The Killer History Can’t Escape: How a 300-year-old Outlaw Became an Internet Meme
Margaret Kennedy as Captain Macheath, The Beggar’s Opera, 1777. Harald Paulsen, German actor and the original Mack the Knife in Bertold Brecht’s The Threepenny Opera. Mac Tonight cup.
History likes to think it moves in straight lines — progress, invention, improvement. But some stories don’t fade; they change their costume and step back into the light.
A man with a pistol at his hip and a flash to his grin, appears in the streets of London, the smoky cabarets of Berlin, the jazz clubs of New York, the neon glow of late-night Los Angeles; and wherever he goes, there’s a song to his name.
This is Macheath: charming outlaw, femme fatale’s desire, and cultural ghost. From John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera in 1728 to the pixelated memes of the 2010s, his grin has survived, carrying with it a sharp edge of satire and mischief.
London 1728
“Through all the Employments of Life
Each Neighbour abuses his Brother;
Whore and Rogue they call Husband and Wife:
All Professions be-rogue one another.”
(The Beggar’s Opera, Act I Scene I)
A smog settles on South London where the pickpocket robs the merchant, the merchant cheats his customer, the lawyer pockets a little extra from them both. The brothel madam takes her cut, the preacher his tithe, and the constable looks the other way – whilst rubbing the gold in his pocket. All the while, the beggar scrounges the cobbles as cartwheels rattle by like coins in a coinbox.
It is in this lovely city that the gentleman “Macheath” – the charming highwayman with a pistol at his hip and a price on his head – first takes centre stage, when, in 1728, John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera burst into the underbelly of London’s theatre scene (the second favourite form of entertainment after hangings).
The opera follows Macheath, an outlaw caught between worlds — adored by women, hunted by the law, and betrayed by his own friends. He courts Polly Peachum, daughter of a crime boss who turns profits from turning in his fellow thieves, and Lucy Lockit, whose father runs the local prison. Between them all, crime, love, and business blur until everyone’s pocketing something from someone else.
The show ran for an unprecedented sixty-two weeks, making it an immediate success, upstaging Handel’s powdered wig operas that had been dominating the higher end opera scene in London. Its rough-edged humour and singable tunes, and importantly its location in the raw South of London, drew a far broader crowd – merchants, apprentices, and nobles alike. The opera’s bawdy satire also made it ideal for pamphlets featuring political uppercuts, and a tool to directly tackle the now openly corrupt government.
Soon however, Macheath’s name would disappear from the limelight, swallowed by government censorship and a society keen to polish its image.
Berlin 1928
“Und der Haifisch, der hat Zähne
Und die trägt er im Gesicht
Und Macheath, der hat ein Messer
Doch das Messer sieht man nicht”
“Oh, the shark has pretty teeth dear
And he shows ‘em, pearly white
Just a jack knife has Macheath dear
And he keeps it out of sight.”
(Die Moritat von Mackie Messer [The Ballad of Mack the Knife] in Die Dreigroschenoper [The Threepenny Opera], English version: Marc Blitzstein)
In a warm cabaret in central Berlin, where the spirits are high and the lager cheap, a tune begins. A man steps into the spotlight, sharp suit, sharper smile.
“Mackie” was back in town. This time, re-envisioned by playwright Bertolt Brecht, translator Elisabeth Hauptmann, and composer Kurt Weill as Die Dreigroschenoper (The Threepenny Opera), Macheath would take the form of a serial killer wielding a knife (“Mack the Knife”). In place of the rustic folk tunes, Weill created a unique style of his own that captured the glamorous grit of Berlin, infused with Cabaret, jazz, and parodied classical opera. But beneath the bright brass and smoky piano, The Threepenny Opera hid a bite; like its predecessor, it was a portrait of inequality, corruption, and a society on the edge. Berlin in 1928 is laughing at its own decay, but the laughter would be short lived.
In 1933 Weill would leave Berlin for the U.S., fleeing Nazi persecution, and bringing with him his stage hit. In New York, Weill built an illustrious career writing musicals for Broadway, The Threepenny Opera however couldn’t seem to catch a hold... until the tune found its next stage.
New York 1954
“Oh... what’s the next chorus, to this song, now?
This is the one, now, I don’t know
But it was a swinging tune and it’s a hit tune
So... we tried to do Mack the Knife.”
In 1954, Macheath came swaggering back into the spotlight with the full momentum of post-war America. The Threepenny Opera opened on Broadway, with Lotte Lenya (Weill’s widow) singing once again of the smiling killer. The following year, jazz legend Louis Armstrong took up the tune, tipping his hat to Lenya by name. Some radio stations banned the record, fearing it glamorised crime — which, in a way, it did — but the ban only made the public hungrier. The record sold by the millions, and in 1997, it was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.
Then came Bobby Darin. His 1958 version — smooth, brassy, and impossibly confident — turned the song into a chart-topping classic, reaching No. 2 on Billboard and sealing Macheath’s American makeover: the outlaw recast as a lounge-singer in a sharp suit.
By 1960, the tune reached the “First Lady of Song,” Ella Fitzgerald, whose legendary live performance — forgetting the lyrics halfway through and improvising the rest with a wink and a Louis Armstrong impression — completed the transformation. Mack the Knife had become pure showbiz: a smile with no blood behind it.
Los Angeles 1986
In a board room in Los Angeles the suits depart with their coughs and straighten their ties as a team of advertising experts click their heels and show their teeth. Their objective is simple: sell more burgers to late night America.
“When the clock strikes Half Past Six, Babe!/ Time to head for golden lights!/ It’s a good time for the great taste (dinner)/ at McDonald’s! It’s Mac Tonight!”
Out of the spotlight steps a new “Mack:” silver skin, crescent-moon head, tuxedo sharp enough to cut glass. The knife has become a piano, the back-alley smirk traded for a corporate grin. The character, Mac Tonight, croons Weill’s melody over spinning burgers and chrome milkshake machines. The campaign is a hit. Macheath has made it to primetime.
It’s an almost perfect irony: a character born from the grime of London’s underworld, revived in Weimar’s smoky bars, now reborn as the corporate veneer of the world’s most successful fast-food chain. A song once written to mock greed and corruption is now selling it — with a jingle.
The Internet c.2010
Decades later and Mac Tonight would resurface, this time, however, selling something much more sinister than late night burgers. He resurfaced on anonymous internet message boards and pixelated memes. Moonface (as he would come to be known), still fresh off the corporate press, and still carrying Macheath’s sinister charm, became the perfect vessel for selling the ideologies of a new “Alt-right” movement. Emerging largely from forums in the US and Europe, the movement relied on toxic internet culture to spread hate dressed in irony - mixing racism with performative anti-establishment rage – anger stoked from the top but pointed squarely at anyone vulnerable enough to become a target.
In yet another grim twist of irony, the figure once created to call out the growing concerns of Weimar Germany, began appearing in front of Nazi flags; the voice who thrived in the Jazz clubs of the 1950s was now plastered across racist memes.
Like the rogues of The Beggar’s Opera, these message boards thought themselves subversive, raging against the system, but their rage only fuelled it. The cycle turns again: corruption wearing a smile, rebellion sold back as a product. And somewhere in the background, Macheath is still grinning, waiting for his next encore.
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