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      in Movies

      ‘The Boys in Red Hats’ Review: Cool Story, Bro

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      This documentary explores the incident on Jan. 18, 2019, when a high school student grinned and stared at a Native American demonstrator at a raucous Lincoln Memorial gathering.Jonathan Schroder’s “The Boys in Red Hats” is a maddening instance of a movie at war with itself. That’s appropriate enough since its subject is the encounter on Jan. 18, 2019, between white high school students and a Native American demonstrator at the Lincoln Memorial. The incident became a viral flash point over one teenager’s grinning in the face of the Native American elder.As an alumnus of the students’ school, Covington Catholic in Kentucky, Schroder presents this film as his journey toward understanding. He hears out pooh-poohing parent chaperones, agitated former students, one student’s attorney and a current pupil whose identity is concealed. Black activists on the day and Covington’s penchant for pep rallies are both advanced as explanations for the teens’ behavior.Between a bro-friendly voice-over and “TMZ Live”-style bull sessions with his producer, Schroder’s exploratory pose comes to feel exasperatingly clueless. Yet the film also assembles soothingly sharp commentators who lay bare the power and race dynamics and aggression at play in the Lincoln Memorial encounter. These include Mohawk journalist Vincent Schilling; Anne Branigin, a writer for The Root; and Allissa Richardson, a journalism professor who sees a “textbook example of white privilege.”Schroder’s request to interview the Covington Catholic student who attracted so much ire is turned down, and the same happens (in person) with Nathan Phillips, the Native American drummer. (I don’t even know where to begin with his weirdly nostalgic story of being punched in the head by a Covington teacher while a student.)A fizzled ending points fingers at media bias and our “bubbles.” Some viewers of the Lincoln Memorial events might instead invoke the pioneering media theorists The Marx Brothers: “Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?”The Boys in Red HatsNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 27 minutes. In virtual cinemas. More

