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      What It Means to Make Art About Nazis Now

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      And is the culture telling the right stories about them, at a time when it’s never felt more urgent?A MAN IN a tie and suspenders smokes a cigar thoughtfully, its ash end hot orange in an otherwise cool blue shot. Its fiery pock is the most lurid thing we see in Jonathan Glazer’s “The Zone of Interest,” even though there’s a crematorium next door.“The Zone of Interest,” winner of the 2024 Academy Award for best international feature, imagines the domestic life of the Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel) and his wife (Sandra Hüller), who for a time lived mere yards from the ovens built to burn the bodies of hundreds of Jews a day. The screenplay might have been ghostwritten by Hannah Arendt, so banal is its portrait of evil. Höss fishes with his children, worries about a promotion, enjoys his garden, conducts an affair. We see no victims, nor, other than that cigar, any flame: just a pretty, smoky glow from the furnaces at night.It’s not as if the movie’s intentions could be misread. Without depicting horror itself, Glazer, who is Jewish, wants to show how easily middle-class values like diligence and ambition were adapted by Nazis to horrible ends. But in avoiding what the cartoonist Art Spiegelman, in response to Roberto Benigni’s 1997 movie “Life Is Beautiful,” called Holokitsch — the sentimental exploitation of victims’ suffering to dredge up drama — “The Zone of Interest” approaches it anyway, only now from the other direction, drawing its aesthetic power from detachment instead of engagement.Is that better?Tear-jerking as they may have been, works like “Life Is Beautiful,” the 1979 mini-series “Holocaust” and Steven Spielberg’s “Schindler’s List” (1993) had no trouble plainly acknowledging the murder of six million, which “The Zone of Interest” does only obliquely. If, as the German philosopher Theodor Adorno asserted in 1951, it became “barbaric” to write poetry after Auschwitz, it also, for many, became barbaric not to. What else can artists do with atrocity but make art from it?At the same time, and especially in our time, they are faced with a paradox. The appalling resurgence of antisemitism has made it more important than ever to remind the world of the great crime against the Jews. Yet the names and symbols of Adolf Hitler’s regime — and of Hitler himself, the big rhetorical nesting doll that contains the rest — have been emptied of real meaning by years of overuse as sitcom punch lines (the Soup Nazi from “Seinfeld” nearly three decades ago) and zingers for politicians (Donald Trump called out Joe Biden’s “Gestapo administration” in May). To try to reinvest these ideas with awfulness is to risk aesthetic failure. Not to try is to risk the moral kind.Still, the “Sieg Heil” salutes, SS lightning bolts and swastikas keep coming, even if in most contexts their omnipresence has rendered them not just objectionable but trite. In political discourse, Nazi name-calling almost always diminishes the unique evil of the originals. The words themselves, like amulets, may even burnish the twisted self-respect of those who trade in them. JD Vance, who in 2016 wrote that Trump might be “America’s Hitler,” has had a convenient change of heart, but it’s not clear that Trump minded anyway. That he might just as easily have been called America’s Idi Amin or Joseph Stalin emphasizes the emptiness of the insult.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Ask Arts & Leisure

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      Your culture and entertainment questions answered by New York Times journalists and experts.When you work on arts and entertainment coverage, and part of the job is keeping up with what’s on TV, or Broadway, or at the Met (both the museum and the opera house), people in your life invariably have questions: What should I watch? What should I read? What do I need to see while I’m in town?But also: How do I know when to clap during an orchestra concert? Can I bring my slightly schlumpy friend to the opera? Is there a right way to start watching the “Real Housewives” shows? What do I do if I’m late to a Broadway show? We want to know what questions you have about culture, in all its wonderful but sometimes complicated, intimidating or confusing forms, and across all the genres, whether that’s theater, music, movies, dance, TV, art, video games or something that isn’t so easy to label. What have you always wondered about? (Is it whether the American or the British version of “The Office” is the better one?) What would you ask one of our critics or reporters if you met them in person?Fill out this form, and Times journalists may publish an answer to your question. We’ll never publish or share your contact information, but we’ll use it to reach out to you to let you know that we’re addressing your question, and then share the answer once it’s published. More

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      Alicia Keys, LaChanze and Billy Porter Celebrate Black Theater

