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      In ‘The Innocents,’ Kids Behaving Deadly

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      Eskil Vogt, the Oscar-nominated co-writer of “The Worst Person in the World,” explores a childhood paradox in his new horror movie: how kids can be both innocent and cruel.It’s no biggie for horror movie villains to be rabid grannies or killer Santas. But what kind of monster kills a cat?In the new supernatural horror film “The Innocents,” that monster is a preteen named Ben (Sam Ashraf), and his gasp-inducing act early in the film is a hint of the sins to come by his, and other, little hands.“We still like to think that kids are pure angels,” Eskil Vogt, the film’s writer-director, said in a recent interview over video. “I think we need to face that the opposite is true.”Ben, who lives in a towering Oslo apartment complex, isn’t the only kid there with psychic powers. When young Ida (Rakel Lenora Flottum), her autistic older sister, Anna (Alva Brynsmo Ramstad), and their mother and father move into the building, Anna miraculously regains her ability to speak. Anna and a neighbor girl named Aisha (Mina Yasmin Bremseth Asheim), who can hear thoughts, team up to call on their powers for (mostly) peaceful ends, flying under the radar of their clueless parents.But Ben, a bullied boy raised by a distant mom, struggles with a far more sinister power he’s not equipped to handle, and the consequences are deadly and heartbreaking.Rakel Lenora Flottum as Ida and Sam Ashraf as Ben in “The Innocents.”IFC MidnightA movie of icy dread, “The Innocents” unnervingly explores how children can be both uncorrupted and cruel, a paradox that can have deep emotional repercussions that linger well past the playground years. The young characters don’t question their otherworldly powers, nor do they fully comprehend the responsibility that comes with them. But they know enough not to tell their parents.Vogt was no different. On vacation as a kid, he remembers using an air gun to shoot a sea gull in flight; he saw the bullet make impact, but the bird didn’t fall. He kept it from his parents.“I remember walking around that day and going to bed that night thinking that this sea gull was dying slowly in agony somewhere because of me,” he said.Vogt said he drew on that and other fraught childhood decisions as he made “The Innocents.” The film (in theaters and on demand) arrives just months after he and his friend and longtime collaborator, the director Joachim Trier, shared an Oscar nomination for best original screenplay for their humanist dramedy “The Worst Person in the World.”In a separate video interview, Trier said if there’s a through line between both films, it’s how Vogt uses “form and visuality to make something that’s worth showing on a big screen.” If the terrors in “The Innocents” are more pernicious than sensational, Trier said it’s the product of Vogt’s deep affection for the films of Alain Resnais (“Hiroshima Mon Amour”) and other formalist cinema of the ’60s. “He’s hard core about that,” Trier said.Slow-burn horror, too. In 2014, Vogt wrote and directed the moody thriller “Blind,” about a paranoid sightless woman. Three years later he and Trier co-wrote Trier’s film “Thelma,” about a college student with telekinetic powers.A horror movie fan, Vogt said he was drawn to the films of David Cronenberg, especially the devilish man-child movie “The Brood” (1979), but also to Wolf Rilla’s “Village of the Damned” (1960), with what he called its “weird and special” youngsters.“I don’t think I’ve been as scared as an adult as I was as a kid,” Vogt said.Mark Sommerfeld for The New York TimesVogt said he also looked no further than his living room and his two children, ages 9 and 11, who “can be the best kids in the world and in an instant they can become raging lunatics.” He said it was because of open casting, not an intentional choice, that the kids in “The Innocents” are outsiders beyond their powers: Anna has autism, Aisha has vitiligo and Ben is a boy of color (Ashraf was born in Norway and is of Persian and Pakistani descent).“It wasn’t like they are magical because they’re special,” he added.What Vogt hasn’t made, he stressed, is an evil-kids movie.“It’s a story about basic humanity,” he said.“The Innocents” joins other recent projects about children on the dark side, including the new film adaptation of Stephen King’s “Firestarter” and the HBO dark comedy series “The Baby.”T.S. Kord, the author of “Little Horrors: How Cinema’s Evil Children Play on Our Guilt” (2016), said in an email that ​​diabolic kids have featured in horror with increasing frequency in recent decades as horror “wants to point out all the ways in which the human race is screwing up.”“We’ve devastated children and childhood for practically ever, now they’re striking back,” said Kord, who teaches German, film studies and comparative literature at University College London. Yet we have a societal stake in claiming that children are innocent, she added, “because their innocence defines us as a humane society.”What may unsettle viewers most about “The Innocents” is Vogt’s daring choice to assign villainy to tweens with at least some agency in their actions. In horror, kids are usually bad because of external forces (“The Exorcist”), or they’re teenagers who’ve already been messed up (“Eden Lake”). Of course, there are also fiendish fetuses (“The Unborn”) and blackhearted babies (“Grace”), but their consciousness is still unshaped and therefore particularly susceptible to outside diabolical forces.Flottum’s character goes for a swing in “The Innocents.”IFC Midnight“The Innocents” is closer in spirit to “The Bad Seed” and other horror films in the far more frightening middle, where kids do bad things because they haven’t totally figured out that other people have feelings.“During childhood we have to create our own set of values and morals and not rely on what our parents told us,” Vogt said. Eventually, he continued, “you have to do some of the stuff your mother said you shouldn’t do, and figure out if she was right or not.”It remains to be seen how kids behaving deadly in “The Innocents” will land with audiences. One critic wished that Vogt had focused “more on the harmless side of the children’s powers,” an indication of how strong the desire is to affirm childhood as a time of incorruptible purity.But “kids with powers have consequences,” Vogt said. So does just being a kid.“I remember lying in bed and hearing sounds and imagining the worst thing and how that would become part of my reality because I had no way of distinguishing between what’s real and not,” he said. “I would be completely and totally scared out of my mind. I don’t think I’ve been as scared as an adult as I was as a kid.” More

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      Japanese TV Show “Old Enough!” Features Toddlers Running Errands

