Atlantic Monthly Contributors's Blog, page 241

Grease: Live Makes the Best Case Yet for the TV Musical

At the end of Grease: Live, when the cast of the three-hour televised production bounded offstage, loaded into branded golf carts, and drove through the rain to get to a vast, arena-sized funfair, singing all the while, it felt like Fox giving a polite but pointed middle finger to NBC. It was, after all, the peacock network who kickstarted the live musical event™ revival with 2013’s The Sound of Music Live!, but it was Fox who proved definitively on Sunday night that the genre can be something other than fodder for hate-watching and tweetable moments.

There are a considerable number of reasons why this might be: The direction by Thomas Kail, better-known for a musical you’ve perchance heard of about one of the Founding Fathers that rhymes with schmamilton; the cast; the fact that Grease, being the highest-grossing movie musical of all time, is simply a better product to work with than, say, the eccentrically dorky Peter Pan. But the one factor that seemed to work in Fox’s favor more than any other came from something NBC has now thrice eschewed: an audience. The presence of teenage spectators, who did double duty throughout the night playing extras in gym scenes or crowds at a pep rally, gave Grease: Live an energy that all its forebears have lacked, despite the zingy exclamation point NBC tacks on to the title of all its Live! events.

What was so remarkable about the production was how adept Kail, a theater director, seemed to be with the medium of television. NBC’s three live musicals have been shot on a closed soundstage in Queens, incorporating the worst elements of high-concept theatrical shows (endless rehearsal time, low-rate special effects) and network television specials (ridiculously frequent ad breaks, stilted acting). Kail, by contrast, filmed Grease: Live on 22 acres of outdoor space at the Warner Bros. Studio lot in Los Angeles, allowing cameras to zip between scenes, through sets, and around the actors as they hand-jived in the gymnasium and high-kicked at cheerleading practice outside the school.

In some ways, the production felt like a faithful remake of the 1978 movie adaptation starring Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta, scaled out to meet its actors’ most long-cherished musical-theater dreams (and with its more risqué lyrics pruned for younger viewers). Julianne Hough, a TV veteran at the tender age of 27 thanks to her recurring appearances on Dancing With the Stars, played the doe-eyed ingenue Sandy, with her backstory edited to better reflect Hough’s (she’s from Salt Lake City, not Australia). The Broadway star Aaron Tveit played the greaser Danny Zuko, and if he left viewers occasionally longing for some of Travolta’s edge, both he and Hough proved to be powerful performers, with an extra cheerleading scene thrown in to showcase Hough’s dance skills.

Still, Grease is truly an ensemble piece, and the cast Kail assembled around his two leads almost threatened to obscure them. The actress and singer Keke Palmer, playing Marty, simply crushed a fantasy scene inserted into a sleepover, where the song “Freddy My Love” became a USO show spectacular for Marty to entertain the troops. As Rizzo, Vanessa Hudgens (High School Musical) demonstrated the theatrical chops that recently earned her the starring role in an ill-fated Broadway revival of Gigi, capturing her character’s combination of ice-cool composure and crushing insecurity. The former Saturday Night Live star Ana Gasteyer and Haneefah Wood, as Principal McGee and her much-maligned assistant, Blanche, acted as superb comic relief, although the script’s Cold War-era zingers about fallout shelters and “duck and cover” training possibly went over the heads of younger viewers who’d tuned in to see Joe Jonas.

About that: Jonas was mostly relegated to eye candy with his band, playing jive numbers amid punch-spiking and dirty dancing and the ritual humiliation of Patty Simcox (the aptly hyperactive Elle McLemore). But for anyone who missed him, there was Carly Rae Jepsen as Frenchy, singing the show’s only clunker of the night, a new song called “All I Need Is an Angel” that seemed like a glaring tonal error. And for (slightly) more mature viewers, there was Boyz II Men, a few decades older but no less deft with the harmonies, joining forces to play Teen Angel. If there were to be a critique of this moment, which only the most mean-spirited person could offer, it would be that Boyz II Men are lovers, not haters, and thus the acerbic nature of Teen Angel’s wisdom (“spending all that dough to have the doctor fix your nose up”) was mostly lost amid the soulfulness.

Still: Boyz II Men. And Mario Lopez, playing Vince Fontaine. And Jessie J, kicking off proceedings in a tube top singing the title song. And Grease’s original Frenchy, Didi Conn, playing Vi the diner waitress, and its original Doody, Barry Pearl, playing Mr. Weaver. And Wendell Pierce (The Wire’s Bunk Moreland) as Coach Calhoun. It’s like Fox took all the best elements of the British pantomime tradition (aggressive celebrity cameos, audience interaction) and fused them with big-budget movie-making and Tony-winning direction to make a musical-theater experience NBC could never, ever top.