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      The stage stars were among more than 600 people who turned out for an evening of dinner and performances to benefit Black Theater United.LaChanze was in the mood to celebrate.“I am so ready to party,” the actress, wearing a sequined red gown with a bold red lip, said on the red carpet before the second annual Black Theater United gala at the Ziegfeld Ballroom in Midtown Manhattan on Monday night.LaChanze is the president and a founding member of Black Theater United, a nonprofit that aims to combat racism in the theater community. She was one of more than 600 people — including the singer Alicia Keys, the actor Billy Porter, the actress Kristin Chenoweth and the pop-classical musician Josh Groban — who gathered at the grand event space for a live auction, dinner and performance on a night when most Broadway shows were dark.The gala raised money for the nonprofit founded by an all-star team of Black theater artists, including the Tony Award winners Audra McDonald, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Phylicia Rashad and LaChanze in the summer of 2020 in response to the murder of George Floyd by a white police officer in Minneapolis.Mr. Mitchell remembered a call at the time with Ms. McDonald, the director Schele Williams and LaChanze. “They just started saying, ‘We’ve got to do something,’” he said.The organization now offers programs for aspiring young Black theater artists including student internships, a panel and discussion series, a musical theater scholarship and a program that aims to educate artists of color about designing for the theater.From left: Nichelle Lewis, Stephanie Mills and Sydney Terry performing “Home” from “The Wiz.” Ms. Mills was the original Dorothy in the 1975 production of the musical, a retelling of the classic “Wizard of Oz” story.Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      5 Halloween Film Festivals Worth Traveling For

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      It’s October, and horror movie festivals scratch both the weekend getaway and scare-the-bejesus-out-of-you itch. A guide to some worth checking out.Watching weird indie horror movies at home on Tubi can be a bunch of fun. So can going to the local multiplex to see the latest scary Hollywood blockbuster with other shrieking fans.Horror film festivals offer the best of both worlds, with twists. The programming is heavy on premieres and small-budget indies, and the more ambitious festivals host events like costume contests and offer themed food and drinks to keep the party going. Some of the festivals are very kid-friendly, and others are better suited for blood-and-guts lovers.With Halloween around the corner and fall getaways calling, here’s a look at some of the noteworthy scary (and not-that-scary) film festivals happening this October.The Eerie Horror Fest is held at the Warner Theater, in Erie, Pa., an ornate movie palace that opened in 1931 and seats 2,250.Paul GibbensEerie Horror FestErie, Pa., Oct. 4 and 5Presented by the Film Society of Northwestern Pennsylvania, this festival is known for showing classic and new films along with a hearty roster of panel discussions and events. A highlight takes place on Oct. 5, when the festival presents a screening of the 1995 horror film “Tales From the Hood,” an influential horror anthology and a seminal work in both horror and Black cinema, followed by a Q. and A. with the director, Rusty Cundieff.The frosting on the cake at this festival is its home: The Warner Theater, an ornate Art Deco and French Renaissance space first opened in 1931, with 2,250 seats, a grand proscenium stage and crushed velour and gold leaf accents — the kind of elegance more associated with the likes of Cannes than “Carrie.” This year, the festival has teamed up with two local coffee purveyors — Purrista Cat Café and North Edge Craft Coffee, a roaster — for a special drink menu featuring themed concoctions like the Frankenstein’s Matcha and Killer Klownz, a blueberry cheesecake latte. There will also be displays of adoptable cats — black ones, perhaps — at the theater.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How The Times’s Fall Culture Preview Comes Together

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      Arts & Leisure’s fall preview connects readers with the season’s noteworthy cultural works. And there are many.Times Insider explains who we are and what we do, and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.In the spring, Andrew LaVallee starts planning for fall.As the editor of The New York Times’s Arts & Leisure section, he is constantly considering the cool, crisp season, when Broadway stages new performances, galleries open much-anticipated exhibitions and new TV series are released on streaming services, all shaping cultural conversation and impassioned debate.Months of planning culminate in the Arts & Leisure fall preview, an annual section that shares with readers the can’t-miss cultural works of the season.This year’s section, which appears in print on Sunday, includes the work of about 70 journalists. Across 92 pages, 45 articles, five covers and 11 art forms, including theater, film, dance, podcasts, books and video games, The Times shares the best of what fall has to offer.Planning begins in earnest in April. But for LaVallee, the content is “on my mind all year round.”“Really early in the year, or even the year before, you’re starting to hear about, say, Robert Downey Jr. is going to be in his first Broadway show in the fall,” LaVallee added. “I’m starting to bookmark things like that in my brain.”In this year’s preview, there’s an article on a Broadway revival of “Romeo and Juliet,” a discussion with the filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar and a piece on the actor Daniel Dae Kim and his long-anticipated return to the stage.Readers will also find music critics’ picks from pop (Chappell Roan) to classical (Wagner’s “Ring” cycle) to rap (Sexyy Red). There’s a panoply of exciting upcoming releases to write about, too, including art exhibitions, TV shows, even video games. (In the new Legend of Zelda, Princess Zelda is finally a playable protagonist.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Why You May Never See the Documentary on Prince by Ezra Edelman

