Dude I hate being on instagram again. Why am I seeing so much discourse about Timothee Chalamet and Opera/Ballet?
My opinion about this means fuck all, but as someone who:
1.) watched the interview
2.) has seen Marty Supreme
3.) patronizes Ballet and has cried watching the Pas de Deux in the Nutcracker and has watched Opera
This whole thing feels weird and unnecessary.
Yes, you’re allowed to roll your eyes at this little hyper twink at his seemingly dismissive remarks about mediums you care about.
The broader context though is this comment comes after talking about how film and television seem to be changing in the digital age in terms of what they show and how they write. They talk about producers and studios pushing to have action or conflict happen quickly to engage the audience faster and how this often does a disservice to the work itself. Timothee then brings up that there is a counter push by younger audiences for more care in their stories, to take their time. He says Gen Z are more theater going than their Millennial counterparts.
He then says he doesn’t want to be in a position like in Ballet or Opera where you feeling you are part of a dying medium and that you have to hold the line. He doesn’t articulate it well, of course.
Look, I love Ballet and Opera, and it isn’t a dying medium, there has been more viewership in recent years. Hell, the tickets I usually get are thankfully 25 dollars at most.
However, ballet is still largely inaccessible and has long been associated with wealth and affluence. Part of the only reason I’m able to have gone is because I had disposable income at the time AND I live in a large city. I saw an abbreviated version of the Nutcracker once as a kid growing up in a rural area and the only reason I saw Opera was because my friends (who are music teachers and singers) showed me. Most people do not have access. This is fortunately changing.
The people I’ve seen talk about it, not all of them, have been presenting this in a weird way. Globally, we are an experiencing an attack on intellectualism and the arts. It’s hard not to get defensive because it feels like an attack on one sector is an attack on all.
But to act as if Ballet and Opera are pure art without their own issues or faults is baffling to me and the discourse that has been pushed to me, takes this lean. Both require discipline and hard work but this is made more complicated when you factor in both’s long history of elitism, misogyny and racism. These art forms are of course changing for the better but you can’t blame people for being dismissive when both professions have had bars placed around them.
Plus, Timothee, while flippant, knows that world intimately or more than most. His grandmother, mother and sisters were all heavily involved in ballet. It was his mother’s CAREER. He, I believe, even took ballet as a child. He’s not just talking completely out of his ass.
Look, you can’t blame people for disagreeing, I sure do, but I understand what he’s trying to say. Media and the arts in general are under attack broadly and everything feels uncertain. As an illustrator in the age of AI, NO ONE wants to feel like a solider defending their medium.
I guess my point is I feel weird about the discourse because it feels like a weird culture war distraction pushed by Meta and other media companies who thrive on anger to get more traffic. I’ve also seen people bash Marty Supreme just cause they’re angry and as funny as it is, they engage in criticism where clearly they either didn’t watch it or they didn’t understand it.
It goes back to what they were saying in the first place. People are being fed the most engaging portions of media. The sound bite, the outrageous shit, and media has seen that we eat this up. No more nuance, no more broad conversations or context, just people with half the information yelling at one another.
And here I am, contributing to the noise I guess, I don’t know.
Ballet and Opera will be fine. If anything, his comments will boost ticket sales and get more people in seats to watch impressive feats, beautiful music and so on.
