Special: Jerome Robbins (with Liz Rosenfeld)
As one of Broadway's star choreographers, Robbins helped define Broadway's Golden Age with striking dance theatre that integrated ballet technique into storytelling. His charisma, abuses of power, and boundary-obliterating working methods helped define an idea of choreographer-as-genius that still disfigures dance today.
Today, special guest Liz Rosenfeld discusses the choreographer Jerome Robbins. Born in New York to Jewish immigrants, Robbins pursued dance and radical politics––until, under the threat of being blacklisted and exposed for his sexuality, reporting on his former comrades to the House Committee on Unamerican Activities. As one of Broadway's star choreographers, he helped define Broadway's Golden Age with striking dance theatre that integrated ballet technique into storytelling. His charisma, abuses of power, and boundary-obliterating working methods helped define an idea of choreographer-as-genius that still disfigures dance today.
SOURCES:
https://www.npr.org/2011/02/24/97274711/the-real-life-drama-behind-west-side-story
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/03/19/happy-hundredth-jerome-robbins
Jerome Robbins: By Himself: Selections from his letters, journals, drawings, photographs, and an Unfinished Memoir (ed. Amanda Vaill)
Wendy Lesser: Jerome Robbins: A Life in Dance
Jerome Robbins - Something to Dance About, dir. Judy Kinberg
Our intro is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.
S7E10: Rotha Lintorn-Orman
The story of a dashing tomboy who was the first woman to found a British political party. The only problem: that party was the British fascists.
We close out our season with the story of a dashing tomboy who was the first woman to found a British political party. The only problem: that party was the British Fascists.
SOURCES:
Colin Cross, The Fascists in Britain (London: Saint Martin's Press, 1963)
Julie Gottlieb, Feminine Fascism: Women in Britain's Fascist Movement, 1923-1945 (London: Bloomsbury, 2021)
Asa Seresin, "Lesbian Fascism on TERF Island," 2021 https://asaseresin.com/2021/02/11/lesbian-fascism-on-terf-island/
Richard Thurlow, Fascism in Britain: From Oswald Mosley's Blackshirts to the National Front (London: I. Thurbis, 1998)
Edward White, "Conservatism with Knobs On," The Paris Review, December 2, 2016, https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2016/12/02/conservatism-with-knobs-on/
Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.
S7E09: Baron Franz Nopcsa von Felső-Szilvás
Today’s subject had a multi-hyphenate name and a multi-hyphenate resume––, in his 55 years of life, he was an adventurer, a geologist, a spy, a dinosaur scientist, one of the founders of paleobiology, the world’s first airplane hijacker, a founder of the field of Albanian studies, a cosplay artist, and a murderer. Born in 1877 in Transylvania, the Baron Franz Nopcsa von Felsö-Szilvás may have been, except perhaps as a pub quiz answer, lost to history since his death, but in his lifetime he had an outsized impact on several scientific disciplines, central European politics and nationalisms, and, unfortunately, the man who he lived with until a murder-suicide ended both of their lives.
SOURCES:
Gëzim Alpion, “Baron Franz Nopcsa and His Ambition for the Albanian Throne,” BESA Journal 6, no. 3 (Summer 2002): 25–32
Gareth Dyke, “The Dinosaur Baron of Transylvania,” Scientific American, October 1, 2011, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-dinosaur-baron-of-transylvania/
Robert Elsie, “1907 | Baron Franz Nopcsa: The Baron Held Hostage in the Mountains of Dibra,” Texts and Documents of Albanian History, accessed April 18, 2024, http://www.albanianhistory.net/1907_Nopcsa2/index.html
Robert Elsie, “The Viennese Scholar Who Almost Became King of Albania: Baron Franz Nopcsa and His Contribution to Albanian Studies,” n.d., http://www.elsie.de/pdf/articles/A1999VienneseNopcsa.pdf
Emily Osterloff, “Franz Nopcsa: The Dashing Baron Who Discovered Dwarf Dinosaurs,” Natural History Museum, accessed April 18, 2024, https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/franz-nopcsa-the-dashing-baron-who-discovered-dwarf-dinosaurs.html
Vanessa Veselka, “History Forgot This Rogue Aristocrat Who Discovered Dinosaurs and Died Penniless,” Smithsonian Magazine, accessed April 18, 2024, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/history-forgot-rogue-aristocrat-discovered-dinosaurs-died-penniless-180959504/
Traveler, Scholar, Political Adventurer: A Transylvanian Baron at the Birth of Albanian Independence: The Memoirs of Franz Nopcsa, NED-New edition, 1 (Central European University Press, 2014), https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7829/j.ctt6wpkrc
"A Field Guide to the Long History of Skyjackings,” CrimeReads(blog), May 10, 2021, https://crimereads.com/skyjackings/
Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, our outro music is by Dj Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.
