The theme that cropped up most prominently in my assignments this semester is nationalism. From the way that French politics directed composers’ musical choices, I have concluded that nationalism often caused the other class themes of racism, gender, and sexuality. The politics of power balances between nations applies, in the most basic way, to all of the events and pieces we have studied this semester since they were based in the nation of France. But more specifically, each piece revealed the composer’s political commentary on the subject of Many composers whom we analyzed wrote music that attempted to define the “French sound” in music. In my third paper, I discussed how Debussy’s Wagnerian-style accompaniment to a soldier’s life-threatening injury in the ballet La Boîte à Joujoux alludes to Debussy’s belief that the future of French music involved the death of Wagnerian influence. In class, we analyzed the seemingly-deliberate dehumanization of black people when Josephine Baker was made to present herself in animalistic dance gestures and absurd facial expressions. I often contrast this conscious assertion of white-French cultural dominance to Debussy’s borrowing of Javanese gamelan music in his Pagodes, which seemed to be motivated by genuine appreciation for this culture’s beauty rather than poking fun at or asserting dominance over foreign peoples.
Another theme, though not specifically listed as a class theme, that frequently popped up is this infatuation with the sensational presentation of exotic cultures through the combination of music, art, and dance. This also directly ties back to nationalism, in that composers, dancers, directors, and the general public were consciously or subconsciously discerning what French artistry was by observing other cultures. The connection between exotic production and frenzied consumption became a self-perpetuating cycle in which these forces propelled each other. Creators and performers, such as Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes, filled the French mainstream theaters and music halls with multimedia, multi-cultural performances, while the public — through their financial support — encouraged more such spectacles to be produced. The most foreign-influenced shows of the Ballets Russes, including Cléopâtre and Schéhérazade, exoticized Egyptian and Middle Eastern cultures with the use of sexualized and stereotyped costumes, such as Ida Rubinstein’s green face paint and her disrobing in the Dance of the Seven Veils. Other musical spectacles make specific aural references to other cultures’ music, such as the scattered and dissonant qualities of instrument parts and the heavy use of percussion to evoke Brazilian primitiveness in Milhaud’s L’homme et son desire. These intense visual and aural displays of exotic cultures seemingly hypnotized the Parisian spectators, as the art economy boomed with constant new creations throughout the 1920s.
Learning about the level to which nationalism and exoticism pervaded the theatrical and musical productions of 1920s Paris has sculpted my worldview that regardless of a creator’s intentions, the natural consequences of cultural borrowing still have real effects on consumers’ political outlook. For instance, although it seems that Debussy was admiring, not poking fun at, Javanese gamelan by incorporating it into his piano music, his cultural borrowing still provided French audiences with a simplified aural stereotype of what Asian music sounds like: pentatonic scales and a lack of harmonic function. His motive was supposedly neutral or even positive, yet the outcome still had the potential for negative impact, such as encouraging the French to believe their culture is superior.
This analysis can be expanded to my view on institutions. Ballet companies, for example, may not have always been trying to poke fun at the cultures they referenced in their choreography and costuming. The Ballets Russes’ self-exoticization through the use of Russian folklore and traditional Russian peasant costumes (each foreign to the French ear and eye, respectively), once again provided audiences with a narrow-scoped stereotype of what Russian culture consisted of. In such institutions, collaborators often find common grounds upon which to build and strengthen their projects. The individual artist’s motives behind and consequences of their work is easily amplified to a larger level in ballet companies and the likes. After analyzing various composers’ works and their impacts, I see that institutions are capable of the exact same, if not even bigger, positive and negative cultural influences on society.