This was the case until '48: in architecture, literature, music, painting, and sculpture. Artistic events were also part of the original Greek Olympics. They ended up cancelling this because too many of the competitors were professional, but even back in the days when we obeyed that stupid rule, there were all sorts of "amateur" athletes who were given bullshit on-paper jobs who were really just pros. Especially the Commies.
Honestly, I'm with Ted Gioia. We should bring back artistic competition at the Olympics. I'm sure they'd often make the wrong calls, but competition is still by far the best way for people to establish themselves in fields. It'd be good for both the mediums and the competitors.
It's interesting that there are a lot of billionaires right now endowing prizes, but they have a hard time catching the public's attention, the way the Olympics (1896) and Nobel Prizes (1901) did. Printing presses got much more efficient in the late 19th Century, so newspapers and books got cheaper, so a lot of our enduring middlebrow culture (e.g., Sherlock Holmes, Dracula, etc.) comes from around 1900.
Can I criticize anything in the Olympics when I think it is elitist BS from 1896 on? But half the country watches this crap and votes for the "non-Hitler" like they are told.
There always has to be one person who is "too cool for school." Just remember than less than 50% of Americans watch the Super Bowl. Sports does not have to appeal to everyone to be successful because nothing in the U.S. appeal to everyone.
Gunn is the rare talent whose dancing style replicates her writing style: clumsy, contrived, spastic, utterly talentless, and just as painful to read/watch as it must have been to write/perform.
Its actually quite difficult and requires a lot athletically. Lots of upper body strength and agility. American Ninja Warrior types as youngsters, with rhythm, confined to a small dance space to show off.
And, fun fact: one of the most popular musicians to b-boy to is.....James Brown. Because despite James's music coming out decades before breakdancing became a thing, many of the beats Brown laid down in his songs are perfect for breakdance. Breakdancing is funk on the dancefloor for solo dudes.
Breakdancing went public just before the 1984 Olympics. I can recall first seeing guys spin around upside down on their shoulders in the 1983 movie "Flash Dance." It was one of the many manifestations of the mid-1980s warmth of black-white relations, along with "Thriller," "Purple Rain," "The Cosby Show," and "Beverly Hills Cop" and the exceptionally low black murder rate of 1984. Contrary to prediction, 1984 turned out to be a pretty good year.
Unfortunately, crack came along in the later 1980s and gangsta rap.
A lot of American black pop culture in the 1970s was about boring kitchen sink realism (e.g. Good Times) or else this-is-definitely-the-black version stuff (Shaft, Foxy Brown, Blacula). It was either "feel bad for blacks" or "this is a black thing". Disco might have been an exception, but that was more homosexual than black, and the backlash against it by people who weren't into clubbing, sleeping around, doing drugs, and partying was so intense it wiped disco off the map.
By the 1980s, the black middle class kids who became entertainers wanted a pop culture that mirrored their own childhood and not some misery or ghetto stuff. Prince, for example, grew up as a wannabe rocker with white guitar heroes from nice Minnesota, not in some New York slum. Michael Jackson was part of a showbiz family that did very well for itself and he was the star. Cosby's entire schtick was family-friendly and he hated the negative messaging. Heck, we even saw half-blac Rae Dong Chong become an above-the-title star and love interest for Arnold Schwartzenegger and C. Thomas Howell.
I know your favorite eliminated Olympic event is the Plunge For Distance, but I would suggest you also lobby for the reinstatement of the “swim obstacle course.” This could be done in the open water, though it might be preferable to host in a location in which sewage isn’t an issue.
> Breakdancing, or as they call it at the Olympics “breaking” as if it were a sport rather than a dance
It was done for different reasons, and it isn't an Olympic sport, but Ultimate Frisbee is now just known as Ultimate, which is grating to the ears since it's an adjective being used as a noun. Fun Fact: Ultimate Frisbee was invented by Joel Silver when he was in high school, who went on to become a popular (if not award winning) movie producer.
Ballroom dancing could make a claim to having been an Olympic Sport at one time. When the Modern Olympics were started, Athletics and Art were judged and given points. Ballroom dancing, at lest, is a form of dance, that required grace and endurance.
But people don't want to watch dance, they want to watch sports.
