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

[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.