German ballet director suspended over poop attack on critic

February 15, 2023 6:44 PM

A ballet director has been suspended after he smeared dog poop on a German newspaper critic’s face over a review he didn’t like. “[Ballet director Marco Goecke] has been given the next few days to apologize ‘comprehensively’ and explain himself to theater management ‘before further steps are announced.’” Also relevant: A Brief History of People Protesting Stuff with Poop
posted by Roverlaw (35 comments total)

So, I haven't read any of these links, and honestly I probably won't.

But. I initially agreed with the critics who claimed the final act of Tar was hallucination, or something. Not real. Now?
posted by Caxton1476 at 6:54 PM on February 15, 2023 [2 favorites]

Oh Gustav!
posted by lalochezia at 7:04 PM on February 15, 2023 [1 favorite]

* Removes tissues from purse, calmly wipes face, sighs *
"Oh, Marco...after that last ballet, this is a bit redundant, don't you think?"
posted by PlusDistance at 7:42 PM on February 15, 2023 [30 favorites]

From the Guardian, "German ballet director offers no apology over dog faeces incident":

An award-winning German ballet company director who smeared his dog’s faeces on the face of a dance critic has failed to apologise, saying he was responding to decades of “annihilatory criticism”.

[...]

“I told her ‘I’m a human’,” he said in the NDR interview, describing her reaction as “aggressive, arrogant and condescending”. He admitted to then smearing her face with his dog’s excrement, saying it was not premeditated but that he acted “in the heat of the moment”.

He said: “My old dachshund had done his business in his bag, which sometimes happens at the age he is, and I had just packed the poo into a bag and had wanted to throw it away outside.”

Hüster, in her version of events, said Goecke approached her in the crowded foyer and blocked her path, telling her she should be banned from entering the theatre as she always wrote negative reviews of his productions.

“I told him ‘no, that’s not true, there are productions of yours that I’ve cherished a lot. It’s not true,’” she said. “Then all of a sudden he pulled this bag from his pocket. With the open side of the bag, he rubbed the dog excrement into my face. When I felt what he had done, I screamed. I was in panic.”

People around her were stunned into silence, she said. One woman told her later how she had pursued Goecke through the foyer. “She tried to get help and get hold of the man, but someone from the theatre came and led Marco Goecke to a separate room,” she said.

Goecke said he regretted the incident but he did not offer an apology. “I think that the means I chose were certainly not super. Absolutely. I think from a societal viewpoint, making use of such a method will not receive approval or be respected,” he said, sitting on a park bench accompanied by his 14-year-old dog, Gustav.

I'm inclined to believe the account of the person who did not smear someone else's face with dog poop. Like, he wasn't just holding his dog's poop bag in his hand, it was in his pocket. Who would put a filled-but-not-tied-closed dog poop bag in their pocket?
posted by mhum at 8:09 PM on February 15, 2023 [12 favorites]

Dude, the Spinal Tap review was metaphorical.
posted by Devils Rancher at 8:46 PM on February 15, 2023 [1 favorite]

Isn't this assault? Is he in jail?
posted by flamk at 10:18 PM on February 15, 2023 [9 favorites]

Not that it’s relevant to this case of assault, but his choreography is garbage.
posted by sixswitch at 10:47 PM on February 15, 2023 [3 favorites]

I once had an actor pay to throw a pie in my face over a review that someone else wrote in a paper I never worked for. At least it was for charity.
posted by Just the one swan, actually at 10:50 PM on February 15, 2023 [4 favorites]

Suspended? Fucking suspended? Anything less than summarily fired, the institution distancing itself from him entirely, and him getting arrested and thrown in jail very fucking promptly is grade A misogynist bullshit.
posted by Dysk at 11:24 PM on February 15, 2023 [24 favorites]

If he does this to critics, one wonders how he treats the ballet dancers he directs...
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 11:50 PM on February 15, 2023 [34 favorites]

The Aristocrats!
posted by Meatbomb at 12:41 AM on February 16, 2023 [12 favorites]

DOUCHY DEUTSCH DIRECTOR DUMPS DUMP ON DAME

[yeah, assault]
posted by chavenet at 1:19 AM on February 16, 2023 [11 favorites]

This certainly sounds outrageous, which is why we are hearing about it in the English language news, but German theatre and performing arts seem to have these sorts of events pretty regularly. I recall an English director took over one of the Berlin theatres and had his office door smeared with shit. My partner worked in the German theatre world for a long time and was quite happy to leave it behind, as it was a business with a lot of “personality”
posted by The River Ivel at 3:31 AM on February 16, 2023 [5 favorites]

It's camp as hell. It's like "Wait, 'Sprockets' wasn't parody?" no, as it turns out, no it wasn't...
posted by From Bklyn at 4:53 AM on February 16, 2023 [3 favorites]

I hate to be reductionist, but when I first saw this story I found myself wondering if he would have done this to a man, especially a strong man who was capable of hitting him hard. If he'd been walking his dog and encountered a critic who was, say, 35, six feet four and a regular gym-goer, would he have been overcome by an uncontrollable urge? Or is this one of those things where someone feels an "uncontrollable" urge that they would never feel against their boss, a cop, a lawyer, a weightlifter, etc?

I add that literally smearing shit on someone's face is a bit different even from whatever pathological issues would lead you to smear shit on someone's door, substantially because a door can't "uncontrollably" punch you in the face.
posted by Frowner at 5:03 AM on February 16, 2023 [35 favorites]

So badly want to see this ballet and read the review.

Who reviews the reviewers?
posted by sammyo at 5:05 AM on February 16, 2023 [1 favorite]

Suspended? Fucking suspended? Anything less than summarily fired, the institution distancing itself from him entirely, and him getting arrested and thrown in jail very fucking promptly is grade A misogynist bullshit.

