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Retro Shock -- Art after September 11th NOW


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Interesting article in today's NYTimes. While I'm not one who considers television a high art, even in its better moments, it takes the temperature of the nation quicker than any other art form.

How retro will we go? How will this trend affect ballet and dance? Ballet seems to me at a real crossroads now: either New! Now! crossover works or very retro classicism and fauxclassicism. Neither, to me, are healthy for the art form and we discuss that often here. What analogs can you see in this article for ballet?

For Fall, TV Looks Back, and Back

Over four days this week, the television networks went through an annual ritual called the upfronts, in which they took over Carnegie Hall, Radio City and other prime New York locations to announce their fall schedules and lure advertisers to buy spots early. As always, there were jokey performances, circuslike parties where media buyers lined up to be photographed with stars, and unrelenting hype for shows that try to reflect the national mood.

What we'll be watching in the fall suggests that programmers believe the mood to be overwhelmingly nostalgic and backward-looking.

Reflecting a post-Sept. 11 longing for comfort and safety, six networks announced schedules that include remakes of "Dragnet," "Family Affair" and "The Twilight Zone." There are also two shows set during the 1960's, two more in which a grown man relives his high school days in the 80's, and dramatizations of the lives of Lucille Ball, Jackie Gleason, Jerry Lewis and Ozzie and Harriet Nelson. These retro shows suggest how profoundly the aftershocks of the attacks are pervading the culture, at least in the minds of those trying desperately to divine what the public wants.

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