It's back to architecture for a little while, and the next series of posts will all be on the same overarching theme -- coziness. It will start from the small scale and work up progressively toward an entire city plan.
We'll be visited yet again by some of our favorite recurring characters here -- America and Japan exhibiting the cultural traits of the Dark Ages in Eurasia, re-examining the Dark Ages in Eurasia itself with a mind toward how they cycle with Humanist / Enlightenment cultures over the course of a 2000-year cycle, the place of architecture in American ethnogenesis (and how we invented so-called Modernism), specifically Frank Lloyd Wright pioneering just about every family of building style that makes us us (and most of it coming from ground zero of American ethnogenesis -- Chicago), the utter cluelessness of most architectural and other critics when they try to figure out American culture, and so on and so forth.
Along the way we'll explore an aspect of architecture that has received shockingly little critical attention, including in books that are devoted to formal spatial / geometric analysis. E.g., The Dynamics of Architectural Form by Rudolf Arnheim (1977), a formal critical book that I happen to have a handy copy of -- but I figure there's little discussion elsewhere, or else he would've included it in his citations and footnotes.
And that aspect is... CONCAVITY, as opposed to the far more common convexity. There is a very tiny amount about this aspect regarding interior spaces or individual elements like a column or vault, but we'll be taking a far larger view of the entire building and its grounds, and of entire neighborhood and city plans.
Everyone just assumes that when you talk about "shapes" of buildings, they have to have a convex perimeter -- where every vertex of an angle joining two walls, is pushed outward from inside the building. For example, a rectangle or pentagon or hexagon or octagon or in the limit a circle / ellipse.
We're going to see just how concave you can make a building's exterior -- where some of those corners between two walls have been pulled inward toward the center of the building. For example, a U shape, a "spokes stemming from a hub" shape, etc.
But we can't cover that topic until we start with a smaller scale, and examine how cozy Americans prefer their buildings to be, how Dark Age and defensive and fortress-like we like them, how we assume the central state is weak and nomads / bandits / feuding factions are unchecked, etc. Only then will it make sense why America pioneered concave building shapes, and how early we invented them.
And then the usual corollary -- that the Euros were at least a generation behind us (sometimes longer), copying us, and just slapping a different Bauhaus-y branding on top of our popular styles that almost always trace back to Frank Lloyd Wright.
It cannot be otherwise -- he was born in 1867 and was churning out pioneering works in the 1890s. Walter Gropius, the earliest Euro modernist, was born in 1883, and was not churning out his distinctive works until the 1920s -- a full generation delayed from the grandfather of American -- and therefore Modern -- architecture, Frank Lloyd Wright himself.
But we will give the Euros their due -- their Dark Age due, that is. And the Saharo-Arabians of the Dark Ages as well. I haven't looked too far into East Asian examples, other than to confirm that Japan is on a different timeline and is currently Dark Age like we are.
If you're sick and tired of cathedrals and chateaus, and want to see CASTLES for a change...
If you'll just puke seeing another grid layout for a city's streets, and want to see eccentric arterial meanderings and cul-de-sacs everywhere...
If you'd rather not set foot in the city to begin with, but retreat to pastoral hamlets...
We're going to see just how fucking awesome Eurasia used to be -- during the Dark Ages.
Mainly, though, the focus will be on American ethnogenesis, and the model is one of convergent evolution -- similar environments selecting for similar adaptations, not like we consciously revived the Dark Age castle complex in America. They just turned out similarly due to America having a weak central state, just like Eurasian societies did back then.
I'll put together the first post as soon as I can, but in the meantime, let this programming note cleanse your brain of whatever dIsCouRsE-sludge has been flung against it lately, and get it re-acquainted with some of the major recurring themes here, before we take off on the journey. ^_^
Why don't I share the list of books I'm consulting, aside from rummaging through online sources. I scored all of them VERY cheap in thrift stores or used bookstores, they're by no means rare or expensive, and any one would be a great start if you're curious about architecture.
ReplyDeleteJust for the picture quality alone! Or the line drawing quality. Nothing on the internet is as good as the professionally shot and printed photographs from the good ol' days.