But Grease: Live was also a reminder that casting goes a long way. No small amount of Laura Benanti can make up for a Maria who’s more wooden than an alpine skiing lodge, and for the most part, Kail’s main ensemble boasted serious live-theater chops. It remains to be seen whether Fox’s upcoming The Rocky Horror Picture Show Event or a Tyler Perry-hosted live production of The Passion will emulate this success. But for now, the network has shown what can be done with live theatrical events, and set the bar higher than many skeptics (ahem) might have ever imagined possible.

An Emergency Meeting on the Zika Virus

Updated on February 1 at 1:29 p.m. ET

The World Health Organization has labeled the Zika virus a public health emergency of international concern—a classification will result in a global response to the virus that has been linked to certain birth defects.

WHO Director-General Dr Margaret Chan: #ZikaVirus & #microcephaly situation is a Public Health Emergency of Intl Concern #alert

— WHO (@WHO) February 1, 2016

Such a designation, which was made Monday in Geneva, is rare. The WHO previously declared it during the H1N1 swine flu outbreak in 2009; the Ebola outbreak in 2014; and for the resurgence of polio in Syria that same year. But Zika’s quick spread to the Americas has many health experts worried.   

The virus, which was first isolated in Uganda in 1947, spreads to humans through mosquito bites. For decades, the virus was mostly restricted to equatorial parts of Africa and Asia, but over the past decade spread to the Pacific islands. Last year, it was detected in the Americas (in Brazil), WHO says, where it “is now spreading explosively.” It has now been reported in 23 countries and territories in the region.

The illness caused by Zika is itself usually mild, the CDC says. Symptoms—including fever, rash, joint pain, and conjunctivitis—last for up to a week. But the arrival of the disease in the Americas has been linked to an increase in the birth of babies with abnormally small heads and in cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome. The WHO says though a causal relationship between Zika and birth malformations and neurological syndromes has not yet been established, it is “strongly suspected.”

“The level of alarm is extremely high,” Margaret Chan, WHO’s director-general, said last week in Geneva.

Writing on CNN, Tom Frieden, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said though most people in the contiguous U.S. are unlikely to ever come into contact with the virus, those living in Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Caribbean or Pacific territories, and Central and South America are likely to see an increasing spread of Zika.

A Historic Day in Burma

After more than 50 years of military rule, Burma has sworn in hundreds of lawmakers in the country’s first democratically elected parliament.

The inaugural session on Monday in Nay Pyi Taw, the capital, came three months after the National League for Democracy (NLD), the party of Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, won 80 percent of contested seats in the two-house parliament, defeating the junta-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party. The country, also known as Myanmar, has been under army control since 1962.

Old and new lawmakers marked the transition with dance, karaoke, and jokes in the parliament chambers Friday, reported EFE, the Spanish news agency.

NLD members, including Suu Kyi, had been imprisoned for years by the ruling junta. The party previously won elections in 1990, but the military government voided the results and placed Suu Kyi under house arrest for 15 years.

“I never imagined that our party would be able to form the government,” Khin Maung Myint, an NLD member, told the Associated Press Monday. “Even the public didn’t think we could have an NLD government. But now it is like a shock to us and to the world, too.”

A quarter of the 664-seat parliament remains reserved for military. Members of smaller, non-military parties were also sworn in Monday.

One of the first orders of business for the new parliament will be to choose a new president when Thein Sein, a general who was handpicked by the junta in 2011 but considered a reformist, steps down at the end of March. The majority party has not yet named a candidate. Under Burmese law, Suu Kyi cannot take the job herself; the constitution, drafted by the military government, includes a provision that bars individuals with foreign children—like Suu Kyi, whose sons were born in Britain and hold British citizenship—from the post. In the days before the election last fall, Suu Kyi dismissed the provision as a technicality and said she would be “above the president.”

“I’ll make all the decisions, it’s as simple as all that,” she told the BBC.

In an interview with BBC a month after her party won the election, Suu Kyi said the people of Burma were now “far more politicized” than in previous years. She said the existence of the Internet played a significant role in keeping the election fairly free and fair.

“Everybody gets onto the ’net and informs everybody else of what is happening,” she said. “It’s much more difficult for those who wish to engage in irregularities to get away with it.

