20

Wednesday

Powerful scoundrels may beat down the rest of us in life, but we don’t have to wait for the hereafter for our comeuppance—they’ll always be the targets of the satirist’s lash. “Sharp Pens, Loose Tongues,” an exhibit of German satire in art and film, shows that Weimar Germany was similar to present-day America in a few respects: Wealthy women who take pleasure in cuckolding their men are still funny, and self-importantfrumps still make great visual stand-ins for politicians. Last week saw Charlie Chaplin’s landmark The Great Dictator accompanied by a documentary, The Tramp and the Dictator, which expounds on the odd coincidences in Chaplin’s and Hitler’s lives. But the less-well-known offerings on display are equally rewarding, especially a collection of full-page caricatures drawn from the pages of Simplicissimus, a turn-of-the-century publication that could rival Mencken’s American Mercury for its cutting editorial bite. The exhibit is on view to Oct. 31 at the Goethe-Institut Washington, 812 7th St. NW. Free. (202) 289-1200. (Kriston Capps)