Said Odylle Beder, "a B-girl from Brooklyn known as Mantis," quoted in "Breakers Grapple With Hip-Hop’s Big Olympic Moment/Largely left out of hip-hop’s 50th anniversary, breaking will get its stage at the Paris Olympics. Its pioneers wonder if their art will translate into sport" (NYT).
Where early B-boys and B-Girls spun windmills and threw out freezes to the funk and soul breaks used by pioneering D.J.s, the large competitions are bound by copyright laws and use nondescript music designed for breaking.
“The music is what drove us,” said Chino Lopez. “These kids just took what we did, and they’re just copying it. And it evolved. Don’t get me wrong. They’re doing crazy stuff now compared to what we were doing, but I see that they’re not living through the music, and that’s very, very important.”
I'm giving this post my "bad art" tag, because turning art into a sport is — according to the experts, quoted above — making bad art.
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20 comments:
I, too, question making an art form into a sport, but I get it. It's athletic. But focusing just on that does kind of miss the point. James Brown made his band play music to his dance moves, not the other way around, as in Hip-Hop. The DJ was the inspiration, which is wild, because they practically disappeared, along with breaking, from the cultural scene. That's one of the reasons why, as was observed yesterday, our culture has become so lame. They dissected Hip-Hop, and taken away just the parts they think they can make the most money on.
What a joke this is.
"Just like you I’m wondrin’ what I’m doin’ here
Just like you I’m wondrin’ what’s goin’ on"
Dancers are great athletes. On the most superficial level, I can see including them in the Olympics. But the trained body is only a tool to create art.
I have no knowledge about breaking, but if the dancers object, I would trust them.
The Olympics is casting about for relevance, adding new "sports" in an effort to attract a broader audience. But all they are really doing is diluting the product. There is a difference between sport and entertainment, even where the entertainment is physical. Not everything can be made sport by declaring a winner.
If they want more interest, they need to concentrate what they do, strip down to the core essentials of real competition, create a product that any sports fan can just turn on and have a decent chance of liking what they see. If we have to check the schedule and hope something good is on at a time we can watch, far fewer of us will watch at all.
The Olympics stopped being about "sports" certainly by 1984 when they added stuff like Rhythmic Gymnastics and Synchronized Swimming. They wanted to include art and attract more females. They succeeded, but detracted from the track-and-field fastest, strongest, best competitions in the process. Even figure skating dropped skating figures such as O and 8...as this "athletic" activity drifted toward wind-up-doll music box dancing.
I've not paid attention to the Olympics for a long time, and care less and less about obsessive-compulsive competitors prone to taking drugs and cheating. It was fun I suppose for a sense of moral superiority during the Cold War -- when the USSR paid pros while the west fielded amateurs, and when the East Germans juiced their bio females to look and perform like men. Now, the Germans might well say "We were all transgendered males but suppressed by the International Olympic Committee. Give us back our medals."
Let this dystopian image be the tombstone of the Olympics:
https://images.dailyhive.com/20220209102216/big-air-beijing.jpg
Add to the list of why these are the dumbest times to be alive
Sort of like the required "dance elements" in women's gymnastics floor exercises and in figure skating, I guess. Maybe they're intended to show artistry, in the sense of awareness of the music, but you are definitely not doing art.
I can't remember if it was here or elsewhere that I was recently made to notice that men's floor exercises, in contrast, don't have a soundtrack and don't require dance elements. It's all The Patriarchy!
Over at neo's big, she occasionally posts and comments on ballet videos. As dance is something about which I know nothing, I appreciate those posts a lot. Such a difference between ballet and - as far as I'm concerned - most other forms of dance, from folk to modern: it's like the difference between representational and abstract art.
LOL! Jerking off will eventually be an Olympic event.
- This is just another effort to attract and increase their core viewing audience: women. Be prepared for more human interest features on what personal struggles each break dancer had to overcome.
- I don't consider any activity to be a sport where the winner is decided by someone's opinion. Chess is more a sport than gymnastics.
- YMMV
Finally, an Olympic sport that makes less sense than rhythmic gymnastics.
Man what a bunch of ol'Grumps. I see nothing wrong with "breaking" as a sport. Why not? If we can have grotesque (Sic) absurdities like female boxing, wrestling, and weightlifting, why not this?
And you can make a case that any sport that involves too much subjective "judging" really isn't a sport. Sports should be contests with clear and obvious winners based on objective criteria.
And we've long ago left sports being tests of strength and speed. Anyone for a game of Beach volleyball or Archery?
I appreciate the criticism of the artistic "sports" but I've seen the rhythmic gymnasts throw a hoop 40 feet in the air while laying down, roll over a few times, do a couple of flips and then catch the hoop coming down with... their foot.
There is a level of athletic skill involved because I'm pretty sure even Aaron Rogers couldn't pull that off. Especially now.
This just confirms my position that if a sport requires a judge, it's not a real sport. There are a few of those in the Olympics that I enjoy for the athletic ability on display but they still aren't real sports Sports should be limited to who finished first, went higher, scored more points, etc. All the judged sports devolve into inter-personal political messes.
This has long been a sore spot for me--what is a sport?
I've come to the following conclusions. To be a "real" sport:
1) You must have the opportunity to negatively affect your opponent (some defense). Swimming and track and field don't fit this definition--they're "competitive athletic activities."
2) You have to break a sweat. Sorry golf. Golf is a competitive athletic activity, too (congrats!).
3) If you can wear a belt during the competition, you're not a sport. Sorry again, golf--and baseball.
4) If you can eat, drink or chew tobacco while playing, you're not engaged in a sport. Sorry again, Baseball. And bowling (for all the reasons above).
5) There's some continuum of the amount of equipment needed that pushes you away from being a sport too. Racecar driving is punishing and you might sweat--but there's too much emphasis on the equipment. American football is less of a sport than rugby--but clings to the "sport" category in my rubric.
There are many competitive athletic activities and they should savor that categorization--they're just not "sports." Archery, downhill skiing, gymnastics, high-jump... and most of them. Discuss.
Man what a bunch of ol'Grumps. I see nothing wrong with "breaking" as a sport. Why not? If we can have grotesque (Sic) absurdities like female boxing, wrestling, and weightlifting, why not this?
Yah the whole idea was supposed to be a few days of peace and diplomacy thru sport. There were some janky sports back in the day, too...
I'm more turned off by the price tag for hosting and the global corruptocrats at the trough when the local corruptocrats bravely put up taxpayer money for all the shit, claiming it's great for the economy. Zimbalist debunked that one decades ago...
Lillehammer and Lake Placid should be the model of all future Olympics- throw the thing in the back 40 and the high school gym and a pop-up tent. Instead the model is Bejing- trillion dollars and only a couple hundred lives for Las Vegas...
Didn’t know it was still a thing.
"They dissected Hip-Hop, and taken away just the parts they think they can make the most money on."
Yup. That's why you don't hear Hip-Hop like this any more:
The Message - Grand Master Flash and the Furious Five
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PobrSpMwKk4
Back on the Block - Quincy Jones
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqJ8X28V6sI
Schoolly D - Am I Black Enough For You
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3rxxWXAFA0
I might watch Olympic spear chucking, but not this.
I think singing should be an Olympic sport, we could allow pros like in Olympic Basketball. A big Ethel Merman "I love a parade" takes a lot of muscle power.
How about writing an academic paper as an Olympic sport, I lost 10 lbs while writing one.
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