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      New Report Paints Bleak Picture of Diversity in the Music Industry

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      The Annenberg Inclusion Initiative examined 4,060 executives at six types of companies, and found 19.8 percent were from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups.A year ago, as protests spread across the country following the murder of George Floyd, the music industry promised to change.Major record labels, streaming platforms and broadcasters pledged hundreds of millions of dollars in charitable donations. The diversity of the music industry itself — a business that relies heavily on the creative labor of Black artists — came under scrutiny, with calls to hire more people of color and to elevate women and minorities into management and decision-making positions.But how diverse is the music business? The answer, according to a new study: not very.A report by the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative at the University of Southern California, released Tuesday, examined the makeup of 4,060 executives, at the vice president level and above, at 119 companies of six types: corporate music groups, record labels, music publishers, radio broadcasters, streaming services and live music companies.Among those executives, 19.8 percent were from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups, including 7.5 percent who were Black. Women made up 35.3 percent of the total.Delving deeper into the numbers, the authors of the 25-page report, led by Stacy L. Smith and Carmen Lee, found that the representation of women and minorities seemed to shrink as they looked higher up music companies’ organization charts.After filtering out subsidiaries, the researchers looked at the uppermost leadership positions — chief executives, chairmen and presidents — in a subset of 70 major and independent companies, and found that 86.1 percent of those people were both white and male. The 10 people of color who held those positions were all at independents, and just two were women: Desiree Perez, a longtime associate of Jay-Z who leads his company Roc Nation, and Golnar Khosrowshahi, the founder of Reservoir, which owns music rights.The report includes some stark findings. For example, among the 4,060 people in the study’s sample, the researchers found 17.7 white male executives for every Black female one.“Underrepresented and Black artists are dominating the charts, but the C-suite is a ‘diversity desert,’” Dr. Smith said in a statement. “The profile of top artists may give some in the industry the illusion that music is an inclusive business, but the numbers at the top tell a different story.”Each year since 2018, the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative has tracked the artists, songwriters and producers behind the biggest hits. Again and again, it has found that women are far outnumbered by men, yet revealed some encouraging numbers for underrepresented groups: People of color have made up about 47 percent of the credited artists behind 900 top pop songs since 2012.Yet the group’s new report, called “Inclusion in the Music Business: Gender & Race/Ethnicity Across Executives, Artists & Talent Teams,” and sponsored by Universal Music Group, shows that women and people of color are poorly represented in the power structure of the industry itself.The variation across different job levels and industry sectors is notable. Black executives fared best within record labels, making up 14.4 percent of all positions, and 21.2 percent of artist-and-repertoire, or A&R, roles, which tend to work most closely with artists. Black people hold just 4 percent of executive jobs in radio, and 3.3 percent in live music.According to U.S. census data, 13.4 percent of Americans identify as Black.Women posted their highest executive numbers in the live music business, holding 39.1 percent of positions. But drilling down, the study found, most of those women were white. Even at record labels, where Black executives were best represented, Black women held only 5.3 percent of executive jobs.The U.S.C. report is one of a number of efforts underway to examine the music industry and evaluate its progress in reaching stated goals of diversity and inclusion. This week, the Black Music Action Coalition, a group of artist managers, lawyers and other insiders, is expected to release a “report card” on how well the industry has met its own commitments to change.Much of the data used in the U.S.C. report, the researchers said, came from publicly available sources, like company websites. The report suggests that a lack of participation in the study by music companies was a reason.“Companies were given the opportunity to participate and confirm information, especially of senior management teams,” the report says. “Roughly a dozen companies did so. The vast majority did not.”The authors of the report, who also include Marc Choueiti, Katherine Pieper, Zoe Moore, Dana Dinh and Artur Tofan, said they want to spur the industry toward change. The report recommends a number of steps that companies can take to make their executive ranks more diverse, including making career pathways more flexible and “fast tracking” leaders with support and mentoring.“Our hope,” Dr. Lee said, “is that the industry will come together to tackle this problem in a way that creates meaningful progress.” More

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      Met Opera Protest: Union Rallies Against Proposed Pay Cuts