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      in Theater

      In ‘What to Send Up,’ I See You, Black American Theater

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      Our critic reflects on the significance of Aleshea Harris’s play, at BAM Fisher, for Black audiences.We didn’t know what to do about this piece.Whether I, a Black critic, should review Aleshea Harris’s breathtaking “What to Send Up When It Goes Down,” even though my former colleague Ben Brantley, a white critic, already reviewed and raved about the show’s initial run in 2018. Whether I should be in conversation with a white critic or another Black critic.This is the piece I came up with: I’m reporting on a moment in time when I, a Black critic and a Black woman in America, felt the safest and most embraced by my Blackness in a theater.On a gloomy Friday evening, I went to BAM Fisher for the play, being presented by the Brooklyn Academy of Music and Playwrights Horizons in association with the Movement Theater Company. I headed to the downstairs lobby, which featured portraits of Black men and women killed by the police. The room was full of Black people.If you can’t imagine the comfort of being with people who look like you in a space where art is being made, it’s something like sipping from a steaming cup in the dead of winter: the warmth is precious, immediate and shocking all at once.Harris, a veritable poet of a playwright who also wrote “Is God Is,” describes the play as “a space in the theater that is unrepentantly for and about Black people” — “a space for affirming, and reflecting.” She calls it “an anger spittoon” and “a dance party.” It’s true that “What to Send Up” feels less like a play than it does a series of cathartic experiences — which isn’t to say it isn’t beautiful theater, because it is still very much that.Early on in the show, directed by Whitney White, in a kind of intimate workshop, one performer (Kalyne Coleman, who is stunning as both a performer and the host) asks the audience members, who are all standing in a large semicircle, to step forward if they’d ever witnessed a race-based act of police brutality or if they’d ever been a victim of a racially motivated act of police brutality. Most people stepped forward after the former. About a dozen people, of the 50 or so in attendance, stepped forward in response to the latter, including a 30-something Black couple.Then a series of skits charts all the horrific ways Black people are stereotyped and generally misrepresented in art and in real life. There are biting parodies of troubling Black tropes in entertainment, like the supplicant servant figures in “Driving Miss Daisy” and “The Help.” And there are surreal monologues (one woman recounts how she snatched the mouth off a white man and how it flopped like a fish) alongside stepping, choral songs and spoken word.This was a show that validated my fear and sorrow as a Black citizen of this country and yet still alerted me to the privilege of having had a sheltered suburban upbringing. I thought about the first time someone directly called me the N-word, casually slinging it to the side of my face while I was walking through Midtown Manhattan one weeknight. I thought of all the times I’ve felt uncomfortable as a Black person in a space — in my career, in academia, in social settings. I thought about my growing discomfort around police officers, especially in the last several years.It’s rare for a play to allow me access to both that validation and that awareness of my privilege — because so rarely is Blackness shown onstage and so pointedly aimed toward a Black audience with all the nuances and variations that come within the experiences of their lives.Denise Manning, left, and Kalyne Coleman in “What to Send Up When It Goes Down.”Donna WardAt one point in the show, there is a symbolic Black death, tender though devastating, followed by an extended moment of silence. At another point, we were invited to write messages to Black Americans — they would join the scores of postcards with messages from other audience members that adorn the walls of the theater. Later we were asked to let out a collective, soul-cleansing scream — something I, an introvert, would usually pass on. But the mighty wall of sound led by Black voices — a great sound of exaltation and frustration and defiance all at once — invited me in, and my own voice, unsteady and hesitant, joined. It was like stretching a muscle I never realized existed; the feeling was overwhelming in its depth and release.But, I wondered, can any such space truly and wholly be for a Black audience, especially when there are white audience members there, too? Some part of me was quietly policing the white people in the theater — how they responded to certain scenes and questions, if and when they laughed at certain jokes, if they seemed to hold themselves accountable, if they were taking up too much space.As a critic and a reporter, part of what I do is read the room — how and why audiences react to the happenings onstage, and what that says about the work. But here, I didn’t want to care. In the show’s final minutes, non-Black audience members were invited to leave the theater and gather in the lobby. When I recounted this to a friend afterward, she asked what the white audiences saw, if anything, but I don’t know and — I know this is shameful to admit — I don’t care.I am concerned only with how Harris’s play made me and the other Black people in that room feel. I noted how the couple from earlier clutched each other through most of the show. At some point, the woman left and returned wet-eyed with a handful of tissues. Her partner lovingly rubbed her back.I also ended the show in tears, which I hadn’t expected — but among Black performers and audience members, I felt newly seen and safe. I had a fresh moment of realization, considering my duty as a Black critic. And as a Black poet, I had a moment of inspiration: I want more art like this.Affirmations, exclamations of joy, moments of commemoration: I’ll skip the particulars of those last few holy minutes that were exclusive to the Black audience. I want to honor and extend the loving, communal Black space Harris creates in an art form that has so few of them. And I want to keep it for myself — and for that couple and for the Black woman who, earlier in the show, had said she wished for a future version of this country where she could feel more “human.”I took a slow tour of the theater after the show, and read the messages others had left. “When you breathe, the universe sings,” one notecard read. Any other day in any other place in America, I’d probably find that sentiment too hokey. When have I ever heard singing when inhaling the air of this supposedly great free nation?But at BAM Fisher on that Friday night, I believed in a song of community, of strength and beauty and Black life despite whatever funereal tune is forced upon the lives of Black Americans. Of course I believe in theater for everyone, but I also believe in theater for Black people, and Black people alone.Leaving the venue, I thought of what a pleasure and privilege it was to receive theater gift-wrapped especially for me. And what a pleasure and privilege it is for me to laud it. But the greater pleasure? To tell you something special happened among the Black people in a theater with a qualifier: This play, non-Black theater lover, is not for or about you, and that’s perfectly fine.What to Send Up When It All Goes DownThrough July 11 at BAM Fisher, Brooklyn; bam.org More

