Mr. Chalamet, Let’s Keep This Thing Alive

by Andrew Petiprin

In February 2026, Hollywood actor Timothée Chalamet put his foot in his mouth with an unprovoked salvo against the fine arts. In a pronouncement that has elicited a barrage of return fire, Chalamet said glibly, “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... no one cares about this anymore.” He then laughed and issued himself the kind of face-saving pardon parodied by Will Ferrell’s Ricky Bobby character in the comedy Talladega Nights: “All respect to the ballet and opera people out there.”

Both the unkindness and incorrectness of Chalamet’s remarks have been detailed by many commentators already, but it is worth rehearsing a few points briefly here. First, Chalamet comes from a family of dancers, and in the past, he described his upbringing as “dreaming big at the Koch Theater in New York.”

Second, although the presence of professional ballet rarely dips down into American popular culture as it did occasionally in the days of Balanchine and Baryshnikov, its appeal to American youth is stronger than ever. Opera may be in rougher shape at the developmental level, but La Scala and Le Palais Garnier and the Royal Opera House still open their doors every night to paying customers. People still make pilgrimages to Bayreuth.

No one cares? I’m not convinced.

Third, Chalamet’s own medium, cinema, is not what it once was.

Arguably, even in decades like the 1960’s and 1990’s when auteurs were popular within the wider culture and were perched on the artistic cutting edge, the film industry was already a shadow of what it had been in the 1930’s, when more than half of the American population went to the movies at least once a week.

Nowadays it is plainly obvious that movie theaters are barely hanging on, charging high prices to a small audience accommodated with reclining seats, surround sound, and specialty food and drinks delivered mid-show. The craft of filmmaking is largely done on computers, and the results are normally consumed at home by individuals with at least one eye on their phones.

As Artificial Intelligence is now capable of de-ageing and re-animating movie stars of the past, it may not be long before producers have no need for a living, breathing Timothée Chalamet on set at all. For now, however, the recent Academy Awards show attempted to make up for the shadow cast by one of its brightest stars by featuring the classical-crossover baritone Josh Groban and ballerina Misty Copeland, who came out of retirement three months after total hip replacement surgery to offer a few steps en pointe. But who was watching this special gesture on Hollywood’s biggest night? The viewership of the Oscar broadcast was just 17.9 million viewers, down 9% from the year before.

No doubt, Chalamet wishes he had never opened his mouth on this topic; but the artistic communities he maligned have attempted to use his foolish words to their advantage. My own social media feeds have been full of exuberant young dancers reacting defiantly to the actor’s words and re-asserting their love for their craft. See, for example, this post from the New York City Dance Alliance, where my teenage daughter regularly competes. Here is another one from the Youth America Grand Prix, where again, my own child is being formed as a dancer with professional aspirations.

These reactions are inspiring, but our response to Chalamet’s perspective also requires a simple but fundamental reminder about how we view the passage of time. In his blithe dismissal of keeping things alive, he has revealed an attitude towards the past that is too common in the West today. We imagine that what is asked of us by our tradition is a fantasy. We think we are called to return to a land we do not recognize and have no particular interest in seeing prosper anew.

Carefully chosen relics tell only of one’s individual destiny, with no thought of their use by others beyond. Thus, in Chalamet’s remembrance of his childhood, the Koch Theater at Lincoln Center exists as a static, dead element in his development rather than a dynamic, living setting for the formation of tomorrow’s generation.

Choosing instead to live in continuity with the past, however, makes us eager to keep alive what has mattered to our ancestors, precisely so that we may claim their gifts as our own and enjoy them moving forward. It delights me to see the standard mid-twentieth-century choreography of The Nutcracker every December; but it may be equally enriching to see something new from a contemporary choreographer like Justin Peck. Or not. Nevertheless, it is encouraging that someone is putting new talent on display in an established (e-hem, “dying”) medium. The point, then, is not to insist that opera and ballet as we have known them – or cinema, for that matter – are meant to last forever through artificial means. They once were not, and one day they may not be. But it is neither more virtuous nor more realistic to pursue the next thing at the expense of the former thing. Indeed, the next thing becomes the former so quickly we can hardly keep up. And alas for poor Mr. Chalamet, the world will move on, and before long his throwback youthful photograph will be featured in the In Memorium segment of the Oscar broadcast – if people still care about such things by then.

Consequently, today’s man of the arts must take a page out of the traditional man of faith’s book. There he learns that in some sense, everything is dying. But, by the power of the same spirit that animated his creative predecessors, without whom there would be no Dune or Marty Supreme, there is always the possibility that life may revisit the valley of the dry bones. To this self-aware steward of artistic treasure, the prospect of participating in resurrection comes into focus as the ultimate creative thrill, making worthwhile the countless hours at the barre or taking singing lessons or memorizing monologues, with no realistic expectation of fame or fortune.

This hope contrasts with Chalamet’s flippant pessimism, and it must find wider expression today. After all, the West itself appears to be dying – by suicide, some say – but what are we who love our home meant to do without it? It is unreasonable accept the premise that something better awaits, or that we deserve the unknown benefits of moving beyond the best artefacts of bygone days. Churches are dying too, of course, and their demise is illustrative to the fate of the fine arts. The atomized temples of addiction that have taken their place are proving to be poor replacements, to say the least. Keeping the old things alive seems to be a far safer bet.

One must encourage the likes of Mr. Chalamet, therefore, to change his tune: Long live ballet, long live opera, and long live cinema. To this list we add, long live the West. And if any of the glories of our civilization should die, let it not be on our watch.