You're lucky if one of their descendants took a nice picture and uploaded it to Flickr in 2008. Otherwise you'll get the same exact image, repeated a zillion times, from an image search. And they won't have multiple views, good lighting, composition, or anything like that. The only good images on the internet are digitally preserved scans / copies of a photograph that someone shot and printed several decades ago.
* * *
The Dynamics of Architectural Form, by Rudolf Arnheim
Dimensions: Space, Shape & Scale in Architecture, by Charles Moore and Gerald Allen
Encyclopedia of American Architecture, by William Dudley Hunt (1980 edition, chock full of Midcentury Modern and Brutalist examples to illustrate everything)
American Architecture since 1780: A Guide to the Styles, by Marcus Whiffen
Buildings for Commerce and Industry, by Charles King Hoyt
Frank Lloyd Wright: The Masterworks, by Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer
Romanza: The California Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright, by David Gebhard
Landmarks of Los Angeles, by Patrick McGrew
Columbus, Indiana: A Look at Architecture, by Columbus Area Visitors Center (1984 edition)
Castles, by Charles W.C. Oman
Romanesque Art in Italy, by Hans Decker
It is worth noting that the kind of medieval castle that we contemporaries are familiar with in terms of image first became widespread with the disintegration of the Carolingian Empire:
ReplyDeletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle
Convexity vs. concavity comes up also in the grid vs. arterial layout! Grids being convex (exposed, isolating), arterials being concave (cozy, bonding).
ReplyDeleteAnd "transit" layouts also apply on the smallest scale, within a room like a classroom!
This is why I procrastinate on some of these topics, cuz they keep turning up more and more connections and insights... but at a certain point, they'll have to be addenda that go in the comment thread, and the foundation has to be laid in a standalone post.
The first facet I'll look at doesn't involve convexity vs. concavity very much, more like the scale of spaces, but it'll touch on geometric complexity as well.
It's not so much about the collapse of the Frankish Empire, but the rise of nomadic empires that were getting a foothold in Europe, or nomadic raiders who fell short of an empire but were still a harassing presence. That coincided more or less with the stagnant and collapsing stage of the Frankish Empire.
ReplyDeleteNamely the Vikings (empire), Moors (empire), and Magyars (regular raiders). They were not Christian, they were nomadic, and two of them (Moors and Magyars) were foreigners who didn't speak an Indo-Euro language. So they were meta-ethnic nemeses within Europe.
The castle-building empires were spawned in reaction to these (seemingly) permanent nomadic mega-armies / empires. The Franks didn't build castles cuz they arose in reaction to the Roman Empire, a sedentary civilization.
Why didn't the Byzantine Empire build castles, since they were spawned by the frontier with various nomadic groups like the Alans, Huns, early Goths, etc.? Perhaps due to these groups being here today, gone tomorrow kind of nomads -- coming in waves every several generations, but not being a regular raiding group, or setting up their own nomadic empire nearby.
There needed to be imperial-level asabiya to build castles cuz they're very expensive and long-term oriented, meaning the nobles / elites must be willing to sacrifice a decent amount of their wealth in order to build something that will last for centuries, redounding to the benefit of the community / society at large, not just their own narrow bloodlines, not just for the next couple generations.
At first they were made of earth and timber -- not so expensive, not very long-lasting. But better than nothing. Soon they were made from stone, more expensive and long-lasting.
I reject the view that they arose *primarily* due to internal feuding among noble factions -- they had plenty of that in the Frankish Empire, like their integrative civil war involving rival factions led by queens Brunhild and Fredegund. Or jockeying for position between the various components of the empire, like Austrasia vs. Neustria.
Yet the Franks were not extensive castle-builders (either the earth-and-timber type or the stone type). They had tons of wealth, they were highly cohesive -- but they didn't arise in response to nomadic nemeses.
If anything, they were more nomadic than their nemesis -- starting out as part of the Germanic volkerwanderung, reacting against the sedentary civilized Roman Empire. Likewise, the Vikings were not castle-builders -- they were nomads themselves, arising in response to the (by that time) sedentary civilized Frankish Empire.
It remained for the French, British, and Spanish empires to become castle-builders (at home and abroad, e.g. in Italy and Sicily).
The Byzantine Empire was also spawned by pressure from the Persian meta-ethnic nemesis (the Sasanians, at that point), from the eastern direction. And the Sasanians were another sedentary civilized Persian empire, not nomadic raiders from Central Asia or Arabia, as would show up only beginning in the 7th C, centuries after the Byzantine Empire was born.