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      in Movies

      ‘The Legend of the Underground’ Review: Gay Activism in Nigeria

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      In this stylish documentary, young men discuss their country’s laws criminalizing gay sex.The documentary “The Legend of the Underground” captures queer Nigerian activists as they discuss their country’s laws criminalizing gay sex. Together, they lament unjust arrests and police brutality. But they are not aiming for either martyrdom or altruism — instead, their goal is to improve the circumstances of their own lives.This film is stylish, like a well-curated advertisement. These men are beautiful, youthful, dressed in mesh and silks. But the movie’s almost shallow appeal to aesthetics is not disconnected from the political agenda of gay Nigerians. For these men, desirability serves multiple purposes. It may entice potential partners, but also advertisers, the global entertainment industry and the hostile Nigerian public.The movie shows the tug of war between profit and public service by contrasting the civic-minded approach of Michael, an organizer who splits time between Lagos and New York for his safety, with the actions of the prominent Nigerian activist James Brown. James wants to grow his follower count to publicize the queer cause, but he also has ambitions to become a global influencer.The filmmakers Giselle Bailey and Nneka Onuorah capture arguments as other activists wrestle with the contradictions of James’s motivations. But crucially, they don’t shy away from James. Instead, the film leaves the tension unresolved, suggesting that James’s mix of political protest and personal ambition may be new tactics from a new generation. In the Nigerian queer scene, there are no sinners and no saints. In the end, Michael dons a sweater for a night out at the club. The shirt’s glitter typeface shows a single word: Buysexual.Legend of the UndergroundNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 26 minutes. Watch on HBO platforms. More