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      The Metropolitan Opera hopes to reopen in September after its long pandemic closure, but simmering labor tensions have called that date into question.As New York prepares for the long-awaited reopening of its performing arts sector, with several Broadway shows putting tickets on sale for the fall, it is still unclear whether the Metropolitan Opera will be able to reach the labor agreements it needs to bring up its heavy golden curtain for the gala opening night it hopes to hold in September.There have been contrasting scenes playing out at the opera house in recent days.On the hopeful side, the Met is preparing for two concerts in Queens on Sunday — the company’s first live, in-person performances featuring members of its orchestra and chorus and its music director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, since the start of the pandemic. And it recently reached a deal on a new contract with the union that represents its chorus, soloists, dancers and stage managers, among others.But the serious tensions that remain with the company’s other unions were put on vivid display outside Lincoln Center on Thursday, as hundreds of union members rallied in opposition to the Met’s lockout of its stagehands and management’s demands for deep and lasting pay cuts it says are needed to survive the pandemic. The workers’ message was clear: their labor makes the Met what it is, and without them, the opera can’t reopen.The Met’s stagehands have been locked out since December. James J. Claffey Jr., president of their union, Local One of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, said that the season cannot open without them.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“That’s not the Met Opera,” said James J. Claffey Jr., president of Local One of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, which represents Met stagehands, pointing over to the opera house. “The greatest stage, the largest stage — it’s empty. It’s nothing without the people that are right in front of me right now.”Masked stagehands, musicians, ticket sellers, wardrobe workers and scenic artists packed the designated rally space, greeting each other with elbow bumps after more than a year of separation. They wore union T-shirts and carried signs with messages like, “We Paint the Met” and “We Dress the Met.” The same chant — “We are the Met!” — was repeated over and over throughout the rally.The protest made clear the significant labor challenges that the Met must overcome to successfully return in the fall.Although the opera season is not scheduled to begin until September, the company will need to reach agreements with Local One, which represents its stagehands, much sooner to load in sets and hold technical rehearsals over the summer. The Met has been hoping to bring a significant number of stagehands back to work beginning in June, but Claffey said union members were holding out for a labor agreement.The Met locked out its stagehands in December after contract negotiations stalled. The union has been fiercely opposed to the Met’s assertion that it needs to cut the payroll costs for its highest-paid unions by 30 percent, with an intention to restore half of those cuts when ticket revenues and core donations returned to prepandemic levels (the Met has said the plan would cut the take-home pay of those workers by about 20 percent).“Regardless of the Met’s plans, Local One is not going to work without a contract,” Claffey said in an interview. “There’s a lockout when you didn’t need us, but when you really need us, it’s going to transition from a lockout to a strike.”Although the Met recently struck a deal with the union representing its chorus, tensions remain high with the unions representing its orchestra and stagehands.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe Met said in a statement on Thursday that it had “no desire to undermine” the unions it works with but that it had lost more than $150 million in earned revenues since the pandemic forced it to close, and that it needs to cut costs to survive. The statement said the Met had “repeatedly” invited the stagehands’ union to return to the bargaining table.“In order for the Met to reopen in the fall, as scheduled,” the statement said, “the stagehands and the other highest paid Met union members need to accept the reality of these extraordinarily challenging times.”The rally was organized by Local One, which represents the Met’s roughly 300 stagehands. Speaking outside the David H. Koch Theater because metal barriers blocked the path to the Metropolitan Opera House, union leaders railed against the monthslong lockout that has prevented its workers from returning to the Met in full force.“A lot of us stagehands have had to pivot or leave the industry entirely,” said Gillian Koch, a Local One member at the rally. “And we are showing up to say that is not OK, and we all deserve to have our careers after this pandemic.”Tensions rose even higher when the stagehands learned that the Met had outsourced some of its set construction to nonunion shops elsewhere in this country and overseas. (In a letter to the union last year, Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, wrote that the average full-time stagehand cost the Met $260,000 in 2019, including benefits; the union disputes that number, saying that when the steady extra stagehands who work at the Met regularly, and sometimes full-time, are factored in, the average pay is far lower.)The stagehand lockout has not been absolute. Claffey said that at the Met’s request, he has allowed several Local One members to work at the Met under the terms of the previous contract, particularly to help the union wardrobe staff who are on duty.But although the Met has now reached a deal with the American Guild of Musical Artists, which represents its chorus, it has yet to reach one with Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians, which represents the orchestra. Both groups were furloughed without pay for nearly a year after the opera house closed before they were brought back to the bargaining table with the promise of partial pay of up to $1,543 per week.Adam Krauthamer, the president of Local 802, pointed out that because of the Met’s labor divisions, other performing arts institutions were ahead of the Met in reopening.“Broadway is selling tickets; the Philharmonic is doing performances; they’re building stages right before our eyes,” Krauthamer said in a speech at the rally. “The Met is the only place that continues to try to destroy its workers’ contracts.”The rally had the backing of several local politicians who spoke, including Gale Brewer, the Manhattan borough president, and the New York State Senators Jessica Ramos and Brad Hoylman, who had a message for the Met’s general manager: “Mr. Gelb, could you leave the drama on the stage, please?” More

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      in Theater

      Should the American Theater Take French Lessons?