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      “Old Enough!,” a Japanese show that has been on the air for decades, recently came to Netflix. It features toddlers running errands without adult supervision.TOKYO — Three-year-old Yuka steps off the curb into a crosswalk that bisects a four-lane street. “Even though the light’s green,” a narrator says in a voice-over, “she still looks out for cars!”So begins a typical scene in “Old Enough!,” a Japanese reality show that began streaming on Netflix in late March. It is new to American viewers but has been running in Japan for more than three decades.The show’s popularity in Japan is a reflection of the country’s high level of public safety, as well as a parenting culture that sees toddlers’ independence as a key marker of their development.“It’s a typical way of raising children in Japan and symbolic of our cultural approach, which can be surprising for people from other countries,” said Toshiyuki Shiomi, an expert on child development and a professor emeritus at Shiraume Gakuen University in Tokyo.Short and sweet“Old Enough!” has been running on Nippon TV, initially as part of another show, since 1991. It was inspired by “Miki’s First Errand,” a 1977 children’s book by Yoriko Tsutsui that tells the story of a mother who sends her 5-year-old daughter out to buy milk for a younger sibling.The edited “Old Enough!” episodes that appear on Netflix are short (around 15 minutes or less) and upbeat. They track toddlers as young as 2 as they attempt to run errands in public for the first time, with a studio audience laughing in the background. Safety spotters and camera crews hide offscreen, with mixed results; they often stumble into the frame.As the children navigate crosswalks and busy public places full of adults, a narrator describes their incremental progress in breathless tones, like a commentator calling a baseball game in the ninth inning. And the toddlers strike up conversations with the strangers they meet along the way.Yuka, a 3-year-old girl in the Japanese city of Akashi, goes shopping by herself on the show.Netflix/Nippon TV“Mom said, instead of her, I would go to the shops today,” 3-year-old Yuka tells a shopkeeper in the coastal city of Akashi as she buys udon noodles for a family meal.“Really?” the shopkeeper replies. “Aren’t you a clever thing?”The errands inevitably go awry. Yuka briefly forgets to buy tempura, for instance, and another 3-year-old forgets what she has been asked to do because she is too busy talking to herself. In other episodes, children drop their cargo (live fish, in one case) or refuse to leave home in the first place.When 2-year-old Ao’s father, a sushi chef, asks him to take some soy-sauce-stained chef’s whites to a nearby laundromat, he won’t budge.“I can’t do it,” Ao tells his father, standing outside the family home and holding the soiled linens in a plastic bag.Eventually, Ao’s mother cajoles him into going, partly by bribing him with a snack. “It’s painful, isn’t it?” the father says to her as the boy ambles down the road alone. “It breaks my heart.”“You’re too soft on him,” she replies.A rite of passageProfessor Shiomi said that parents in Japan tried to instill a particular kind of self-sufficiency in their children. “In Japanese culture, independence doesn’t mean arguing with others or expressing oneself,” he said. “It means adapting yourself to the group while managing daily tasks, such as cooking, doing errands and greeting others.”In Japanese schools, it is common for children to clean classrooms, he noted. And at home, parents give even young children pocket money for their expenses and expect them to help prepare meals and do other chores.In a well-known example of this culture, Princess Aiko, a member of Japan’s royal family, would walk alone to elementary school in the early 2000s. (She was always under surveillance by the Imperial Household police.)The errands that toddlers run on the show inevitably go awry.Netflix/Nippon TVIn the Tokyo area, Wagakoto, a production company, films short documentaries of toddlers running errands, for a fee that starts at about $120. Jun Niitsuma, the company’s founder, said that the service was inspired by “Old Enough!” and “Miki’s First Errand,” and that clients paid for it because they wanted a record of how independent their toddlers had become.“It’s a rite of passage” for both children and their parents, Mr. Niitsuma said. “These errands have been a very symbolic mission for decades.”Room for debateBefore Netflix acquired “Old Enough!,” it had been adapted for audiences in Britain, China, Italy, Singapore and Vietnam.“‘Old Enough!’ is a reminder that unique storytelling can break down cultural and language barriers, and connect entertainment fans globally,” said Kaata Sakamoto, the vice president for Japan content at Netflix.The show does have some critics in Japan. Their main arguments seem to be that the toddlers’ errands essentially amount to coercion, or that the show could prompt parents to put their children in harm’s way.The toddlers on the show strike up conversations with strangers they meet along the way.Netflix/Nippon TVViolent crimes are rare in Japan. Still, some academics contend that common safety metrics paint a misleading portrait of public safety. They point to recent studies by the Ministry of Justice indicating that the incidence of crime in Japan, particularly sexual crimes, tends to be higher than what residents report to local police departments.“It’s a terrible show!” said Nobuo Komiya, a criminologist at Rissho University in Tokyo who has advised municipalities across Japan on public safety.“This TV station has been airing this program for years, and it’s been so popular,” he added. “But Japan is full of danger in reality. This myth of safety is manufactured by the media.”Even supporters acknowledge that “Old Enough!” was created for an older era in which different social norms governed toddlers’ behavior.Today, there is increasing debate in Japan about whether forcing young children to do chores is good for their development, as was once widely assumed, Professor Shiomi said. And parents no longer take public safety for granted.“I myself sent my 3- or 4-year-old for an errand to a vegetable shop,” he said. “She was able to get there but couldn’t remember the way back because she didn’t have a clear image of the route. So the shop owner brought her home.”Hisako Ueno More

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      At New York Children’s Film Festival, the Films Come First

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      The New York International Children’s Film Festival returns with a diverse, sophisticated slate, including Richard Linklater’s animated take on the 1969 moon landing.When Chloé Zhao won the Academy Awards for best director and best picture for “Nomadland” last year, some who felt special pride were neither her relatives nor her film industry collaborators. These delighted fans were the team behind the annual New York International Children’s Film Festival, which in 2011 showed one of Zhao’s earliest projects: “Daughters,” a 10-minute short about a 14-year-old Chinese girl being forced into an arranged marriage.The festival, whose 25th-anniversary edition begins on Friday evening at the SVA Theater in Manhattan, has long showcased filmmakers who either go on to distinguished careers or have already achieved them. This year’s opening-night titles include “Where Is Anne Frank,” a haunting animated feature about children affected by wars past and present, from the award-winning Israeli director Ari Folman (“Waltz With Bashir”). On March 19, the festival will close with “Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood,” an animated examination of the 1969 moon landing by the acclaimed American filmmaker Richard Linklater (“Boyhood”), who will conduct a livestreamed Q. and A. with the audience.“We are a film festival first,” Nina Guralnick, the organization’s executive director, said in a video interview. In choosing sophisticated works, she added, “we want the program and the experience to be part of a continuum of film appreciation and film discovery, and not kind of segmented as something for kids.”This year, Guralnick and Maria-Christina Villaseñor, the festival’s programming director, are confronting the challenges of the pandemic by presenting both in-person screenings — almost all at the SVA Theater — and virtual offerings. Although the 20 features and more than 60 shorts make up a robust and global slate (this year includes the festival’s first film from Kyrgyzstan), the programmers will host fewer screenings, showing some titles in the theater only once, and others only online.“Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood” is an animated examination of the 1969 moon landing by Richard Linklater (“Boyhood”).NetflixThe streaming works, which will be available through April 3 — past the festival’s official end date — will include all those for children under 5, who are still too young to be vaccinated against Covid-19. This year, however, also gives children ages 3 to 5 a broader range of short films than in the past, as well as a feature: the Swedish director Michael Ekblad’s “Best Birthday Ever,” an animated tale about a kindergarten rabbit who must cope with a baby sister.“We really wanted to get back into the theater this year, if we could safely,” Guralnick said. And while circumstances won’t allow in-person award festivities, the festival will still feature its audience-choice and jury prizes. (It is one of the few Oscar-qualifying children’s festivals, meaning that its prizewinning shorts are eligible for Academy Award consideration.)This year, one of the programming highlights is animation, which Villaseñor described as a way to give young audiences “a different point of access” to subjects that might otherwise be too harsh.“Charlotte,” for instance, a feature by the Canadian directors Tahir Rana and Éric Warin, uses painterly animation to illuminate the life and work of Charlotte Salomon, a young German Jewish artist — voiced by Keira Knightley — who died at Auschwitz.Folman also chose intricate animation for “Where Is Anne Frank” because, he said in a phone interview, it offers “endless opportunity to do crosses between reality and imagination, between conscious and subconscious, between dreams and true stories.” Folman undertakes all of these in the film, which focuses not on Anne but on Kitty, the imaginary friend to whom Anne’s diary was addressed. Kitty emerges from the journal as a girl in contemporary Amsterdam, traveling across time to learn what happened to her friend. During her quest, she encounters refugee children who reflect Anne’s legacy.“I don’t look at it as a Holocaust movie,” Folman said. “I look at it as a coming-of-age movie.”The festival, however, does not neglect animation’s affinity for the wildly comic. In Domee Shi’s “Turning Red,” from Disney and Pixar, a 13-year-old Chinese Canadian girl transforms into a big red panda whenever she’s too excited.“Oink,” Mascha Halberstad’s stop-motion feature about a pet piglet.Viking Film/A Private ViewOther boisterous travails occur in “Oink,” the Dutch director Mascha Halberstad’s stop-motion feature about a little girl with an imperiled pet piglet. But this is no “Charlotte’s Web.” Oink, the piglet, makes an indelible mark in not always welcome ways — housebreaking is an issue — and Babs, his owner, has her hands full, especially with a visiting grandfather obsessed with a sausage-making contest. Halberstad, who will attend the festival with the producer Marleen Slot for a Q. and A. on Friday, explained in a video interview that she was aiming for a tone like that of Roald Dahl because “he doesn’t underestimate children.” Though the film ends happily, “it has a bit of an edge,” she said.The festival also offers titles that capture an interplay between art and science. “I wanted to eliminate the divide between them,” Villaseñor said, “and have people realize how vitally important the creativity in the arts is to innovating in the sciences.”“Gagarine,” for instance, a poignant, inspiring movie that was selected for the 2020 Cannes Film Festival, mingles a teenager’s passion for space exploration with his desire to have a home. The first feature from the young French directors Fanny Liatard and Jérémy Trouilh, the film was shot at the real Cité Gagarine, a housing project outside of Paris that was torn down in 2019.“We were really roommates with the demolition team,” Trouilh said as he sat next to Liatard in a video call from Paris. Their fictional protagonist, Youri (Alséni Bathily), refuses to leave, constructing for himself an elaborate kind of secret space capsule in the shadow of the wrecking ball.“Because of the empty space left by the absence of his parents,” Liatard said, “we imagine that space is the thing that is a refuge for Youri.”Alséni Bathily in “Gagarine,” about a teenager’s passion for space exploration. It was shot at a Paris housing project that was torn down in 2019.Cohen Media GroupMore technology-fueled dreams appear not only in Linklater’s “Apollo 10½,” in which another boy imagines himself lifting off, but also in the festival’s annual shorts program “Girls P.O.V.,” which this year features young female science pioneers, real and imagined. Still other budding innovators occupy the spotlight in Thomas Verrette’s documentary “Zero Gravity,” about diverse middle school students in a NASA coding competition.Such films capture the enduring principles of the festival, which was founded by Eric Beckman and Emily Shapiro, parents who in 1997 made a commitment to offering children more independent and less commercial fare.“We’ve wanted to help kids dream beyond the limitations of their own reality,” Guralnick said. Through the festival’s many iterations, she added, “we’ve been trying to be a gateway for children for 25 years to what they envision the future to be, to what they envision their world to be — should be, can be.”The New York International Children’s Film FestivalMarch 4-19; 212-349-0330; nyicff.org. More

