Le Crazy Horse in Paris

Le Crazy Horse in Paris used to be a great cabaret – I recall many years ago a very aesthetic show in which, through a very clever arrangement of lighting, one only got a glimpse of the girls on parade – from which one was expected, I suppose, to reconstruct the rest (but the brain is able to recognize a form with exposures as brief as 16 milliseconds).

Those days are gone. Le Crazy Horse is now an over-priced cabaret – or rather a cross between a cabaret and a theatre – with a boring show, a faded carbon-copy of its former self.

I last visited it some two years ago, and the only thing I retain is a handout leaflet which said that they had the world’s “most beautiful and most inaccessible women”.

Those who wrote that line are smart – for inaccessibility is the key to the fantasy world recreated there. It is the inaccessibility that creates endless possibilities – in the mind. Once something is totally accessible, it is also rigidly defined, and hence limits the precious role of fantasy.

I suppose that for Dante, too, Beatrice was inaccessible, opening up extraordinary possibilities in his mind. Had she been accessible, he may not have written of her as he did. After all, he has nothing to say about his wife, who must have been totally accessible.

The gulf between the inaccessible girls at Le Crazy Horse and Beatrice is not quite as wide as may seem, although some may be outraged at the suggestion.

But fantasy obviously comes at a price – and viewing those inaccessible girls at Le Crazy Horse is now for those who have cash to spare. What they are paying for is not really a glimpse of the girls at all, but the world of fantasy that that view provides.

And why not?