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      Arts workers are protesting closings and occupying playhouses all over France. On Broadway, that drama has yet to open.The only march you’re likely to see on Broadway this year is the kind with trombones in “The Music Man.”And if you ever hear people say the Majestic Theater has been forcibly occupied, you can be pretty sure they’re referring to “The Phantom of the Opera.”Which is why the news last week that thousands of protesters were marching in France to demand the reopening of theaters there seemed so difficult to comprehend here. Our theaters draw thousands outside only if they are lining up to see the Rockettes inside.Nor were the French merely marching. Dozens of protesters also forced their way into playhouses across the country — including three, in Paris and Strasbourg, designated as national theaters — to demand that cultural institutions, shut down since October, be treated like other businesses, some of which have been allowed to reopen.Also on their agenda: an extension of tax breaks for freelance arts workers, or “travailleurs d’art.”That the phrase “arts workers” (let alone “national theaters”) barely registers in American English is part of a bigger problem here — and suggests a bigger opportunity.The pandemic has been a disaster for the theater, of course, potentially more damaging to performing arts industries than to any other. And yet, in the long run, if there is a long run, how we repair our stages could also lead to long-needed changes that would elevate the people who work on, under and behind them.Not that those workers are likely to endorse the immediate reopening the French are seeking; by a strange quirk of political culture, the push for a return to normalcy at all costs that is a calling card of our right wing seems to be a progressive position there. The protesters — mostly students and actors and other theater workers — frame art-making as a matter of both liberty and labor. They see themselves as frontline workers; one of the signs they carried read: “Opening essential.”Cultural workers protesting the government closure of arts institutions, which are deemed nonessential, during the pandemic.Ian Langsdon/EPA, via ShutterstockHere, the unions representing actors and other theater workers make the opposite argument: They worry that a too-swift reopening for the sake of the economy would expose their members to unacceptable risk. Singing, trumpeting and spitting while speechifying are occupational hazards most other professions don’t face.Which is why, even in states like Texas and Montana that have ended mask mandates and declared themselves open for business without restriction, theaters aren’t on board. The Alley Theater, in Houston, is offering only virtual performances of its new production of “Medea” this month; the season at Montana Repertory Theater, in Missoula, remains a remote one regardless of state rules.But if the specific motivation for the French protests seems unpopular here, the underlying assumptions about art are ones Americans should heed. Begin with how we look at our theater, and how it looks at itself.Even when producing work that becomes a part of the national conversation — “Hamilton,” “Slave Play,” the Public Theater’s Trump-alike “Julius Caesar” in 2017 — our musicals and dramas are too often seen as inconsequential entertainment. The frequent abuse of the phrase “political theater” to describe cheap and manipulative appeals to sentiment tells you in what regard our theater is reflexively held.But if that attitude toward content is uninformed and condescending, the attitude toward the people who create it is worse.There is no tradition in the United States, as there is in France, of treating artists as skilled laborers, deserving of the same respect and protections provided to those who work in other fields. It doesn’t help that American unions are so weak compared to those in France, where nearly all workers are covered by collective bargaining contracts. The comparable figure here has hovered around 12 percent for years.Behind the statistics is an abiding strain of prejudice, dating back to the Puritan settlement, that sees cultural work, especially stage acting, as a species of child’s play or worse. In “An Essay on the Stage,” Timothy Dwight IV, a Yale president in the early 19th century, wrote that those who indulge in playgoing risk “the loss of the most valuable treasure, the immortal soul.”Or as a German character in “Sunday in the Park With George” puts it: “Work is what you do for others, Liebchen. Art is what you do for yourself.”Both attitudes are very nearly backward, but that doesn’t mean they’re not widely maintained even today. Indeed, they are enshrined in the stinginess of American governmental support for the arts, which remains a pittance. Cultural spending per capita in France is about 10 times that in the United States.Which is one reason there are six national theaters in France, not just the three occupied last week. More than 50 other cultural spaces around the country, including the Opera House in Lyon, which students entered on Monday, have now been occupied as well, the protesters say. To occupy a building (while permitting rehearsals within it to continue) may be a misdemeanor, but it is also a sign of love and ownership.It’s hard to imagine such an occupation in the United States; for one thing, there is no national theater. And who would play the role of the actress at the French film industry’s César awards ceremony this weekend who protested her government’s lack of support by stripping off a strange costume — was it a bloody donkey? — to reveal the words “No culture, no future” scrawled across her naked torso?But ours is a country that treasures its cultural heritage without wanting to support the labor that maintains it.Perhaps that’s changing, if less dramatically than in France. Though the pandemic has left many theater artists without work — and, often, without the health insurance that comes with it — the relief bill President Biden signed last week will make it cheaper for them to obtain coverage elsewhere. The bill also includes $470 million in emergency support for arts and cultural institutions.Organizations like Be an #ArtsHero are working to expand that relief even further. And hundreds of theater makers have used their talents to raise millions for organizations, like the Actors Fund, that are helping their colleagues survive the pandemic.But arts workers shouldn’t be remembered just in emergencies and just as charity. Nor should they be remembered solely for their economic impact. It is often argued that Broadway alone contributes $14.7 billion to New York City’s economy, as if that were the point when it is really just the bonus.What the French protests challenge us to consider is that the arts are neither an indulgence nor a distraction; they are fundamental not just to the economy but also to the moral health of a country. They are worth marching for.Surely our theater artists, those highly skilled laborers, can figure out, if anyone can, how to demonstrate that idea — if necessary, in front of the Majestic Theater, with trombones and Rockettes in tow. More