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      Marc Brown on the End of ‘Arthur’ and His Favorite Fan Theories

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      With the beloved PBS children’s show ending after 25 seasons, its 75-year-old creator answered some off-the-wall questions about his 8-year-old aardvark.From the minute Marc Brown meets you, he’s sizing you up. Just maybe not in the usual way.“People remind me of animals,” said Brown, the 75-year-old creator of the illustrated character Arthur Read, the 8-year-old bespectacled aardvark who, since the book “Arthur’s Nose” debuted in 1976, has been helping children navigate the world around them. “When the child that I’m talking to reads a book and all the characters are animals, they don’t care what color their skin is. They are immediately drawn to the character that they identify with and feel an affinity with.”For more than 25 years, Brown and a team at WGBH, Boston’s PBS affiliate, have produced the animated adaptation series “Arthur,” in which the aardvark, his friends and a lineup of animalized guest stars tackle difficult subjects like bullying, divorce and disability. The series, which has won praise from both children and parents for its candor in depicting challenging situations — as well as seven Emmy Awards and the distinction of longest-running children’s animated series on American television — will air its final episodes this week. (All four will air on Monday afternoon and stream free on PBS Kids.)Brown appears in animated form in an episode from the new and final season of “Arthur.”WGBH“One of the reasons I love ‘Arthur’ is because of the imperfections in our characters,” said Carol Greenwald, who created the show with Brown and now serves as an executive producer. “It’s important to show kids that you can really screw up and it’s not the end of the world. You can learn from your mistakes and come back a better person.”Both Brown and Greenwald said that the idea from start was for the series not only to reflect issues relevant to kids but also to present a world in which they could see themselves. When they first got started, Greenwald said, the WGBH team dispatched people with cameras to capture neighborhoods around Boston to help animators diversify the homes in Arthur’s world.“Arthur lived in a beautiful little house with a picket fence,” she said, “but we wanted to diversify the world enough that kids who lived in apartment buildings, or in smaller, lower income neighborhoods, would feel like they were as a part of that story.”And Elwood City, Arthur’s fictional home, did come to feel like home for many viewers, not just in Boston but also around the world. So when one of the show’s writers revealed in July that the show had wrapped production — and when PBS later announced that the series’s final episodes would air this winter, the reaction, at least on social media, was a collective balled fist (a riff on a popular Arthur meme).Arthur, a bespectacled 8-year-old aardvark, debuted in Brown’s 1976 book “Arthur’s Nose.” The books were adapted into a PBS animated series for 25 seasons.Calla Kessler for The New York TimesArthur’s friends are all animals, too. “People remind me of animals,” Brown said.Calla Kessler for The New York TimesBut for fans who have been with Arthur across more than 250 episodes, there’s some consolation: The characters will live on in a new Arthur podcast, games and digital shorts — and the series’s final episode will flash forward to provide viewers a glimpse of what Arthur and his friends grow up to be.“There are definitely some surprises,” Greenwald said.In a recent video call from his sunny West Village living room, Brown was candid, sprightly and puckish. His clothing and furnishings were impeccably tidy, his white hair neatly combed — it wasn’t hard to see where Arthur, fond of polo shirts and V-neck sweaters, took his sartorial cues. Brown, who is still an executive producer of the show, reflected on its longevity and why now was to right time to end it, and he talked about some of his new projects, including the long-gestating Arthur movie that has gained new momentum recently. (He also set the record straight on a few fan theories.) These are edited excerpts from the conversation.Congratulations on 25 years! Did you ever think you would be having this conversation when the first episode premiered in October 1996?Not in my wildest dreams. I thought it’d last two years — if I was lucky.Many authors help create a show, then step back. Why are you still so intensely involved after 25 years?I still have the same feeling I had when PBS came to me and wanted to put Arthur on television. I had invested 15 years before that in the characters, and I was getting lots of letters from kids. It felt like a little family, and I wanted the characters to be faithful to my vision. And so I’ve been a guard in the corner in that way.“I thought it’d last two years — if I was lucky,” Brown said of the animated adaptation, which premiered in 1996. Today it is the longest-running animated children’s show on American TV. GBHSo many of the stories are inspired by real-life experiences you had when your kids — Tolon, Tucker and Eliza — were little. Now that they’re adults, is it more difficult to come up with fresh ideas?So many episodes grow out of our writing team’s experiences — and it turns out they’re still helpful and relevant to kids! There are episodes, like the one on head lice, that every time we run them, because it’s still an ongoing problem for a lot of kids, it gets a lot of positive feedback.Why end it now, then?Technology has changed in the last 25 years, and kids are now watching stories on their iPhones, listening to podcasts, playing games on their devices — they’re getting information so many other ways. We’re looking for ways to try new things.Have you been surprised by the reaction?It was wonderful to see the response. I’m still getting many messages on my Instagram page: “Is Arthur really over?” I love seeing reactions from these young adults who grew up with Arthur, the fact that these characters are still fresh in their minds. It’s great that he’s touched so many people so deeply that they want him to continue.In the first book, “Arthur’s Nose,” Arthur looked like an aardvark with a long snout, not a mouse with glasses. What happened?The second book, “Arthur’s Eyes,” came from when my son Tolon was getting glasses. He came home and said, “Dad, I thought all my friends were better-looking.” You can’t make that up! So of course Arthur had glasses, too. As the series went on, I just got to know him better, and he became more lovable and more humanlike — and his nose got shorter. It was not intentional!Have you ever met an aardvark?[Laughs.] I haven’t had any encounters with aardvarks, although I think there may be one that lives in an apartment across the street.The series is notable for its diverse characters, including ones with blindness, dyslexia, autism and dementia. How did you ensure those representations were accurate?We work with a series of experts for each episode, like the one we did about Arthur’s grandfather, Dave, who was struggling with Alzheimer’s and doesn’t remember Arthur’s name. Things like that are so important, and so many families are dealing with that. We heard from a dad who watched the show about autism and discovered through the show that his son was autistic and wrote to thank us. The show helped parents understand their kids. Matt Damon’s mom happens to be one of our wonderful experts who’s helped us with many episodes. That’s how we got Matt Damon as a guest star. The poor guy didn’t know what hit him!The show made headlines in 2019 when it revealed that Mr. Ratburn, Arthur’s teacher, is gay. The episode also showed his wedding to a man. Did you have any worries about how people would react?We want to represent the world around us. When we wanted to have Arthur’s teacher get married, we thought it could be opportunity for him to marry a same-sex partner — and kudos to PBS, who got behind us and let us do that, and do it in a way that wasn’t about his sexual orientation. It was about the fact that their teacher, who they love, found a partner who he loved, and they were happy for him.When The New York Times talked to you in 1996 — shortly after the first episodes aired — you were getting 100,000 letters a year from kids. How much fan mail do you get these days?I get letters asking for Francine’s phone number — well, Francine [a monkey character on the show] doesn’t have a phone number! Years ago, I was really stupid: In the book “Arthur’s Thanksgiving,” I put our home phone number in a little illustration of a bulletin board that says “Call Arthur at 749-7978.” Every Thanksgiving, the phone began to ring and ring and ring. My wife, Laurie, had the best response. You’d hear a little voice say: “Hello? Is Arthur there?” And she’d say, “No, he’s at the library.” That was when we lived outside Boston; it went on for a few years!Brown in his Manhattan home with his cat Romeo. “I haven’t had any encounters with aardvarks,” Brown said, “although I think there may be one that lives in an apartment across the street.”Calla Kessler for The New York TimesWhat’s next for you?For three years now, I’ve been working on a new preschool animated show called “Hop.” It’s a little frog, and one of his legs is a little shorter than the other. It’s a show about the power of friendship, solving problems together and kindness.And my dream for an Arthur feature film, which I decided wasn’t ever going to happen, might actually happen in a way I could be proud of. When that idea was hatched 15 years ago, I spent way too much time out in Los Angeles talking to people that weren’t making a whole lot of sense — in my mind. But now I think I’ve found the right people.Can we do a quick speed round? There are several fan theories that I’d love to have you confirm or deny.Sure.Let’s start with the most plausible: Arthur lives in Pennsylvania.Well, I grew up in Erie, Penn. Lakewood Elementary School was where I went to elementary school. I can still see my third-grade class, and all my friends, many of whom turned into characters in Arthur’s world. But I also lived in Massachusetts for many years, and I used a lot of elements from there — the movie theater in “Arthur’s Valentine” was the theater down the street where we lived. When Carol and I were trying to come up with a name for Arthur’s hometown, she suggested Elwood City, which is also in Pennsylvania, near a place where she lived as a child. That’s how it happened, folks!Arthur gets married.I’m not telling you! You’ll have to tune in and find out.Arthur takes place in a multiverse.No? [Laughs.]Arthur is a reality series directed by Matt Damon.I hadn’t heard that one. That’s interesting.The whole show is acted out by aliens.Well, we did do something similar a few years ago with Buster and his fascination with aliens, so …That’s not a no?I couldn’t be happier inspiring people’s imagination. That’s a good thing! More

