Toxic tradition

Russian director Vladimir Urin scoffed last week at one ballerina’s public criticism of a tradition his famed Bolshoi Ballet has kept up for more than 100 years. “The ballet La Bayadere has been performed thousands of times in this production in Russia and abroad, and the Bolshoi Theatre will not get involved in such a discussion,” Urin told Russia’s RIA Novosti news agency.

He was defending the ballet company’s custom of putting white performers in blackface for a story set in royal India. His critic? Misty Copeland, who, as prima ballerina of New York’s American Ballet Theatre, is the first African-American principal dancer of any major international ballet company. Copeland reposted on Instagram a photo of two Bolshoi dancers in blackface at a rehearsal and said, “This is the reality of the ballet world.”

Several Bolshoi fans on the internet joined Urin in defending the company. They argued that the Bolshoi was simply holding to tradition, that no one else had claimed the makeup offended them, and that the blackface was necessary because there aren’t very many people of African descent in Russia, let alone ballerinas.

Other companies around the world, including Copeland’s own American Ballet Theatre, perform La Bayadere all the time without using blackface, so there’s no excuse for the Bolshoi’s insistence on a practice that’s almost universally considered racist and that does nothing to add to the quality of the performance. But Urin and his comrades invoking tradition to justify racial aggression can serve as a caution to others, especially during a time of year when tradition dictates so many aspects of life.

A much better-known ballet, The Nutcracker, has run into problems of a similar but less clear-cut nature. The second part of the ballet includes a series of short numbers called divertissements showcasing what are supposed to be dancers from around the world: Arabia, China, Russia, Spain. But the parts are often played by white dancers as caricatures of those cultures. Women in the Arabian dance dress as scantily clad harem girls, while the men in the Chinese dance have Fu Manchu mustaches.

Ballet companies have tried different things to make the productions more sensitive. The Richmond Ballet in Virginia invited a Chinese ballet dancer to choreograph the Chinese divertissement. Artistic director Stoner Winslett incorporated animals from each country into the performances and tried to make them the focus rather than the people. “We tried to do all respectful things,” she told Dance magazine in 2013.

In a recent conversation with WORLD editor-in-chief Marvin Olasky, Justin Giboney, a political strategist and Christian activist offered advice to white people for engaging in discussions of race. His suggestions could apply to the Bolshoi ballet, the numerous performances of The Nutcracker, and to any other group confronted with the uncomfortable fact that one of their traditions might hurt someone else: Avoid the defensive crouch.

“You can’t carry on a conversation well from a posture of self-defense,” Giboney said. “Too often on both sides, we try to come out of conversations about culture and race with a perfect narrative. Nobody left a conversation with Jesus with a perfect narrative. We have to be honest and ready for self-examination, not ready to say we’re angels and they’re demons.”

A scene from a controversial Zola commercial Associated Press/Zola

Off again, on again

The Hallmark Channel managed to offend pretty much everyone last weekend by pulling and then reinstating a commercial with two brides kissing. The ad shows two women getting married to each other and wondering whether they should have used the wedding planning website Zola. They briefly kiss at the end.

Hallmark, known for family-friendly programming and original Christmas movies, decided not to air that commercial and three other Zola ads with same-sex couples after getting complaints from the pro-family group One Million Moms. In an interview over the weekend, Hallmark spokeswoman Molly Biwer said the company felt “it was in the best interest of the brand to pull them and not continue to generate controversy.” But Hallmark reversed its decision and apologized when celebrities and LGBT advocates balked. Now One Million Moms is calling for a Hallmark boycott.

The flip-flop has hurt Hallmark’s image but been a boon for Zola. “Nobody ever heard of Zola,” said Laura Ries, president of marketing firm Ties and Ries. “And now everybody knows it and loves it.” —L.L.

A scene from a controversial Zola commercial Associated Press/Zola

Remembering Radio and a Titan

Two men whose lives and involvement in high school football were depicted in movies from the early 2000s died this week.

James “Radio” Kennedy, who inspired the 2003 film Radio, died on Sunday at a hospice facility in Anderson, S.C. He was 72.

Kennedy received his nickname because he always carried around a transmitter radio. Due to his disabilities, he couldn’t read or write and struggled to speak. He got involved with T.L. Hanna High School in Anderson in the 1960s, when Harold Jones, the football coach at the time, took him under his wing as an unofficial assistant. Kennedy, played by Cuba Gooding Jr. in the movie, found belonging, while Jones (Ed Harris) discovered a purpose much larger than football.

On Wednesday, Herman Boone, the Virginia high school coach portrayed by Denzel Washington in Remember the Titans (2003), died at age 84 after battling cancer.

Boone led T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, Va., to the state championship and through the early, turbulent days of school desegregation. The movie chronicles the 1971 season, when the recently integrated team, its new African American head coach, and its former head coach, who was white, pulled together to overcome racism and rigged games to go undefeated.

“That movie is not about football,” Boone said in 2017, pointing out it was instead “about some incredible young boys in Alexandria, Va., who in 1971 became an integrated team and showed the world how one can overcome their fear of diversity.” —Loren Skinker and Mickey McLean

Streaming pirates

A pair of computer programmers in Las Vegas admitted to having created massive illegal streaming platforms called iStreamItAll and Jetflicks, which rivaled companies like Netflix and Hulu. Federal authorities charged them with money laundering and criminal copyright violations. They pleaded guilty to both charges last Friday.

According to a report from the U.S. Department of Justice, iStreamItAll hosted more than 118,000 TV episodes and almost 11,000 movies without permission. The sites had tens of thousands of paid subscribers and were compatible with a multitude of devices, including “smartphones, tablets, smart televisions, video game consoles, digital media players, set-top boxes, and web browsers,” the Justice Department said. —L.S.