ReplyDeleteGoob is returning to her fantastical sea-home, having cheered up the spirits of the land-lubbers when they needed it most. Another Manic Pixie Dream Girl from the 2020-'24 restless phase concluding that her crazy carnival tour has done its job, and now it's time to focus more on her own needs and duties.
ReplyDeleteOff the PC...
Wish I could be...
In the real world...
That's from a longer fragment I wrote a couple years ago, but didn't DARE post it, for fear of jinxing her graduation. But now that she's given notice, I should finish it up as a final tribute song. ^_^ A hopeful send-off, capturing how restless she must feel as an online superstar who wants to break out of the palace and be free.
ReplyDeleteCuz like Moom, I don't think she's reincarnating, not as a streamer anyway.
I have a bad track record jinxing graduations -- everyone I wrote a tribute song for has graduated, albeit with quite a delay. Fauna, Mumei, and Gura, all graduating this year. Others graduated without me writing a song for them (Sana and Ame), so they still might've left even if I hadn't, but still -- not a good record of what effects my fan-songs have had.
ReplyDeleteThat's why, as much as I've written a fragment here or there in my drafts file, I'd NEVER post a song for Irys. She's the last one who I regularly watched that's still streaming in Hololive, and the day I post something for her like that, it'll start the countdown to the final Manic Pixie Dream Girl of Holo EN taking flight for good.
Obviously I don't blame myself for this bad correlation, it's more like my tribute songs were representative of a broader fan outpouring and desire for connection with the talent. And for a little while, the talents felt the same way toward us, collectively.
But over time, that got to overwhelming for them, leading them to want to unplug the online spotlight and lead "normal" lives -- still terminally online, given them being Millennials and Zoomers, but without being in a global spotlight, as much of a rush as that was at first.
I, and I assume the other fans, don't have any regrets about our outpouring of fan-art, fan-songs, etc., toward the talents. And I assume the talents have no regrets about reciprocating for as long as they did. But that mutually parasocial connection has run its course, and if anything the talents probably feel like they've plunged into a hangover after a rush-filled high, and need to de-tox and recover for awhile.
The streamers who never got that intimately parasocial with their fandom, will not be plunging into a hangover -- cuz they never took off on the rush-filled bonding high to begin with. They've been more even-steven the whole time, not on a rollercoaster.
So, as sad-girl as she may be, Kronii has outlasted 3 of her 4 gen-mates. She didn't chase the high, so she won't get plunged into the hangover and feel like quitting cold turkey and checking into a detox resort.
I don't have an addictive personality or anything, but I'd still say the hangover was worth the high in the case of the (non-Japanese) vtuber fandom.
The Japanese streamers aren't quite so parasocial, or their fans aren't so parasocial, it's more of a traditional "performer and spectator" relationship, only in a new medium. They do interact back-and-forth, but it's not as intense and intimate as it was for streamers and their audiences outside of Japan, during the early 2020s.
Anyway, no regrets. ^_^
Also we're soon moving from the MPDG era to the manic era of the 15 year cycles so they would be moving on anyways.
DeleteOn an upbeat note, Bae + Irys are going to play a retro-tastic arcade game from the '90s (slightly remade for the Switch), Snow Bros. 2!
ReplyDeleteIt looks a lot like Bubble Bobble, so I assumed it was by Taito, but it's actually by Toaplan. Imitation is the best form of flattery. ^_^
I already wrote before about co-op games being dominant from the late '70s through the mid-'90s, during the harmonious phase of the 50-year civil discord cycle. And sure enough, this game is from 1994.
After that year, it was mainly player-vs.-player or team-vs.-team -- whereas the classic co-op games were purely players-vs.-computer. People wanted to get along and cooperate with each other, not turn everything into a competition. If a video game needed a competitor, it had to be the computer itself, not another person.
Maybe Bae has settled into Glorious Nippon for long enough that the desire to honor the classics has started to take her over, as is natural for the Japanese streamers -- many of whom are still playing old school Pokemon games, or Chrono Trigger like Koyori, or Dino Crisis like the Koronator, or Ocarina of Time like Sora.