Dancing also has a decent amount of evidence pointing to its mental health improvements to its practitioners as well. The decline in people dancing together has been a major net negative for our societies.
Whether or not breaking is a sport is irrelevant to the Olympics--they're the Olympic GAMES, not the Olympic SPORTS. Like dancing, gymnastics, figure skating, diving and other performance events, breaking is a legitimate game to the extent participants are rated by objective standards. If their score just reflects how much they aesthetically impressed the judges, it's merely a show.
"I can recall looking forward to seeing the next aesthetic breakthrough that Torvill & Dean would unleash.
But in the 1990s that kind of artistic innovation got shut down by the sports' authorities to make judging more objective."
Individual ice princesses were always adored by American audiences more than pairs, the success of the film <i>The Cutting Edge</i> notwithstanding. Even poor Debbie Thomas --the first black Ice Princess who took on the sexier and exotic Katarina Witt in 1988 and who tragically had a nervous breakdown from all her type-A pressure (Thomas became a doctor as well as an Olympic medalist) and now lives in poverty in a trailer park with her low-IQ white second husband-- was a hit during her Olympic time.
Audiences also seemed to prefer when younger teenage girls won over older ones---perhaps its all the fathers watching with their female children. But younger usually have less grace and precision, so they have to make up for it in athleticism and snappy programs. So the Olympics modified to make the ratings bigger. Nancy Kerrigan, herself a medalist, complained about the change and pressured the Olympics to make age-restricted categories of teens and 20s-30s so that the more willowly and precise but less athletic older women could win something.
Americans love when their teenage girls win in the Olympics: gymnastics in the summer and figure skating in the winter.
I find here performance ok. It is a new sports in the Olympics, so they have to find out how to judge it, and if it works at all for the Olympics. As it is, Raygun probably did more to make the sport of breaking famous than the winners. She took a hit for the team, so to say.
At any rate, all these new sports - breaking, skating, beach volleyball etc. - are just there to make it a multi week-long commercial TV event. Few people take it very seriously, or even know about it.
The real Olympics are still the classic sports. If you won a gold in the 100 m or 400 m sprint, gymnastics, swimming: people will be in awe. You achieved your life's mission. Fame for generations is secured.
If you won gold in BMX, people will still be impressed, but it will not be very life changing.
I agree with your point. I happened to catch the breakdancing and was pretty surprised. It's more performative than just athletic. There are two hipster MC guys. They call the event "B-Boys" and "B-Girls." Apparently part of the competition is somehow showing up your one-on-one rival, who stands on the platform pacing and genuflecting while you're performing (though you get a penalty for making obscene, sexual, or violent gestures toward your opponent). It just seems divorced from the austere majesty of most individual Olympic events.
When that Australian girl went viral, my first thought was, "I don't see the difference between her performance and any others." My second thought was, maybe she was trying to make a mockery of the whole thing. Apparently she's some type of cultural studies professor, so this amusing trolling would indeed be an interesting project for someone like that.
> Apparently she's some type of cultural studies professor
She literally has a Ph.D. in Cultural Studies*, so she is Dr. Gunn. Sadly the 36-year-old professor is married to one of her former classmates, so she is off the market; she reminds me of Christine O'Donnell, who ran for the US Senate from Delaware a few times as a Republican.
*This sounds about as real as the M.A. in Folklore and Mythology held by Jeff Albertson
Lots of arts used to be part of the olympics. Clearly the bigger problem here is need for some sort of sciencey faux-objectivity.
The 1932 Los Angeles Olympics gave out medals in architecture, literature, music, painting, and sculpture on sports-related themes.
This was the case until '48: in architecture, literature, music, painting, and sculpture. Artistic events were also part of the original Greek Olympics. They ended up cancelling this because too many of the competitors were professional, but even back in the days when we obeyed that stupid rule, there were all sorts of "amateur" athletes who were given bullshit on-paper jobs who were really just pros. Especially the Commies.
Honestly, I'm with Ted Gioia. We should bring back artistic competition at the Olympics. I'm sure they'd often make the wrong calls, but competition is still by far the best way for people to establish themselves in fields. It'd be good for both the mediums and the competitors.
Thanks.