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      in Television

      James Corden's Food Bit Draws Ire and a Petition For It to End

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      For years, the late-night TV host has dared celebrities to eat choice foods, but an online petition is calling for it to end.For years, the late-night television host James Corden has played a food-based truth or dare with celebrities called “Spill Your Guts or Fill Your Guts.” Participants choose to either answer personal questions or take a bite of a food deemed disgusting to eat, like ghost pepper hot sauce, a sardine smoothie or dried caterpillars.“Wow, it all looks so terrible,” Jimmy Kimmel, the host of late night show “Jimmy Kimmel Live!,” said as he appeared on Mr. Corden’s segment in 2016. “I know people can’t smell it, but it doesn’t smell good, either.”Mr. Corden responded, “It’s really disgusting, it’s horrific,” as he spun a table with Asian ingredients and snacks like chicken feet, balut, pig’s blood and thousand-year eggs.While the segment has received scrutiny in the past, an online petition posted this month has brought renewed criticism that its portrayal of Asian foods as disgusting is harmful. More than 46,000 people have signed the petition, asking Mr. Corden to change the food options on the segment or end its run.“Everyone is entitled to their opinion on food,” said Kim Saira, 24, a Los Angeles activist who organized the petition and set up a protest last Thursday near Mr. Corden’s studio, posing behind a sign that said “Delicious, Not Disgusting.” “My whole point is that James Corden is a white person and is actively using ingredients from Asian cultures and profiting from it and showing it in such a negative light. There’s a way to not like foods and still be respectful about it.”Ms. Saira said she was confused when she first watched the segment featuring balut about two years ago.Balut, a fertilized duck egg, is a late-night snack Ms. Saira grew up eating when she visited relatives in the Philippines every year. She has memories of sitting around a table with her family during power blackouts, which were common, eating the balut by candlelight while they told stories.“I didn’t know why they were calling a food that was so sentimental ‘disgusting,’” said Ms. Saira, who is Filipina and Chinese American.Mr. Corden has been doing the bit for years. A YouTube playlist created by his program has videos as far back as 2016. Speaking to Howard Stern on his radio show June 16, Mr. Corden addressed the controversy.“The next time we do that bit, we absolutely won’t involve or use any of those foods,” Mr. Corden said. “Our show is a show about joy and light and love. We don’t want to make a show to upset anybody.”Mr. Corden’s staff did not respond to requests for comment for this article.“We’re in a kind of cultural moment where bits like this one exist with this increasing acceptance of cultural foods,” said Alison Alkon, a professor at the University of the Pacific. “We’re kind of in this Ping-Pong dialectic.”Using food to prompt a response of disgust, for entertainment, has a long history, said Merry White, an anthropology professor at Boston University. In the United States, the game show “Fear Factor” challenged contestants to eat foods with ingredients like fish eyes, cow bile and coagulated blood paste. Reactistan, a YouTube reaction channel, has had Pakistani people try foods that were strange to them, like American hamburgers, doughnuts and candies such as Ring Pops and Airheads.Even Mr. Corden, who is British, hosted a segment using foods from his homeland, such as haggis and a smoothie with fish, chips and mushy peas.Lok Siu, an associate professor in the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, said the practice disrespects people’s cultures. The choice of Asian foods has made Asian Americans feel more vulnerable or marginalized during a time of rising violence against them.The perception of Asians in the United States has historically been defined through food, Professor Siu said.“You use food as a metaphor to describe that distance, the kind of strangeness between a group of people that you don’t understand and their habits, the way they’re eating, the smell that comes with the spices,” she said. “There’s something around the way we discuss food, the way we think about food in our acceptance or rejection of it, it’s a rejection of a culture and the people that’s associated with it.”She added that Mr. Corden’s use of Asian foods on the segment defines which foods are considered mainstream, delicious or disgusting; food is a metaphor for what is considered normal..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-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;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-w739ur{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-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media 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ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;-webkit-transform:rotate(180deg);-ms-transform:rotate(180deg);transform:rotate(180deg);}.css-eb027h{max-height:5000px;-webkit-transition:max-height 0.5s ease;transition:max-height 0.5s ease;}.css-6mllg9{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s 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(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-1rh1sk1{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-1rh1sk1 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-1rh1sk1 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1rh1sk1 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:#ccd9e3;text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccc;text-decoration-color:#ccc;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}“Why is this not seen as racist immediately?” Professor Siu said. “If he made fun of any other group, would there be a much more broader understanding that that’s racist? It’s not immediately thought of as being racist and damaging because it’s Asian food. There is such a denial of anti-Asian racism in the U.S., and this is a prime example of it.”In Mr. Corden’s most recent episodes, he has served up blood and pork jelly, scorpion-dusted plantains, a thousand-year egg nog (made with thousand-year eggs), cow tongue, turkey testicles, an ant-covered corn dog and a salmon, tuna and fish-eye milkshake.For some Filipino chefs, who grew up eating some of the ingredients that have been mocked on Mr. Corden’s show, the renewed focus on the segment has stirred up memories.Lou Boquila, the chef and owner of Perla, in Philadelphia, said he remembers questioning why he ate balut — which tastes of duck broth, and other ingredients like intestines, tongues or blood — when he was growing up in the United States.“It’s actually very delicious, nothing out of the ordinary for us, but it put us in a different light,” Mr. Boquila said. “If you look at all the great chefs, they use every part of the animal.”“You try American food, speak American, it made you not proud of what you ate growing up, and I was totally stupid for not standing up for it,” he added. “It steers you toward being more Americanized and turning back on your culture.”Javier Fernandez, the chef and owner at Kuya Ja’s Lechon Belly, in Rockville, Md., said “Spill Your Guts” presents an opportunity for him to educate people about Filipino food, the culture and ingredients like pig’s head and pork blood (also featured on Mr. Corden’s show).“When people talk about Filipino food or these non-American ingredients where they feel it’s gross to see, it does better for the culture,” he said. “It helps promote what the cuisine is like. My job is to promote the cuisine itself.”Follow NYT Food on Twitter and NYT Cooking on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and Pinterest. Get regular updates from NYT Cooking, with recipe suggestions, cooking tips and shopping advice. More