I hear that the Japanese government requires a certain quota of hours playing retro JP video games, before they will give kaigai-niki a permanent resident card or citizenship. But it's not a chore -- it's fun! ^_^
Pekora was playing Kirby's Adventure for the NES last week, too! A game that's over 30 years old is better than the new ones today.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I finally found a clue about whether she is a boob-girl or a butt-girl -- I think she's a butt-girl!
In the Mario Party collab today with Marine, Shion, and Korone, both Pekora and Marine excelled at the rhythm mini-game.
I checked old clips to confirm that this was not a fluke -- she has very good rhythm skills.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPSZlgYsyos
Rhythm goes with dancing, and dancing is corporeal, not cerebral. Butt people are corporeal, boob people are cerebral.
Marine is famous for her buns and her dancing skills, and it only makes sense that she's good at rhythm games.
So, Pekora being equally good at rhythm games means she probably has the same nature as Marine -- being a butt-girl rather than a boob-girl.
I don't know if she's mentioned anything more direct and specific about her body type, but if she's so skilled at rhythm games, she just *has to* be a butt-girl!
Much like the Goobinator, on the EN side. Shark energy is stored in the tail. ^_^
Sidebar on how broken Google's search engine is: the clip linked above, titled "Pekora is the rhythm master", does not appear when you enter that title into Google's main engine, or its video search engine. You can put it all in quote marks, you can instruct it to look specifically within youtube.com -- nothing.
ReplyDeleteHowever, YouTube's in-site search engine turns up the correct video when you enter the title into the search bar, without quote marks even.
This is further confirmation that Google's search engine is fundamentally broken -- and likely, irrevocably broken at this point. It's been butchered too much by the QE era of giving all the strivers "projects" to work on, to rationalize their fake free infinite dollar-funded salaries.
These fake-work / make-work projects are not merely innocuous. Innocuous would be telling the Central Bank to direct deposit the six-figure salary into the striver's bank account, without having them do anything whatsoever. They voted Democrat, they're from the preferred tribe or caste within India for whom the hiring manager is a corrupt bag-man in America, etc. So, give them the money.
But that isn't enough -- they want to feel like they've earned it, so they need these projects to produce a tangible outcome.
Whether the outcome deserves a six-figure salary or not, isn't the question -- of course they do not deserve that much money, they're BREAKING the entire goddamn architecture that they're working on!
But they don't want to hear that -- they want to hear how, not only are they getting tons of money, they *deserve* that money due to their merits, not due to corrupt ethnic patronage networks.
Nobody, Indian or American, wants to look in the mirror every day and think, "I'm making six figures only cuz I have social connections to the hiring manager, and what I actually produce is not only mediocre, it actively harms and destroys and degrades the sector of society that I'm supposed to be contributing to. But I secured the bag, I'm on that grindset, so sucks to the rest of you!"
No, they want to be told how meritorious their work is, over and over. They're not just a one-hit wonder -- every single quarter of the fiscal year, they're doing quality work that deserves six-figure compensation. Wow, I really am something special -- and that (deluded, coping) feeling of self-respect is more important than the big fat material salary itself.
Austrian School economists see half the picture, calling these kinds of funding boondoggles "malinvestments" during a bubble. But that misses the other half of the picture -- it's not just that free money during a bubble makes people think there's no costs to anything, so the money goes into dead ends.
It does go into dead ends -- but that is largely due to the demand for self-respect and self-esteem among the teeming hordes of strivers greedily grasping for those free-flowing funds.
Adam Smith made this point in The Theory of Moral Sentiments -- man not only wants to be loved, he wants to be lovely, i.e. to be worthy of that love, like he is being loved cuz he deserves it. Otherwise it could be pity-love, which feels rotten.
That doesn't mean he will actually behave in a way that deserves to be loved by others -- he may just cook up a rationalization for why he's so love-worthy, while acting in a rephrehensible way, rather than behave in a genuinely love-worthy way.
Anyway, the point being for now -- don't bother with Google's search engine, if some site has its own in-site search engine.
It's not as if Google cannot return search results from YouTube -- it absolutely can. It's not like there's a firewall around YouTube that Google can't see inside of. It's just that Google's search engine has been thoroughly corrupted by fake-work / make-work pRoJeCtS.
