What is a “transgressive” artist? There are two contrasting models around at the moment: In the first, Tim Robbins’s new film The Cradle Will Rock, it is Marc Blitzstein, composer, lyricist and librettist of The Cradle Will Rock, a bit of 1930s agitprop commissioned and then cancelled by the Federal Theater Project. Orson Welles and John Houseman then led a famous march uptown to the Venice Theatre, at which Blitzstein, seated at the piano, performed the show himself. It is, of course, one of the all-time great Stalinist droners, set in Steeltown, USA, a municipality run by Mr. Mister entirely for the benefit of himself and a few cronies. Fortunately, down at the steel plant, Larry Foreman is organizing the workers to fight for union recognition.

As Robbins sees it, the defiant socialist composer was a victim of capitalism’s assault on culture: the “right-wing” deemed the show too “dangerous” to ...

This article is available to subscribers and for individual purchase