Still, Suu Kyi, the NLD, and the country face major challenges, not least among them high expectations from a population that has been repressed for years, as well as unrest in parts of the country, and ethnic divisions that pit Burma’s Buddhist majority against, among others, the Muslim minority Rohingya.    

The 2016 SAG Awards: The Anti-Oscars

It used to be that the procession of awards shows leading up to the Oscars each year were only noteworthy insomuch as they pointed at who might take the prize at the final event of the season. The Golden Globes, the Critics Choice Awards, and the BAFTAs have long seemed almost averse to making radical or offbeat choices, possibly because they hoped to cement their own significance by offering a preview of who might win the Academy Awards. But as the narrative of this year’s Oscar season has focused on the overwhelming whiteness of that show’s nominees, its smaller siblings have seemed to directly challenge its supremacy. This was particularly plain to see at Saturday’s Screen Actors Guild Awards, where Idris Elba, Queen Latifah, Viola Davis, and Uzo Aduba were among the night’s winners.

Related Story

Why the Oscars Had to Change

Awards season has never been more of a chore—more and more ceremonies are being televised, presenting the same tired film clips week after week to diminishing audiences. But if they’re going to continue (and given advertisers’ love for live televised events you can’t fast-forward through, they will), at least they can serve as pushback to the Oscars, rather than reinforcement. The SAGs, voted on by the 160,000 film, TV, and radio actors of the SAG-AFTRA union, complicated the Oscar race by giving their top prize to Spotlight, and by awarding a coterie of talented actors of color, none of whom will walk the Oscar stage on February 28th.  

It helps that the SAGs hand out awards for television as well as film, but Elba’s win for Best Supporting Actor in Beasts of No Nation felt like a particular jab at the Academy. SAG voting ballots were submitted two weeks after the Oscar nominations were announced, prompting uproar over the fact that all 20 acting nominees were white for the second year in a row. Elba won two awards—collecting one for his work in the BBC TV series Luther—and even winked at the controversy onstage, joking, “Welcome to diverse TV.”

Elba was the actor of color most predicted would make this year’s Oscar ballot, having been nominated for a Golden Globe, a SAG, and a BAFTA, which usually forms an unstoppable combination of precursor nods. But he missed out, along with actors like Michael B. Jordan, Benicio Del Toro, and Oscar Isaac who were on the fringes of the race. As a result, the biggest night in Hollywood turned into an event worthy of boycotting. Perhaps just as strangely, the SAGs didn’t nominate the expected Oscar frontrunner in Best Supporting Actor—Sylvester Stallone in Creed—and so Elba had a path to the award.

Awards ceremonies should serve as some sort of pushback to the Oscars, rather than a reinforcement.

Aduba won for her work on Orange Is the New Black (Female Actor in a Comedy Series), as did Latifah for the HBO movie Bessie (Female Actor in a Television Movie or Miniseries), and Davis repeated her 2015 Emmy win for How to Get Away With Murder (Female Actor in a Drama Series). Her speech focused more on her role in the show, but her comments backstage built on her powerful words from last September. “We have become a society of trending topics. Diversity is not a trending topic. It’s just not,” she told reporters, continuing:

I felt like I could play Chekhov, any character in Chekhov and Shakespeare in Arthur Miller, in August Wilson. I see myself as an actor. No matter what is going on in the business, I will find a way to practice my art, and all of the actors of color who I know don’t place any limitations on themselves either. So regardless of what is going on with the Academy, regardless of what is going on in Hollywood, they will find a way to be excellent. We always have and we always will.

Davis’s point about “trending topics” felt especially salient—diversity is the buzzword of this year’s awards season—but could still be ignored in future years, especially if the Academy’s rule changes don’t have an immediate impact. Either way, awards ceremonies more and more serve as a dramatic stage for publicly asking these tough questions, and one of the Oscars’ losses is that its expected winners will have little to contribute on that front. Outside of Best Supporting Actor, the SAGs anointed two favored candidates for big trophies later in the month: Leonardo DiCaprio for The Revenant (Lead Actor) and Brie Larson for Room (Lead Actress). Alicia Vikander was named Best Supporting Actress for The Danish Girl, which marks her the likely winner in a more confused category.