It's interesting that there are a lot of billionaires right now endowing prizes, but they have a hard time catching the public's attention, the way the Olympics (1896) and Nobel Prizes (1901) did. Printing presses got much more efficient in the late 19th Century, so newspapers and books got cheaper, so a lot of our enduring middlebrow culture (e.g., Sherlock Holmes, Dracula, etc.) comes from around 1900.
Can’t watch the video (“not available in your country.”). But there were excerpts in the other videos. I’m unimpressed. It looks ugly.
“Deterritorializing gender in Sydney's breakdancing scene: a B-girl's experience of B-boying” — Garbage. Civilizational collapse can’t be far off now.
There's an epidemic of territorialized gender in Sydney's breakdancing scene. This is a serious issue.
Civilizational collapse is in the rear-view mirror now. The fractured pieces are starting to hit the ground.
Can I criticize anything in the Olympics when I think it is elitist BS from 1896 on? But half the country watches this crap and votes for the "non-Hitler" like they are told.
There always has to be one person who is "too cool for school." Just remember than less than 50% of Americans watch the Super Bowl. Sports does not have to appeal to everyone to be successful because nothing in the U.S. appeal to everyone.
Having observed this phenomenon in Orange County California, during its halcyon days, it appears to be calisthenics in expensive venues.
Just anecdotal evidence.
Gunn is the rare talent whose dancing style replicates her writing style: clumsy, contrived, spastic, utterly talentless, and just as painful to read/watch as it must have been to write/perform.
She'll go far!
But you have to admit, she was transgressive!
Breakdancing is absurd...
Its actually quite difficult and requires a lot athletically. Lots of upper body strength and agility. American Ninja Warrior types as youngsters, with rhythm, confined to a small dance space to show off.
And, fun fact: one of the most popular musicians to b-boy to is.....James Brown. Because despite James's music coming out decades before breakdancing became a thing, many of the beats Brown laid down in his songs are perfect for breakdance. Breakdancing is funk on the dancefloor for solo dudes.
Thanks, but it's still stupid.
Breakdancing went public just before the 1984 Olympics. I can recall first seeing guys spin around upside down on their shoulders in the 1983 movie "Flash Dance." It was one of the many manifestations of the mid-1980s warmth of black-white relations, along with "Thriller," "Purple Rain," "The Cosby Show," and "Beverly Hills Cop" and the exceptionally low black murder rate of 1984. Contrary to prediction, 1984 turned out to be a pretty good year.
Unfortunately, crack came along in the later 1980s and gangsta rap.
A lot of American black pop culture in the 1970s was about boring kitchen sink realism (e.g. Good Times) or else this-is-definitely-the-black version stuff (Shaft, Foxy Brown, Blacula). It was either "feel bad for blacks" or "this is a black thing". Disco might have been an exception, but that was more homosexual than black, and the backlash against it by people who weren't into clubbing, sleeping around, doing drugs, and partying was so intense it wiped disco off the map.
By the 1980s, the black middle class kids who became entertainers wanted a pop culture that mirrored their own childhood and not some misery or ghetto stuff. Prince, for example, grew up as a wannabe rocker with white guitar heroes from nice Minnesota, not in some New York slum. Michael Jackson was part of a showbiz family that did very well for itself and he was the star. Cosby's entire schtick was family-friendly and he hated the negative messaging. Heck, we even saw half-blac Rae Dong Chong become an above-the-title star and love interest for Arnold Schwartzenegger and C. Thomas Howell.
I know your favorite eliminated Olympic event is the Plunge For Distance, but I would suggest you also lobby for the reinstatement of the “swim obstacle course.” This could be done in the open water, though it might be preferable to host in a location in which sewage isn’t an issue.
Also, the standing broad jump.
> Breakdancing, or as they call it at the Olympics “breaking” as if it were a sport rather than a dance
It was done for different reasons, and it isn't an Olympic sport, but Ultimate Frisbee is now just known as Ultimate, which is grating to the ears since it's an adjective being used as a noun. Fun Fact: Ultimate Frisbee was invented by Joel Silver when he was in high school, who went on to become a popular (if not award winning) movie producer.
Ballroom dancing could make a claim to having been an Olympic Sport at one time. When the Modern Olympics were started, Athletics and Art were judged and given points. Ballroom dancing, at lest, is a form of dance, that required grace and endurance.
But people don't want to watch dance, they want to watch sports.