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      The Boy King of YouTube

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      Over the protests of my fellow concerned parents, I want to admit something: I don’t care all that much about screen time, the great child-rearing panic of the 21st century. So many of us have come to believe that if our children spend more than a certain amount of time staring at a screen, whether television, phone or iPad, they will succumb to some capitalist plot to turn them all into little consumption monsters with insatiable appetites for toys, sugar, more screen time. This seems absurd to me, but as the father of a 4-year-old, I have not been immune to screen-time shaming — it upsets me to see my child watching a vapid show like “Paw Patrol” on our iPad. These moments of protest usually come, it should be noted, when I’m sitting beside her, staring at my own phone, scrolling through Twitter.“This show is dumb,” I’ll sometimes say. She almost always ignores me. Her stony silence then prompts me to try to think of a show that’s not dumb, which is an impossible task — because what kids’ programming isn’t dumb?For the last two years, her favorite show has been “Octonauts,” about a diverse band of animals who explore the oceans and swamplands in vessels called GUPs. They help whales and eels and flamingos in need. What’s left unsaid, but certainly seems clear enough to me, is that the Octonauts have colonized the Vegimals, a species of squeaking underwater creatures who all resemble one sort of vegetable or another. The Vegimals’ oppression does not register with my daughter, who has watched every “Octonauts” episode multiple times, owns a small fortune in toy GUPs and goes to her preschool dressed in a sweater with Kwaazi, an incorrigible pirate cat, knit across the front. I have not yet talked to her about how the Vegimals are portrayed as infantile, loyal beings who love to bake kelp cakes all day, but I plan on doing so soon.What effect do all these television shows have on the developing brain of a 4-year-old? I don’t honestly know, but I try not to worry too much about it. Life is long and full of different stimuli. I spent most of my preteen years reading horny fantasy books by Piers Anthony and the science fiction of L. Ron Hubbard. The “good” books I read mostly involved warrior mice who were probably also colonialists. I’m fine now. A wary ambivalence seems like the most healthful way to go.There is one type of video I refuse to let my daughter watch: toy videos. Parents with kids of a certain age will certainly know what I’m talking about here, but for the rest, a toy video is an internet genre, usually found on YouTube, that features someone playing with another plastic monstrosity, often one with tie-ins to “Paw Patrol.” The genre has spawned many toy-video variants: Some feature adults; others, kids. Some have even been deliberately packaged to hide their true content from concerned, but perhaps less than vigilant, parents.On occasion, especially on long drives, I’ll hand my daughter the iPad. She watches “Peppa Pig,” which I, of course, hate — those British pigs with their phallic noses prattling on about nothing. Invariably, after about 20 minutes or so, I’ll look back and see her, still strapped into her car seat, brow furrowed, jabbing at the screen with her finger. Then I’ll hear the same high-pitched nonsense, but in a much worse British accent, and know she has switched from Peppa proper to a video of some adult with Peppa toys who, for God knows what reason, is re-enacting a scene in which Peppa and her brother, George, go jump in muddy puddles or whatever.“No!” I yell.My daughter then looks up, annoyed.There’s no real logic to this, of course. What’s the difference between watching the Anglophone silliness of Peppa, a show that exists only to sell toys, and a video of someone playing with the toys themselves?Until recently, my daughter and I were somehow able to avoid the king of toy videos: Ryan Kaji. There’s no one way to describe what Kaji, who is now 10 years old, has done across his multiple YouTube channels, cable television shows and live appearances: In one video, he is giving you a tour of the Legoland Hotel; in another, he splashes around in his pool to introduce a science video about tsunamis. But for years, what he has mostly done is play with toys: Thomas the Tank Engine, “Paw Patrol” figures, McDonald’s play kitchens. A new toy and a new video for almost every day of the week, adding up to an avalanche of content that can overwhelm your child’s brain, click after click.Kaji has been playing with toys on camera since Barack Obama was in the White House. Here are a few of the companies that are now paying him handsomely for his services: Amazon, Walmart, Nickelodeon, Skechers. Ryan also has 10 separate YouTube channels, which together make up “Ryan’s World,” a content behemoth whose branded merchandise took in more than $250 million last year. Even conservative estimates suggest that the Kaji family take exceeds $25 million annually. But we’re a full decade into being stunned by YouTuber incomes, and I’m not sure these numbers should be alarming, or even surprising.Ryan Kaji and his parents, Loann and Shion, on the set of Nickelodeon’s “Ryan’s Mystery Playdate” last summer.Ilona Szwarc for The New York TimesRyan’s parents, Shion and Loann Kaji, met while they were undergraduates at Texas Tech University. Shion, the son of a microchip executive, moved to the United States from Japan when he was in high school and still speaks with a slight accent. Loann’s family escaped Vietnam on a boat and shuttled through refugee camps in Malaysia and Singapore before they made it to the United States; she grew up in Houston wanting to be a teacher. After college, Shion left to get his master’s in engineering at Cornell, but he returned to Texas within a year, after Ryan was born. (He would complete his master’s degree online.) They moved in together and began the uncertain and difficult work of trying to piece a family together.Which is all to say, these aren’t your stereotypical parents of a child star, who, frustrated with their own crashed Hollywood dreams, put their kid through singing and dancing lessons in the living room of a bungalow in Van Nuys. But neither are they just an adorable couple who stumbled into fame and fortune. They’re much cannier than that.In his first-ever video, Ryan Kaji, then just 3, squats on the floor of the toy aisle at Target. He looks very cute, doe-eyed with a Beatles mop cut. He’s being filmed by Loann. “Hi, Ryan,” she says brightly.“Hi, Mommy,” Ryan says.“What you want today?” Loann asks. “What is your pick of the week?”Ryan stands up and picks out a “Lego choo-choo train.” He does seem precocious, but not obnoxious — he doesn’t rattle off factorials or sing “Over the Rainbow” or “Tangled Up in Blue” or anything like that. Just a 3-year-old who seems a little advanced for his age, especially when it comes to expressing himself. There’s little that distinguishes this video from the millions of other family videos on YouTube, and Loann herself says she didn’t really expect anything to come from it other than something to share with her son’s grandparents. If you’re being uncharitable, you might note how “pick of the week” seems to suggest a plan for unending content.Shion saw no issue with it — why would he? — but he worried about the cost of buying toys nonstop for Ryan to play with on YouTube. And so the young couple agreed to allocate $20 a week in production costs, toys included. Loann would film everything on her phone and edit the videos on her laptop.For years, Kaji has made a new video almost every day of the week, adding up to an avalanche of content..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}At the time, Ryan was watching a lot of YouTube shows. His favorites were “EvanTubeHD” and “Hulyan and Maya,” each of which served as inspiration. Children’s content on YouTube tends to be derivative in this way. Once a specific toy or activity becomes popular, copycats emerge, knowing that algorithms will pick up and spread their version of “Slime Time” or what have you. A result is a self-referential world where thousands of children do the exact same thing on thousands of separate channels.When Ryan was getting started, one of the most popular and copied trends involved a giant papier-mâché egg filled with toys. Loann says Ryan wanted to do a giant-egg video, but this would have broken the weekly budget. Loann improvised. She had a lot of old toys based on the movie “Cars” lying around, which she stuffed into the requisite papier-mâché egg. In the video, Loann wakes Ryan up from a pretend nap. He seems genuinely surprised and begins smacking away at the egg with an inflatable toy. Then he begins pulling some clearly used toys out of the egg and feigning great surprise. The video currently has over a billion views.The giant egg was Ryan’s breakthrough. His channel’s audience began growing at an explosive rate, which then placed pressure on Loann to keep feeding her son’s new fans. “I was worried,” Shion says. “Every time I looked at other YouTubers, I didn’t see the huge growth that we were seeing over a short period of time.” That growth wasn’t just limited to the United States; Ryan was becoming popular in Asia, as well. “I was concerned about how much we could keep doing this without putting too much pressure on Ryan.”Virality is mostly luck: A teenager does a dance on TikTok, and suddenly every middle- and high-school kid has seen it, and before you know it, the dancer has 100 million followers and 15 separate sponsorship deals. Some critics will divine great importance from the tiniest of details and build a theory about what the kids really want, but there’s usually nothing outside the brutal logic of algorithms and the insatiable appetites of children.When Ryan’s egg video went viral, Loann saw an opportunity to make some extra income, though she didn’t know all that much about monetizing videos. Their first paycheck from YouTube was for about $150. At the time, Shion