Metafilter, meet German employment laws.
posted by Klipspringer at 5:06 AM on February 16, 2023 [5 favorites]

He's been fired.

(Or at least, what the article says is that both parts agreed to terminate his contract).
posted by LaVidaEsUnCarnaval at 6:41 AM on February 16, 2023 [2 favorites]

A Brief History of People Protesting Stuff with Poop

All the parents in this thread nod silently….
posted by inflatablekiwi at 6:50 AM on February 16, 2023 [5 favorites]

I know it's been mentioned up-thread but HOW IS THIS NOT CLASSIFIED AS ASSUALT ?

He smeared a woman's FACE with ANIMAL EXCREMENT.
posted by Faintdreams at 7:10 AM on February 16, 2023 [4 favorites]

Another thing that strikes me on the misogyny front - women are required to seem "pure" and "gentle" to be acceptable in public life and are perpetually at risk of falling over into various states of femininity-failure. Women are supposed to be "clean" "spiritual", the people who maintain order, the home, education, etc. It is conventional to assault or insult women by "defiling" them, because women are supposed to be clean and pretty if they're going to be publicly acceptable. If a man is muddy or filthy, it's not seen as a kind of masculinity failure, even if it's embarrassing or distressing. Smearing a woman's face with shit is a particular kind of attack on her public presence as a woman intellectual.

This strikes me as a misogynist assault because he probably felt comfortable attacking a woman who looks to be small and thin from her photos where he would not have felt comfortable attacking a man his own size, but it also strikes me as a misogynist assault because of its very nature.
posted by Frowner at 7:25 AM on February 16, 2023 [15 favorites]

The one I really feel bad for here is the dog. An elderly, incontinent dachshund needs a steady, experienced owner, not somebody who flies into rages, attacks people, and gets himself fired. Somebody like me, for example. What I'm saying is give me the dog.

Seriously, though, Frowner is right. Dudes of "uncontrollable" rage often find themselves pretty well able to control it around bigger dudes or authorities. Not always, of course, which is why sensible countries regulate guns, but often enough that it's a stupid and unbelievable excuse.
posted by Countess Elena at 7:46 AM on February 16, 2023 [14 favorites]

My father was an alcoholic who would fly into rage at the unfairness of the world and often loudly fantasized about who deserved to have their faces rubbed into a pile of dog shit. Seems like a particular kind of dude fantasy. And he definitely would have been more likely to carry out this fantasy on a "lowly woman" than a man of equal or better stature. I'm sure this director is a peach to work with and for.
posted by amanda at 7:55 AM on February 16, 2023 [4 favorites]

My German is a bit rusty, but I believe the journalist called this out as assault, and I would hope that charges are filed at some point. And well deserved, that’s not something you can just do to people and shrug it off as poor decision making in the heat of the moment. This guy sounds like a real asshole.
posted by dellsolace at 8:44 AM on February 16, 2023

The article I saw said it was under police investigation.
posted by sammyo at 8:50 AM on February 16, 2023

This has been on the news in Germany for days. The victim has pressed charges for both libel and assault. Goecke had initially been suspended and had been banned from the premises; later the company announced that Goecke's emloyment contract has been dissolved. (German source)
posted by amf at 9:25 AM on February 16, 2023 [1 favorite]

Metafilter, meet German employment laws.

I'm from Denmark, and if there is no way to summarily fire someone for committing a premeditated criminal assault on a customer in the neighbouring country of Germany, I'll be very surprised indeed. Dismissal for cause is a thing, even in Germany. And in fact, he was fired. German employment law indeed.
posted by Dysk at 9:52 AM on February 16, 2023

Dog Poop Guy in the NYT: “I’m still not free of this anger,” Mr. Goecke said. Ms. Hüster had written just two positive pieces about his work during his career, he said, and he felt many of her reviews were attempts to damage him.
“If I’d been a woman and the critic a man, this would be seen differently,” he said."

O RLY?!
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:58 AM on February 16, 2023 [2 favorites]

BBC's reporting that he's been sacked. Good.
posted by Paul Slade at 11:19 AM on February 16, 2023 [1 favorite]

Breathtakingly, the NYT manages to both-sides this one too. The guy was under stress, after all. And he also feels we need to woo people back to arts venues now that the pandemic is [normalized, really] so he was naturally outraged when he got a bad review.
posted by Frowner at 12:35 PM on February 16, 2023 [3 favorites]

"Breathtakingly, the NYT manages to both-sides this one too."


Yes, well it's important to keep these things in perspective. It was dog feces after all, not human feces. That makes a big difference. Which would you rather have smeared in your face, dog feces or human feces?
posted by mikeand1 at 2:48 PM on February 16, 2023

Human, all day long. Don't want either, but especially don't want anything related to dogs.
posted by Dysk at 3:29 PM on February 16, 2023

And he also feels we need to woo people back to arts venues now that the pandemic

...has made people absolutely bonkers from the collective trauma of it all. Let's add to that trauma by going to a venue where a seemingly professional adult person might fly into a rage and pull dog crap out of his jacket to rub in someone's face. Yes, yes, let's get to the ballet. Sounds like everyone is having a great time.
posted by amanda at 5:08 PM on February 17, 2023 [3 favorites]

Reminds me of how Playbill apparently removed an article someone wrote about misbehaving patrons at the theater so they wouldn't hurt ticket sales.
posted by jenfullmoon at 5:50 PM on February 17, 2023

In addition to how horrifying this is as an act of aggression/disrespect, it is also worth noting that getting dog poo in the eyes can cause a variety of infections/parasites that can potentially cause blindness, including the bacteria that causes trachoma.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 11:35 PM on February 17, 2023