But the biggest shock of the night from a prognostication standpoint was Best Ensemble going to Spotlight, the acclaimed journalism drama that has long been considered an Oscar favorite but didn’t have many major precursor awards under its belt. The Golden Globes named The Martian and The Revenant Best Picture, while the influential Producers Guild of America Award (which has picked every Oscar winner in the last 10 years, save one) went to The Big Short. Next up is the Directors Guild, which also has a strong track record picking the Best Picture Oscar. If that goes to George Miller for Mad Max: Fury Road (a strong possibility), then we’ll be going into the big show with no real sense of a favorite. For all the tiring repetitiveness of red carpets, dramatic clips, and emotional speeches, at least this year’s Oscar-lead up has offered up something different.

How Many Muslims Will Vote for Donald Trump?

Throughout the presidential campaign, Donald Trump has promised he’ll win a yuuuge portion of the minority vote. That would defy history, as well as every common-sense understanding of his campaign as a vehicle for working-class white grievance. No Republican has cracked 17 percent of the black vote since Gerald Ford. One would expect things to be even worse among Hispanics, given Trump’s hardline on immigration, and among Muslims. Trump has endorsed a national registry of Muslims and suggested banning them from entering the country—even, perhaps, Muslim Americans who have been traveling abroad.

That makes the finding of a new survey of Muslim voters particularly remarkable: Incredibly, he’s third in the race, and top among Republican contenders, according to a new study from the Council on American-Islamic Relations. About 7.5 percent of those surveyed said they support Trump—though that trails far behind Hillary Clinton (52 percent) and Bernie Sanders (22 percent).

Related Story

How Republicans Won and Then Lost the Muslim Vote

That’s the most surprising finding from the survey, though it should be taken with several grains of salt. Trump’s surprisingly high standing may have more to do with his own name recognition than with real, enduring support. Moreover, the result comes from a survey rather than a formal poll. CAIR identified 2,000 people who it believed were Muslim voters by matching voter rolls with a list of traditional Muslim first and last times. The respondents were chosen from the six states with the highest Muslim populations: California, New York, Illinois, Florida, Texas, and Virginia.

That means the survey may not have the scientific accuracy of a Gallup poll, but it may be the best snapshot we’ll get of the Muslim vote in 2016. There isn’t much good polling on Muslims in the U.S. The number of Muslim voters is still small—perhaps 2 million—but it’s expected to double by 2050. Muslim voters are also thought to have strong turnout, and, in fact, CAIR’s survey found that 74 percent of the registered voters polled intend to vote in this year’s election.

Given the increasingly polarized state of the electorate, blocs like Muslim Americans can take on outsize importance—and they have shown themselves to be swing voters. Prior to the 2000 election, Muslims tended to be a fairly splintered group, often voting more based on ethnicity than a shared religious identity. During that race, George W. Bush made Muslim outreach a priority, and he did well with the bloc. But following the attacks of September 11, 2001, the Muslim vote has swung strongly toward Democrats, driven by opposition to wars in the Middle East and concerns about civil liberties and Islamophobia stateside.

This survey supports many of those trends. Two-thirds of respondents identified themselves as Democrats, versus just 15 percent Republicans. Meanwhile, about three in 10 respondents identified Islamophobia as their No. 1 concern in the election, trailed by the economy, health care, civil liberties, foreign affairs, and education. The economy and health care also tend to be top issues for the population at large.

It’s the Trump finding that really sticks out. Since the Bush campaign in 2000, the Republican Party has become increasingly strident in its rhetoric about Islam—from opposing the so-called Ground Zero mosque to the argument that Syrian refugees are likely to spread terror in the United States. But the approach has hardly been unanimous. Chris Christie has a history of outreach to New Jersey Muslims, though he has backed away from those ties somewhat during the campaign. Jeb Bush has attacked Trump for his proposed Muslim-immigration ban. And how do they place? Bush runs third among Republicans, while Christie is much further back. Given the small number of GOP voters in the sample, these numbers may be pretty muddy. What’s clear is that Trump, no matter how outrageous his comments may be, tops the Republican field in the CAIR survey. In that respect, Muslims voters don’t seem different from the overall electorate.

Boko Haram Strikes Again

An attack by Boko Haram militants on a village in northeastern Nigeria has killed as many as 86 people.

Survivors described in gruesome detail the attack on Dalori village on Saturday. Alamin Bakura, one of those who survived, told The Associated Press the militants firebombed huts, and that he could hear the screams of children who were burned to death. The AP, citing witnesses and soldiers at the village, put the toll at 86. Other news organizations reported a lower toll: Reuters said at least 65 people were killed and AFP put the number of dead at 50.

The village of Dalori and two nearby camps house about 25,000 refugees, and the area is about 3 miles from Maiduguri, where Boko Haram was born.