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      Rapper’s Arrest Awakens Rage in Spanish Youth Chafing in Pandemic

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }At HomeWatch: ‘WandaVision’Travel: More SustainablyFreeze: Homemade TreatsCheck Out: Podcasters’ Favorite PodcastsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyRapper’s Arrest Awakens Rage in Spanish Youth Chafing in PandemicNearly two weeks of sometimes violent demonstrations have turned into a collective outcry from young adults who see bleak futures and precious time lost to lockdowns.Protesters marching in support of Pablo Hasél, a controversial Spanish rapper, in Barcelona this week. Credit…Felipe Dana/Associated PressFeb. 27, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETLeer en españolBARCELONA — It had all the markings of a free speech showdown: Pablo Hasél, a controversial Spanish rapper, had barricaded himself on a university campus to avoid a nine-month jail sentence on charges that he had glorified terrorism and denigrated the monarchy. While students surrounded him, police in riot gear moved in; Mr. Hasél raised his fist in defiance as he was taken away.But Oriol Pi, a 21-year-old in Barcelona, saw something more as he watched the events unfold last week on Twitter. He thought of the job he had as an events manager before the pandemic, and how he was laid off after the lockdowns. He thought of the curfew and the mask mandates that he felt were unnecessary for young people. He thought of how his parents’ generation had faced nothing like it.And he thought it was time for Spain’s youth to take to the streets.“My mother thinks this is about Pablo Hasél, but it’s not just that,” said Mr. Pi, who joined the protests that broke out in Barcelona last week. “Everything just exploded. It’s a whole collection of so many things which you have to understand.”“Everything just exploded. It’s a whole collection of so many things which you have to understand,” said Oriol Pi, 21, of the youth demonstrations taking place across Spain. Credit…Samuel Aranda for The New York TimesFor nine nights, this seaside city’s streets, long quiet from pandemic curfews, have erupted in sometimes violent demonstrations that have spread to Madrid and other Spanish hubs. What began as a protest over Mr. Hasél’s prosecution has become a collective outcry by a generation that sees not just a lost future for itself, but also a present that has been robbed, years and experiences it will never get back, even when the pandemic is gone.The frustration of young people stemming from the pandemic is not limited to Spain alone. Across Europe, university life has been deeply curtailed or turned on its head by the limitations of virtual classes.Social isolation is as endemic as the contagion itself. Anxiety and depression have reached alarming rates among young people nearly everywhere, mental health experts and studies have found. The police and mostly young protesters have also clashed in other parts of Europe, including last month in Amsterdam.“It’s not the same now for a person who is 60 — or a 50-year-old with life experience and everything completely organized — as it is for a person who is 18 now and has the feeling that every hour they lose to this pandemic, it’s like losing their entire life,” said Enric Juliana, an opinion columnist with La Vanguardia, Barcelona’s leading newspaper.Barcelona was once a city of music festivals on the beach and all-night bars, leaving few better places in Europe to be young. But the crisis, which devastated tourism and shrank the national economy by 11 percent last year, was a catastrophe for Spain’s young adults.Police officers during clashes following a protest condemning the arrest of Mr. Hasél in Barcelona on Tuesday.Credit…Emilio Morenatti/Associated PressIt is an instance of déjà vu for those who also lived through the financial crisis of 2008, which took one of its heaviest tolls in Spain. Like then, young people have had to move back into the homes of their parents, with entry-level jobs being among the first to vanish.But unlike past economic downturns, the pandemic cut much deeper. It hit at a time when unemployment for people under age 25 was already high in Spain at 30 percent. Now 40 percent of Spain’s youth are unemployed, the highest rate in Europe, according to European Union statistics.For someone like Mr. Pi, the arrest of the rapper Mr. Hasél, and his rage-against-the-machine defiance, has become a symbol of the frustration of Spain’s young people.“I loved that the man left with his fist in the air,” said Mr. Pi, who said he hadn’t heard of the rapper before Spain brought charges against him. “It’s about fighting for your freedom, and he did it to the very last minute.”The case of Mr. Hasél, whose real name is Pablo Rivadulla Duró, is also igniting a debate about free speech and Spain’s efforts to limit it.The authorities charged Mr. Hasél under a law that allows for prison sentences for certain kinds of incendiary statements. Mr. Hasél, known as a provocateur as much as a rapper, had accused the Spanish police of brutality, compared judges to Nazis and even celebrated ETA, a Basque separatist group that folded two years ago after decades of bloody terrorist campaigns that left around 850 people dead.In 2018, a Spanish court sentenced him to two years in prison, though that was later reduced to nine months. The prosecution focused on his Twitter posts and a song he had written about former King Juan Carlos, whom Mr. Hasél had called a “Mafioso,” among other insults. (The former king abdicated in 2014, and decamped Spain entirely last summer for the United Arab Emirates amid a corruption scandal.)“What he’s said at trial is that they put him in prison for saying the truth, because what he says about the king, aside from all the insults, is exactly what happened,” said Fèlix Colomer, a 27-year-old documentary filmmaker who got to know Mr. Hasél while exploring a project about his trial.Fèlix Colomer and his partner, Valeria, at their home in Barcelona on Friday. On some nights, Mr. Colomer has led the Barcelona protests.Credit…Samuel Aranda for The New York TimesMr. Colomer, who on certain nights has led the Barcelona protesters, noted that others have been prosecuted in Spain for social media comments, a troubling sign for Spain’s democracy, in his view. A Spanish rapper known as Valtònyc fled to Belgium in 2018 after getting a prison sentence for his lyrics that a court found glorified terrorism and insulted the monarchy — charges similar to those Mr. Hasél faces.Yet some feel Mr. Hasél crossed a line in his lyrics. José Ignacio Torreblanca, a political science professor at the National Distance Education University in Madrid, said while the law’s use troubled him, Mr. Hasél was not the right figure to build a youth movement around.