What do Catholic guilt, dancefloor in Tivoli and Danish People's Party have in common? Morten Messerschmidt wrote Showbizz — and it's far more entertaining than it should be.
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Disclaimer: Apropos Magazine received access or a review copy. As always, we share our own impressions — unfiltered.
Six stars
If you think this is just another political autobiography, you're wrong. And if you don't think so, you're probably right. Showbizz is not an apology disguised as recollections -- it's a performance disguised as man. With the charm of the play, the seriousness of the church and the mirror trick of the press, Morten Messerschmidt tries to make one thing clear: He would rather be loved as a character than understood as a human being.
There's something almost Wes Andersonesque about it. Morten Messerschmidt, with perfect side parting and the eternal sensation of having taken the stage in slightly too tight trousers, has written an autobiography. No, this is not a classic politician's story. It is Showbizz. The title alone reveals that we should not expect footnotes and financial laws, but rather a kind of operetta on Messerschmidt's life and sufferings -- in Danish politics, in the yawning bark of the press, and in the shadows of faith.
The book is composed in three acts: the faith, the theater, and the speech. The first act rolls with Messerschmidt's Catholic convictions as its engine. He goes to church not only because it's Sunday habit, but because he means it. That part is surprisingly honest. There's something touching in how little strategic it feels -- as if faith isn't a tool, but a refuge. This is not about religious marketing, but of a man who, in all his contradictions, seeks something higher, perhaps because no one on earth quite bothers to understand him.
The second act is the public performance: Messerschmidt as a media figure, as mockingly clipped satire pieces, as fabric for tabloid and talk shows. He takes us behind the scenes -- literally -- in the Tivoli, on DR's dance floor, in court. Here he balances somewhere between self-pity and self-knowledge, but he has his pen with him. And it's sharp, precise, polemical. If you thought he was going to lay down flat, you don't know the man. He still needs the audience. Even if they don't clap.
He writes as he speaks: solemnly and theatrically, but with the blink of an eye. One wonders how much of it is real and how much is performance. But perhaps that is also the point: that Morten Messerschmidt cannot be separated from the image he has built himself up. He's his own character. Not a prototype of new Danish conservatism, but one that mixes Grundtvig with Grand Prix. And it's actually quite unique.
It all culminates in the third act, where we approach the collapse of the DF, the crisis-ridden fire of Danskheden and Messerschmidt's own legal tussles. He's not objective. He knows that. But he has timing. And he knows how to write a sentence so that it sounds like something from an editorial in Kristligt Dagblad and a joke in Close to the truth — all at once. It's well written. It's unimaginably calculated. It's entertaining. And annoyingly confident.
It's not a book that tries to make you understand politics. It tries to make you understand why he's still here. Why he still gets up every morning and ties the tie -- and why we still bother watching. And when you close the book, you're not left with a deeper understanding of society. You have the feeling of having read a good script. One that was ready for DR's drama director, but ended up at Gyldendal.
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Reflection
There are plenty of reasons to hate Showbizz. It's self-staging, ideologically deadlocked, and it manipulates like only a charismatic politician can. But it's also entertaining. That is accurate. And that's honest enough that you have to take your hat off -- even if you would never vote for him. Maybe especially that's why.
4 out of 5 stars (... and a silent ovation behind closed curtains.)