was still working as a structural engineer, and while he wanted to help Loann, who had a job as a teacher, someone needed to earn a steady salary.But after about a year of continued growth and bigger paychecks from YouTube, Shion and Loann both realized that they needed to commit fully to influencer life or risk squandering Ryan’s rare gift. They wanted the core of their channel, at the time called Ryan’s Toys Review, to remain the same — Ryan playing with the toys he liked, from “Cars” and “Thomas & Friends” — but they needed help. So they hired a couple of editors and started a production company, Sunlight Entertainment. Loann, who was pregnant at the time with twin girls — Emma and Katie, who are now 5 years old and appear frequently in Ryan’s videos — finally quit teaching to become a full-time YouTube mom.Shion held out a little longer, but he, too, eventually left his job to manage his son’s business. “I started to feel like I was the dead weight in the family,” Shion told me. Ryan needed full support from both parents. “So that’s when I realized, OK, we need to kind of step back, and we have to see how we can support Ryan in his branding.”Shion and Loann noticed that a lot of kid YouTube channels were focused more on the brand of the toy than on the brand of the talent. They were, in plainer terms, just adding “Thomas the Train” to their titles and hoping that other kids who wanted to consume every single video about Thomas the Tank Engine would stumble upon their content. Shion thought this was backward. Ryan, not the toys, should be the brand. Shion was proposing an interesting evolution: Given Ryan’s popularity, why couldn’t he create his own brands, his own characters, his own toys? Why help Thomas when you can create your own universe of characters, diversify your content streams, ramp up merchandising and license your content to some of the biggest platforms in the world? “People are watching Ryan, not the toy he’s showing,” Shion says. “So, oftentimes, we create a new original, animated character that’s inspired by Ryan.”Today, Ryan’s World includes the separate channels “Combo Panda,” “Ryan’s World Español” and “Gus the Gummy Gator.” Ryan doesn’t put in extensive appearances in all these videos; sometimes he just gives a short introduction. In one recent video, the action starts with Ryan in his backyard holding a rubber ball. He tosses it halfheartedly in the air, watches it bounce and then says that Peck and Combo — two of the cartoon characters in Ryan’s World — are going to teach viewers about gravity. He’s on camera for all of 35 seconds.Loann and Shion say that cameos like this are their way of limiting the amount of time Ryan needs to be on camera, which is their main concern these days. Still, there’s little doubt that he has spent most of his childhood being captured on video. Many of these appearances are banal; some are of dubious taste, like “Ryan’s First Business-Class Airplane Ride to Japan.” Others are just more videos of a cute kid playing with toys. Right now, as I am typing this, the latest entry in the Ryan’s World feed is an hourlong video in which Ryan is present for a vast majority of the screen time. He gives a few scientific facts about the strength of spiders, plays with some toys and is his usual, charming self, all while wearing a Ryan’s World T-shirt.In 2017, the Kajis established a partnership with Pocket.watch, a licensing company headed by a former executive from the Walt Disney Company. Pocket.watch handles the Ryan’s World franchise, including the deals with Walmart, Amazon and Skechers. But even as the family enterprise was expanding, Shion says, most viewers at that time still wanted to see Ryan play with familiar toys. So, Ryan continued to do — and generate a great deal of revenue from — what he had always done: picking up a popular toy and playing with it on camera. In 2019, Truth in Advertising, a consumer watchdog group, filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission, accusing the Kajis of “deceiving millions of young children” by not adequately disclosing their advertisers. (A spokeswoman for the family said that they “strictly follow all platforms’ terms of service and all existing laws and regulations, including advertising-disclosure requirements.”) The brand, which has continued to profit from sponsored content on its YouTube channels, also makes money from its line of Ryan’s World toys, multiple deals with streaming networks and licensing deals.Today, Sunshine Entertainment, the production company Shion and Loann created, has 30 employees. And the Kajis have traded Houston for Hawaii. When I asked Loann why they moved, she said, “Well, I always wanted to live in Hawaii, and now that we can afford it, we thought, Why don’t we just do it?”Last summer, I traveled with my daughter to Simi Valley, Calif., for a taping of the Nickelodeon show “Ryan’s Mystery Playdate,” a half-hour-long, professionally produced recapitulation of many of the motifs from Ryan’s YouTube videos. The night before the shoot, I asked my daughter to watch an old episode of the show on our iPad. She didn’t seem particularly interested at first, but when I moved to turn it off, she slapped my hand away and said she liked Ryan. Which didn’t surprise me — why wouldn’t she like him? But I admit I did feel slightly disappointed. Over the next few days, I had her sample a bit more from the Ryan Kaji media empire: A science lesson in which Ryan and his little twin sisters mix baking soda and vinegar; a game of tag played between Loann and Ryan; and the giant-egg video that started it all. She, of course, liked the egg the best.The Nickelodeon shoot was at a remote studio lot that had been made up to resemble a boulevard, with long stretches of building facades that somehow evoked historic Boston and the Wild West at the same time. Crew members in masks and plastic face shields were standing around the set, waiting for the talent to arrive. The Kajis’ tight schedule and their desire to spend as much time as possible in Hawaii means that Ryan flies to Los Angeles, films a season’s worth of shows, then heads right back home.Kaji and crew members on set of “Ryan’s Mystery Playdate.”Ilona Szwarc for The New York TimesThe conceit of “Ryan’s Mystery Playdate” is relatively simple. Ryan, Shion and Loann play a game. Ryan generally wins. Shion usually loses. Loann wins some and loses some, but she mostly hovers as a positive, encouraging presence. At some point, the mystery play date arrives. Today’s two guests were the Pie Ninja, who throws pies, and Major Mess, a burly military man who loves to make messes.A blast of cheery music sounded, then a round of recorded applause. Ryan emerged from a door wearing a pair of polarized sunglasses. Next came Loann and Shion, dressed in brightly colored jumpsuits, followed by a couple of production assistants who carried water and clipboards. The first contest was a simple memory-based matching game. Whoever missed got a pie in the face from the Pie Ninja. Before shooting started, however, Shion and the director on the set had to negotiate whether Shion would be hit with one or two pies. Shion said he didn’t really have any problem with two pies, which pleased the director.When the filming started, Ryan kept the scene together as Loann and Shion repeatedly forgot their lines. This, Loann would tell me later, is how nearly all these shoots go. Ryan rarely makes mistakes, nor does his positive attitude waver much. He spends a majority of “Mystery Playdate” with an amazed, gape-mouthed look on his face.Watching the Kajis coming together as a family to play these games reminded me of a moment from high school, when I was driving around town with a couple of classmates I didn’t know particularly well. One of them, an exemplary student who did things like run for student council, divulged that she and her parents played board games together once a week. This seemed absolutely insane to me, but I didn’t say anything about it, because you never know if your family’s dysfunction is atypical or if everyone else is just lying about their happy lives. I pictured this classmate seated on the floor of a living room, one much bigger than mine, playing Parcheesi with her bookish parents. This image persisted, and for the next year, I felt a great deal of hostility toward her. Today I play games with my daughter almost every night, but I suppose there’s still part of me that thinks about that happy family and still cannot fathom how such things could ever be possible.Why do children want to watch happy children playing with toys they can’t have? Are they responding to the toys or to the images of a happy family? Are they envisioning a life they already feel may be out of reach? And at what age does aspiration turn into resentment? I imagine my daughter will grow tired of these toy videos when she learns to feel real jealousy, which I suppose is a good reason to hope she just keeps watching them.And yet there’s something a bit unsatisfying about this explanation. Because if it were true that children just want to watch other children doing the things they most want to do, the most popular videos would show kids watching “Paw Patrol” on an iPad. The Kaji empire and its thousands of imitators, oddly enough, have created perhaps the only world in which children do not stare at screens. It’s a nice dream, I admit, but not to the extent of persuading me to allow my daughter to keep watching videos. The limits we set as parents may be arbitrary, but they are all we’ve got.Ryan’s life, despite its fictional presentation as a parade of remarkable discoveries that he shares with his enthusiastic parents, may not be all that different from my daughter’s. During the shoot in Simi Valley, after a long stretch of filming in the intense sun, I overheard a crew member say to him, “If you finish this scene, you can play Minecraft.”Jay Caspian Kang is a staff writer for the magazine and the opinion pages. He is the author of the novel “The Dead Do Not Improve,” and his latest book, “The Loneliest Americans,” was published by Crown in October. More

