How can you tell if an art form is alive or dead? You can’t take its pulse, or request a death certificate. No heartfelt eulogies will be posted online or published in the newspaper. The truth is, there’s no easy way of knowing, which is probably why there have been so many premature RIPs in the past (see: painting in the 1830s, the novel in the 1960s, rock music and photography in the 1990s, and rap in 2025). Nevertheless, the conversation has flared up once again this past week, thanks to a recently-shared video of Timothée Chalamet in conversation with Matthew McConaughey.

If you’re even remotely online, you’ve probably already seen footage of the offending statement as it circulates on social media. For those whose attention is tuned solely to Tchaikovsky, though, Chalamet essentially declared that ballet and opera are all but dead in 2026. “I don’t want to be working in ballet, or opera, or things where it’s like, ‘Hey, keep this thing alive, even though like no one cares about this any more,’” he told McConaughey, jokingly adding: “All respect to all the ballet and opera people out there. I just lost 14 cents in viewership... Damn, I just took shots for no reason.”

Unsurprisingly, Chalamet’s “shots” sparked a significant backlash in the worlds of opera and ballet. Beyond that, celebrities from Doja Cat to Jamie Lee Curtis also chimed in, with the latter asking in an Instagram story: “Why are any artists taking shots at any other artists?” Meanwhile, esteemed institutions of opera and ballet were quick to point out that the arts are “not only alive and well, but thriving” in 2026. 

To illustrate this, the English National Ballet shared its audience figures on Instagram, writing: “Last year alone... over 200,000 people joined our performances, experiencing the power of ballet. Our production content was seen by over 5 million viewers around the world. Our social content saw over 65 [million] impressions. And we connected with thousands of people of all ages and walks of life through creative learning and participation.” For context, London’s Prince Charles cinema reported 250,000 ticket sales in 2024, across 858 different films.

Is the death of an art form really just about audience figures and Instagram likes, though? Or is it more about the ‘life’ of the art itself? In music and cinema, for example, we can point to moments in recent memory that have changed the way people think about the form itself. In cinema, you might cite the mainstream success of Uncut Gems, the films coming out of Harmony Korine’s EDGLRD, or even the sprawling, green-screen-riddled Marvel Cinematic Universe (not all change is good). In about the last 40 years of music, there’s been rave, hip-hop, dubstep, hyperpop, and more, each with its own styles, subcultures, and means of production. Both art forms, alongside the visual arts, are also undergoing significant shifts in the age of AI, with even greater transformations just over the horizon.

I can’t claim to be aware of every single new ballet or opera that’s been performed in the last four decades. What I do know is that composer Philip Glass and choreographer Pina Bausch (born 1937 and 1940, respectively) are still frequently hailed as radical, avant-garde figures in their respective art forms. Both were at the height of their creative powers in the 1970s. And even then, the fundamental context and staging of Glass’s work would have been recognisable to opera-going audiences a century before, even if they hated it. (Today’s equivalent would be screening A Minecraft Movie in IMAX for Charlie Chaplin, or fitting Louis Armstrong with a pair of Airpods and blasting 2slimey.) In other words, if an art form’s health can be measured by how much it changes or responds to the world around it, opera and ballet are, undeniably, dying, if not already dead.

This is not to say that ballet and opera aren’t still worth our time and money, or that they should be stripped of the public funding that helps keep them afloat. In fact, they’re arguably even more valuable as static artefacts of a time gone by – somewhere we can escape, for a couple of hours, the pressing issues of the present, the shock of the near future, and the endless discourse that ties it all together. What a relief, at least, to go to the Royal Opera House and not be distracted by some Twitter discourse about whether George Balanchine fell off, or what to rate Jewels on Letterboxd!

A lot of the backlash to Chalamet’s comments seemed to (maybe accidentally) agree with this idea of ballet and opera as their own microcosm, which doesn’t interact with modern life in a particularly meaningful or radical way. Take, for example, choreographer Martin Chaix, who wrote: “If anything, in a world where AI is reshaping cinema faster than most realise, the unmediated human presence of ballet and opera becomes more essential, not less.” This is a good point and, according to Chaix, it proves that the art is “very much alive”. But isn’t he actually saying that its value lies in the fact that it’s dead – as in, no longer responsive to the times we’re living in – so that it won’t be swayed by the transformative effects of emerging technologies?

If we’re being generous, we might suggest that this is what Timmy was trying to say, albeit clumsily, when he dismissed ballet and opera as art forms on life support: not that they’re no longer beautiful, or can no longer touch the human soul, but that they can’t speak to the present in the way other art forms can, or make a massive splash outside their relatively tiny, and shrinking, worlds. As someone who’s made no secret of his desire to shape contemporary culture (he’s dating a Kardashian! he stood on top of the Las Vegas Sphere!), it’s easy to see why Chalamet doesn’t want anything to do with those art forms, in this case. In fact, his statement about ballet and opera seemed to be borne out of the anxiety that cinema is on a similar path toward obsolescence – that, sometime in the near future, no one will care about going to sit in the dark, eat popcorn, and stare at a big screen for two hours, either.

But for ballet and opera themselves, death doesn’t have to be the end. Instead of defending what’s left of their relevance to the modern day, they could lean into their role as antique art forms, and we could embrace the rare opportunity for an experience that feels truly out-of-time – not in competition with newer art forms like cinema, but in addition to them. There’s a whole afterlife to be lived, if only they’re willing to embrace it (and the government and/or extremely wealthy give it the funding it deserves). Go toward the light!