“He’s no Joan Baez, he’s actively justifying and promoting violence. This is clear in his songs. He says things like, ‘I wish a bomb explodes under your car,’” said Mr. Torreblanca, referring to a song by Mr. Hasél that called for the assassination of a Basque government official and another that said a mayor in Catalonia “deserved a bullet.”Amid public pressure that was growing even before the protests, the Justice Ministry said on Monday that it planned to change the country’s criminal code to reduce sentences related to the kinds of speech violations for which Mr. Hasél was sentenced.But for Nahuel Pérez, a 23-year-old who works in Barcelona taking care of the mentally disabled, freedom for Mr. Hasél is only the start of his concerns.Since arriving in Barcelona five years ago from his hometown on the resort island of Ibiza, Mr. Pérez said, he hasn’t found a job with a salary high enough to cover the cost of living. To save money on rent, he recently moved into an apartment with four other roommates. The close quarters meant social distancing was impossible.Nahuel Pérez, left, with his roommates in their apartment in Barcelona on Friday. “The youth of this country are in a pretty deplorable state,” Mr. Pérez said.Credit…Samuel Aranda for The New York Times“The youth of this country are in a pretty deplorable state,” he said.After Mr. Hasél was arrested at the university, Mr. Pi, who had seen the news on Twitter, began to see people announcing protests on the messaging app Telegram. He told his mother he wanted to go to the demonstrations, but she didn’t seem to quite understand why.“I’m not going to go look for you at the police station,” is what she told him, Mr. Pi said.He thought about what it must have been like for his mother at his age.There was no pandemic. Spain was booming. She was a teacher and married in her 20s to another professional, Mr. Pi’s father. The two found a house and raised a family.Mr. Pi, by contrast, is an adult still living with his mother.“Our parents got all the good fruit and here’s what we’re facing: There’s no fruit in the tree anymore, because they took the best of it,” said Mr. Pi. “Everything that was the good life, the best of Spain — there’s none of that left for us.”When he’s not at the protests, Mr. Pi spends his days working as a hall monitor in a nearby school that operates a mix of online and socially distanced in-person classes.It’s not the career he wanted — not a career at all, he says — but it pays the bills, and lets him talk to high school students to get their outlook on the situation in Spain.He doesn’t mince words about what lies ahead for them.“These are the people who will be me in ten years,” he said. “I think they’re hearing something that no one has ever told them. I would have listened if someone had come to me when I was 12 and said: ‘Listen, you’re going to have to struggle for your future.’”Roser Toll Pifarré contributed reporting from Barcelona, and Raphael Minder from Madrid.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      in Movies

      ‘My Darling Supermarket’ Review: Cosmic Tales From the Checkout Lane

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story‘My Darling Supermarket’ Review: Cosmic Tales From the Checkout LaneThe director Tali Yankelevich applies an experimental flair to her documentary about supermarket workers in Brazil.A scene from the documentary “My Darling Supermarket.”Credit…Cinema TropicalFeb. 25, 2021, 7:00 a.m. ETSomewhere in São Paulo, Brazil, there’s a supermarket that looks awfully familiar. It has white fluorescent lights and endless shopping lanes. Every day, there’s bread to bake and meat to grind. It’s the kind of store you might find anywhere in the world. Yet, by the end of the slight but intriguingly strange documentary “My Darling Supermarket,” it might as well be on Mars.“Just ordinary people doing their jobs — would anyone want to watch that?” chuckles a manager.The director Tali Yankelevich tackles this challenge to mixed results, moving spryly between interviews with employees and observational footage, captured with experimental flair, of the store’s many rote operations.[embedded content]There’s a forklift operator who spends his free time building cities on a cellphone game; a custodian with some decent pipes; a flirty bread maker interested in quantum physics. A standout character is an ebullient baker with dreams of Tokyo, who sometimes wanders the aisles in full anime cosplay.Yankelevich occasionally glimpses deeper truths from her subjects, but it’s easy to wonder what such unfocused portraits communicate beyond the obvious fact that grocery-store workers are humans with personalities, too! Meanwhile, potentially interesting, distinguishing details about Brazilian culture are muted by the director’s commitment to abstraction.Better late than never, the film’s spiritual thrust becomes clear by the third act. The stark symmetry of the shelved merchandise and the eerily dissonant score assumes an otherworldly, ritualistic power when our subjects begin musing on faith and the nature of existence. The cinematographer Gustavo Almeida’s camera glides around the store like a satellite drifting through the interdimensional cosmos. For a spell, I was reminded of what supermarkets felt like as a child: vast alien playgrounds.My Darling SupermarketNot Rated. In Portuguese, with subtitles Running time: 1 hour 20 minutes. Watch on Film Forum’s virtual cinema.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Report: New York City’s Arts and Recreation Employment Down by 66 Percent