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      in Music

      Violinist Apologizes for ‘Culturally Insensitive’ Remarks About Asians

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      Pinchas Zukerman was criticized for invoking ugly stereotypes about Asians during a master class at Juilliard, which called his remarks offensive.A master class by the renowned violinist Pinchas Zukerman was supposed to be the highlight of a recent virtual symposium hosted by the Juilliard School.Instead, Zukerman angered many of the roughly 100 students and teachers in the class on Friday when he invoked racist stereotypes about Asians, leading Juilliard to decide not to share a video of his master class afterward with participants, as it had initially intended.At one point, Zukerman told a pair of students of Asian descent that their playing was too perfect and that they needed to add soy sauce, according to two participants in the class. At another point, in trying to encourage the students to play more lyrically, he said he understood that people in Korea and Japan do not sing, participants said. His comments were reported earlier by Violinist.com, a music site.Zukerman’s remarks were widely denounced by musicians and teachers, with many saying they reinforced ugly stereotypes facing artists of Asian descent in the music industry.Juilliard tried to distance itself from the matter, describing Zukerman as a guest instructor and saying his “insensitive and offensive cultural stereotypes” did not represent the school’s values. Zukerman apologized Monday for what he called his “culturally insensitive” comments.“In Friday’s master class, I was trying to communicate something to these two incredibly talented young musicians, but the words I used were culturally insensitive,” he said in a statement. “I’m writing to the students personally to apologize. I am sorry that I made anyone uncomfortable. I cannot undo that, but I offer a sincere apology. I learned something valuable from this, and I will do better in the future.”Asian and Asian American performers have long dealt with racist tropes that their playing is too technical or unemotional. A wave of anti-Asian hate in the United States in recent months has heightened concerns about the treatment of Asian performers.Zukerman is a celebrated violinist and conductor whose career has spanned five decades. He was the biggest name at the Juilliard event, known as the Starling-DeLay Violin Symposium, which is focused on violin teaching and attracts promising young musicians, many of them teenagers, to take part in master classes.He made the remarks on Friday while offering feedback to a pair of sisters of Japanese descent.After the sisters played a duet, Zukerman told them they should try bringing more of a singing quality to their playing, according to participants in the class. When he said that he knew Koreans did not sing, one of the sisters interrupted to say that they were not Korean, adding that they were partly of Japanese descent. Zukerman replied by saying that people in Japan did not sing either, according to participants.His remarks prompted an outcry among Asian and Asian American musicians, with some sharing stories on social media about their experiences dealing with stereotypes and bias..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-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;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-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media 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(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-1rh1sk1{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-1rh1sk1 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-1rh1sk1 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1rh1sk1 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:#ccd9e3;text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccc;text-decoration-color:#ccc;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}Hyeyung Yoon, a violinist who last year founded Asian Musical Voices of America, an alliance of artists, said Zukerman’s remarks represented a type of thinking that “dehumanizes a group of people without actually getting to know who they are.”“It’s so prevalent in classical music, but also prevalent in the larger society,” she said in an interview.Keiko Tokunaga, a violinist, said she and many other Asian musicians had heard comments similar to Zukerman’s.“We are often described as emotionless or we just have no feelings and we are just technical machines,” she said in an interview. “And that is very offensive, because we are as human as anyone else on the planet.” More

