Last night when I was…staying up too late and goofing off on Facebook, I participated in a friend’s little movie game. The task was to find a high-grossing movie that was released around your birthday, look up the tagline for that movie, and voila, that tagline would help guide you to your purpose in life (or not). So I played along, secretly hoping that my movie would be Deliverance, but alas, since you’ve probably already figured out from the blog headline that no – it wasn’t Deliverance, but it was Cabaret. I haven’t even seen Cabaret, though it is on my list of movies I need to see someday (preferably when I get some alone time since my dear husband isn’t a fan of musicals unless John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd are in them or it’s Sweeney Todd, or Pirates of Penzance).

Wow, now that I’ve read Wikipedia’s synopsis of Cabaret, all I can say about it and what it means for my life’s purpose? “Meh, it figures.” Independent American woman sings/performs at the Kit Kat Club in 1931 Berlin (hey I happen to like Kit Kat candy bars), and her outfit she wears? Well, back in my younger years, I’ve worn similar outfits as Halloween costumes (sometimes I used to like to vamp it up and loved wearing costumes with lots of black). As for Sally Bowles, she winds up having sex with two different men – Brian – who had three failed previous relationships with women – and some playboy guy named Maximilian, and of COURSE she gets pregnant and doesn’t know who the daddy is (classic movie trope). Also, Maximilian and Brian have sex with each other too (how very progressive for a 1972 film set in the early 1930s). Nowadays, if a celebrity “comes out,” most peoples’ reactions are “So?” But that hasn’t always been the case…so many folks had to remain “in the closet” – or risk possible persecution or worse – for centuries because it just wasn’t accepted by society. Plenty of folks still don’t accept it now, either.

Sally is conflicted – she just doesn’t see herself as a professor’s wife, which would be her fate if she married/stayed with Brian. She has an abortion without informing him about it (again, how very progressive – this was WAY before abortion would be addressed in Fast Times at Ridgemont High). Brian and Sally do wind up having an “understanding” about the whole thing. Sally stays behind for the cabaret life in Berlin, and Brian goes back to England (he’s a professor at Cambridge, which probably means he wears tweed jackets with elbow pads and frequently says “Indeed” while huffing on a pipe).

Well, well WELL! That’s obviously a lot more exciting than my life up until this point! Maybe I just haven’t lived up to my potential? Were those karaoke nights I used to enjoy my subconscious means of attempting to be Sally Bowles?

If nothing else, it’s fun to think about performing in a smoky cabaret club in an outfit I was poured into, wearing excessive eye liner/mascara and with jet black hair. But seriously, I’m really not much into wearing hats!!!! 🙂