Latest news with #TomorrowBelongstoMe
Yahoo
21-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Kennedy Center's Upcoming Performance (According to Steve Bannon) Deemed a 'Downgrade'
The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts' upcoming performance (at least, according to Donald Trump's former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon) following Trump's presidential takeover has shocked many in the theater community. According to Bannon, the J6 Prison Choir — which is indeed made up of previously imprisoned individuals involved in the Jan. 6 insurrection — will potentially be added to the lineup, as he announced at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). The news that "the J6ers," who were present at the event "from the medium-high security prisons to the U.S. penitentiaries," would possibly play the once-lauded venue in Washington, D.C., "for a night in honor of their families," was met with raucous applause from the audience. "Beautiful!" one attendee could be heard as Bannon paused to allow the news to sink in. He also shared his own idea for their potential performance, suggesting that they "invite all of the families they tried to destroy, the J6ers, and they get to sit in the boxes where the elites sit" while the "elites" are sent to the "D.C. gulag," shocking many internet users at home. Parade has reached out to the Kennedy Center for comment. "We're living in the upside down," one theater-lover mourned, referencing the horrifying alternate universe found in Netflix's Stranger Things. "So it begins," another lamented, bracing for whatever comes next, while another agreed, "Lord, what a downgrade." "I hear their rendition of 'Tomorrow Belongs to Me' is particularly chilling," someone else wrote, referencing the track from the musical Cabaret that is performed by young members of Hitler's regime. Another disappointed X (formerly Twitter) user called the move "DEI for terrorists," while someone else suggested calling the FBI "to report the second assassination of John F. Kennedy's memory." One even played on Trump's recent "honor" for "God Bless the U.S.A." songwriter Lee Greenwood, writing, "And I'm ashamed to be an American." "They can sing Amazing Disgrace," another quipped. CBS reported that Trump's intention was to put an end to the center's "woke culture" when he announced earlier this month that he'd be taking over the board. Shortly after the news, the Kennedy Center canceled the upcoming tour of the children's musical Finn, which "follows a young shark who realizes he may relate more to smaller, more gentler fishes," according to Playbill. The Kennedy Center claimed that the decision was financial in origin, but, per the publication, the musical could easily be seen as a metaphor for the LGBTQ+ experience, and the creators were "not surprised" by the move following "the events" that preceded the news. As a result, many previously scheduled performers have also pulled out of their events, including Issa Rae. "Unfortunately, due to what I believe to be an infringement on the values of an institution that has faithfully celebrated artists of all backgrounds through mediums, I've decided to cancel my appearance at this venue," she explained in a statement, promising all ticketholders a refund. Next:
New York Times
08-02-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
To Obey or Not to Obey
In 1978, my parents went to Poland, the first foreign trip in each of their lives. When they returned to our home in Moscow, my mother couldn't stop talking about what they'd seen — not a place but a movie, Bob Fosse's 'Cabaret.' One scene in particular stayed with her. Three friends are returning from a weekend trip. Sleep-deprived, hung over and preoccupied with their sexual and romantic entanglements, they pull over at a roadside cafe. There, a teenager wearing a Hitler Youth uniform starts singing. He is both earnest and, in his brown pants tucked into white knee-high socks, puerile. But after a minute, other young people in uniform join in, and soon all but one customer are standing and singing. The protagonists duck out. They have been pushing Nazism out of their minds, but at this moment they realize that they are in the minority, that life as they've been living it is over. The song everyone around them is singing is 'Tomorrow Belongs to Me.' I was 11 when my mother couldn't stop talking about 'Cabaret,' and I was confused. I thought my parents had gone to an actual cabaret and somehow gained an insight into the nature of the Soviet regime. A few years later, after I'd seen the movie myself, I realized my mother was right: That scene is the single most vivid portrayal of what it feels like to live in a society that is falling in line before a totalitarian leader. I experienced this in real life as an adult, when Vladimir Putin came to power in Russia and my world suddenly felt like a chessboard from which an invisible hand was picking off pieces faster than I had thought was possible. Now, in Donald Trump's America, I am living through something similar, and it is moving at a faster rate still. For me, it began before the election, when the owners of The Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post decided to pull their papers' endorsements of Kamala Harris for president. It continued with Mark Zuckerberg remaking Meta to reflect what he called the 'cultural tipping point' that was the presidential election; with ABC News handing over millions of dollars in response to one of Trump's frivolous lawsuits and CBS considering doing the same; and most recently, with the great erasure: of records of trans care for minors provided by hospitals and of diversity-and-inclusion policies at many universities and corporations. Now some universities are quietly retooling their programming in hopes of conforming with expectations that have not yet been clearly laid out. I am talking not about deletions of pages from government websites, such as those of the White House and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, presumably mandated by newly installed officials; I am talking about actions that individual people or private institutions took pre-emptively, with some measure of free will. The Yale historian Timothy Snyder has called this 'anticipatory obedience.' In his 2017 book 'On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century,' lesson No. 1 was 'Do not obey in advance.' Those who anticipate the demands of a repressive government and submit to these demands before they are made, Snyder wrote, are 'teaching power what it can do.' Snyder is right, of course, but his admonition makes obeying in advance sound irrational. It is not. In my experience, most of the time, when people or institutions cede power voluntarily, they are acting not so much out of fear but rather on a set of apparently reasonable arguments. These arguments tend to fall into one or more of five categories. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. Already a subscriber? Log in. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