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      in Movies

      Review: ‘Sisters on Track,’ ‘LFG’ and the Price of Star Power

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      Two documentaries explore the flaws of the financial reward systems in elite sports and their effects on the athletes involved.Two documentaries, “Sisters on Track” and “LFG,” explore the achievements of world-class athletes and, more intriguingly, the way money is allocated within sports.“Sisters on Track” follows Tai, Rainn and Brooke Sheppard, three preteen sisters who qualified as junior Olympians in track. The film begins in their first moments of national recognition, as they are invited on to shows like “The View” to discuss their family’s achievements. At the time, their mother was single, working minimum-wage jobs that were insufficient to cover their rent in Brooklyn. The Sheppard family was living in a homeless shelter, and their athletic success is presented as a story of resilience.The documentarians Corinne van der Borch and Tone Grottjord-Glenne show how this flash of national attention granted them immediate opportunity, including an offer by the entertainer Tyler Perry to pay for the family’s housing for two years. Their film follows the Sheppard sisters in vérité style through this period, as their mother, Tonia, and their coach, Jean, guide them through middle school, puberty, nerves and indecision. The shared dream is for all three girls to earn college scholarships.“Sisters on Track” shows a family working within the imperfect system that controls the financial rewards available to them. By contrast, the subjects of “LFG,” (it stands for a soccer rallying cry), are looking to upend the entire pay structure of their sport. The documentary follows the U.S. women’s soccer team as the players pursue a lawsuit against their employer, the United States Soccer Federation, for institutionalized sex discrimination.Soccer stars like Megan Rapinoe, Christen Press and Jessica McDonald explain how the women’s team has to win more games, secure more viewers and generate more revenue to make a wage that is comparable to that of the men’s team. In talking-head interviews with the documentary’s directors, Andrea Nix Fine and Sean Fine, the teammates express their hopes that future generations of girls will be able to earn a living as athletes without having to maintain an unparalleled record within their sport.Jessica McDonald in the soccer documentary “LFG”.HBO MaxBoth films are conventional in cinematic style, and they constitute the kind of feel-good entertainment that is easy to recommend. But what is timely and interesting — even thorny — about these films is their focus on the economic opportunities generated by athletic achievement. For the Sheppard family, continued track success pushes closed doors open, granting the sisters access to shelter, scholarships and private school admissions that might have otherwise been beyond their means. But as they plan ahead for college — its opportunities and its expenses — they know they have to maintain their national records if they want to translate early success into lifelong stability.Unlike the Sheppards, who are at the start of their athletic careers, the women of the national soccer team have already proven themselves as world champions. But their astronomical achievements have not translated into astronomical earnings, suggesting that a glass ceiling looms over all women in sports. Both documentaries question how much success women must achieve to attain financial stability, and both films find that it’s not enough to be very good. To translate physical ability into financial gain, you have to be the best in the country, if not the best in the world.Though both movies are peppered with promises that everything will work out in the long run, they also function as documents of the exploitation that elite athletes experience. Here, superhuman strength runs straight into all-too-recognizable barriers — poor working conditions, low wages, discrimination, corporate greed. The subjects of “Sisters on Track” and “LFG” confront challenges with the mentality of champions, but that doesn’t make the opposition any less daunting.LFGNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. Watch on HBO Max.Sisters on TrackRated PG. Running time: 1 hour 36 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      in Music

      Grammy Officials Oppose an Open Hearing on Reasons for Ousting C.E.O.

