Timothée Chalamet has attacked ballet and opera. How can anyone in the arts behave like this, Neil Mackay asks. He’s a symbol of the collapse of culture in the 21st century.

I must reluctantly salute Timothée Chalamet. I find him a detestable creature. He would be better renamed ‘Shallow Timothy’. Yet he has pulled off one of the greatest tricks in the history of entertainment. 

Chalamet has packaged himself as an avatar for all that’s good about Gen Z. I have much time and affection for Gen Z, so find this rather sickening. 

Chalamet is presented to the world as a sensitive, vulnerable young man; poetic, emotionally intelligent. He’s been self-curated as a kind of modern David Bowie: androgynous, aesthetic, deep, sensitive. Chalamet is, we’re told: A Great Artist.

He is not. Chalamet is part and parcel of influencer culture. There’s little difference between a lip-fillered Instagram phoney selling wellness potions, or those roided-up fools in suits so tight they can barely breathe teaching boys on YouTube how to be pick-up artists, and the cult of Chalamet.

The mask has slipped, though. This ‘great artist’, this sensitive, intelligent man, this poet, decided to trample all over the arts. 

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He said this in a podcast with Matthew McConaughey, another actor you suspect exists in a world of image which is rather in conflict with his true self: “I don’t want to be working in ballet or opera or things where it’s like ‘keep this thing alive even though no-one cares about this anymore’.”

He then added tellingly: “I just lost 14 cents in viewership. Damn, I took shots for no reason.”

Spoken like a true influencer. Shallow Timothy realised his comments would see percentage points fall from his audience figures and saw dollars deplete.

If Chalamet had presented himself to the world as the barbarian he so clearly is, then his comments would be irrelevant. It would be a case of ‘stupid lumpen idiot makes stupid lumpen idiotic statement’. 

But when a man has stolen the clothes of a great artist to further his thirst for fame only to trash the arts, then he, I think, deserves our contempt.

Chalamet has never been a good actor. That, to me, is the flaw in the entire tale of this man’s rise to fame. He’s dull, insipid. Weak sauce, some might say. The movie Dune, for which he won inexplicable plaudits, is among the worst films ever made. 

Chalamet, and the films he appears in, are very much part of the ‘hyper-normalisation’ of 21st century life.

When systems fail - as all systems have in this world we’ve fashioned - people cling to false yet comforting beliefs. 

It is easier, for example, to buy the PR line that Chalamet is a great actor and the movies he makes worthy of critical consideration because to do otherwise would be to accept that the actors we’re now told to idolise are in fact ciphers, and the films which we’re told matter are in fact worthless.

What ‘great artist’ attacks ballet or opera, for pity sake? Great artists fight for art, they defend art. If they’re rich, they support art. 

Chalamet is perfectly within his rights to say that he struggles to understand opera and ballet as he’s badly educated, or has no appreciation of art, or because he prefers sitting in his pants playing on his Xbox. But he didn’t make those points.

He said he had no interest in working in ballet or opera because no-one cares. In other words, his contempt is predicated on money and public opinion. There we see the soul of the influencer. If Shakespeare and his pals had cared only about public opinion they would have invested in another bear-baiting pit instead of opening The Globe.

'Chalamet, and the films he appears in, are very much part of the ‘hyper-normalisation’ of 21st century life.' (Image: Agency)

Neither ballet nor opera need me as advocate. If you’re not moved by the elemental power of opera or the beauty in ballet then there’s likely something dead inside you. You don’t need to be rich or to have studied music or dance, attended university, or live a middle-class lifestyle to appreciate opera or ballet. You just need a soul and a mind that’s open to art.

But we’re moving into a post-art age, I fear. Chalamet’s barbarism chimes with the politics of today, where parties like the Conservatives sneer at the liberal arts in university, and the White House governs in memes which seem dreamt up by lonely, angry schoolboys.

I’ve felt real anger towards Chalamet for his comments. He is, in effect, merely an influencer, so thus he has influence particularly over young folk. That this savage dullard may encourage others to sneer at the arts makes him a public health hazard. The more we understand the arts, the more we’re inoculated against the Chalamets of this world.

While reading up on the oaf, I learned he’s apparently in a relationship with one of the Kardashian clan. I’ve more respect for the Kardashians that Chalamet. At least, they’re honest. He’s a cheap Kardashian off-cut; a metastasising mole masquerading as a beauty spot.

Chalamet will be at the Oscars this Sunday. He’s hoping to pick up some gongs. I restrain myself from imagining the giant statue of Oscar which stands on the awards stage falling on him as he walks to the podium.

He's spoken of in the same breath - by people who clearly share his ingrained stupidity - as Marlon Brando. Indeed, Chalamet is the youngest actor to become a three-time Oscar nominee since Brando.

I think we’ve reached the root problem with contemporary cinema in one easy metaphor. Compare Brando, at roughly the same age as Chalamet, in A Street Car Named Desire to, say, Shallow Timothy’s performance in Dune. It’s like comparing a Monet to graffiti in an underpass.

Chalamet will likely gain his gongs. How could he not? Cinema has become so degraded in the digital age, as has television, that he’s the perfect fit. An idiot for an art form that has devolved into idiocy.

In film, story and substance have been replaced by cheap spectacle and the desire for meme-able moments. Film-makers have forgotten how to write and edit. Studios believe our attention spans are dead so serve us up easily digestible pabulum. 

Looked at from that perspective Shallow Timothy is indeed the quintessence of modern cinema and so deserves its highest plaudits.

Neil Mackay is the Herald’s Writer-at-Large. He’s a multi-award winning investigative journalist, author of both fiction and non-fiction, and a filmmaker and broadcaster. He specialises in intelligence, security, extremism, crime, social affairs, cultural commentary, and foreign and domestic politics

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