S7E08: Qutbuddin Mubarak Shah
Join us for a trip back to the court of 1300s Delhi for a story of love, lust, intrigue, revolution, and “the results of pampering young men and catamites.”
"If you have to take an beautiful enslaved convert boy from another province to become your lover, and then you fall hopelessly in love with him, and then promote him and he attains great power, do be aware than he might actually want to take your throne." Somehow, this extremely specific lesson was forgotten by two generations of rulers. Join us in a trip back to the court of 1300s Delhi for a story of love, lust, intrigue, revolution, and, in the words of a historian of the time, "the results of pampering young men and catamites."
SOURCES:
Indira Chatterjee, "Alienation, Intimacy and Gender: Problems for a History of Love in South Asia," in Ruth Vanita ed., Queering India: Same-Sex Love And Eroticism In Indian Culture And Society (Abingdon: Routledge, 2002)
Abraham Eraly, Age of Wrath: A History of the Delhi Sultanate (Delhi: Penguin India, 2014)
Ruth Vanita and Saleem Kidwai, eds., Same-Sex Love in India: Readings in Indian Literature (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2016)
Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicdesigner. Image via.
S7E07: Marthe Hanau
Marthe Hanau built a several-hundred-million-franc financial powerhouse: which turned out to be a fraud. Learn how far one woman was able to go to accumulate wealth and power by any means necessary.
Marthe Hanau built a several-hundred-million-franc financial powerhouse: which turned out to be a fraud. Her investors had been promised returns of 8% interest on savings and in investments forty percent a year —but by the time she died in prison, they were owed a hundred and fifty five million francs. Some people even credit her spectacular swindle to the political confluence that brought Leon Blum and his popular front to power in France at the end of the 1930s. This is the fascinating tale of just how far one woman was able to go to accumulate wealth and power by any means necessary.
SOURCES:
Stéphanie Bee, "La Bancquiére des Annès Folles," Univers-L, January 11, 2020, https://www.univers-l.com/portrait_marthe_hanau.html
Janet Flanner, "The Swindling Presidente," The New Yorker, August 18, 1939, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1939/08/26/annals-of-crime
Paul Jankowski, Stavisky: A Confidence Man in the Republic of Virtue (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002).
Dean Jobb, "The Ponzi of Paris," CrimeReads, December 3, 2021, https://crimereads.com/marthe-hanau-paris-ponzi-confidence-woman/
Rod Kedward, La Vie en Bleu - France and the French since 1900 (London: Allen Lane, 2005).
Wilfried Knapp, France--partial Eclipse: from the Stavisky Riots to the Nazi Conquest (London: Macdonald, 1972).
Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner. Image via.
S7E06: John Whitgift
Today's episode is about England and its capacity to be deeply weird. We get into one of England's weirdest, bloodiest, and maybe horniest moments, the English Reformation: a time of enormous tumult and violence, but also new ideas that reconfigured and reshaped the world. Today’s Bad Gay is perhaps an unlikely and unfamiliar candidate, but one whose life and loves sheds a light on that time: it’s the theologian, reformer, and Archbishop of Canterbury, John Whitgift.
Today's episode is about England and its capacity to be deeply weird. Weget into one of England's weirdest, bloodiest, and maybe horniest moments, the English Reformation: a time of enormous tumult and violence, but also new ideas that reconfigured and reshaped the world. Today’s Bad Gay is perhaps an unlikely and unfamiliar candidate, but one whose life and loves sheds a light on that time: it’s the theologian, reformer, and Archbishop of Canterbury, John Whitgift.
