wnyc.org / 93.9fm / am 820

Arts and entertainment in 2002 often seemed to shun the daring or original in favor of cultural comfort food, witnessed by the return of the family sitcom; the traditionalism of neo-rock bands like the Strokes and the White Stripes; and big-budget Hollywood sequels including the 10th Star Trek movie, the 20th James Bond sequel, and Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones, the latest installment of George Lucas' sci-fi franchise. Financially speaking, the past twelve months saw many distress signals from the business of the arts: CD sales slumped, museums cut their staffs, major symphony orchestras and opera houses found themselves awash in red ink.

Still, the show had to go on, and as this subjective survey of WNYC staff members suggests, the year will also be remembered for its share of vibrant cultural landmarks.

Theater

Among our staff favorites was Hairspray, the musical adaptation of John Waters' film about a pudgy teen's triumph, which has become the biggest (and toughest) hit on Broadway. The show, at the Neil Simon Theatre, features a chipper cast and a gigantic Barbie play set about which Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman's hypnotic pop score and Jerry Mitchell's exhilarating choreography flourishes. That kind of energy has helped propel Broadway through one of its toughest years, weathering a steep drop in business following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Many also raved about Mary Zimmerman's Metamorphoses, based on Ovid's episodic poem recounting transformations of gods and mortals. WNYC Overnight Music host George Preston was enchanted by its remarkable beauty. "What an imaginative, provocative production,” he recalls. “It struck just the right balance between mythic power and off-handed whimsy. I liked it so much that I subsequently approached one of the cast members (none of them are stars) on a subway platform to tell him how much I enjoyed the evening."

Also earning nods was Suzan-Lori Parks's Topdog/Underdog, a play which won the Pulitzer Prize for drama this year and featured the acting prowess of Jeffrey Wright and Mos Def. Described as "a darkly comic fable," the play was directed by George C. Wolfe, head of the New York Shakespeare Festival and the Public Theatre.

Music

After the dominance of manufactured boy bands and artists like Britney Spears for many years, maverick genres like country and rap were increasingly dominating the pop charts once again. 2002 was, after all, the year of Eminem, who spent eight weeks at No. 1 thanks to his Eminem Show (the top-selling disc of the year) and 8 Mile film soundtrack. It was also the year in which singers like Faith Hill and Shania Twain further brought country music into the mainstream on new albums. As the New York Times recently opined, "amid heightened patriotism and Republican election victories, country music seems to be even more consonant with the national mood."

Beyond mainstream pop, there were also plenty of captivating and unlikely CDs to hit store record bins this year, including Wilco’s Americana-meets-electronica release, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, a favorite of several WNYC staff members. Another disc that struck a chord was Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band’s The Rising. Although it seemed Springsteen had put writing rock anthems behind him after Born in the U.S.A., his longtime fans knew if any artist could write anthems addressing September 11, and not make them sound jingoistic, it would be the Boss.

"This is a case where the first pop interpretation of 9/11's aftermath may turn out to be the last word," says WNYC’s Kerry Nolan. "It’s an astonishing, honest and often breathtaking collection of stories played by the finest working band in rock and roll.”

Like the pop world, 2002 was a bleak year for the classical recording industry, which continued to retrench in the face of a glutted market for standard repertory. And while crossover carried the day at the major labels, the industry also became more discriminating in its offerings, and several visionary, substantive work emerged.

Highlights included a new EMI recording of Schoenberg’s Wagnerian masterpiece Gurrelieder, featuring an all-star vocal lineup backed by the mighty Berlin Philharmonic under its new music director Simon Rattle; John Adams’s symphonic masterpiece Naïve and Sentimental Music, performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Esa-Pekka Salonen (Nonesuch), and several indie releases, including a gorgeous account of Strauss’s Four Last Songs, in which the Finnish soprano Soile Isokoski displays a stunning legato to rival classic versions by Elizabeth Schwarzkopf and Jessye Norman (Ondine).

Film

Hollywood had another year of record revenues at the box office as studios piled on such mega-hits as the eagerly awaited comic-book adaptation, Spider-Man, which scored an all-time best debut of $114.8 million domestically in its opening weekend. Also making strong showings were A Beautiful Mind and the latest in the Harry Potter franchise.

At the same time, independent cinema gained momentum through the release of fêted films such as Adaptation, Y Tu Mama Tambien, and Bowling for Columbine - all filmed at a fraction of the price of Blockbusters. Talk To Her by Pedro Almodóvar (following the glories of his 1999 Oscar winner, All About My Mother) and Spirited Away, the Japanese anime feature directed by Hayao Miyazaki were two that earned nods from WNYC staffers.

Books

A scurry of fresh-faced novelists garnered acclaim in 2002, reflected at the November National Book Awards in which all five finalists, including winner Julia Glass (The Three Junes) were first- or second-time novelists. Other newcomers that made splash included Alice Sebold's million-selling The Lovely Bones and Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything is Illuminated, which received some of the best reviews of 2002.

Established literary lions also energized the publishing industry. In The Corrections, New Yorker writer Jonathan Franzen's third and best-yet novel, he makes parallels between the dysfunctions of one Midwest family with the breakdown of society-at-large. Familial friction is also at the heart of Ian McEwan's Atonement, among the most-acclaimed literary novels of 2002. The novel is the story of an insulated upper-class family living in the British countryside in the years before and during World War II, to whom accidents and unanticipated occurrences happen in tragic-comic proportions. Throughout this exploration of accident versus moral choice, McEwan's writing is lush, detailed, and intense.

Television

Shows such as The Osbournes, American Idol, and The Bachelor suggested that reality television is here to stay. But there were also several smart, demanding, and funny shows that appear on several WNYC lists. HBO held sway in 2002 with such four-star programs as the Sopranos, Sex and the City, and Curb Your Enthusiasm, starring Larry David, the man who was the driving genius behind Seinfeld.

Now in its second season, Curb features all those comic situations that made Seinfeld so ineffably funny for so many years, right down to the recognizable mix of self-absorbed characters and intricately interconnected storylines. If watching those nightly Seinfeld reruns for the umpteenth time is starting to wear thin, Curb offers a brilliant alternative every Sunday night.

DVD/Video

Last but not least, the DVD market continues to mature as more and more deluxe editions and re-releases are being produced. Not only do DVDs represent a dramatic improvement over the smeary, unstable images and fuzzy sound of VHS tape, but they offer a large storage capacity and a wide range of supplementary features, from commentaries to deleted sequences and other background information. Finally, they offer assurance that the very best moments from the past year in film will be preserved well into the future.