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      Dig, if you will, a small slice of Ezra Edelman’s nine-hour documentary about Prince — a cursed masterpiece that the public may never be allowed to see.Listen to this article, read by Janina EdwardsIt’s 1984, and Prince is about to release “Purple Rain,” the album that will make him a superstar and push pop music into distant realms we had no idea we were ready for. The sound engineer Peggy McCreary, one of many female engineers he worked with, describes witnessing a flash of genius during the creation of his song “When Doves Cry.” Over a two-day marathon recording session, she and Prince filled the studio with sound — wailing guitars, thrumming keyboards, an overdubbed choir of harmonizing Princes. It was the sort of maximalist stew possible only when someone is (as Prince was) a master of just about every musical instrument ever invented. But something wasn’t right. So at 5 or 6 in the morning, Prince found the solution: He started subtracting. He took out the guitar solo; he took out the keyboard. And then his boldest, most heterodox move: He took out the bass. McCreary remembers him saying, with satisfaction, “Ain’t nobody gonna believe I did that.” He knew what he had. The song became an anthem, a platinum megahit.The next sequence starts to probe the origins of Prince’s genius, how it grew alongside a gnawing desire for recognition. His sister, Tyka Nelson, a woman with owlish eyes and pink and purple streaks in her hair, appears onscreen. She describes the violence in their household growing up. How their musician father’s face changed when he hit their mother. The ire he directed at his son, on whom he bestowed his former stage name, Prince — a gift, but also a burden, a reminder that the demands of supporting his children had caused him to abandon his own musical career. Prince would risk lashings by sneaking over to the piano and plinking away at it — the son already embarked on his life’s work of besting his father, the father giving and withdrawing love, the son doing the same.Cut to Jill Jones, one in a long line of girlfriend-muses whom Prince anointed, styled, encouraged and criticized. Hers is one of the most anguished testimonies in the film, revealing a side of Prince many of his fans would rather not see. Late one night in 1984, she and a friend visited Prince at a hotel. He started kissing the friend, and in a fit of jealousy, Jones slapped him. She says he then looked at her and said, “Bitch, this ain’t no [expletive] movie.” They tussled, and he began to punch her in the face over and over. She wanted to press charges, but his manager told her it would ruin his career. So she backed off. Yet for a time, she still loved him and wanted to be with him, and stayed in his orbit for many more years. Recounting the incident three decades later, she is still furious, still processing the stress of being involved with him.In the next sequence, it’s the evening of the premiere of “Purple Rain,” the movie, which will go on to win the Academy Award for best original song score in 1985. Prince’s tour manager, Alan Leeds, was with him in the back of a limo on the way to the ceremony. He remembers one of Prince’s bodyguards turning to Prince and saying: “This is going to be the biggest day of your life! They say every star in town is there!” And Prince clutched Leeds’s hand, trembling in fear. But then, as Leeds tells it, some switch flipped, and “he caught himself.” Prince’s eyes turned hard. He was back in control. “That was it,” Leeds says. “But for maybe 10 seconds, he completely lost it. And I loved it. Because it showed he was human!” In the next shot, we see Prince emerging from the limo and walking down the red carpet in an iridescent purple trench coat over a creamy ruffled collar, his black curls piled high. He swaggers, twirling a flower, unbothered: a creature of regal remove.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      What if Orchestras Were More Like Netflix?

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      As subscriptions face an uncertain future, classical music could look to the membership models of streaming services and gyms for inspiration.Perhaps you spend your mornings at the gym, working out with the help of a playlist on Spotify. In the evening, you wind down with Netflix or a movie on Max. As you go to bed, you might even open a meditation app to help you fall asleep. Then you wake up, and do it all again.A routine like that is built on memberships that provide unlimited access to something for a monthly fee, and are tightly woven into our lives in part because they’re convenient. (Dangerously so: I’m far from alone in having realized too late how many free trials have turned into valves quietly hoovering up money from my bank account.) Why, then, have they not caught on in classical music performances?The model could go something like this: You pay a monthly membership fee to your local symphony orchestra that entitles you to attend however much you’d like. As with a gym or a streaming service, some people may go often; some, not at all. Regardless, the orchestra receives steady revenue, and you have full control of your calendar, with the ability to make plans even the day of a performance.While a handful of orchestras have experimented with this model, it hasn’t become standard because most institutions already have a long-established ticketing program they prefer: subscriptions. In that system, people are sold packages for a season, which involves planning evenings out up to a year or more in advance. This works for those who like to go on the same night of the week, or sit in the same seat. Orchestras, in turn, are provided with financial security.According to the League of American Orchestras, subscriptions have bounced back from a pandemic slump strongly enough that they grew by 7 percent from 2019 to 2024. Administrators, however, have long been anxious about the future of the subscription model. Less than a decade ago, the League itself commissioned a study that revealed subscriptions were not only in decline, but also out of touch with how people plan and purchase entertainment today.The St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, shown performing in April, was an early adapter of the member model. “There just aren’t that many people in April who want to commit to concerts from September to June,” the ensemble’s leader said.Claire Loes for the St. Paul Chamber OrchestraWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More