The arts and culture that got us through 2020

It's an unusual exercise: reflecting on the best arts and entertainment of a pandemic year. Not for lack of options, exactly, though obviously, there are only so many things you can do from the virus-free safety of home. Rather, it's a matter of context. The impulse to read a book, catch a Zoom play, binge a 12-hour reality series about topiary — these so-called unprecedented times might make for some unprecedented choices. And the question of whether something is categorically good or bad might not matter so much if it's the only thing stopping you from sobbing in the shower for the fifth day straight. Regarding that particular example, I can't speak for anyone on the team, but here's some of the culture that got us through 2020. 

Dolly Parton, Songteller: My Life in Lyrics

Already a secular patron saint, Dolly Parton's closing 2020 as a bona fide hero: saving actors from moving vehicles, reading stories to kids in quarantine and basically curing COVID-19. (She's a million-dollar backer of the research that produced the Moderna vaccine, so when it's time to get the jab, close your eyes and think of Dollywood.)

Even from where I stand, locked away in an apartment a tenth the size of Parton's wig locker (and surely, she has a wig locker), it feels like she's getting me through the bad days. Back in the spring, WNYC's 2019 podcast series Dolly Parton's America was an edifying early-pandemic distraction. But more recently, I've been enjoying another low-key master class on her career, Parton's new memoir (Dolly Parton, Songteller: My Life in Lyrics). The book itself is a hefty coffee-table tome: lyrics to 175 tunes, plus notes from Parton herself, and it's an ideal guided playlist, especially for a casual fan like myself. My familiarity with her discography's a smidge better than just singing "9 to 5" at karaoke, but still. With every chapter I'm delighted and sometimes just plain shocked, discovering her range as a songwriter. (Take this ghoulish example, Evening Shade — a charming little foot-stomper about some kids who burn their headmistress alive.) Still, through it all, there's no better security blanket than that her gentle, fluttery vibrato. Some people use the Calm app. For now, I prefer to read along with Dolly.

—Leah Collins, senior writer

Minari

There's a general impression that 2020 was a historically bad year for movies. And obviously, in many ways it was: cinemas shuttered across the world and productions were forced to adapt to the protocols of a pandemic. But there were still a lot of incredible films that found their way to release. I've been catching up on them the past few months, and the overall standout has been Lee Isaac Chung's heart-wrenching Minari. 

Loosely based on Chung's own upbringing in rural Arkansas, the film follows a Korean-American family trying to build a life for themselves in the early 1980s. Offering an intimate version of the American dream that we don't see enough, Minari totally melted me. Its performances are Oscar-worthy (yes, those are still happening) across the board, particularly those from veteran Korean actress Youn Yuh-jung and Steven Yeun of Walking Dead fame. And the complexity of the narrative Chung creates quietly says so much. 

It's currently playing where cinemas are still open, but keep an eye out for a digital release in early 2021. And while we're here, I'll vouch for a few other incredible 2020 films you should try to see one way or another: Ammonite, The Nest, Never Rarely Sometimes Always, Nomadland, Palm Springs and Promising Young Woman.

—Peter Knegt, producer

The Writer's Voice

Books have helped me in a trying year, but because I can't keep up with the creeping volume of my reading list (thanks, Daunt Books!), I will sometimes, while preparing my utilitarian WFH lunches, turn to The Writer's Voice, an audio-fiction podcast by The New Yorker. How comforting it is to hear authors read their stories: Han Ong's quirky tennis tale Futures and Roddy Doyle's Life Without Children, delivered in his Irish lilt. One recent one I especially enjoyed was Curtis Sittenfeld's A for Alone. It's a fitting title for these times, I think, and I've been wanting to read more of her work after finishing her novel Rodham, which came out in the spring. It's a book about what might have happened if Hillary Clinton didn't marry Bill. Is there a better pandemic activity than indulging in a few "what ifs"?

—Marcia Chen, producer

Black Lives Matter Toronto paints colonial monuments pink

If you had asked me at the beginning of 2020 what my favourite art of the year would be, hands down my answer would've been this: "just you wait, just you wait ... it will be Alexander Hamilton." Hamilton, led by a cast of BIPOC performers, has dominated my running playlist for years, but I've never seen the musical live. That was supposed to change this spring, but the pandemic cut the show's Mirvish run short, and as a worldwide cultural reckoning took centre stage in its place, I struggled with whether I needed art as an emotional reprieve from the daily intensity of change, or if I needed art to thrust me further into it.

Turns out it was both, and the taped Disney+ version of Hamilton was solid. But ultimately, the art that moved me the most this year was Black Lives Matter Toronto's public demonstration in July. Members defaced statues of John A. Macdonald, King Edward VII Equestrian and Egerton Ryerson with pink paint, covering placards with messages reading "Abolish, Defund, Disarm, Dismantle."  

At the time, Black Lives Matter Toronto issued a statement: "Along with a coalition of artists, the group artistically disrupted statues of slaveholders and monuments to colonialism at Ryerson University and at Queen's Park." It was a display of activist art in solidarity with similar initiatives around the world, which raised difficult questions about these celebrated political figures while urging supporters to #DefundThePolice. 

Although everything about this year had already been disrupted, it was a timely reminder of how art can be an effective medium for protest and how it can challenge power structures in a direct and urgent way. (Toronto police, unsurprisingly, saw it differently, charging the protestors with three counts of mischief under $5,000 and conspiracy to commit a summary offence.)

