I really just don’t get So You Think You Can Dance? judging. Which is to say, I think I bring the wrong set of principles. Naively, I’ve been watching the show with the expectation that marginal dancers are on the way out, exceptional dancers staying around to develop. Especially since this year’s group is exceptional. This week’s goodbye to Jimmy means I’m wrong. Read the rest of this entry »
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I’m late with this one. Alas. So, I’ll start by just saying it: the fact that Ricky got cut is really obnoxious and wrong. Sure, this season’s competition is extra-tense and close and all that, but, seriously, Ricky was an amazingly beautiful dancer. He’s off the show and brings with his ejection all sorts of quirks about So You Think You Can Dance? Read the rest of this entry »
I am so happy to move beyond the humiliation teasers on So You Think You Can Dance? and into the real competition. Cuts, dancing for your life, focus on how people manifest their talents through exhaustion and pressure. You know, the real reason one might tune in if one imagines oneself as not a complete jerk. I’m still a little traumatized by the humiliation thing, but I’ll pretty much leave it behind. Except to say that it is totally unnecessary. This is a compelling and exciting show without juvenile antics. Seriously.
A recent episode of CSI: NY opened with a beautiful woman strutting her stuff at what appeared to be a strip club. Flash to the bathroom: she’s dead, head in the toilet, and the CSI crew is there to solve the crime. But who would kill this foxy Jane Doe in her prime? Read the rest of this entry »
The strange life of the dancer…
Tryouts this week on So You Think You Can Dance?: Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta. The tryout phase of So You Think…?, like American Idol’s version of the same, is quirky simply because they are both clearly filling time and trying to lure in viewers. You’d hope – maybe even think – that viewers would be drawn into the show by the sheer physical craziness of dance. People can do unbelievable things with their bodies. Seriously. But the producers have taken the now familiar and depressing route in recruiting viewers: humiliation. Read the rest of this entry »
Dancing With The Stars will crown its champion tonight, and no matter who wins, normative expectations of gender and sexuality will be challenged. Our three contestant offer alternative masculinities and femininities to a public reared on Barbie and Ken. Read the rest of this entry »
13.69: Reading Popular Culture has a fascinating bit on feral women. Why do we want them? What do they say to us about 
desire? Does the wildness of these particular women produce a sexually present woman, or another victim? Well, because she’s a complicated reader of such things, 13.69 thinks of this as both – those are the consequences of cultural desire and material limits. Cultural desire dis-locates the desire, of course, folding desire into the “we” and the “our.” Read the rest of this entry »