AJ Chronicles: This week’s stories — When Spectacle replaces Authority

First up, a visual metaphor for the culture this week: a 15-foot gold-leaf statue of the President commissioned by crypto investors, versus the empty desks at the Washington Post, where the entire photography staff and Pulitzer Prize-winning art critic Sebastian Smee were unceremoniously let go. Heavy-metal “boosterism” in its rawest form versus the sound of expertise leaving the building.

This week’s feed reads like a study in the displacement of authority by spectacle. The stewardship of high culture substituted with a deep-fried state fair. Literally. The Smithsonian is replacing its thoughtful Folklife Festival with a “Great American State Fair” on the National Mall, a pivot from anthropological curiosity to populist funnel cake. Federal arts policy feels increasingly like the writers’ room at a reality show producers’ meeting.

The social contract between the audience and art is loosening. In Japan, a city had to cancel a major cherry-blossom festival not because of climate change, but because tourists couldn’t stop defecating in residents’ gardens. On Broadway, producers are wringing their hands over audiences who treat musicals like karaoke bars, drowning out the professionals they paid hundreds of dollars to see. We are apparently no longer “passive observers.” We insist on being the “main character,” where the art is merely a backdrop for our own performative consumption.

You want economics? In the arts there’s a state of cognitive dissonance. The Minnesota Orchestra posted record-breaking earned revenue and still face-planted into a $4.2 million deficit. It turns out that even when you win, you lose—a paradox that makes the strategy of “Boosterism”—betting on optimism as a business model—seem less like a delusion and more like a survival tactic.

Amidst this, the mass-market paperback is officially dying, taking with it the idea of culture as a cheap, disposable utility found in drugstores. We are bifurcating into a world of high-end luxury experiences (that lose money) and digital “slop” (that makes money).

Is it depressing? If you embrace the absurdity—an opera featuring zombies and a Trump-like King Ubu premiere in Hamburg—it’s actually bizarrely fascinating. Institutions are cracking, audiences are feral, and the critics have left the building. The inmates are running the asylum and they’re singing along to show tunes.