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }At HomeBake: Maximalist BrowniesListen: To Pink SweatsGrow: RosesUnwind: With Ambience VideosAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyReport: New York City’s Arts and Recreation Employment Down by 66 PercentThe New York State comptroller’s office details the effects of the pandemic’s devastation and says a full recovery would be made only with government assistance.The arts, entertainment and recreation sector had seen the largest drop of all the parts of the city’s economy, the report says.Credit…David S. Allee for The New York TimesFeb. 24, 2021, 1:59 p.m. ETEmployment in New York City’s arts, entertainment and recreation sector plummeted by 66 percent from December 2019 to December 2020, according to a report released on Wednesday by the New York State Comptroller’s office that detailed the economy’s devastation from the coronavirus and the serious obstacles to recovery.The report from Thomas DiNapoli’s office said that the sector had seen the largest drop of all the parts of the city’s economy. A full comeback, it said, would depend upon significant government assistance.The sector “is a cornerstone of the city’s ability to attract businesses, residents and visitors alike,” the report said. “Yet the sector relies on audiences who gather to take part in shared experiences, and this way of life has been significantly disrupted by the pandemic.”Although nearly all business has been affected by the pandemic, its impact on arts, entertainment and recreation entities has been particularly striking.From 2009 to 2019, employment in the sector — which in this report includes performing arts, spectator sports, gambling, entertainment, recreation, museums, parks and historical sites — grew by 42 percent, faster than the 30 percent rate for total private sector employment.In 2019, according to the report, more than 90,000 people in 6,250 establishments were employed in the arts, entertainment and recreation. Those jobs had an average salary of $79,300 and provided $7.4 billion in total wages. In addition to businesses with employees, the report said, there are a large number of people who were self-employed, including artists and musicians.In February 2020, just before the pandemic shutdown in New York City, nearly 87,000 people were employed in the arts, entertainment and recreation sector there, the report said. Many major institutions announced closures on March 12. A statewide stay-at-home order went into effect on March 22. By April, employment in the sector stood at 34,100 jobs.Budgets at arts and recreation establishments have been “decimated,” the report said, and some organizations and facilities have struggled even as they were able to reopen, saying reduced revenues because of capacity restrictions, as well as diminished ticket sales, have limited income and necessitated budget cuts.Many performing arts venues are still closed. Most Broadway theaters do not expect to reopen until June at the earliest, the report noted, adding that the Metropolitan Opera and the New York City Ballet announced they would not be reopening until September.“Arts and recreation face an uphill climb to recover from the damage wrought,” the report said, adding: “The challenges facing the arts and entertainment sector require direct and impactful support from policymakers to maintain the city’s extensive cultural offerings.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      in Television

      What Frustrated Workers Heard in That Dolly Parton Ad

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyScreenlandWhat Frustrated Workers Heard in That Dolly Parton AdA protest song about degrading work becomes a rousing call to do even more work after that.Credit…Photo illustration by Najeebah Al-GhadbanFeb. 18, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETWe open to shades of gray and beige and what must be the world’s dullest office. In case you didn’t notice the overwhelming tedium, though, there’s help: One actor’s heavy eyelids are dragging his whole body downward, and another, slumped onto one elbow, seems to be collapsing so thoroughly into his desk that he might merge with it. By the time we see papers thudding into the inbox of a young woman — the camera loses focus as she contemplates the files, as if it shares her despair — we’ve gotten the message: Work is where joy goes to die.Then a flicker of hope crosses the woman’s face. She has looked up at the clock, which is moments away from striking 5. She opens her laptop, where we see our first glimpse of real color, in the website for a dance-fitness business she’s starting. After one last edit, she hits publish, then closes the laptop to an office transformed. Her gray sweater is now a red tank top, and she dances past her officemates, all now in bright outfits, converting their cubicles into creative small businesses: an art studio, a bakery, a woodworking shop, a landscaping business that seems to specialize in topiary sculptures, something involving scuba. Their life force is restored, because their jobs and their dreams are now one.The message is familiar, and classically American: bootstraps and businesses, Horatio Alger for the Instagram generation. If this ad — aired by Squarespace, a service for building and hosting websites, during this year’s Super Bowl — had only had a different soundtrack, it might well have been forgotten by Monday.But all this was set to Dolly Parton singing a reimagined version of her famous “9 to 5,” originally written for the hit 1980 comedy of the same name. In that movie, Parton, Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin play office workers who semiaccidentally kidnap their sexist boss and, in his absence, transform their office, offering flexible hours, on-site child care and equal pay for men and women. The movie, in turn, was inspired by real women: a group of Boston secretaries who banded together in 1973 to fight against degrading and unfair working conditions. They are the ones who named their cause after the eight daily hours of their lives they wanted to make better.The updated song moves work into the remaining hours: It’s called “5 to 9,” and it is, according to Squarespace, “a modern rallying cry for all the dreamers working to turn an after-hours passion or project into a career.” The two songs are bizarro images of each other: both feisty and plucky, the same tune with very different messages. In the original lyrics: “They let you dream just to watch them shatter,” and “It’s a rich man’s game no matter what they call it/And you spend your life putting money in his wallet.” Now Parton offers that you could “Change your life, do something that gives it meaning/With a website that is worthy of your dreaming.” By the end, she’s belting: “5 to 9, you keep working, working, working, working.” Where once was righteous outrage at a broken system, there is now self-help. And grinding.After the ad aired, as Squarespace tried to promote the hashtag #5to9, a counterversion appeared: #9to5ShouldBeEnough. The ad clearly felt, to many of its viewers, like yet another glorification of an economy in which people must work more jobs, for ever longer hours, just to survive to the next paycheck — often for gig-economy companies that classify them as “independent” contract laborers, instead of offering the sorts of protected, benefited, living-wage