Dazzled by the Light: Technological Entertainment and Its Social Impact in Variete

This article proposes that E. A. Dupont's 1925 film Varieté both represents the variety acts that were so popular in Weimar Germany and becomes such an act itself. Simultaneously, the film depicts how variety shows aroused illicit sexual energy in their participants. Thus, through its discourse on the social effects of the burgeoning entertainment industry, Varieté can be interpreted as engaging analytically with the technological world in which it was produced.