It's not political censorship either, although they did that as well during Obama's 2nd term onward. There are no geopolitical implications about a Japanese anime bunny-girl streamer being a master at rhythm games. Google just plain and simply DOES NOT WORK anymore.
Imagine thinking you could ever achieve immortality by uploading your mind to a computer, when something as simple as a search engine -- and yet, the global flagship of its kind -- has been thoroughly corrupted and lies a decomposing abandoned mess, within your fairly brief life so far.
ReplyDeleteBoomers and some Gen X-ers may be more delusional about this, cuz the progress line for "computers" has gone up so much over their lifetimes -- they remember when there were no computers, no internet, no cell phones whatsoever.
But Millennials and Zoomers were basically born online, and the things they took for granted as the baseline -- NOT as the most recent pinnacle of ever-skyward progress, but simply the most pathetic default baseline -- have utterly broken down and lie in ruins, before they've even turned 40.
Tech-tards had better find a more clueless demo to sell their slopaganda to, and that's precisely why they target their sales pitches to literal Baby Boomers and Gen X-ers, who couldn't know any better from their lived experiences.
Millennials and Zoomers would intuitively known from their own lived experiences, yeah no, uploading your mind to Google means that your digi-mind will be totally broken and unusable in 10 years or less.
Uploading your mind to Amazon World Services cloud means that when Trump or Vance start a self-shooting tariff war, and China deprives us of rare earth metals, the AWS servers downstream of that change will no longer function optimally, and cuts will have to be made -- and that cinching of the online belt is going to squeeze your puny little digi-mind into pieces.
Uploading your mind to Netflix means your digi-mind will be de-listed and unaccessible for use when their contract window expires, just like those movies that you can only watch during a 6-month period.
Physical media last close to forever -- even the most basic mom & pop video rental store had longer-lasting windows of usability / accessibility for their "data archive" (i.e., the casette tapes).
And even after those stores closed down 20 years ago, or at least threw out their VHS library -- those tapes are still circulating out there, or are being preserved in private collections. I still own and proudly display 3 VHS tapes that I rented, and by the time I went to return them, the store literally closed up with no notice, so I kept them, and have hung onto them ever since. ^_^
Arabesque, The Desperate Hours, and Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. Still in their distinctive video rental store clamshell cases, too. ^_^
Just another timely reminder of how pointless, fake, actively-harmful the AI boondoggle has been, and will always ever be. Anyone churning out slopaganda on behalf of AI is literally on the take by these transhumanist billionaire dum-dums who can't even observe what a ruined state the computer / online landscape lies in, just one generation after the bursting of the original Dot-Com bubble.
I put aside the moral arguments for/against AI, uploading your brain, etc. Those are too open-ended and debatable -- the purely empirical and scientific angle of attack is totally undefended. Just imagine trying to sell this digi-brain bullshit, when Google's search engine lies in ruins, when Netflix suffered a Library of Alexandria-level wipeout of its archive when it transitioned from physical media to online streaming services, and the whole rest of the pathetic state of "tech" these days...
And so we're
ReplyDeleteSpamming uwu till we get banned
Getting stored in one another's RAM
Gotta deactivate, off-a the site
And then you draw some art about me
And we find our alt accounts
And then we say:
I think we're anon now
No TOS to tell us what is not allowed
I think we're anon now
The sharing of our screens is the only crowd...
* * *
Another fragment from a couple years ago, when the audience and the talents were both on the high, not the hangover. Hehe. To the tune of:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6Q3mHyzn78
I've tried not to be a noob
ReplyDeleteBut when I'm gaming with Moom
I can't let up the chase
Cuz you make my kart race
Blocked me off of the site
You're my malware file
You keep bricking PC's
Yeah, blue screen and can't tweet
Something's feeling cringe now
Cuz I'm drawing my fursona with wings
If I could fly right through the screen now...
Cuz you've got that owl thing
So log off, log off, log off of my thread
And follow back my alt instead
I don't, I don't, don't know what it is
But I need that owl thing
You've got that owl thing
Loss of control during socially harmonious phase of 50-year civil discord cycle. While looking through videos of dance shows from '90s TV, I stumbled upon an Italian one called Non E la RAI, from the early '90s. It had more variety than just dancing, but dancing was a crucial part of it.