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      in Music

      4 Things to Do This Weekend

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      Our critics and writers have selected noteworthy cultural events to experience virtually and in person in New York City.KIDSRides and More RidesFrom left, a metal swing ride with detachable riders (1906-20) and a Ferris wheel featuring six gondolas and a music box (1906-20), which are on view in the New-York Historical Society’s exhibition “Holiday Express: Toys and Trains From the Jerni Collection.”New-York Historical SocietyAlong with ice cream trucks and trips to the beach, amusement park fun tends to vanish when the weather turns cold. But Manhattan now offers one place where children can still enjoy some of the splendor of Ferris wheels, roller coasters, carousels and more: the New-York Historical Society.For the first time, its annual winter show, “Holiday Express: Toys and Trains From the Jerni Collection,” includes vintage 19th- and 20th-century carnival playthings. On view through Feb. 27, the exhibition includes such highlights as the collection’s largest toy Ferris wheel (1906-20), made in France with six gondolas, a music box and 17 tiny occupants; a miniature German roller coaster (1886-1917); and blimp rides from the early 1900s with little zeppelin-like compartments.Young visitors, who can pick up a guide to go on a scavenger hunt through the show, will also see the collection’s signature trains — some are chugging merrily — along with model stations.Want more vicarious time travel? Families can register for the society’s latest program in the Living History series, which, like the exhibition, is free with museum admission. At 12:30 p.m. on Sunday, it invites children to learn about 18th-century holiday traditions and make their own decorations.LAUREL GRAEBERClassical MusicFixing a Problem PieceA scene from Janacek’s “Osud” (”Destiny”) at National Theater Brno, a recording of which is available to stream on Operavision’s platform and YouTube channel through May.Marek OlbrzymekThanks to “Jenufa,” “Kat’a Kabanova” and “The Makropulos Case,” the music of the Czech composer Leos Janacek is a core part of the 20th-century repertoire in opera. However, another effort — “Osud” (“Destiny”) — is something of a problem piece. As a result, it has proved to be of interest mainly to scholars and hard-core fans.A new production overseen by Robert Carsen — one of the most consistent directors working — aids the dramatic arc, and thus allows viewers another encounter with Janacek’s masterly musical style. (The opera’s tricky narrative timeline is presented cleanly, but with two singers playing the central role of Zivny, the composer.) Carsen’s approach to this tale of snuffed-out love and throttled creativity was produced for the National Theater Brno, and is available to stream free on Operavision’s platform and its YouTube channel through May.SETH COLTER WALLSPop & RockA Pinc Louds ChristmasClaudi from Pinc Louds performing in Tompkins Square Park. The band will present its “Christmas Tentacular” at Elsewhere on Friday.Bob KrasnerThe Hall at Elsewhere is a more conventional concert space than Pinc Louds have recently been accustomed to. During the pandemic, the band — headed up by Claudi, a Puerto Rico-born singer and guitarist who writes punkish, jazzy songs inspired by love and city life — took up residence at Tompkins Square Park, where they played for fans and passers-by twice a week. Before that, Claudi, an avid busker, was a fixture at the Delancey Street subway station on the Lower East Side.A Pinc Louds show is anything but conventional, though. The audience at their “Christmas Tentacular,” which comes to Elsewhere’s main space on Friday, can expect a colorful, whimsical affair, complete with covers of holiday tunes, puppets and festive sets. Doors are at 6 p.m., and Tall Juan, whose music spans rock, cumbia and reggae, will start his opening set at 6:30. Tickets are $20 and available at elsewherebrooklyn.com.OLIVIA HORNTheaterAudio Drama RevealedFrom left, Jordan Boatman, Marcia Jean Kurtz and Lance Coadie Williams in Deb Margolin’s “That Old Perplexity,” one of two audio dramas featured in Keen Company’s “Hear/Now: LIVE!” Carol RoseggIf the expertly produced audio dramas that have flourished since the start of the pandemic have led you to ask, “How did the artists accomplish this?,” now you have the opportunity to solve that mystery with the Keen Company’s “Hear/Now: LIVE!”The 90-minute performance will feature two world premieres commissioned to be performed in what the company calls “an exciting live format,” showcasing original music and foley effects executed in front of the audience. In “The Telegram” by Mashuq Mushtaq Deen, two cowboys encounter the strange realities of the Wild West as they pay homage to a genre that captivated American listeners during the 1920s. In Deb Margolin’s comedy “That Old Perplexity,” two women develop a connection triggered by the turmoil and grief of a post-9/11 New York City.Tickets are $31.50 and available at bfany.org. Performances will take place at Theater Row on Thursday at 7 p.m., Friday at 8, Saturday at 2 and 8, and Sunday at 3.JOSE SOLÍS More

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      in Movies

      Hollywood Loves a Monstrous Mommy. Can It Do Her Justice?