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      The lawyer for the former chief executive, Deborah Dugan, said the Recording Academy, which runs the Grammy Awards, had already agreed to an open session to discuss her grievances.As the organization behind the Grammy Awards prepares for an arbitration hearing next month with Deborah Dugan, its ousted chief executive, lawyers for Ms. Dugan have accused the Grammys of reneging on a promise to have the proceedings be open to the public.The arbitration, over Ms. Dugan’s dismissal early last year after just five months on the job, could be a rare window into the opaque politics of the Recording Academy, after years of complaints from artists and others in the music industry that the group fails to adequately recognize women and minorities and is rife with conflicts of interest.Those criticisms boiled over when Ms. Dugan was placed on administrative leave by the academy just 10 days before the 62nd annual Grammys ceremony, in January 2020, and later fired. As the dispute played out between Ms. Dugan and the academy, Harvey Mason Jr., who was then the chairman and interim chief, declared the academy’s dedication to transparency.In a letter on Feb. 4, 2020, Mr. Mason, who has since taken over as chief executive, told Ms. Dugan that the academy had agreed to waive the confidentiality provision of the arbitration clause in Ms. Dugan’s employment contract.“The Recording Academy has absolutely nothing to hide,” Mr. Mason wrote, “and, in fact, welcomes the opportunity to tell its story so that the entire music community and the world can hear the truth — and nothing but the truth — about what you did to this proud institution during your brief tenure as president/C.E.O.“In short,” Mr. Mason continued, “we welcome a full public airing of your allegations against the Academy as well as the Academy’s many claims and defenses against you.”Harvey Mason Jr. wrote that “The Recording Academy has absolutely nothing to hide,” in a letter dated Feb. 4, 2020.Jordan Strauss/Invision, via Associated PressBut as the hearing, now set for July 12 in Los Angeles, approaches, the academy has requested the proceedings remain closed. In correspondence with the arbitrator, Sara Adler, and lawyers for both sides, the academy’s lawyers said that the organization “was and is willing to make public the results of this arbitration, and the reasoning for those results, and nothing more,” according to Anthony J. Oncidi of Proskauer Rose, a law firm that has long represented the academy.According to Mr. Oncidi, the confidentiality provision cited in Mr. Mason’s letter last year covered only the disclosure of “the existence, content or result of any arbitration,” and that a full public hearing would expose other confidential information and cause “further emotional distress” to witnesses.In an email to Ms. Adler last week, Michael J. Willemin, a lawyer for Ms. Dugan at the firm Wigdor LLP, said that the academy was changing its position and should be required to keep the hearing open.“The simple, undeniable fact,” Mr. Willemin wrote, “is that the parties agreed to open this proceeding to the public, and, therefore, it must be open to the public unless Ms. Dugan agrees otherwise.”According to the academy, Ms. Dugan was dismissed because she alienated the staff and exhibited bullying behavior toward an executive assistant assigned to her.Ms. Dugan cast the decision to dismiss her differently in a discrimination complaint lodged with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Ms. Dugan — who had led Red, the nonprofit co-founded by Bono of U2, and was brought into the Grammys as a change agent — said her dismissal was an act of retaliation after she challenged the “boys’ club” that she said dominated the academy.Dugan’s ouster also came three weeks after she wrote a detailed letter to the academy’s human resources department alleging voting irregularities, financial mismanagement and conflicts of interest involving members of the academy’s board and its executive committee. She also accused a prominent outside lawyer for the academy of making unwanted sexual advances toward her. (That lawyer, Joel Katz, disputed Ms. Dugan’s account.)The Recording Academy has for years faced complaints about its voting process and its poor record of recognizing women and people of color in many of the top awards. In 2018, Neil Portnow, Ms. Dugan’s predecessor, was criticized for suggesting that women should “step up” to be recognized at the Grammys.This year, the academy voted to eliminate most of its anonymous nomination review committees, in which experts selected by academy executives made the final decision on who made the final ballot in 61 of the Grammys’ 84 categories.Those committees were criticized by Ms. Dugan and came under fire from top musicians like the Weeknd. The next Grammy ceremony, set for Jan. 31, 2022, will be the first in years in which the committees will play no part in making up the ballots of most awards, although they will still be used for 11 categories like production and packaging. More