Government troops who arrived at the village later on Saturday were unable to push the militants back, but reinforcements, which arrived later, prompted a retreat by Boko Haram, the AP reported.

Reuters adds:

It was the third attack this week suspected to have been carried out by the insurgent group - and the most deadly. Since it started losing control of territory, Boko Haram has reverted to hit-and-run attacks on villages as well as suicide bombings on places of worship or markets.

Borno state, where the attack occurred, is at the heart of Boko Haram’s fight to set up an Islamic state. More than 2 million people have been displaced and thousands killed in the uprising.

Deadly Explosions in Syria

Updated on January 31 at 1:49 p.m. ET

At least 45 people have been killed in three explosions—two suicide attacks and a car bomb—near a Shiite shrine south of Damascus, the Syrian government said Sunday. The blasts, which were claimed by the Islamic State, came amid a UN attempt to mediate peace talks between the government of President Bashar al-Assad and opposition groups.

SANA, the state-run Syrian news agency, quoted an Interior Ministry source as saying the explosions hit the Koua Soudan neighborhood near the shrine of Sayyida Zeinab. The car bomb went off at a bus station in the area and, SANA reported, when locals gathered to help victims, two suicide bombers blew themselves up. The agency said at least 110 people were wounded in the attacks.

The shrine of Sayyida Zeinab is said to contain the grave of the Prophet Muhammad’s granddaughter. It is revered by Shiites and, despite the fighting in Syria, continues to be a major center of pilgrimage. The shrine, the area around which is controlled by the Syrian government and Hezbollah, was previously targeted in February 2015.

ISIS, as the Islamic State is also known, claimed responsibility for Sunday’s attacks, which came as representatives of Syria’s government and its opposition began gathering in Geneva for indirect, UN-mediated talks. The future of those talks are uncertain. Two of the group’s that will be gathering in Geneva are Ahrar al-Sham and the Army of Islam, which Assad’s government views as terrorist organizations.

Staffan de Mistura, the UN special envoy to Syria, met Friday with the Syrian government delegation. The opposition delegation, which is scheduled to meet with him on Sunday, said it won’t take part in the talks until its demands are met, the AP reported. Those include lifting the government’s siege on rebel-held areas and an end to the bombardment by Russia and Syria of areas the rebels control.

After meeting with members of the opposition on Sunday, De Mistura said they have been “exchanging with me some of their own ideas and they will let you know and let me know when and how they can be part of this exercise.”

In Washington, John Kerry, the U.S. Secretary of State, called the conflict a “humanitarian catastrophe unmatched since World War II,” and appealed to “both sides to make the most of this moment.”

The UN hopes the talks will lead to a cease-fire followed by a political settlement to a civil war that has killed more than 200,000 people, displaced millions from their homes, and created a humanitarian disaster.

Who Should Pay for the Arts in America?

One morning last August I visited Williams College in Massachusetts to teach a workshop on “building a life in the arts” with a group of racially, geographically, and economically diverse young people working at the Williamstown Theatre Festival. Later that night I attended a show at the theater, where I saw these idealistic apprentices taking tickets from, ushering, and selling merchandise to an overwhelmingly white audience—mostly over 60 and, judging by appearances, quite well-off. The social and cultural distance between the aspiring artists at Williamstown and their theater-going audience couldn’t have been more pronounced. This gulf is quite familiar to most producers and practitioners of the performing arts in America; it plays out nightly at regional theaters, ballets, symphonies, and operas across the country.

The current state of the arts in this country is a microcosm of the state of the nation. Large, mainstream arts institutions, founded to serve the public good and assigned non-profit status to do so, have come to resemble exclusive country clubs. Meanwhile, outside their walls, a dynamic new generation of artists, and the diverse communities where they live and work, are being systematically denied access to resources and cultural legitimation.

Fifty years ago, the National Endowment for the Arts was created to address just such inequity. On September 29, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the National Endowment for the Arts into existence, along with a suite of other ambitious social programs, all under the rubric of the Great Society. Johnson imagined these programs as ways to serve “not only the needs of the body and the demands of commerce but the desire for beauty and the hunger for community.”

Half a century later, the ethos upon which the NEA was founded—inclusion and community—has been eroded by consistent political attack. As the NEA’s budget has been slashed, private donors and foundations have jumped in to fill the gap, but the institutions they support, and that receive the bulk of arts funding in this country, aren’t reaching the people the NEA was founded to help serve. The arts aren’t dead, but the system by which they are funded is increasingly becoming as unequal as America itself.

