mainstream conservatives continued unabated until the end of the song, as did our plentiful guffaws. This was a problem, because we were on the second row, and our friends were on stage, and they could see us all too clearly. “I know I was out of tune,” one girl snapped at us after the show, “but you didn’t need to laugh in my face.” We tried to explain that she was perfectly in tune and that her performance was marvelous – it was the director’s clumsy attempt at irony that had us busting a gut.

I thought of this when a friend of mine posted a wise captioned picture on Facebook. (I know, right? A Facebook meme that’s actually wise? What are the odds?) I share it here for your perusal.

Amen. And I say that regardless of whether your politics are stage left or stage right.

So, to sum up: The Other Cornell had really weird cheek implants.

13 thoughts on “Hitler Cornell”

  3. Many people are currently slaughtered because of their “inferior genes” in this and other countries. Disability selective abortion is a common and often state-supported practice in most modern societies.

    The International Criminal Court in The Hague is currently reviewing a case brought by Saving Downs against the government of New Zealand for it’s genetic screening practices.

    I’m sure you know how I feel about this, so I won’t hijack your blog beyond this.

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  4. The whole right left, East West deal is confusing as heck to people who cannot comprehend Chiral Law. We used to run into this sort of problem all the time in the automotive industry. Rules of thumb aren’t very fault tolerant because too many people still just stand there with their thumb where their head used to be.

    As a work around we had to insist that the only acceptable terms were driver and passenger sides. It took all the guess work out of the finer details as people couldn’t complain when we shipped them the part they ordered. Once all the ambiguity was removed from the pit, it was a no brainer sort the garter snakes from the vipers.

    American Politics has lost too many good people trying to discern whether a snake’s pupils were round or elliptical. The other “d”, aka the devil, can’t hide behind even the finest details once all the subtleties are removed.

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  5. I understand the current popular sentiments when it comes to invoking Godwin’s Law. But I think it’s a double edged sword because while it sometimes prevents absurdities like the one you describe above, it also prevents discussion of probably the most important historical point of the 20th Century.

    This is one of the reasons why it infuriates me when we address the unthinking adolescence of liberal ideology with anything but derisive mockery. Attempting to hold a conversation with leftists as though they were rational grown adults on equal footing just isn’t appropriate.

    Here in Wisconsin, we had to witness professional protesters holding up signs that stupidly read “Hitler killed the unions too!”

    Did Hitler kill the unions? Sure. He killed the Trade Unions all right. But he then forced everyone onto the German Labor Front. So he essentially killed private unions and forced everyone onto a public union.

    Who supports public unions again?

    Then we have the fact that Hitler passed the Enabling Act which allowed him to eliminate local councils and consolidate power.

    Who is it that is constantly attempting to circumnavigate and undermine federalism?

    It’s amusing to watch liberals ontinue to downplay the Nazi Party’s formal name, the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, because you know, we wouldn’t want to sully the sterling reputation of socialism. They are still trying to convince themselves and everyone else that the Nazis were just pretending to be socialists, even though mountains of historical documentation prove the exact opposite.

    Who is it that constantly preaches about the supposed benefits of socialism, and defends its tenets?

    And finally, we have the clip from Cabaret which you’ve posted above. Juxtapose that clip with the following clip:

    and then tell me which side of the American political isle it more closely resembles?

    And before anyone tries to pretzel in the Tea Party carrying signs of Obama as Hitler into this conversation, let me head you off at the pass with reality:

    http://newsbusters.org/blogs/seton-motley/2009/08/12/nbc-cnn-msnbc-all-assign-communist-larouches-obama-hitler-poster-conse

    The bottom line is that the primary reason those on the right continue to be characterized as Nazis is because we allow the left to get away with their very special brand of idiocy unchallenged, for fear of feet stomping temper tantrums and being defriended on Facebook.

    This needs to end immediately.

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    • That doesn’t have anything to do with it JJ, it’s because you are all always on a wrong or opposite page and it’s frustrating to the point where it is infuriating. I watched looonnnng video. And I don’t buy it, I have never in my life scene, sorry seen, a stage like that. What is the point of a stage behind and a full story above the main stage. I get, as in I understand how nature does things, but those types of brooms are meant for one thing, and one thing only sweeping the piles into the pan. Nobody in their right mind would do that. The correct form is a path like a zamboni (one direction) only if it is not a skating rink then a dust mop or microfiber mop. Microfiber is better because they can be used wet or dry. I wide blade by Unger for windows works just as well on floor and a tennisball on the end of a stick as a system is a workable system. Like Governments should be as a system, instead of what we have now which is the equivalent to sweeping and mopping floors with a toothbrush.

      http://vimeo.com/39661527

      I didn’t understand the offwhite colored posters in the corners (tophand left & tophand right), those aren’t musical notes, they are the white spaces in between the words written in etymological dictionaries from the 1800s (only depicted like a photographic nbegative:the dark and light shades reversed)

      Mitt’s campaign theorists, strategic planners and sound bite writers are going to unintentionally sabotage him candidacy not because they want him to loose, but because they are intellectual idiots. Peggy Noonan might be able to pull it off, but no offense, Mitt’s entire theme and soundtrack sounds like it is a carbon copy of the exact style you are using here.

      it’s worse than offensive comedy, hitler would get elected before Mitt unless the wisen up

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