I enjoy the Olympics despite the scores

[jducoeur]

One observation from last night: it reminded me, once again, that I find the judging and scoring to be my one real beef with the figure skating.

This time, there was a skater (didn't catch where from) whose routine was based on Gene Kelly's classic number from An American in Paris. For my money, it was brilliant: not just good skating, but good nods to the original routine peppered throughout. He actually managed to get a bunch of little nuances of Kelly's movement idiom in there -- not easy when you're moving on teeny little blades at high speed.

Of course, the commentators were full of, "Oh, it's not very hard; it won't score well; blah blah blah". And that proved true -- from a scoring POV, it was mediocre. Which is a damned shame, because from a purely artistic POV (as opposed to an athletic one), I thought it completely stole the show.

This seems to happen about once in each Winter Olympics for me. Sometimes it's a solo, sometimes a pair, but there's always *somebody* who just clearly gets the idea of Skating As Dance, and as Art, far better than the rest of the field. And they *never*, ever, win...

Comments

[the-nita.livejournal.com]

As soon as you can pull of the level of athletic skill necessary to enter an ATHLETIC event like the olympics, pull this shite.

Otherwise, don't confused "first past the post" with sports.

[rickthefightguy.livejournal.com]

Very politely put, but I beg to disagree. Athletic and Sporting are not synonyms. There are a lot of very athletic endeavors that are not sports. Unless Art and Sport are synonyms, since most of the best professional athletes I know are artists. It takes great skill and coordination to do a 35' high fall (I know, I have done them many times). But that isn't even an art - it is just an athletic job, that is part of the art form of film making (and very occasionally live theatre).

Now these days the olympics are, no doubt, a collection of athletic events. Some of those events are sports, and some are competitive art forms. Is competitive swing dance a sport? It is athletic and competitive. But my feeling, as I said, is that there is a real difference between competitive athletic events like figure skating and swing dance, where professional judges disagree constantly (which is why we have to take a consensus and the consensus frequently disagrees with a large number of the other observers), and sports, where the winner is the one who ran the swiftest, jumped the highest, or lifted with the most strength.

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

I think you've hit upon an interesting distinction. But isn't it more of a spectrum than a simple either/or?

For instance, I think most people would accept that baseball and football are sports -- yet they have umpires and referees making judgment calls.

On the other hand, Scott McCloud, in _Understanding Comics_, proposes a theory of Art that definitely includes most Sport. IIRC, "Art is any activity not directly related to survival or reproduction." Rather broad, but I often find it useful.

[rickthefightguy.livejournal.com]

I sidejacked your first two comment on this to a comment below btw.

Though McCloud's definition is lovely, (and I like his work from what I have seen of it - isn't he the guy who did the 'closure' strip you have on your mantle?) it doesn't agree with my definition (if I had one) in that it includes a lot of things that I would bar, like reading livejournal, and especially facebook, playing video games (though creating them does fit in my definition), and blowing out candles on a birthday cake, to name 3 of the millions of things that people do that are not directly related to survival or reproduction. And of course survival is related to reproduction, in a prerequisite sort of way, and reproduction to survival in a species sort of way. And also, for professional artists, art _is_ directly related to survival, and come to that, in a species sort of way art is necessary to survival, and .... on and on. Lovely sentiment, but it doesn't stand up to any real thought for me.

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

Yes, the "Closure" piece is from that book.

And I admit that his definition is too radical to stand up all the time. But it does present an interesting perspective that, as I said, I often find useful.