ReplyDeleteLook how wild people used to dance to Eurodisco back in the good ol' days! ^_^
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtiTVVgPWKE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vw4qg9OcXw
To point out the details for those who are not corporeal, they're throwing their bodies off-balance at a fast pace, including a lot of zig-zagging motions, and these include not just their legs but their torso and even their arms. They're whipping their arms around, twirling or spinning their whole body, lifting their legs up high when they "step" (knees rising up to the waist), and whipping their head and hair around. Girls don't whip their hair around anymore...
All destabilizing motions, especially at the fast pace they're doing them.
The overall impression is that they're not in personal control of their bodies, they're possessed by some spirit that's moving them around at will, and they are just going along for the ride with that puppet-master spirit.
So it's not "lack of control" in the sense of entropy, or doing random motions and falling flat on your face and lying still, half-conscious, as though you were shit-faced drunk and can no longer coordinate your body. Their sense of propioception is entirely intact -- indeed, heightened, as proven by their frenetic off-balance motions that *don't* make them fall over.
Their body shows control, but it's not coming from the individual owner of the body -- it's from some external spirit, or the crowd-vibe, or the music, or something else. "Allowing others to control your body" is more accurate than "loss of control".
Also, several of them are playing a trust game -- jumping off of a high diving board and landing in a fairly shallow pool (shallow enough that the water only comes up to their waist while they're standing in it). The underwater shots make it clear how miraculous it is that none of them were injured!
I'm sure the engineers planned and calculated the safe depth beforehand, but still, that's quite a lot of trust to be putting in the crew! If it were a movie, it would qualify as a stunt. You don't see stunts like that in movies anymore, let alone performed by the stars themselves...
The reason is pretty simple: when interpersonal trust is high, people don't feel like they'll be scrutinized, criticized, and ostracized for how they behave, as long as it's pro-social rather than anti-social of course.
ReplyDeleteSo, don't worry what anyone else thinks -- just go wild when you're dancing. It's not like "everyone else is going to think you're weird and want to ostracize you, but you should pay no mind to them".
It's more like, "Don't worry, no one is going to think you're weird in the first place -- they're going to think you're cool and fun and exciting. And the onlookers will want to join you rather than ostracize you."
So they're more likely to cut loose and go wild -- not in an anti-social way like violence, just dropping your guard and going crazy, in the right setting, like a dance party.
Also, when trust is high, you're more willing to put your faith in someone or something else controlling your body -- cuz that external force is benevolent (pro-social, harmonious), and would not manipulate or exploit you while you were in such a vulnerable state of surrendering control over your body.
And vice versa for why people in the discordant phase of the cycle do not dance or otherwise behave in such wild, loose, abandoned ways (that are still pro-social).
ReplyDeleteDancing styles since the late '90s, lasting through the early 2020s, are more calculated, vampy, slinking-around, seductive, all in a highly controlled and poised kind of way.
Like the dancer has total control over their own body -- rather than surrendering control to a larger spirit or crowd-vibe -- *and* they're going to use that control in order to manipulate the audience, scheme them, wrap them around their finger, etc.
Or if the audience is fellow females, to use that self-control to intimidate their same-sex rivals in the mating dance arena -- the ubiquitous dance-off and booty-battle and etc. during the discordant 2000s and 2010s.
See the music videos for "Promiscuous," "Side to Side," and so on. Controlled, vampy, manipulating.
It's very reminiscent of the burlesque / striptease trend of the 1950s and '60s, or the go-go dancers at clubs of that time. As shown in, e.g., the striptease scene in The Graduate. Not wild and abandoned, but fully in control -- and in that case, not only wrapping the male dupes in the audience around her finger, but also intimidating a same-sex rival to the point of crying.
No woman used dancing as a weapon from the disco era to the '80s and through the mid-'90s techno era. They were too harmonious and happy and eager to have fun, not turn every social interaction into a competition with winners and losers.
That ties into the catfight trend of both the late '40s through the early '70s discordant phase, and its revival from the late '90s through the early 2020s. And its absence from the late '20s through the early '40s, and again during the late '70s through the mid-'90s.
If you were in dance clubs during the 2000s and 2010s (they have since died off, so it's hard to judge the 2020s), you couldn't help but notice how awkwardly and standing-still most of the other people "danced", aside from the calculated vampy performer types.