* * *

Despite early—and not inaccurate—accusations of elitism, the NEA has been a huge success. It leveled the playing field for countless arts organizations, particularly in African American and rural communities, which were often considered “too grassroots” to be funded by private or corporate philanthropy. By providing crucial financial support and cultural capital to such organizations as Philadelphia’s Philadanco and the Dallas Black Dance Theatre, the NEA counteracted a kind of philanthropic redlining. As a result, these smaller groups enjoyed a reputation boost, and eventually drew the attention of local agencies and private foundations that had previously ignored them. As The Washington Post’s Philip Kennicott has written, “If you want to understand Johnson’s cultural agenda, you have to see it not as an appendage but integrally related to the War on Poverty and the Civil Rights Act of 1964.”

For almost two decades, public arts funding was stable. But after the 1980 presidential election the NEA found itself under attack. As Ronald Reagan radically reworked the tax code to favor the wealthy and set precedents for union busting and deregulation across multiple sectors, he also went after the NEA. One of the first proposals by Reagan’s budget director, David Stockman, was to slash the NEA’s budget in half. The arts served as a canary in the coalmine for the devastation of federal funding for social services that began with Reagan and continues to this day.

The arts aren’t dead, but the system by which they are funded is increasingly becoming as unequal as America itself.

In other words: Attacking the arts was a stealth strategy for Stockman and his ilk to articulate conservative antipathy towards the federal government specifically, and the public sector generally. Stockman’s goal was finally realized in 1995—under the Clinton administration—when the NEA’s budget and staff were cut by 50 percent, disproportionately affecting minority and disadvantaged communities that couldn’t turn to individual mega-donors or corporate foundations to fill the gap. As a result, arts funding became more dependent on private dollars than ever before—in line with Stockman’s vision.

As of 2012, the non-profit arts economy in the U.S. comprised about 40,000 arts organizations with budgets over $25,000, and another 70,000 groups with budgets less than this amount.  (Groups with budgets less than $25,000 aren’t required to file form 990s with the IRS, so little aggregate data exists about these organizations.) The non-profit arts economy for these larger groups has expanded significantly since the NEA’s budget was slashed in 1995: According to the National Center for Charitable Statistics, revenue increased from approximately $14 billion to $31 billion in 2012. However,  based on estimates from the NCCS and from Steven Lawrence, head of research at the Foundation Center, the distribution of funding has changed dramatically since 1995.

As of 2012, the largest source of revenue for the arts was individual giving, which at $13 billion a year makes up 42 percent of the total. That’s an inflation-adjusted increase of 67 percent since 1995. Earned income (i.e. ticket sales and subscriptions) made up another 41 percent of total revenue at $12.7 billion (up 37 percent since 1995, in adjusted dollars). Private foundation support provided an estimated 13 percent ($4 billion, up 56 percent since 1995).

As of 2014, only 4 percent of all arts funding in America ($1.2 billion) comes from public sources. While funding has increased numerically, it has not kept up with inflation, leading to a decrease of around 26 percent in public art grant money since 1995.

“There’s a structure in place that has kept opportunity away from certain folks,” says Janet Brown, the president of Grantmakers in the Arts, a national consortium of groups that help fund the arts. “A lot of organizations and communities are as impoverished today as they were years ago.”

The DeVos Institute of Arts Management at the University of Maryland recently released a report titled “Diversity in the Arts” looking at this disparity. The report was offered as a “wake-up call” to address inequality in the field, but that phrasing seems deceptive. The report recommends that funders actually support fewer minority organizations, giving “larger grants to a smaller cohort that can manage themselves effectively, make the best art, and have the biggest impact on their communities.” They cite as evidence a study that finds the median percentage of individual donations to black and Latino arts groups was five percent, where “the norm” is about 60 percent for large, “mainstream” (read: white) arts organizations.

Art happens in communities everywhere, not only in symphony halls, opera houses, and regional theaters.

The fact that minority and community-based groups are “plagued by chronic financial difficulties” is undisputed. But what isn’t being acknowledged is that these difficulties are the result of systemic economic inequality. It should come as no surprise that people in minority, disenfranchised, and rural communities don’t usually have access to millionaires and billionaires who they can cultivate as donors. Nor should it shock that these organizations will suffer if the public-funding system that was helping them build capacity, gain cultural legitimacy, and become sustainable is decimated.

