Okay. Okay it’s time to stop the pile on.
If I read one more hot-take or watch one more video or see one more opera house use Chalamet as a crotch on which to absolve themselves of guilt my brain might just break.
Listen, this is in no way a defence of the guy; I don’t rate him as an actor because I don’t think he’s that good; and I know that is completely subjective but that is the good thing about opinions, right or wrong. I think he’s one of those bro actors whose depth is surface level. He can deliver his lines without much understanding for the meanings of the words or the feelings they convey. I didn’t like him in Homeland, and he did as good a job as any in Call Me by Your Name; it was not groundbreaking.
If you find yourselves offended by what he has said about the arts, you should also take the L for it because I don’t know that you’d be so disappointed if you didn’t expect more from him. I’m glad to have sat off this bandwagon so find me on the corner of smug street looking round the corner at the bandwagons pulling in.
However, we’ve come to the part where it’s all weird now, thanks to the media. Opera houses are giving us discount codes and newspapers are doing hot takes upon hot takes and it’s boring and I need you all to shut up.
I’d like to know when the Guardian used its investigative prowess to dissect the elitism of opera and ballet particularly. Why they hardly, if ever, hold these institutions to account about said elitism and snobbery. Why they have seldom interrogated the gate keeping of such places that makes it difficult for a family to enjoy it without breaking the bank. If you’ve not done this then you really just need to shut the fuck up already.
And whilst we are here, let’s be honest; these places are inaccessible to the many. It is a reserved kind of space where outsiders dare not infiltrate. You need to belong to a certain class, a certain income bracket, and if you don’t, you pay an arm and a leg having saved for decades for tickets to one show maybe the only in your lifetime. And the othering doesn’t stop simply because you can now afford the price of admission, oh no, you need to understand certain terms and mannerisms before being allowed to settle into those spaces. You may find that they are speaking English, but it is not the kind you understand. Think of that scene in Pretty Woman where they go to the Opera and she cannot use the binoculars or the slippery little suckers at the dinner table… yes.
Whist this is not what Chalamet sought to interrogate, his comments were glib, he sounded stupid making them, and he most likely did not know anything of which he spoke; words just came tumbling out of his mouth, dumb words at that. As an actor, he does okay with words and emotion, just okay; he couldn’t cut it on the stage not in a billion years. He could never move us like Gilbert Grape or be an innocuously sexy as The Graduate or even deliver an impactful line like “how do you like them apples” he couldn’t possibly convey a sense of emotion like Meryl and Viola, Emma, Emma or Anna… he simply pales in all comparison. He could NEVER be The Fly. He skates by on looks, a good head of hair, and the headlines he generates. He was simply being a tool but now he’s the tool by which the industry seeks to absolve itself of the elitism it has long held on to.
If anything should come out of this moment, let’s start there; parents cannot enrol children in music without it breaking the bank and that’s in private school forget public school programmes that are not even invested in. Matter of fact, they are already being killed off because they are seen as “soft” vocation in comparison to maths and the sciences. I need the pipers piping up to ask themselves why they have not interrogated an institution that actively gate keeps, as aggressively as they have gone after one person with verbal diarrhoea. An industry that shuts out those it deems unworthy and don’t belong because they cannot afford to belong. It’s simple; this is how those institutions are propped up, by keeping people in their place so they don’t infiltrate these “sacred spaces” of theirs. The last vestiges of the elite upon which to fight their class wars.
As I said, the last thing I meant this to be was a defence of Chalamet an actor in a longline of many who is this season’s hot boy, if that’s your aesthetic, but enough now. The discount codes are wonderful, thank we’ll take them, but the hot takes are boiling over.
Moments like these remind me of Justine Sacco and her unfortunate tweet that saw to her cancellation and a tag that will forever be assigned to her. The scenes following Chalamet’s comments have become like that scene in Mean Gilrs where the whole school became a jungle of rabid animals following the publication of the Burn Book; we are all Regina George in this scenario; maybe not so much with Chalamet, but we certainly were with Justine Sacco. We can never forgive ourselves for what we did to Justine, we cannot absolve ourselves of the guilt for how we piled on and tore her life apart for a glib comment some might have made in private maybe even in public; today comments such as those would fit right into the climate we have allowed fester. I often wonder if we learned anything from that moment. Chalamet will be fine, he will go on to have another role, another magazine cover, make another glib comment that there will be many hot takes about, and his stardom will withstand them. But there are the Justine Saccos of the world who will always be tagged by a moment that has come to define their lives unjustly. No stardom just infamy the world will not let them forget.
Enough now. Can we all please just shut the fuck up already. Thanks.