SOURCES:
Diarmaid MacCulloch, Reformation: Europe’s House Divided 1490-1700, 38831st edition (Penguin UK, 2004)
P. G. Maxwell-Stuart, The Archbishops of Canterbury (Tempus, 2006)
“John Whitgift History,” John Whitgift Foundation(blog), accessed March 18, 2024, https://johnwhitgiftfoundation.org/about-us/john-whitgift-history/.
Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner. Image via.
S7E04: Elagabalus
This episode has everything: a tyrannical little boy king, a dictator who wanted to overthrow the Roman pantheon and install a meteorite as the object of a new monotheism, prostitution and vestal virgins, and drowning your party guests in rose petals.
This episode has everything: a tyrannical little boy king, a dictator who wanted to overthrow the Roman pantheon and install a meteorite as the object of a new monotheism, prostitution and vestal virgins, and drowning your party guests in rose petals. We break down Elagabalus: the myth, the legend, the gender-bending icon and the searcher for the biggest dicks in the Roman Empire.
SOURCES:
Cassius Cocceianus Dio, Roman History: Books 71-80, trans. E. Cary, New issue of 1927 ed Edition (Harvard University Press, 1927)
Edward Gibbon and Hugh Trevor-Roper, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volumes 1 to 6: Volumes 1-3, Volumes 4-6, Reprint Edition (Everyman’s Library, 2010)
Harry Sidebottom, The Mad Emperor: Heliogabalus and the Decadence of Rome (Oneworld Publications, 2022)
Elijah Burgher, “Our Lady of the Latrines – Western Exhibitions,” https://westernexhibitions.com/exhibition/elijah-burgher/
Anthony Birley, trans., Lives of the Later Caesars: The First Part of the Augustan History, with Newly Compiled Lives of Nerva & Trajan, Reprint edition (Harmondsworth, Eng. ; Baltimore etc.: Penguin Classics, 1976).
Our intro music is "Arpeggia Colorix" by Yann Terrien. Our outro music was made for us by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.
The image is: Elijah Burgher, Judgment of Paris, 2024. Coloured pencil and watercolour on paper. 14h x 10w in. Courtesy of the artist.
S7E03: Ahebi Ugbabe
The complex life of Ahebi Ugbabe helps tell the story of the colonization and decolonization of Nigeria and of the similarities and the differences between the sex-gender systems we are used to in the contemporary west and the vast array of possibilities in those sex-gender systems throughout different human societies.
Today’s subject was an uneducated woman who was born in approximately 1880 and rose in her nearly 70 years of life from enslavement to sex work to female king. She was a leader of her community of Enugu-Ezike in present-day Nigeria and a collaborator with British colonialism in the region. Finally removed from power by British officials and local elders because she participated in a ritual in a way that only men were supposed to, the complex life of Ahebi Ugbabe helps tell the story of the colonization and decolonization of Nigeria and of the similarities and the differences between the sex-gender systems we are used to in the contemporary west and the vast array of possibilities in those sex-gender systems throughout different human societies.
SOURCES:
Nwando Achebe, The Female King of Colonial Nigeria: Ahebi Ugbabe (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011).
Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, our outro music was made for us by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicdesigner
S702: Joe Orton and Kenneth Halliwell
Two writers from the North of England who made their way in the repressive, damp climate of the postwar UK, went to jail for turning library books into collage art, abused boys in Tunisia, and met a grisly end.
Warning: this episode contains discussions of domestic violence, child sexual abuse, and suicide. Listener discretion is advised.
A rare twofer this week on our show: we discuss the lives and careers of Joe Orton and Kenneth Halliwell. Both frustrated writers from the North of England making their way in the repressive, damp climate of the postwar UK, they were sent to prison for defacing library books into brilliant collage art. But when Orton achieved fame and success, the pressure was too much for Halliwell to bear. And their disturbing pattern of traveling to Tunisia to abuse children casts a pall on any simple attempt to recuperate them as heroes.