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      Listen to This ArticleAudio Recording by AudmTo hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.I screened “The Lost Daughter,” Maggie Gyllenhaal’s adaptation of Elena Ferrante’s novel of the same name, in my living room on a Sunday afternoon. I was on the couch with headphones, and my daughters, ages 6 and 4, were on the floor, fighting over Legos. At one point my younger daughter hit me on the head with a giant stuffed seal. “Watch me,” she yelled. She was going to make soup “out of blood.”It was a distracted form of watching and working, but it is one that after nearly two years of pandemic life feels, if not ideal, habitual. And it was the ideal state to receive a movie like “The Lost Daughter,” which captures with uncanny precision one version of the multitasking mother and arrives on the heels of a year that many women with children will remember as one of the hardest of their lives.The mother occupies a bewildering place in American society, simultaneously omnipresent and irrelevant. Harried moms are enshrined in paper-towel commercials, while our political institutions show a Teflon-like resistance to addressing their material needs. It would of course be impossible for any one work to show this condition, this cruelty, in all its richness and iterations, but American art about mothers is rarely made or received with the necessary asterisk, one that acknowledges the labor of caregiving, the five-alarm fires that are raging in our personal lives and political spheres.“The Lost Daughter” is one of a spate of recent films and television shows that attempt to make audible the scream rising in the throat. It tells the story of an English academic named Leda, played by Olivia Colman in the present and by Jessie Buckley in flashbacks to her life as a young mother, and opens with Colman on the seashore at night. Pain shadows her face and she has what looks like blood on her blouse; she sways and paces before collapsing by the lapping waves. The scene strikes an unsettling note that will thrum for the duration of the movie, which in the present follows Leda at age 47, on holiday on a Greek island. We watch her float in the sea, write and read while she sunbathes, eat ice cream, unfurl into an uneasy relaxation. When a chaotic group — among them a young woman and child — disturbs her idyll on the beach, Leda watches the pair with tenderness and pain on her face.We learn that the large group is a Greek American family from Queens, including the young woman Nina (Dakota Johnson) and her child Elena. Nina triggers overwhelming memories of Leda’s own early years of marriage and motherhood. In flashbacks, we see a young Leda radiating love and frustration as she cuddles her two daughters, plays lacklusterly, throws a doll out the window, withholds a kiss, strikes one of the girls, laughs with delight. In these flashbacks, the camera is close on the little girls, capturing both how cute and defenseless they are, and how exasperating they might be to a parent on the edge of patience and sanity. In one scene, young Leda’s husband, slender and shaggy-haired Jack Farthing, shakes Leda from her focused work under headphones while the girls’ wailing fills their flat. He gestures to his phone call. “It’s Sunday, you’re on,” she whispers furiously. “I’m working,” he says. “I’m suffocating,” she replies. They are both scholars, but his work seems to take precedence. There’s not much money, and he’s often away — an old story.In the present, the older Leda’s relationship with Nina’s family is close, mutually antagonistic and strange. Nina becomes a kind of double to Leda, turning to the older woman for support, though they appear to have little in common. Leda is aloof, independent; Nina is young, tied to a menacing husband, worn out by her daughter. “She won’t sleep unless I’m in the bed with her,” Nina tells Leda. “I’m really tired. I’m like scary tired.” And then Leda tells Nina, and us, her secret: She left her children for a period of time when they were small. A flashback reveals the inciting incident, a trip to a conference where she felt the erotic thrill of both professional and romantic attention, unencumbered by the girls. The note of menace continues unabated until a surprising moment of grace at the film’s very end.Dakota Johnson and Olivia Colman in “The Lost Daughter.”Yannis Drakoulidis/NetflixAs I watched, juggling my own domestic responsibilities with varying amounts of grace, I felt strangely honored by the way the film made space for Leda to make what is undeniably an ugly choice, allowed her to both enjoy her escape and suffer its consequences. Even in my distracted state, it swept in like a stinging breeze off the sea, a cogent, sensuous and provocative work of art that made me reflect on the paucity of realistic representations of motherhood, and the difficulties inherent in creating them.Cinema loves a monstrous mommy. Leda is often rude and unkind, but Colman’s and Buckley’s brilliant performances allow the viewer to inhabit her desperation, rendering judgment irrelevant. And the film’s timing is transcendent, arriving in a moment when the pandemic has disrupted school, shredded an already frayed child-care infrastructure and forced mothers to cobble together care, work with kids on their lap or drop out of the work force entirely. In this moment, there is something cathartic about a mother who says not only, “I prefer not to,” but, “I cannot,” momentarily leaving the relentless work of caregiving to someone else. It’s both a fantasy of walking away and a warning about its costs.The urge to flee is in the air. “Scenes From a Marriage,” Hagai Levi’s remake of Ingmar Bergman’s iconic mini-series, shows a mother and breadwinner, Mira, played by Jessica Chastain, as she takes a temporary assignment in Israel, along with a lover. She is the mother as philanderer and absentee. Mira tells her husband, Jonathan, played by Oscar Isaac, that she will fly in biweekly to see their young daughter, justifying her plan with a note of hysteria in her voice: “Men do it all the time and then, you know, it’s not really a big deal.” Unlike Gyllenhaal’s, Levi’s representation of caregiving is gestural, the child almost always in bed, a suspiciously good sleeper. And unlike Leda, Mira doesn’t make the clean break. What is interesting about the series, stylish and very sexy, is how Mira does manage to live a bit like a man, primarily because of her co-parent, a man who explicitly loves caregiving, and the fact that there’s enough money to ease the difficulty. It’s a fantasy of another kind.A mother leaves in Mike Mills’s new film, “C’mon C’mon,” because her family obligations require it. Mills’s film focuses on the other side of maternal absence: the child, and the person who cares for the child. Viv, played by Gaby Hoffmann, lives separately from her co-parent, who has bipolar disorder, but is obligated to help him through a psychiatric crisis. Joaquin Phoenix plays her brother Johnny, a “This American Life”-style radio host, who volunteers to watch her 9-year-old son, Jesse, while she is away. This is Uncle Johnny’s first rodeo, and he receives parenting instructions from Viv over the phone. The film shows us, mostly through these conversations, that Viv is an involved, present and very real mother (“I [expletive] hate it sometimes,” she tells Johnny, before telling him that he needs to feed Jesse some protein). Upon the movie’s release, I read male critics respectively describe Jesse as “a handful,” his mother as “indulgent.” And yet the movie shows behavior that is fairly standard in terms of child rearing. We see Jesse running away from his uncle in the drugstore and on the street, refusing sleep, rejecting his noodles in favor of ice cream. On the phone with his sister, Johnny laments his inability to control the little boy. “Welcome to my [expletive] life,” she tells him. “Nobody knows what they’re doing with these kids. You just have to keep doing it.”“C’mon C’mon,” black and white and a bit slow compared with the frenetic sensuality of “The Lost Daughter,” mirrors some of its portrayals: It is, in part, about how hard it is to take care of a small person. In contrast to Leda and Mira, Viv represents a perhaps more common version of the absent mother, one who is gone simply because she has to take care of something else. It’s not quite wish fulfillment — Viv has her hands full caring for Jesse’s dad, and she is still phone-coaching Johnny through his babysitting crises — but the day-to-day stuff is, for once, not her problem. I noted with interest Johnny’s recruitment of another colleague as an on-site babysitter, and Johnny’s female co-worker needling him about putting off work.Woody Norman and Gaby Hoffmann in “C’mon C’mon.”Tobin Yelland/A24 FilmsThe film gestures at the deeper systemic struggles of parenthood. Johnny’s adventures with Jesse are interwoven with his work interviewing (real, nonactor) children, whose circumstances are often difficult and remote from his own, including a child who feels responsible for his little sister while their father is incarcerated. The most perverse — and oblique — object lesson comes only in the final credits. The film is dedicated to Devante Bryant, one of the little boys interviewed. The viewer who searches for Bryant’s name learns that he was murdered by gunfire near his family’s house in the Seventh Ward of New Orleans, an area where the average household income is half that of the city’s as a whole. There are American babies much less likely to survive their childhood, American women less likely to survive their matrescence. There are also mothers whose difficult moments, moments like Leda’s or Mira’s or Viv’s, can lead to children being removed from their care. If class and race cannot inoculate women from the difficulties of motherhood, it insulates them from the worst depredations of a cruel country.The recent Netflix special “Maid,” an adaptation of Stephanie Land’s memoir, shows how absence can be forced both by economic conditions and by the state. The series follows Alex, a young white mother played by Margaret Qualley, as she escapes an abusive household with her daughter and navigates the circular logic of American welfare. As she fights her way to stability with paltry assistance programs and cleaning jobs, captions show her dwindling funds, an unusually explicit comment on the impossible economics of American life. In one scene, a social worker explains how Alex can qualify for assistance. “I need a job to prove that I need day care in order to get a job?” Alex asks, incredulous. “What kind of [expletive] is that?”Alex is likable: spunky, funny, scrupulous, beautiful, working on her writing in her rare free time. She is never impatient or unloving with her daughter, a preternaturally placid preschooler. I liked Alex and the show, but was struck by the paradox her character represents, particularly in contrast with Leda and Mira and Viv, who are given the space to be frustrated and miserable, a sort of double privilege of white and comparatively affluent mothers both in reality and onscreen. I imagined how “Maid” would be different if it showed Alex, run ragged from cruel bureaucracy and hard, underpaid jobs, losing her temper with her kid, looking ugly, looking mean. It’s a risk the show doesn’t take, underscoring the challenge of showing the systemic challenges of parenthood alongside the embodied, chaotic act of caregiving and the individual human frailty of mothers. At one point in “C’mon C’mon,” Johnny picks up Jacqueline Rose’s book-length essay “Mothers” from Viv’s desk. “Why on earth,” he reads in a thoughtful voice-over, “should it fall to them to paint things bright and innocent and safe?” Why indeed?Screen portrayals of motherhood that deal explicitly with class are also invariably tied to the raced logic of America. Compare the sunny Alex of “Maid” with Paula, the protagonist Chiron’s mother in the film “Moonlight” — a Black mother, poor and addicted to drugs, presented to the viewer as she appears to her child: untrustworthy, frightening, possessive and cruel. The director Barry Jenkins has spoken of his concern that her character, taken from the autobiographical play “In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue,” by Tarell Alvin McCraney, be presented in her full humanity, and she is carefully and empathetically played by Naomie Harris. Yet in the overall context of onscreen representations of Black motherhood, she still falls within what the scholar Nicole Rousseau identifies as a filmic tradition of “survival,” a motif which “illustrates a child attempting to survive a ‘bad’ Black mother.” “Moonlight” is the child’s story, not the mother’s. What might Paula’s movie look like? The love and terror and difficulty and grief of mothering without a safety net, the vagaries of temperament, chance and opportunity.“Maid” is a show with peculiar racial politics: In an effort to subvert tropes, perhaps, Alex’s first gig as a house cleaner is in the palatial home of a Black woman named Regina (played by a compelling Anika Noni Rose), who imperiously asks Alex if she can read. She and Alex eventually become friends, and fearful Regina, about to become a mother herself, asks Alex if she likes being a mom. “I live for my daughter,” Alex tells her. “You can go,” Regina says coolly, and I laughed out loud, annoyed that Alex didn’t use the moment to paint a fuller picture of the experience. She is a writer, after all.Rylea Nevaeh Whittet and Margaret Qualley in “Maid.”Ricardo Hubbs/NetflixWhile Alex is struggling in temporary housing, a court orders her to temporarily surrender her daughter to her boyfriend’s custody. To demonstrate her fitness, she attends a parenting class where a condescending man teaches nutrition to a roomful of mothers deemed lacking by the state. The implication of these scenes is that this is an injustice — Alex knows how to mother (it is her own mother, given space by the show to fall apart, who never learned). Poor women and women of color in America who are good parents are indeed uniquely vulnerable to having their children taken. And yet, the scenes made me think of the online parenting class I am currently taking through my H.M.O., one I tried for months to get into when the pandemic revealed I needed help — an opportunity born of privilege. Mothers around America eagerly scroll digestible TikToks and Instagram memes about how to be better parents. In “C’mon C’mon,” Johnny reads a script for “doing a repair” that his sister tells him to look up online after yelling at his nephew. Everyone benefits from an acknowledgment that raising children is hard work that does not always come naturally.When I watched “The Lost Daughter,” I felt seen by its portrayal of the condition of living simultaneously in joy and desperation, nostalgia and impatience. But I also know that Leda is a mother who looks a bit like me, with work a bit like mine — the kind of work you can do on the couch, lucky work, fulfilling work. Mothering is work, too — lucky and fulfilling, but work nonetheless, made harder at every juncture by a country whose institutions are built around white patriarchy, a country with rampant inequality, no paid leave, no universal child care or health care, no crisis plan beside “figure it out.” We can’t ask any one movie or show to encompass the entirety of a particular human experience. But we can point out what they show and what they obscure about our culture at a moment when the values and requirements of caregivers are argued in the corridors of power. We need more: more help, but also more art — art that is expansive, challenging, fair.Lydia Kiesling is the author of “The Golden State,” a novel. She lives in Portland, Ore. More

