> Trying to force a countercultural artistic endeavor into a box created by the International Olympic Committee — the oldest of old-school conservatism
I watched a little bit of it and I thought it was fun. Break dancing is exciting to watch and the dancers were smiling and looked like they had a good time.
I think the ioc made a fine product for us normies to enjoy.
I keep seeing takes that are negative on breaking. Like let people have fun. I bet the competitors are happy to dance on the world stage.
This is interesting, because the argument came from an angle I wasn't expecting. I was expecting the contemptful-of-anything-new "that's ridiculous this isn't a sport" argument that I've heard from the various older people in my life. Instead I got, "this is watering down a form of counter-culture expression".
Which is also wrong, but at least differently wrong. This seems like the usual counter-culture gatekeeping. "Hey! We carved out a unique art form, just for us on the ingroup, and you outgroupers don't get to enjoy it without going through some social rituals!" I understand the sentiment, but nothing about mainstream attention is keeping the b-people from continuing to do their own thing.
I wonder if surfing will survive as well. I enjoyed watching it at night with my wife when all the other sports were done for the day, but it was really hard to follow the logic of how a ride was scored. They also had to pause for a couple of days for a storm, and some rounds the waves were clearly not wanting to play along and resulted in less impressive rides.
I don’t understand the argument here if there even is one. He didn’t like the way it was judged and he didn’t understand why raygun was there, so the whole thing should be thrown out? Also — he says the judging is too conservative for such a new sport, so we should in turn be even more conservative and get rid of breaking. This makes no sense.
The argument is that it is not a sport, but an artistic expression.
It is not that someone shouldn't have been there, or that the judges got something wrong. It argues that the whole endeavour is misguided.
The article lists a long list of awesome and very cool things which has no business being an olympic sport. It takes the opinion that breakdancing is that kind of thing too.
While the author may give that superficial suggestion, he never really broaches the subject.
Per the dictionary definition of sport, the only thing that set sport apart from any other artistic expression is notable physical exertion and recognized competition. In breaking, the physical exertion is certainly there and the will to be competitive is also there. It it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck. –– Especially when it is not unlike figure skating, which has been an Olympic mainstay for a century. There is clear precedence for this type of sport being considered Olympics-worthy.
> The argument is that it is not a sport, but an artistic expression.
It can be both. And really, if that's his argument, then he needs to take it up with the World DanceSport Federation. From my understanding, the IOC is kinda like the Unicode Consortium—their job is not to codify some alphabet, it's to take an already defined, used, and supported encoding, and bring it into the fold. The IOC doesn't make up what the sports are, they take sports that are already judged at the world level, and put them into the Olympics.
I don't agree with him either! Or rather I don't have an opinon. I neither agree nor disagree with him. It's just that I can understand his argument without having to form an opinion about it.
> nor am in a position to do anything about it,
Same. The day when dancers need my help to decide anything about dance we all are in a big trouble. Hopefully it never happens. :)
> The argument is that it is not a sport, but an artistic expression.
Yeah! We can't judge an artistic expression in an international competition every four years! Please ignore the skaters in the sparkly costumes diligently practicing elegant movements on the ice rink.
> The further breaking moves in the direction of sport, the further away it moves from being art.
That's definitely true. The demands of sport are going to push things into more physically demanding/technically impressive direction, which will conflict and constrain any artistry.
I don't know much about gymnastics, but I watched some of the balance beam stuff, and it felt like there were some remnants of artistry there (all the hand and leg movements they do between major moves), but they all felt dead and rote to me.
Also, the demands of competition will require formalisation of judging. Instead of just dancing your hearth out, there will be elements, and point values, and combos and judging criteria.
Whereas previously a set of moves would have been "neat, yeah!" now it will be a "3 pointer, a 2 pointer, and then I did not recognise that last bit. Is that in the book?"
You may have a point that because it is new to the Olympics, the competition at the local level vying to make into to the Olympics wasn't there. But if it sticks around, you won't be seeing the Rayguns of the world keep showing up time and time again. Those with favourable mutations are going to find a way to leverage what they got.
I tend to agree with the article, but to be honest "Break" is not high on my list either way.
This caught my eye:
>Softball is in … Oklahoma City?
Really, will they put heat lamps on the players too ? I have been to Oklahoma City in June for a 2 week large national convention almost 30 years ago. I thought I was going to die from the heat, and everyone from the north part of the US were miserable.
One OK person said "It does not get hot until August", a young lady from Washington State went ballistic yelling about the heat. I just laughed.
30 years later with Climate Change, playing Softball in Oklahoma City in July, are you kidding. I hope the have 5000 ambulances there sitting waiting for people to faint.
I watched a little bit of it and I thought it was fun. Break dancing is exciting to watch and the dancers were smiling and looked like they had a good time.
I think the ioc made a fine product for us normies to enjoy.
I keep seeing takes that are negative on breaking. Like let people have fun. I bet the competitors are happy to dance on the world stage.