SOURCES:
Ilsa Colsell, Philip Hoare, and Leonie Orton Barnett, Malicious Damage: The Defaced Library Books of Kenneth Halliwell and Joe Orton (Donlon Books, 2013)
Prick Up Your Ears (Curzon Film Distributors, 1987)
James Fox, “The Life and Death of Joe Orton,” The Sunday Times, November 22, 1970
John Lahr, Prick Up Your Ears: The Biography of Joe Orton, 1st edition (Berkeley: Univ of California Pr, 2000)
Joe Orton, The Orton Diaries, Reprint edition (New York: Da Capo Press, 1996)
“Joe Orton,” Front Row (BBC Radio 4, August 11, 2017), https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08zzly6
Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, our outro music was made for us by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicdesigner
S701: Karl Lagerfeld
A white-haired, powdered, starch-cuffed petty dictator who ruled over the expanding business with an iron fist, stopping every once in a while to make a misogynist or racist public comment, Karl Lagerfeld was one of the most influential figures in the fashion industry as it shifted into late capitalist hyperdrive.
Are you wearing the Chanel boots? Yes, we are. A white-haired, powdered, starch-cuffed petty dictator who ruled over the expanding business with an iron fist, stopping every once in a while to make a misogynist or racist public comment, Karl Lagerfeld was one of the most influential figures in the fashion industry as it shifted into late capitalist hyperdrive. Come for the racist and misogynist public comments, stay for Lagerfeld's great love, Jacques de Bascher, who may more perfectly epitomize Evil Twink Energy than anyone we've discussed on our show.
SOURCES:
Christian Allaire, “The Incredible Dandy Style of Jacques de Bascher, Karl Lagerfeld’s Longtime Partner | Vogue,” Vogue, April 27, 2023, https://www.vogue.com/slideshow/jacques-de-bascher-dandy-style-karl-lagerfeld-partner
Irina Baconsky, “Jacques de Bascher: An Exhibition,” 032c, March 11, 2020, https://032c.com/magazine/jacques-de-bascher-an-exhibition
Holly Brubach, “School of Chanel,” The New Yorker, February 19, 1989, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1989/02/27/school-of-chanel
John Colapinto, “Karl Lagerfeld’s Fashion Empire,” The New Yorker, March 12, 2007, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/03/19/in-the-now
Brock Colyar, “The Man in an 18-Year Relationship With Karl Lagerfeld,” The Cut, February 20, 2019, https://www.thecut.com/2019/02/who-was-jacques-de-bascher.html
Daniel Harris, “The Electronic Funeral: Mourning Versace,” The Antioch Review 56, no. 2 (1998): 154–63, https://doi.org/10.2307/4613651
Beatrice Hazlehurst, “Karl Lagerfeld Depicts Hitler in Political Cartoon to Criticize Angela Merkel - PAPER Magazine,” October 12, 2017, https://www.papermag.com/karl-lagerfeld-depicts-hitler-in-political-cartoon-to-criticize-angela-merkel
Michael Hobbes and Aubrey Gordon, “Diet Book Deep Dive: The Karl Lagerfeld Diet,” Maintenance Phase, accessed February 14, 2024, https://maintenancephase.buzzsprout.com/1411126/9898517
Anisha Mansuri, “The Met Gala: Ignoring Lagerfeld’s Islamophobia and Misogyny,” The New Arab (The New Arab, October 18, 2022), https://www.newarab.com/opinion/met-gala-ignoring-lagerfelds-islamophobia-and-misogyny
William Middleton, Paradise Now: The Extraordinary Life of Karl Lagerfeld (New York, NY: Harper, 2023)
Melissa Minton, “Karl Lagerfeld’s Most Controversial Quotes over the Years,” The New York Post, April 28, 2023, sec. Page Six, https://pagesix.com/article/karl-lagerfeld-most-controversial-quotes/
David Rakoff, Don’t Get Too Comfortable: The Indignities of Coach Class, The Torments of Low Thread Count, The Never- Ending Quest for Artisanal Olive Oil, and Other First World Problems, Reprint Edition (Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2006).
“Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty,” The Metropolitan Museum of Art, accessed February 12, 2024, https://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/a-line-of-beauty
“King Karl,” Kids of Dada, accessed February 12, 2024, https://www.kidsofdada.com/blogs/magazine/11625457-king-karl
Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, our outro music was made for us by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicdesigner