"Politics ain't beanbag."
Hollywood isn't beanbag either.
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| USA Today |
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| BBC |
The "politics ain't beanbag" comment is familiar to Americans as recognition that politics is a rough game. I have likened current politics to professional wrestling. Trump is the premier practitioner of smashmouth vitriol. Like a good anti-hero professional wrestling character, Trump dishes it out and then acts indignant at the injustice of insults being returned. Trump isn't good, but he is interesting and he commands an audience. Hollywood knows how to play the audience-attention game.
I had never heard of Timothée Chalamet until three days ago when I read that he said something dismissive about opera or ballet. Apparently Chalamet is a big name in Hollywood and he is currently dating another big name, a woman who appeared last night at the Oscar awards event in a see-through dress. Nothing new in that. What was new to me was the delight the Academy Awards host, the audience, and the media took in tormenting Chalamet for his comment and failure to win the "Best Actor" award. They piled on with glee. I thought it was excessive, but I am a softie, and I am not a fan of professional wrestling.
College classmate Erich Almasy is a former management consultant who lived in Canada and now lives in Mexico. He writes guest posts about the expat experience. He enjoys the fine arts that Chalamet dissed. In a civil but snarky tone, he shares his thoughts.
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| Almasy |
Guest Post by Erich Almasy
Opera and Ballet are Still Relevant
I don’t know much about Timothée Chalamet. He’s 31 and holds dual French and U.S. citizenship. He’s very busy and has appeared in a number of successful films, of which only one registered with me, Dune. He has four Academy Award nominations to his credit, including one this current Oscar season for his role in a movie about ping pong. He may be best known for his three-year relationship with the youngest Kardashian, Kylie Jenner.
Earlier this month, Chalamet drew my attention with the following comment, "I don't want to be working in ballet or opera, or, you know, things where it's like, 'Hey, keep this thing alive, even though it's like, no one cares about this anymore.'" My negative reaction to this totally asinine statement could have been from the infantile use of “you know” and “like” (twice) in the same sentence. If you cannot speak English, best shut up.
However, my sensibilities were most hurt by his apparent lack of any understanding or empathy for cultural art forms that have entertained, educated, and employed millions for centuries. It made me wonder if he has ever seen either in person. My father grew up in Vienna, Austria, where, as a teen, he watched composer Richard Strauss conduct one of his works at the State Opera House. It was a highlight of his life.
I served on the board of the Canadian Opera Company for nine years, during which we built a combined opera and ballet house and staged the first Wagner Ring Cycle in Canadian history. The house was built from the inside out with acoustics as the primary architectural feature. It has a sprung floor to aid ballet dancers. The Canadian Opera and the National Ballet are both world-class and are well-supported by the Canadian public and provincial and federal governments.
The difficulties of American arts organizations are well-documented, especially the current issues facing New York’s Metropolitan Opera. Unlike European countries, where government subsidy is universal and supported by the public, the United States government makes little or no cultural commitment. Vienna and Berlin both have three opera houses, which are typically sold out.
Opera and ballet feature strongly in our appreciation of the performing arts. Classical composers such as Beethoven and Mozart also wrote operas, and the music of Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, and Stravinsky is fundamental to ballet. I don’t believe that I am a minority when I say that certain arias give me goosebumps. Solos and duets from works such as Bizet’s Norma and Carmen; Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, La Boheme, Turandot, and Tosca; Verdi’s Rigoletto and La Traviata; Mozart’s Don Giovanni and The Magic Flute; Wagner’s Ring and Lohengrin; and so many more. The lyrical beauty of ballets such as Swan Lake, Romeo and Juliet, The Rite of Spring, Giselle, and La Sylphide have enchanted me and remain truly timeless.
Is my position elitist? I don’t believe so, because standing-room audiences throughout Europe, over 100 professional opera companies in the United States, and over 175 ballet companies worldwide suggest that at least a few people still “care.” Perhaps Monsieur Chalamet might do well to remember that before him came Anna Pavlova, Joan Sutherland, Rudolf Nureyev, Maria Callas, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Luciano Pavarotti, Margot Fonteyn, and Enrico Caruso. If I’m allowed to be slightly snarky, Timothée, please wipe that smirk and smudge off your upper lip. It makes you look twelve - or maybe that is the idea. Life is truly better with art. Even yours.
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6 comments:
The political point is that you cannot appear to want it too much. Be like Michael B Jordan: I’m in it for the work, not the glory.
Can’t say I recognized much listed in the post, but Phantom of the Opera was a big deal in Anchorage which I attended with my wife along with Cats. The arts are a part of what makes us human and will survive the politics of the day.
It's a bit reminiscent of Trump's hand-mirror hyperbole to assert "No one cares about this any more", when that really means "I don't care", or at least "no one I care about cares". Still, it's hard to imagine that that remark cost Chalamet the Oscar. To borrow a phrase, today's Hollywood is politics for attractive people.
I think Opera and Ballet has gone the way of Classical music. It has its Nitch, but little more in the US. It's kind of boring.
In high school, I had a music teacher, who was pleased to tell us that classical music was the only music worth listening to, and that jazz and rock (which were what I liked to listen to) were crap.
His narrow minded, elitist attitude did not endear me to classical music, which was already a genre I was not that interested in. At one point, I said something to him like what Timothée Chalamet said about how the music I liked didn't require life support from the government because people actually wanted to go and see it.
Some of my friends who were into classical music called me a "philistine" for my lack of interest in classical, but I didn't care. I was too busy learning to play Take Five (a jazz song in 5/4 time) on the piano. Much later in life, I spent a year and a half learning how to play Estimated Prophet (a Grateful Dead song in 7/4 time) on my synthesizer.
There's no arguing taste. We like what we like.
According to the NYTimes, Gia Kourlas in Critic's Notebook on March 7, Chalamet comes from a dance family, both his mother and sister studied at the School of American Ballet (the training ground for City Ballet) and both performed in the Nutcracker multiple times. Maybe he knows exactly of which he speaks, opera and ballet are not popular art forms for the masses in the U.S.
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