jobs for which the women of the original 9to5 group continue to fight. It didn’t help that the gig-economy mainstays DoorDash and UberEats aired their own Super Bowl ads branding themselves as genial supporters of small businesses. DoorDash used the “Sesame Street” song “People in Your Neighborhood”; UberEats resurrected the tongue-in-cheek anti-corporate message of “Wayne’s World.” Both companies have taken in billions during the pandemic, skimming hefty fees off the struggling local restaurants whose food they deliver.Squarespace’s ad was a little different: Starting your own business is not the same as working in the gig economy, no matter how much gig-economy companies like to frame working for them as “being your own boss.” Still, it’s striking that the jobs in the ad — the sorts of creatively fulfilling jobs that characters have in romantic comedies — are also the sorts that are ever rarer and more untenable in our increasingly corporatized economy. Rather than reflecting the work most people actually do in their second shifts, they offer a dream that papers over reality.‘5 to 9, you keep working, working, working, working.’This was a poor message, AdWeek chided, at a time when “hustle culture feels downright toxic.” Inevitably, though, debate about the ad landed not on Squarespace, but on the shoulders of Parton herself. Was she profiting off the fetishization of an exploitative economy, or was she just another hard-working American with her own side hustle? (There’s an ad within the ad, for Parton’s new fragrance line, which uses a Squarespace site). A Washington Post headline referred to the ad as “Dolly Parton’s betrayal,” while one in Newsweek argued that the ad “Shows We Live in a Dystopia” — but only after cautiously averring that “Dolly Parton Is Awesome.”Parton is beloved for her music, her savvy, her generosity — but also for being the rare celebrity who has managed to rise above the polarization of a country that seems to agree on little except its admiration of her. She is careful not to appear to choose sides in our culture wars, and that circumspection creates a space for us to project, ardently, our own politics onto her choices. Perhaps she was surprised to learn how many people found an ad about hustling after your dream job — the real story of her own hardscrabble-to-superstardom life — to be political. But viewers of the ad saw it in the context of their own experiences: endlessly working, working, working, working.What’s interesting about the two versions of the song isn’t what they tell us about Parton. It’s what they show us about how, four decades later, our economy is still broadly failing the people who toil inside it. The original lyrics offer frustration and disbelief — “What a way to make a living!” — and a clear diagnosis of the problem: companies that aren’t required to respect or take care of their workers. In Squarespace’s hands, the words become “a whole new way to make a living” — a dream of escape, of going out on your own because you’ve given up on an economy that refuses to look out for you.But listeners reacting online kept mishearing that new line. They detected something a lot closer to how they actually experience our economy. Endless hustling, they heard, now offers neither solution nor escape; it is, simply, “the only way to make a living.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      A ‘Great Cultural Depression’ Looms for Legions of Unemployed Performers

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyA ‘Great Cultural Depression’ Looms for Legions of Unemployed PerformersWith theaters and concert halls shuttered, unemployment in the arts has cut deeper than in restaurants and other hard-hit industries.Soon after the pandemic struck, a year’s worth of bookings vanished for the acclaimed violinist Jennifer Koh, who found herself streaming concerts from her apartment.Credit…Elias Williams for The New York TimesDec. 26, 2020Updated 5:32 a.m. ETIn the top echelons of classical music, the violinist Jennifer Koh is by any measure a star.With a dazzling technique, she has ridden a career that any aspiring Juilliard grad would dream about — appearing with leading orchestras, recording new works, and performing on some of the world’s most prestigious stages.Now, nine months into a contagion that has halted most public gatherings and decimated the performing arts, Ms. Koh, who watched a year’s worth of bookings evaporate, is playing music from her living room and receiving food stamps.[embedded content]Pain can be found in nearly every nook of the economy. Millions of people have lost their jobs and tens of thousands of businesses have closed since the coronavirus pandemic spread across the United States. But even in these extraordinary times, the losses in the performing arts and related sectors have been staggering.During the quarter ending in September, when the overall unemployment rate averaged 8.5 percent, 52 percent of actors, 55 percent of dancers and 27 percent of musicians were out of work, according to the National Endowment for the Arts. By comparison, the jobless rate was 27 percent for waiters; 19 percent for cooks; and about 13 percent for retail salespeople over the same period.In many areas, arts venues — theaters, clubs, performance spaces, concert halls, festivals — were the first businesses to close, and they are likely to be among the last to reopen. “My fear is we’re not just losing jobs, we’re losing careers,” said Adam Krauthamer, president of Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians in New York. He said 95 percent of the local’s 7,000 members are not working on a regular basis because of the mandated shutdown. “It will create a great cultural depression,” he said.The new $15 billion worth of stimulus aid for performance venues and cultural institutions that Congress approved this week — which was thrown into limbo after President Trump criticized the bill — will not end the mass unemployment for performers anytime soon. And it only extends federal unemployment aid through mid-March.The public may think of performers as A-list celebrities, but most never get near a red carpet or an awards show. The overwhelming majority, even in the best times, don’t benefit from Hollywood-size paychecks or institutional backing. They work season to season, weekend to weekend or day to day, moving from one gig to the next.The median annual salary for full-time musicians and singers was $42,800; it was $40,500 for actors; and $36,500 for dancers and choreographers, according to a National Endowment for the Arts analysis. Many artists work other jobs to cobble together a living, often in the restaurant, retail and hospitality industries — where work has also dried up.They