OPERA AND BALLET ARE FINE. OUR BRAINS NEED LIFE SUPPORT.
On opening night of “Pretty Little Room,” a new chamber opera commissioned by Opera Memphis, executive director Ned Canty weighed in on the biggest cultural controversy in the past two weeks. The actor Timothée Chalamet’s off-handed remark in an interview that opera and ballet are dying art forms prompted a national backlash. The film industry, he implied, was where artists could still make relevant work.
Canty joined the fray by posting a social media video of the sold-out Crosstown Theater audience as evidence the celebrity had really stepped in it. Now, in my mind, this makes a stronger case for the relevance of 30-second videos (more on that in a moment). But no doubt opera and ballet defenders found the humbling of a smug actor gratifying.
Arts supporters well know that every weekend across America new operas, ballets and works of theater elevate, inspire, and contribute to the greater good of mankind. Hollywood can take credit for many big-picture conversations (pun intended) about our society. But the seeds of innovation are always planted in native soil.
Who does that planting? Actors, dancers, choreographers, artists, musicians, etc. They dedicate their underpaid lives to beautiful, ephemeral works of art that can only be experienced live and in person. Their output is not the sludge of generic “content” shoveled onto streaming platforms by anonymous entertainment executives. They are passion projects created by friends and neighbors deeply invested in the conscience of our communities.
Corporate media’s street-level limitations are apparent in Pixar’s recent string of upsets. “We’re making a movie, not hundreds of millions of dollars in therapy,” quipped the company’s Chief Creative Officer Pete Docter about deleting queer themes in “Elio.” Even after the studio’s watering down for mass appeal, the movie was a financial flop.
Meanwhile, the opera “Pretty Little Room” offered a compelling, queer storyline straight out of Memphis history. A shocking murder involving forbidden lovers made sensational headlines in the 1890s. A grave in Elmwood remains a lurid stop on the cemetery tour. However one relates to the medium of opera itself, this story is our unique civic inheritance. The piece — by Memphians and for Memphians – contributes to our meaningful citizenship. It needs no adulteration for the folks in Peoria, and in that sense lands with more artistic integrity than any Pixar film.
Yet the Chalamet brouhaha does expose an inconvenient truth that we can’t afford to ignore: the reality of simple math.
It’s true the opera was well-attended. But Crosstown’s total seating capacity for two nights is just over 800. At $50 a ticket, the potential $40,000+ or so in revenue likely fell far short of production costs. Without sizable donations from individuals, corporations, foundations and government agencies, virtually no arts group, anywhere, can live off its box office.
But this has always been the case.
The real threat to these art forms’ survival isn’t obsolescence; new ground is always being broken. Rather, it’s humanity’s diminishing capacity for intellectual curiosity. We simply face more distractions, decisions and attention deficits than ever.
The pandemic certainly contributed to the problem. Six years ago, forced isolation got us addicted to the comfort of digital media. Attendance at live events has yet to recover. As Canty lamented after Opera Memphis had to cancel a performance of “The Barber of Seville” because of January’s snowstorm, “the effort it takes to get anybody out of the house at all is so much greater than the gravitational pull that sofas have been exerting ever since the pandemic.”
But a bigger concern looms. As anyone who’s tried to sustain concentration through a challenging piece of art lately will admit, brainrot is no myth. Dopamine is one helluva drug. Even diehard arts patrons (this writer included) find themselves constantly having to check back in to the task at hand–be it reading a book or watching a ballet.
For anyone predicting the future of the arts in America, the direst warnings are coming from classrooms, where teachers face an uphill battle with screens. The slicing and dicing of attention spans are the most urgent threat to deep, human connection and by extension, the arts.
Chalamet may be naïve, as well, to think the film industry is immune to this death of a thousand cuts—or a million short videos. The Golden Age of megaplexes and blockbuster weekends has already been put on notice by an infinite stream of digital content eating up our mental bandwidth. Additionally, AI-generated videos and the excesses of CGI chip away at human creativity in modern filmmaking. Local arts groups may derive some optimism in the overabundance of digital slop. As Johnny Cash once sang: “Flesh and blood needs flesh and blood.”
We might imagine a future in which small, historic movie theaters, like the ones on Lamar and Summer Avenues, will be run by nonprofits showing classic films in the traditional format. The resurgence of vinyl records and board games hint at a possibility that retro-movie venues might serve a growing community of analog aficionados, united by a love of shared experiences and intellectual rigor. Much like opera, ballet, music and theater fans have enjoyed for centuries.
The time for intervention is now. One upside to Chalamet backlash is the opportunity to champion the so-called “dying” art forms as worthy of our sustained brainpower. Art organizations should make accessibility a priority with affordable tickets and community outreach. And as individuals, we must recommit ourselves to fighting the Siren call of Netflix.
It’s time to burn our comfy couches with the same enthusiasm we roast the Chalamets of the world, who’ve always underestimated the staying power of the living, breathing local arts. ✒ C.B.