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      in Theater

      Sharon Pollock, Playwright Who Explored Canada’s Identity, Dies at 85

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      Ms. Pollock was best known for dramas inspired by historical events that examined racial tensions and other volatile issues.Sharon Pollock, an oft-produced Canadian playwright who was known for works that explored Canadian history and identity at a time when few of her contemporaries were doing so, died on April 22 at her home in Calgary, Alberta. She was 85.Her daughter Lisa Pollock said the cause was cancer.Ms. Pollock’s works covered a wide range, but she was especially known for dramas inspired by historical events. Her best-known play, “Blood Relations” (1980), was a take on Lizzie Borden and the ax murders of her father and stepmother in 1892 in Massachusetts (Borden was acquitted). But most of her history-inspired plays involved events in Canada’s past.“Walsh” (1973), one of her first staged works, was about James Walsh of the North-West Mounted Police and his handling of Sitting Bull and the Sioux Indians who had come from the United States in the 1870s seeking refuge. “One Tiger to a Hill” (1980) was inspired by a 1975 hostage-taking at a prison in British Columbia.These and her many other historical works didn’t merely document an event; they used it as a jumping-off point to explore themes like racial tension. That was at the core of her “End Dream,” about a real-life 1924 case in Vancouver in which a Scottish nanny died under murky circumstances and a Chinese servant was charged. The charges were later dropped.“I am only interested in historical things if I can manipulate them,” she told The Globe and Mail of Canada when that work was given its premiere in 2000 by Theater Junction in Calgary. “I want to make something bigger than the mystery.”Anne Nothof, a professor emerita at Athabasca University in Alberta who writes frequently about Canadian drama, said Ms. Pollock viewed theater “as a means of illuminating the dark corners of apathy and ignorance” and used it to examine areas of history that were often sanitized.“In her plays, she provided multiple perspectives on historical events,” Dr. Nothof said by email. “Pollock was committed to creating a theater that responded to the past and the present, that challenged historical and personal assumptions.”Stephen Hair and Julie Orton in “Blow Wind High Water.” Staged at Theater Calgary in 2017, it was Ms. Pollock’s last new produced play.Trudie LeeMs. Pollock had a long relationship with Theater Calgary, where she was artistic director in 1984 and 1985 and where four of her plays had their premieres, including “Walsh” almost 50 years ago and her last new produced play, “Blow Wind High Water,” in 2017.Two of her plays, “Blood Relations” and “Doc” (1984), received the Governor General’s Literary Award, a top honor in Canada, and in 2012 Ms. Pollock was given the Officer of the Order of Canada designation “for her contributions to the theater as an award-winning playwright, actor, artistic director and teacher.” That same year, when the University of Calgary held a conference celebrating her, it was called simply “Sharon Pollock: First Woman of Canadian Theater.”Mary Sharon Chalmers was born on April 19, 1936, in Fredericton, New Brunswick. Her father, Dr. George Everett Chalmers, has a hospital in Fredericton named after him, and her mother, Eloise (Roberts) Chalmers, was a nurse. She was also an alcoholic; Ms. Pollock painted a stark picture of her early years in “Doc,” a play that had autobiographical elements, and she talked bluntly about her mother.“To be truthful, I didn’t like her very much,” she told The Calgary Herald in 2013. “She was an ugly drunk. She didn’t go somewhere nice and quiet and drink herself into oblivion. I always say that every statutory holiday she would try and kill herself. Eventually she succeeded. I think I was 17 when that happened.”She dropped out of the University of New Brunswick in 1955 and married Ross Pollock. But their relationship, she said, was troubled, and the marriage ended after about a decade. In 1966 she moved to Calgary with the Canadian actor Michael Ball, with whom she had a long-term relationship.From left, Amanda Dahl (Ms. Pollock’s daughter), Kate Trotter and Susan Hogan in “Doc,” a 1984 play that had autobiographical elements.George GammonShe began her theater career as an actress. In a 2008 interview with the The Calgary Herald marking the 40th anniversary of Theater Calgary, she recalled working with that company in its early years. She had especially vivid memories of the old QR Center, which was notorious for a leaky foundation.“The dressing rooms were in the basement, so in the spring you’d have about three inches of sewage and horrible water all through the dressing room areas,” she said.The seepage, she said, somehow always seemed to be worst when a production called for period costumes.“You not only had to watch your feet,” she said, “but you had to hold up these reams of skirt, or else you’d enter onstage with a kind of osmosis — water creeping up all over the edge of your clothes.”(Perhaps appropriately, a decade later “Blow Wind High Water” was part of that theater’s 50th-anniversary season. It was about a Calgary flood.)Ms. Pollock’s plays were staged at the Stratford Festival in Ontario, the Neptune Theater in Halifax and many other theaters, including the Garry Theater in Calgary, which she ran for five years in the 1990s. She also served in executive roles at Theater New Brunswick and other houses, though her strong personality sometimes led to clashes with board members.Ms. Pollock in 2017.via Theatre CalgaryStafford Arima, Theater Calgary’s current artistic director, experienced that personality when he staged her final play.“I fell instantly in like with Sharon’s no-filter way of communicating,” he said by email. “Her energy reminded me of a glorious tsunami wave that engulfed any space she inhabited — whether it was a rehearsal room or a coffee house.”In addition to her daughter Lisa, she is survived by five other children, Jennifer Pollock, Kirk Pollock, Melinda Tracey, Michele Pollock and Amanda Dahl; 12 grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.In a “Playwright’s Note” in the program for “Blow Wind High Water,” Ms. Pollock addressed the audience in words that might well have applied to many of her plays:“I hope you’ll experience in some small way some small parts of history that have made the place you live in the place it is.” More