A feature that has run continuously since the magazine’s first issue, “Goings On” was last updated in 2016, when editor David Remnick announced a parade of new online features: a revolving display of articles, an interactive map, a video series, and “grids of listings based on category.” But for all the attention devoted to nifty digital ways to sort their events, The New Yorker’s editors have neglected to rethink the outdated way in which the “Goings On” categories are delineated in the first place. There’s “Art,” “Classical Music,” “Dance,” “Movies,” “Food & Drink,” “The Theatre,” and “Readings and Talks.” And then there’s “Night Life.”
In this schema, “Night Life” does not refer to clubs and parties (of little interest, apparently, to the magazine’s readership) or bars (covered under “Food & Drink”). Instead, the heading serves as a euphemism for non-classical music. In the past, a classical music/nightlife dichotomy may have reflected a broader social consensus on the distinction between high and low forms. But with such distinctions murky if not altogether irrelevant today, it is hard to ignore the inherent racism: in practice, the New Yorker maintains one category for a historically white kind of music, and another category for everything else.
As cultural institutions, universities, and publications—including The New Yorker itself—have relaxed their discriminatory attitudes toward music and art outside of the European tradition, the “Goings On” page has remained stuck in the proverbial mud. Whether it’s a stylized anachronism or a simple blind spot, no one seems to have seriously considered the troubling implications and often incoherent results of this system of categorization. Look to the magazine’s archives, and what you find is a history of editors’ awkward efforts to decide what should count as “Music,” what should be relegated to the grab bag of “Night Life,” and what should be excluded altogether.