According to a 2011 report prepared by the researcher and arts advocate Holly Sidford for the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, 55 percent of contributed income in 2009 (gifts and grants) went to the two percent of arts organizations with budgets over $5 million. “It’s only gotten worse, actually,” Sidford told me recently. Statistics from the NCCS indicate that in 2012, one percent of arts organizations—those with budgets over $10 million—received close to 50 percent of all contributed funding for the arts. “Not only do the big institutions continue to get the bulk of the revenue,” says Sidford, “but their portion of the total is going up.”

The disproportionate allotment of funding to large, conservative, Eurocentric arts organizations is accepted by default and justified—or so the common wisdom goes—because organizations like Lincoln Center or the Kennedy Center serve so many more people than the smaller ones. In fact, the numbers tell a different story.

According to the NCCS’s statistics, out of the approximately 40,000 arts organization in the country with budgets over $25,000 per year, there are approximately 450 organizations whose budgets are over $10 million. That means that there are 39,570 organizations who, “even if they are only serving on average 1,000 people a year, in aggregate are serving significantly greater numbers of people,” says Sidford. Given these structural impediments to equity, it isn’t surprising that the sector’s definition of what legitimately constitutes “the arts” doesn’t reflect America’s evolving demographics.

“We need to get back to that place where when we say ‘the arts’ to someone, their mind doesn’t immediately go to a big-box building downtown where it costs you $160 to go,” says Janet Brown.

The NEA’s current chairperson, Jane Chu, is an accomplished pianist as well as a seasoned arts advocate, but she also has some personal experience of the incalculable value of exposure to the arts. Chu’s mother fled Communist China as a teenager and left her family behind to come to the United States. Chu’s father was a student in the U.S. who stayed rather than return to China, eventually becoming a professor in Oklahoma, where Chu was born. “I’ve navigated my whole life through opposing perspectives,” Chu says. “My parents … felt very strongly that the way for me to succeed was to assimilate, assimilate, assimilate. So while my parents spoke Mandarin, I spoke English. And of course I was dutifully taking piano lessons.” After Chu’s father died of cancer when she was 9 years old, music offered both comfort and a way to express herself.

While it’s easy to dismiss funding the NEA or arts education as “extras” or “frills” that need to be scaled back in a time of fiscal crisis, the truth is that the arts help create community and foster cross-cultural understanding. By disproportionately supporting large institutions, which reach a tiny slice of the American population, mega-donors and corporate foundations use the arts to serve the one percent. Which is why a strong and robust NEA, and increased investment in public funding for the arts nationally, is needed today, more than ever.

Art reflects the values, aspirations, and questions of a culture; it’s a mechanism for a society to articulate how it imagines itself.

At a moment when disdain for (and belief in the incompetence of) the federal government is widespread, it seems almost radical to propose that government programs make a difference, but evidence suggests they do. “The closer you get to where people live, the more effective you will be,” Brown says. Art happens in communities everywhere, not only in symphony halls, opera houses, and regional theaters. “People of privilege have choices that people with fewer resources do not,” offers Holly Sidford. “What we should be working on is giving people with fewer resources more choices, not dictating where they should go.”

The NEA does what no other funder does, public or private: It provides funding to communities in all 50 states and five U.S. jurisdictions. The geographic, demographic, and income diversity among the NEA’s grant recipients is unmatched by any other U.S. funder. Its Challenge America program is dedicated to reaching underserved communities, whether limited by geography, ethnicity, economics, or disability, which means nearly half of all NEA grants are awarded to institutions in poverty-stricken neighborhoods, and more than half of their grantees are small arts organizations. What’s more, 40 percent of the NEA’s grant-making funds are delivered at the local level through partnership agreements with 60 different state arts agencies and regional arts organizations.

The chair of the NEA, Roger Stevens, watches

President Lyndon B. Johnson break ground

for the Kennedy Center in 1964. (Wikimedia)

Like Medicare, Social Security, and other Great Society initiatives, the NEA has long been under attack by conservatives who are ideologically opposed to an empowered central government. And in much the same way that opponents of the Affordable Care Act inveigh against socialized medicine and characterize government-run health care as incompetent and failure-prone, so too people dismiss the significant accomplishments of the NEA. But the organization hasn’t just been a model for equity and inclusion. Through its partnership agreements it’s provided a template for how the federal government can work effectively with state and local governments. Its Our Town program, among other initiatives, has modeled a way for government to incubate new strategies and ideas that are adopted by the private sector.

