On Tentative Stops And Starts
I write a weekly column for the website AudienceOutlookMonitor.com which collects audience surveys taken by arts groups from around the world and analyzes the results and tracks the data over time since this spring. Here are some columns over the last few months.
By FRANK RIZZO
As we inch towards Labor Day in the U.S., traditionally the start of the fall season in the not-for-profit arts world, there are tentative signs of life in terms of re-gathering, along with flickers of hope — but renewed fear, too. Some of the most telling occurrences are coming from the film industry.
But are they simply outliers rather than harbingers of a more widespread return to indoor performances? It’s far too soon to tell but these initial efforts might provide some hints on people’s willingness to return to the indoors collectively — and the necessary follow-up results of those gatherings.
The Venice Film Festival — the only one of the “Big Five” festivals to open since the pandemic began — launched this week and although the attendance was sparser there was a sense of a return to celebratory gatherings — and glamour, too, including gilded masks.
Also from the commercial sector, Hollywood is finally releasing its much-delayed, big-budget, summer film “Tenet” in the hopes that audiences will be lured back to enclosed spaces — under proper safety guidelines, of course.
Elamin Abdelmahmoud writing in BuzzFeedNews shares his experience about seeing the film (complete with a mini-review) but I found what he had to say at the end of his essay most telling: “The sweet thrill of the summer movie now comes with an asterisk. An uncomplicated joy has become complicated. Before deciding to see ‘Tenet,’ my wife and I had to have a serious conversation about whether we were both comfortable with the decision. We’re all going to have to have those conversations now.”
It’s all about those conversations and comfort levels and even as the spread of the virus may have been reduced in some areas, in others it is rising — at least in the U.S. And it does nothing to add confidence to the general public when one reads this week that Hollywood star Robert Pattinson tested positive during the shooting for the film “The Batman” — even as the production was taking extraordinary measures for safety. The production was halted. The news was even more dire when it was learned….
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