are an integral part of local economies and communities in every corner of rural, suburban and urban America, and they are seeing their life’s work and livelihoods suddenly vanish. Terry Burrell, an actor and singer in Atlanta, saw the tour of her show “Angry, Raucous and Gorgeously Shameless” canceled after the virus struck.Credit…Lynsey Weatherspoon for The New York Times“We’re talking about a year’s worth of work that just went away,” said Terry Burrell, whose touring show, “Angry, Raucous and Gorgeously Shameless,” was canceled. Now she is home with her husband in Atlanta, collecting unemployment insurance, and hoping she won’t have to dip into her 401(k) retirement account.Linda Jean Stokley, a fiddler and part of the Kentucky duo the Local Honeys with Monica Hobbs, said, “We’re resilient and are used to not having regular paychecks.” But since March hardly anyone has paid even the minor fees required by their contracts, she said: “Someone owed us $75 and wouldn’t even pay.”Then there’s Tim Wu, 31, a D.J., singer and producer, who normally puts on around 100 shows a year as Elephante at colleges, festivals and nightclubs. He was in Ann Arbor, Mich., doing a sound check for a new show called “Diplomacy” in mid-March when New York shut down. Mr. Wu returned to Los Angeles the next day. All his other bookings were canceled — and most of his income.Mr. Wu, and hundreds of thousands of freelancers like him, are not the only ones taking a hit. The broader arts and culture sector that includes Hollywood and publishing constitutes an $878 billion industry that is a bigger part of the American economy than sports, transportation, construction or agriculture. The sector supports 5.1 million wage and salary jobs, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. They include agents, makeup artists, hair stylists, tailors, janitors, stage hands, ushers, electricians, sound engineers, concession sellers, camera operators, administrators, construction crews, designers, writers, directors and more. “If cities are going to rebound, they’re not going to do it without arts and cultural creatives,” said Richard Florida, a professor at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management and School of Cities.Steph Simon, a hip-hop artist from Tulsa, had been booked to perform at South by Southwest when the virus hit and eliminated the rest of his gigs for the year. Credit…September Dawn Bottoms/The New York TimesThis year, Steph Simon, 33, of Tulsa, finally started working full time as a hip-hop musician after a decade of minimum-wage jobs cleaning carpets or answering phones to pay the bills.He was selected to perform at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, played regular gigs at home and on tour, and produced “Fire in Little Africa,” an album commemorating the 1921 massacre of Black residents of Tulsa by white rioters.“This was projected to be my biggest year financially,” said Mr. Simon, who lives with his girlfriend and his two daughters, and was earning about $2,500 a month as a musician. “Then the world shut down,” he said. A week after the festival was canceled, he was back working as a call center operator, this time at home, for about 40 hours a week, with a part-time job at a fast-food restaurant on the weekends.In November, on his birthday, he caught Covid-19, but has since recovered.Performers on payrolls have suffered, too. With years of catch-as-catch-can acting gigs and commercials behind her, Robyn Clark started working as a performer at Disneyland after the last recession. She has been playing a series of characters in the park’s California Adventure — Phiphi the photographer, Molly the messenger and Donna the Dog Lady — several times a week, doing six shows a day.“It was the first time in my life I had security,” Ms. Clark said. It was also the first time she had health insurance, paid sick leave and vacation.In March, she was furloughed, though Disney is continuing to cover her health insurance.“I have unemployment and a generous family,” said Ms. Clark, explaining how she has managed to continue paying for rent and food.Many performers are relying on charity. The Actors Fund, a service organization for the arts, has raised and distributed $18 million since the pandemic started for basic living expenses to 14,500 people.“I’ve been at the Actors Fund for 36 years,” said Barbara S. Davis, the chief operating officer. “Through September 11th, Hurricane Katrina, the 2008 recession, industry shutdowns. There’s clearly nothing that compares to this.”Higher-paid television and film actors have more of a cushion, but they, too, have endured disappointments and lost opportunities. Jack Cutmore-Scott and Meaghan Rath, now his wife, had just been cast in a new CBS pilot, “Jury Duty,” when the pandemic shut down filming.“I’d had my costume fitting and we were about to go and do the table read the following week, but we never made it,” Mr. Cutmore-Scott said. After several postponements, they heard in September that CBS was bailing out altogether.Many live performers have looked for new ways to pursue their art, turning to video, streaming and other platforms. Carla Gover’s tour of dancing to and playing traditional Appalachian music as well as a folk opera she composed, “Cornbread and Tortillas,” were all canceled. “I had some long dark nights of the soul trying to envision what I could do,” said Ms. Gover, wholives in Lexington, Ky., and has three children.She started writing weekly emails to all her contacts, sharing videos and offering online classes in flatfoot dancing and clogging. The response was enthusiastic. “I figured out how to use hashtags and now I have a new kind of business,” Ms. Gover said.But if technology enables some artists to share their work, it doesn’t necessarily help them earn much or even any money.The violinist Ms. Koh, known for her devotion to promoting new artists and music, donated her time to create the “Alone Together” project, raising donations to commission compositions and then performing them over Instagram from her apartment.The project was widely praised, but as Ms. Koh said, it doesn’t produce income. “I am lucky,” Ms. Koh insisted. Unlike many of her friends and colleagues, she managed to hang onto her health insurance thanks to a teaching gig at the New School, and she got a forbearance on her mortgage payments through March. Many engagements have also been rescheduled — if not until 2022.She ticks off the list of friends and colleagues who have had to move out of their homes or have lost their health insurance, their income and nearly every bit of their work.“It’s just decimating the field,” she said. “It concerns me when I look at the future.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More