This example of the private sector building on government innovation is something Chu hopes to build on during her tenure. “On the occasion of our 50th anniversary, of course we want to celebrate the first 50 years,” she told me. “But the other part is to look forward and ask, ‘What do the next 50 years look like?’”

The NEA was founded to “nurture American creativity, to elevate the nation’s culture, and to sustain and preserve the country’s many artistic traditions.” In an inclusive, pluralistic society, arts funding should reflect our increasingly diverse communities. Deliberately excluding art made by and for underrepresented communities goes against the spirit on which the NEA was founded.

If you look at the more than 1,000 projects set to receive NEA funding this year, you can see the historical (and present) richness of American culture that all but demands to be preserved and supported. A small literary press in Hawaii that mostly publishes works by Asian American and native Hawaiian authors. A Chicago children’s theater that puts on performances that can be enjoyed by visually impaired audiences or those on the autism spectrum. Songwriting workshops to teach Tlingit children in Hoonah, Alaska, about their culture. A New Orleans film festival for Louisiana filmmakers. Art reflects the values, aspirations, and questions of a culture; it’s a mechanism for a society to articulate how it imagines itself. The projects funded by the NEA reflect the growing diversity—and beautiful complexity—of America itself.

Where the Bullets Go

Since 2013, Kathy Shorr has been traveling the U.S. photographing survivors of gun violence. Some of them were injured in mass shootings, others by their spouses, and still others by accident. But Shorr wanted to share more than images, she also wanted to share their stories. That's why subjects were asked to describe how they were wounded—and photographed in the place they were shot. “Most of these locations are banal and 'normal' places we all visit: shopping centers, places of entertainment, church, neighborhood streets, movie theaters, etc.” Shorr said.  “Gun violence is now something that most of us have a connection to.” She added that she doesn’t want her work to be divisive, saying that many of the survivors portrayed are gun owners. SHOT is more of a catalog of scars, both emotional and physical. “I hope to get people to start talking about what we have in common,” she said.

Clinton and Trump Take an Edge Into the Iowa Caucus

Real-estate mogul Donald Trump has leapt ahead of Texas Senator Ted Cruz in the last weekend before the Iowa caucus, according to a Bloomberg/Des Moines Register poll released Saturday, as the gap between former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders continues to narrow.

28 percent of likely Republican caucus-goers said they would support the bombastic businessman as their first choice, with Cruz drawing 23 percent and Florida Senator Marco Rubio in third place with 15 percent. Cruz led in the same poll in early January, suggesting that Trump’s constant barrage of attacks on the senator have taken a toll.

Trump’s supporters also appear to be the most enthusiastic among Republican caucus-goers, with 71 percent saying their minds are made up in favor of the candidate, compared to 61 percent of Cruz supporters and 47 percent of Rubio supporters. 53 percent of Rubio’s supporters indicated that they could still be persuaded by alternatives.

But among second-choice candidates, Rubio leads the pack at 20 percent, followed by Cruz at 17 percent, former neurosurgeon Ben Carson at 11 percent, and Trump at 7 percent, suggesting either Cruz or Rubio could leap ahead to first place on Monday night.

In perhaps the most surprising result, only 29 percent of likely Republican caucus-goers said they disapproved of Trump’s decision to skip the final GOP debate before the caucus. 24 percent approved of the decision, and another 46 percent didn't care.

A victory in Iowa for Trump, who holds commanding leads in New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada, could give him insurmountable momentum in the Republican presidential race. A win for Cruz or Rubio could cement either senator’s position as the alternative to Trump, who many Republicans fear is too divisive to win the general election.

On the Democratic side, Clinton narrowly leads with 45 percent of likely caucus-goers, with Sanders close behind with 42 percent. Former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley trails with a potentially crucial 3 percent support.

Sanders has a slight edge as a second-choice candidate, leading Clinton 28 to 26 percent. But the candidates remain roughly even when both first-choice and second-choice figures are combined, suggesting that O’Malley’s supporters may split roughly equally between Clinton and Sanders when the former Maryland governor is eliminated in the first round on Monday night.

The controversy over Bill Clinton’s history of sexual impropriety, which Trump has recently highlighted, also does not appear to faze most Democratic caucus-goers. Only 7 percent said they disapproved of how Hillary Clinton has handled her husband’s extramarital affairs, and 73 percent indicated they had a positive view of Bill Clinton’s role in her campaign.

And Clinton’s edge could be even greater than the first-choice support numbers suggests. According to the poll, 83 percent of Clinton supporters have made up their minds to support her, compared to 69 percent of Sanders supporters when asked the same question.