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![\"Jordan](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/4037070_web1_Chalamet.jpg\")
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Jordan Strauss \/ Invision Files<\/p>\n
Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet<\/p>\n
No one cares. Oh, really? Then why is there \u2014 and this is real \u2014 a full, multi-chapter work of Heated Rivalry fanfic set at the Royal Winnipeg Ballet during Nutcracker season, written by someone who isn\u2019t even from here?<\/p>\n
I\u2019m using that very specific example on purpose. Culture is built on culture. Even if someone has never been to the opera, they\u2019ve probably seen one of the many Bugs Bunny cartoons referencing it. Maybe you\u2019ve never seen Nutcracker, but you\u2019ve probably played Tetris or seen The Simpsons. I saw Black Swan, Darren Aronofsky\u2019s 2010 psychological thriller, long before I ever saw a production of Swan Lake.<\/p>\n
The point is, the stuff \u201cno one cares about anymore\u201d serves as a foundation upon which a lot of other art is created. Chalamet didn\u2019t go after theatre, but actors were treading the boards long before they were performing for a camera. And don\u2019t even get me going on how much opera is used in film.<\/p>\n
Shakespeare\u2019s oeuvre alone continues to be a cultural engine, showing up in sometimes surprising ways, like the 1999 rom-com 10 Things I Hate About You, which is a loose adaptation of The Taming of the Shrew. Or a line from Macbeth providing the title for Gabrielle Zevin\u2019s acclaimed 2022 novel Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, the cover of which also references a different piece of classic art: Hokusai\u2019s The Great Wave off Kanagawa, a woodblock print from 1831.<\/p>\n
Culture is built on culture. It gets riffed on, adapted, skewered, satirized, modernized, taken apart and put back together by artists who see the source material differently. Even those who are telling new, contemporary stories in old mediums would have learned the classics.<\/p>\n
Perhaps that\u2019s what makes Chalamet\u2019s comments so frustrating, other than the fact they are incredibly dismissive of his fellow artists, which include, by the way, many other people, including costumers, lighting designers, musicians and conductors, to name just a few. He talks as though ballet and opera are static, frozen-in-amber artforms, as though they are not constantly being adapted or reimagined for new audiences all the time, all over the world.<\/p>\n
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Any ballet or opera organization worth its salt knows it necessarily needs to evolve in order to remain relevant.<\/p>\n
Chalamet could have made the argument that high art can be incredibly inaccessible \u2014 less accessible, certainly, than the movies, though seeing one in a theatre is becoming prohibitively expensive, too. But he\u2019s not saying that. He\u2019s saying no one \u201ccares,\u201d which is a wild thing for an artist to say about other artists.<\/p>\n
Decades from now, people will still marvel over one dancer being able to inhabit both white swan and black in Swan Lake. Or revel in hearing the Queen of the Night aria from Mozart\u2019s The Magic Flute live and in person. Those things are pretty AI-proof, too; I suspect the demand for live experiences will only grow, not shrink, in our increasingly technological society.<\/p>\n
And I hope people will keep seeing movies in the theatre, too. Because when you truly care about art, you tend to care about all of it.<\/p>\n
winnipegfreepress.com\/jenzoratti<\/p>\n
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Jen Zoratti Jen Zoratti is a columnist and feature writer working in the Arts & Life department, as well as the author of the weekly newsletter NEXT<\/a>. A National Newspaper Award finalist for arts and entertainment writing, Jen is a graduate of the Creative Communications program at RRC Polytech and was a music writer before joining the Free Press in 2013. Read more about Jen<\/a>.<\/p>\n Every piece of reporting Jen produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print \u2013 part of the Free Press\u2018s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press\u2019s history and mandate<\/a>, and learn how our newsroom operates<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n
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