ReplyDeleteThey were too afraid of being considered weird and ostracized, perhaps with good reason, given how competitive and anti-social their peers were.
Very similar to American Bandstand from the '60s, near the peak of social chaos. You'd think social chaos would lead to wild abandoned dancing -- but they were incredibly awkward and motionless, considering they're on a dance show and in a "safety in numbers" group setting. Social chaos leads to turtle behavior, not butterfly behavior.
I was one of the lone wild dancers during the discordant phase, probably cuz I was a bit earlier of a generation than them, and imprinted on the max of social harmony, and have never worried about anyone thinking I'm weird, trying to shame me, ostracize me, etc. As my occasional half-hearted haters always find out, I cannot be shamed if I'm not doing anything wrong. Try it on an insecure Millennial like yourself instead. ^_^
And far from alienating the rest of the crowd with my loss-of-personal-control dance style, they all looked up to me like I was the lone brave soul fighting the good fight against the awkward, anti-social, navel-gazing mainstream of the zeitgeist. Always happy to lift the crowd's spirits, and encourage them to do so themselves, by modeling the right behavior!
The last time people were such wild abandoned dancers was the good ol' big band / swing era, from the late '20s through the mid-40s. Sometimes literally bouncing off the walls, using overhead ceiling joists as a monkey bar to grab onto and swing off of, throwing each other's bodies around like rag dolls...
In a high-trust, harmonious phase of the cycle, you bet!
And no, the crowd looking up to me as a role model was not just the teen and college babes who were eager for me to pull them up onto the stage and dance next to or against me.
ReplyDeleteI mean, sure, they loved it -- super-hot guy, wild dancer, non-stop stamina (4 hours of intense gymnastics with few breaks). But really I think it was the wild part that got them so excited. I'm sure there were a few other hot guys there, but they weren't role models for high-trust abandoning self-control kind of behavior.
And the guys were just as eager to jump up on stage and dance next to me -- no homo, more like the frat bro types who wanted to cut loose like a wild-and-crazy '80s college frat party. They'd always ask my name, pat me on the back, point and scream to the others, "This guy - is an '80s - LEGEND!"
One of them asked if my name was Dan? I said, No, why? "Ah, cuz everyone calls you Dan, Dan, the '80s Man!" LOL. ^_^
I miss having an environment where I can be the life of the party, week after week, for years upon years. It's the part I hate most about the current decade, as we plunge into imperial collapse and all our most seemingly default baseline institutions -- like, "local dance clubs" -- have utterly vanished, yes still many years after the Covid hysteria has ended.
Xanadu's opening scene begins with very large-ranging head and hair whipping! I knew it had to be there somewhere, but it's literally the first series of motions that the first muse to awaken makes. There's plenty of spinning, often with hair-whipping worked into the spin, but it's crazy to see throwing your head around in a circle being the opening "step" in the movie's choreography.
ReplyDeleteWell, that sets the tone perfectly -- wild and abandoned, not calculated and vampy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cj5_vZAidRQ
Notice also the full extension of the arms, full extension of the legs, leaping around, spinning fast, whipping the head and hair -- it's very explosive and straight-arrow motions. The opposite of Bob Fosse's distinctly slow, languid, sinuous motions, which fit the calculated / vampy / audience-manipulating zeitgeist of the '50s and '60s and first half of the '70s (discordant, low-trust).
Disco in general, Saturday Night Fever, Xanadu, and everything after it -- at least until the mid-'90s -- was the swinging of the choreographic pendulum away from Fosse-esque slow sinuous seduction, and toward explosive carefree spontaneity.
Before moving on to other '80s examples, just want to emphasize another pro-social role that wild and abandoned dancing plays within the harmonious phase of the cycle.
ReplyDeleteIt's not just about the individual dancer signalling that they trust the larger force that's controlling their body, and so being a role model to do likewise -- encouraging others to trust that same larger external force, to take over *their* bodies as well.
It's also a person-to-person signal, like "Hey, you can trust me not to manipulate or exploit you -- look how I'm obviously not in calculated control of my own body. If I'm not in control of myself, then I certainly can't plot, scheme, trick, deceive, or manipulate you."
Carefree spontaneity prevents the cold, clinical, calculated mindset needed to exploit others.