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      5 Things to Do This Thanksgiving Weekend

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      Our critics and writers have selected noteworthy cultural events to experience virtually and in person in New York City.Art & MuseumsReframing FreedomOne of the murals of Shaun Leonardo’s “Between Four Freedoms,” on view at Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms State Park on Roosevelt Island through Tuesday.Anna LetsonThe making of Shaun Leonardo’s latest public artwork — “Between Four Freedoms,” the exhibition of which has been extended to Tuesday at Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms State Park on Roosevelt Island — is predicated on the notion that the four freedoms cited in Roosevelt’s 1941 speech don’t apply to everyone equally. How would our most vulnerable citizens interpret them? In a series of workshops leading up to the installation, Leonardo attempted to answer that question. For one, he pointed to the freedom from fear: How can it be considered attainable when children continue to be incarcerated? How can people declare it when for them fear persists in the shadows?The culmination of these exercises is represented in a series of large vinyl murals of hand gestures (which sometimes speak louder than words) that Leonardo applied to the granite walls at the entrance to the park. Words haven’t been completely ignored, though. QR codes surrounding the works link to audio recordings of workshop participants discussing what freedom — or its lack — means to them.MELISSA SMITHKIDSSetting Hearts AflutterAn emerald swallowtail butterfly, which is among the species in the American Museum of Natural History’s butterfly exhibition, on view through May 30.D. Finnin/American Museum of Natural HistoryThe butterflies are back in town.That may seem like a puzzling announcement in November, but at least one Manhattan site considers it routine: the American Museum of Natural History. After a yearlong pandemic-induced hiatus, the institution is once again presenting its annual exhibition “The Butterfly Conservatory: Tropical Butterflies Alive in Winter,” on view through May 30.Mimicking a light-filled 80-degree rainforest, this 1,200-square-foot vivarium provides close encounters with as many as 500 creatures, such as monarch, viceroy, blue morpho and emerald swallowtail butterflies, and atlas and luna moths. (Timed entry is required, and visitors must buy tickets that include special-exhibition access.) For curious children, the thrills of wandering among the show’s blossoms and greenery include seeing these free-flying international travelers alight on an outstretched hand or emerge from a chrysalis.Small visitors who prefer to keep insects at a distance can enjoy several exhibits outside the conservatory’s doors. Among them are a short film about metamorphosis and displays on butterfly habitats and adaptations. Owl butterflies, for instance, have large spots that resemble owl eyes — a way to fool predators — while monarchs contain foul-tasting toxins. Those bright orange wings are nature’s own caution sign.LAUREL GRAEBERFilm SeriesOf Instincts and BuboesSharon Stone in Paul Verhoeven’s “Basic Instinct,” one of the films IFC Center is showing for a retrospective of the director’s work in anticipation of his latest, “Benedetta.”Rialto PicturesBefore Paul Verhoeven’s latest provocation, the 17th-century lesbian-nun drama “Benedetta,” opens on Dec. 3, IFC Center invites viewers to revisit his scandals of yore. While his early Dutch outrages aren’t much represented (other than “Spetters,” one of the most phallocentric movies ever made, screening on Saturday), you couldn’t ask for a more ice-pick-sharp Friday-night selection than “Basic Instinct” (also showing Sunday through Tuesday), the subject of protests — even during filming — for its depiction of Sharon Stone’s bisexual murder suspect. It stands, along with Verhoeven’s return to Holland, the gripping World War II drama “Black Book” (on Saturday, Tuesday and Wednesday), as the high point of his mastery of the erotic thriller.Perhaps less seen, but relevant to “Benedetta,” is “Flesh + Blood,” screening on 35-millimeter film on Sunday. Rutger Hauer’s character leads a group of mercenaries who claim a divine mandate, but the encroaching plague proves impervious to superstition. “Benedetta” will close the series on Dec. 2.BEN KENIGSBERGComedyNo Topic Too HotD.L. Hughley will be at Carolines on Broadway on Friday and Saturday.Phil ProvencioThey say the Thanksgiving table is no place for certain subjects, but those are just the kind of scraps D.L. Hughley can turn into a feast.The comedian, who hosts a nationally syndicated afternoon radio show with a companion series on Pluto TV’s LOL! Network, has been making waves since the late 1990s, when he starred in his own sitcom on ABC and toured as one of “The Original Kings of Comedy” alongside Steve Harvey, Cedric the Entertainer and Bernie Mac, who died in 2008.Hughley had the political savvy to host his own CNN show and the mainstream appeal to compete on “Dancing With the Stars.” In 2012, he created and starred in “D.L. Hughley: The Endangered List,” a mockumentary for Comedy Central that won a Peabody Award. This year, he published his fifth book, “How to Survive America.” He’ll certainly have plenty to talk about when he performs at Carolines on Broadway on Friday and Saturday at 7 and 9:45 p.m. Tickets start at $60, with a two-drink minimum.SEAN L. McCARTHYFive Movies to Watch This WinterCard 1 of 51. “The Power of the Dog”: More