Is the Emcee gay?

surely the whole point of the film, and the kitkat club itself it to lose unhelpful labels? to me the film is saying that it doesn't matter whether you're man or woman, gay or straight, gentile or jew (or even gorilla for that matter!) people are just people at the end of the day.

When the movie first came out, all my friends were like "Oh that Emcee/Joel Grey is soooo GAY."

Back then in 1973, any guy who sported makeup to the extent that the Emcee did was perceived as "gay," regardless of what historical context a movie was set in. So of course he came off as "gay."

But that's ignoring that Joel Grey sported makeup in the stage play - although apparently he did have a "drag" moment" (during the stage musical's equivalent of "Tiller Girls").

So I'm guessing his visual impact on 60s/70s audiences was meant to convey an atmosphere of "anything goes"/"decadence," which, in a certain way, is grounded in a certain type of homophobia. The emcee is "grotesque," not in any way appealing - yet he definitely has a "homosexual" side to him.

If you watch "PBS' Broadway Treasures," you can see a video-taped version of "Wilkommen" from a Tony Awards broadcast of the 1960s. Joel looks the same - but seems less lecherous (even when he introduces the Cabaret girls). What the stage number has that the movie did not is a few really GAY boys who prance around the Kit Kat Klub, at one point even dancing with other during the course of the show. The Emcee/Joel Grey in the Tony-recorded version shoos them away as they "flit about," so obviously even he/the characters is somewhat disapproving of the notion of someone being "uber-Gay".

On the other hand, there was no drag character in the stage play like "Fraulein Elke" in the movie (whom the Emcee seems certainly comfortable with - at least onstage). And with the lead male character Brian Roberts "bi-sexual," it almost seems as if, by the early 1970s when the movie was greenlighted, being "gay" was a little more permissible/not-as-offensive to some.

In the end, however, the Nazis wipe Germany's slate clean, so the moral issue of being gay ends up somewhat inresolved: Were gays "victims" in the same way that Jews were, eliminated because Nazi Aryan values were imposed? Or were gays part of a corrupt society that deserved cleansing, a corrupt society which the Nazis then conveniently blamed on Jews in order to eliminate them too?

It really wasn't until the movie "Paragraph 175" - a documentary the persecution of gays and lesbians - and the recent play "I Am My Own Wife" - which recounts the experiences of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, a German transvestite who ran a gay bar in Berlin from "Cabaret" days through Nazi occupation and then through Soviet-occupation - that genuine perspectives of someone being gay in the Weimar Republic came to light.

"Don't call me 'honey', mac."
"Don't call me 'mac'... HONEY!"

I don't think anything the Emcee says or does can be taken as representative of who he really is or what he's really like in his own life, even when they happen to overlap.

He's a raunchy showman; everything he does on-stage, whether it's putting on a pink triangle or a yellow Star of David, or physically flirting with anyone of either gender, is meant to be both provocative and confrontational, and is intended to both titillate and satirise the audience (both his audience within the Klub, and the audience of the show or movie).


You might very well think that. I couldn't possibly comment.

I think his orientation is just as ambiguous as his political beliefs.

As others have said, he's probably intended as bi-sexual. The whole point of the Cabaret is to reflect the moral decadence that is to befall Germany as a totalitarian state bent on exterminating Jews.

Moderns might dismiss the emcee being gay as irrelevant but the sexual ambiguity of the KitKat Klub in 1930 Berlin is to reflect not only the moral decay of Germany but the moral decay of Sally and Brian. Sally gets pregant--perhaps by Brian--and she has an abortion. That abortion represents the pivotal question re moral choice and how that moral choice is to reflect Nazi behavior. Not an easy or comfortable equation, but there it is.

Gay? Straight? Bi-sexual? The Emcee is beyond all of these labels. The Emcee is a completely ambiguous character. He(if you ever want to give the Emcee a gender) really can take any form: Nazi, Jew, Gay, Straight, Transvestite, prostitute, pimp etc etc.

The Emcee is this invisible yet ever present force in the show. The other characters are unaware of the emcees existence. How can you even talk about a sexuality. He is a brick thrown through a window, a shelf for a pineapple, a pimp, and a prisoner. If anybody has ever seen Alan Cummings portray the role of the Emcee you will see ambiguity portrayed at its finest.

The Emcee's character is to portray the emotion of the situation and scene, not to define labels.

He is the personification or avatar of Bacchus himself (God of Wine and Song). But Bacchus is also a god of death as well. This was well represented in the film. But it was thrown out in the Broadway revival I saw a few years back.

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