—Lucius Dechausay, video producer

Swan Lake Bath Ballet

30 seconds in and I was enraptured. It was not the only ballet dance performance video that moved me in 2020, but it was the one that super-charged the genre. I revisited Swan Lake Bath Ballet (BBC, YouTube) time and time again after it launched in our COVID summer. 

It's the most familiar ballet in the most unfamiliar setting: dozens of swans trapped in bathtubs, trying to move with grace or purpose. Like all of us, they're stuck in a prescribed space and trying to get on with it. The effect is brilliant — a kaleidoscope of legs and limbs and angles and curves in synchronized movement, a flurry of feathers and flexed feet. All of it is simply dazzling and funny. Performed by an international cast of uber-dancers from more than half a dozen ballet companies (National Ballet of Canada representing), the choreographed moves were executed in each participating dancer's tub (well lit, well timed, like a drill — no, a murmuration!) to the tune of (well, you can hum it) the most popular ballet theme of all time.

It's a fitting salute to all of the dancers, professional and amateur, who made us take a breath and maybe pull ourselves together this year. Here we are: Zooming in our pajamas, eating chips on the couch, stuck in our homes. And there they are: venues shuttered, seasons cancelled, their livelihood taken away. But they show up. They go to the barre. And then they make the moves that take your breath away.

—Grazyna Krupa, executive in charge of programming, CBC Arts

The Midnight Gospel

The Midnight Gospel is an adult animated show from comedian Duncan Trussell and Adventure Time creator Pendleton Ward. The show uses conversations from the Duncan Trussell Family Hour podcast to serve as each episode's backbone. Trussell voices the lead character Clancy, a 20-something who lives in a technologically advanced universe. In every episode he travels to a new world using his malfunctioning multi-verse simulator, and because it's on the fritz, every place he goes is experiencing some sort of apocalypse. Visually, these animated worlds are something out of a fever dream. And at every stop on Clancy's journey, he gathers content for his "spacecast," talking to anyone who is willing. 

Released on Netflix on April 20, a show about a character travelling to apocalyptic dimensions felt somewhat fitting. With COVID-19, our world feels flipped upside down, as the majority of us have lost our sense of normalcy. Many of us feel uncertain about our future and maybe a little existential. Personally, The Midnight Gospel was a dose of perspective that I needed. These conversations about life, death, spirituality, happiness, depression, meditation, etc. were in one way or another a self-empowerment exercise. The characters discuss such topics and raise existential questions that the viewer inevitably answers themselves.

The Midnight Gospel resonates with me based on the fact that Clancy and his subjects converse despite the utter chaos around them. It reminded me that despite an apocalypse or a global pandemic, human connection will always be highly valued. As meditation guru Trudy Goodman wisely suggests in episode four: "The time of death is uncertain but death is certain. If we really got that, we would have fewer of the kind of moments where we regret having wasted our time or someone else's."

—March Mercanti, video producer

Mexican Gothic

This year I've been turning to art that immerses me in another time and place — specifically a time with no Zoom meetings, no social distancing and no mention of the news cycle. 

Reading Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia provided the perfect spooky escape from reality. The book transports you to 1950s Mexico, where its heroine, Noemí Taboada, goes on a nightmare of an adventure visiting her newlywed cousin Catalina at a creepy decaying mansion in the mountains. Noemí meets Catalina's new family and starts unravelling their horrifying secrets  — and I don't think it's a spoiler to say they involve colonialism, eugenics and a lot of mould. It's a page turner that I simultaneously wanted to end immediately and never.

Reading this gothic story at bedtime definitely left me feeling unsettled, but also took my mind off everything in the present so I could dream of sleuthing, tough heroines and a different kind of gloom than that of 2020. 

—Mercedes Grundy, producer

Floodlines

When the cultural history of the pandemic is written, how will we look back on the artistic productions of 2020? Will we applaud the audacity of countless theatre companies that pivoted to Zoom and audio and outdoor performance? Will we lament the countless gallery shows that never were? Smile knowingly at sweater-core releases from pop titans? And most interesting to me: is the best pandemic art going to be the stuff that gestated throughout lockdown and the racial justice reckonings of this year, all the better to set the world ablaze in 2021 and 2022?

One thing's for certain — 2020 turned out to be a crummy year for actual art-going. So my pick for the art that helped me survive the dumpster fire is something I could immerse myself in while trapped at home: Floodlines, the Atlantic's gorgeous podcast about the "unnatural disaster" that was Hurricane Katrina. Narrated and reported by Vann R. Newkirk II., Floodlines spent its eight illuminating and utterly immersive episodes looking back at an earlier moment when humanity confronted a terrifying incursion from the natural world, and, frankly, failed to rise to the challenge, amidst a backdrop of failing public institutions and systemic racism.

The miracle of the thing: Floodlines is not a bleak listen. Yes, it has its share of tragedy, as it must. But the show, sublimely scored by jazz trumpeter Christian Scott and avant composer Anthony Braxton, is held together by the voices of everyday New Orleanians — those who survived, those who mourn what was lost, and those who have fought to imagine a future. It doesn't end with easy answers. But if you're looking for a piece of art that reckons with what comes next, I can't recommend it highly enough.

—Andrew D'Cruz, executive producer