Young people watch a lot of dancing on Tik-Tok.
Dancing also has a decent amount of evidence pointing to its mental health improvements to its practitioners as well. The decline in people dancing together has been a major net negative for our societies.
Female people (cisgender ones) love figure skating, which is more dance than sport. And the subjective judging in that “sport” adds drama.
Everyone loves the hopeless amateur at the Olympics, like Eddie the Eel and Eddie the Eagle.
Unfortunately for Raygun, she’s not called Eddie, so her legacy will most likely be to confirm people’s suspicion that breakdancing is kind of lame.
Just been reminded it was Eric the Eel. Still, people loved him because swimming is hard and he knew he was bad at it.
Whether or not breaking is a sport is irrelevant to the Olympics--they're the Olympic GAMES, not the Olympic SPORTS. Like dancing, gymnastics, figure skating, diving and other performance events, breaking is a legitimate game to the extent participants are rated by objective standards. If their score just reflects how much they aesthetically impressed the judges, it's merely a show.
Free trip ro Paris! Who cares about the humiliation.
She could just do what Simone Biles did and refuse to compete after she got there.
Would the press run cover for her as much as they did for Simone though?
Not a chance. Simone is a real athlete. Raygun is a Simpsons b-plot.
"I can recall looking forward to seeing the next aesthetic breakthrough that Torvill & Dean would unleash.
But in the 1990s that kind of artistic innovation got shut down by the sports' authorities to make judging more objective."
Individual ice princesses were always adored by American audiences more than pairs, the success of the film <i>The Cutting Edge</i> notwithstanding. Even poor Debbie Thomas --the first black Ice Princess who took on the sexier and exotic Katarina Witt in 1988 and who tragically had a nervous breakdown from all her type-A pressure (Thomas became a doctor as well as an Olympic medalist) and now lives in poverty in a trailer park with her low-IQ white second husband-- was a hit during her Olympic time.
Audiences also seemed to prefer when younger teenage girls won over older ones---perhaps its all the fathers watching with their female children. But younger usually have less grace and precision, so they have to make up for it in athleticism and snappy programs. So the Olympics modified to make the ratings bigger. Nancy Kerrigan, herself a medalist, complained about the change and pressured the Olympics to make age-restricted categories of teens and 20s-30s so that the more willowly and precise but less athletic older women could win something.
Americans love when their teenage girls win in the Olympics: gymnastics in the summer and figure skating in the winter.
Nellie Kim's routines were far more graceful and beautiful than Nadia Comenici's. Kim was 18, Comenici 14.
I find here performance ok. It is a new sports in the Olympics, so they have to find out how to judge it, and if it works at all for the Olympics. As it is, Raygun probably did more to make the sport of breaking famous than the winners. She took a hit for the team, so to say.
At any rate, all these new sports - breaking, skating, beach volleyball etc. - are just there to make it a multi week-long commercial TV event. Few people take it very seriously, or even know about it.
The real Olympics are still the classic sports. If you won a gold in the 100 m or 400 m sprint, gymnastics, swimming: people will be in awe. You achieved your life's mission. Fame for generations is secured.
If you won gold in BMX, people will still be impressed, but it will not be very life changing.
I agree with your point. I happened to catch the breakdancing and was pretty surprised. It's more performative than just athletic. There are two hipster MC guys. They call the event "B-Boys" and "B-Girls." Apparently part of the competition is somehow showing up your one-on-one rival, who stands on the platform pacing and genuflecting while you're performing (though you get a penalty for making obscene, sexual, or violent gestures toward your opponent). It just seems divorced from the austere majesty of most individual Olympic events.
When that Australian girl went viral, my first thought was, "I don't see the difference between her performance and any others." My second thought was, maybe she was trying to make a mockery of the whole thing. Apparently she's some type of cultural studies professor, so this amusing trolling would indeed be an interesting project for someone like that.
> Apparently she's some type of cultural studies professor
She literally has a Ph.D. in Cultural Studies*, so she is Dr. Gunn. Sadly the 36-year-old professor is married to one of her former classmates, so she is off the market; she reminds me of Christine O'Donnell, who ran for the US Senate from Delaware a few times as a Republican.
*This sounds about as real as the M.A. in Folklore and Mythology held by Jeff Albertson