That's why we're so drawn to those babes from Non E la RAI -- aside from having ripe scantily clad bods. There were music video girls like that during the 2000s and 2010s -- but the early '90s babes are signalling how carefree and spontaneous they are, putting us at ease about "is she going to try to play games, shit-test, and otherwise use our interaction as a contest to boost her sense of winning rather than losing?"
Well, some of "us" are drawn to those type of girls. Those of us who imprinted on the harmonious phase. There's a lot of Millennial and Zoomer guys who imprinted on the discordant phase, and *like* girls who are cold, calculating, and manipulative, who move around in slow slinking seductive motions.
You wanna get used? That's yer problem, Millennial / Zoomer. But you can see why they developed that preference -- what else was there to choose from, for them? Might as well mold your tastes to fit what is available. A coping mechanism.
A lot of Millennials and Zoomers call themselves "perfectionists," when they really mean "control freaks" or "power-trippers". They're the opposite of carefree and spontaneous -- they're paralyzed by anxiety, and by the fear of not being in total control of themselves / others / their environment / etc.
ReplyDeleteRather than being a sad thing that we should feel sorry for, we should shame them for it -- it's just another form of anti-social, me-first, attempt to always gain the upper hand and have the last word. It's cohesion-corroding competitiveness.
Worth considering, when we try to imagine (or relive) what the harmonious phase was like -- when people didn't care about exercising control, let alone to such an egocentric degree, and wanted to share power rather than viciously compete over it.
Can't neglect the iconic "drenched on the chair" scene from Flashdance, set to "He's a Dream".
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-9NHe28wGg
It actually opens with a bit of Fosse-esque slow slinky strutting and finger-snapping, but it pretty soon goes into explosive territory.
After she gets drenched, she whips her head and hair strongly forward, then again backward, and then some more while she pounds on the seat, and periodically throughout the rest of the dance.
A later number, set to "Manhunt", also involves mostly explosive movements, and lots of head whipping (although the dancer's hair is too short for the hair to go flying around as well).
Even her "floorwork" (choreography done while mostly on the ground) is pretty upper-body demanding and explosive. She isn't making sinuous slinking motions like a seductive animal crawling on all fours -- her lower body is fairly still, and she's pulling herself forward with her arms and hands, like climbing. And not in careful, measured, thinking-it-over motions like when you're rock-climbing -- direct, confident, ever-forward pulling motions.
The lyrics are a great compliment, part of the confident woman who initiates the interaction, is too restless and eager to just wait around for a shy guy to make the first move. She's on a "manhunt"! That's why her motions must be so explosive and aggressive, since the shy retiring role is already being played by her crush, and she has to bluntly seize the opportunity and leave no room for languid ambiguity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xoqPXklDQU
Briefly back to the early '90s for another iconic "whipping around drenched hair" photo -- the album cover of Rid of Me by alterna-hottie-baddie PJ Harvey:
ReplyDeletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rid_of_Me
There are zillions of examples from music videos of the '80s and first half of the '90s of girls whipping their hair as they come up from underwater. This just happens to be better preserved in our memory cuz it's a still image from the cover of a seminal album.
When are art-hoes gonna start whipping around their long, dark, thick, DRENCHED mane of hair???
They don't wanna be hot and exciting anymore... or at least, not through the early 2020s. Maybe as the pendulum swings away from the discordant phase, we'll get more of the harmonious-phase culture, like hot alt babes whipping their hair around like they're possessed -- and playing it straight, not for self-conscious irony-poisoned meme value.
PJ Harvey wasn't just meme-ing with that album cover...
Last one from the '80s, showing what strip club dances used to look like by then, as opposed to the Midcentury burlesque shows. From Beverly Hills Cop (strip scene begins at 2 min). NSFW.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDLyybDpSls
Explosive motions, arms and legs fully extending, whipping the head and hair around, looking possessed rather than in personal control.
During the 2000s and 2010s non-topless pole dancing craze, their movements were more Fosse-esque. Slowly winding down and around the pole while upside down, slowly extending their torso away from the pole while holding onto it, and so on.
ReplyDeleteNot like the wild animals from Flashdance or Beverly Hills Cop.
A compilation of dance scenes from Showgirls, maybe NSFW, I didn't check the whole thing. But it shows how through the mid-'90s, dance styles were still mainly about losing control, being possessed, and as a result whipping the head and hair around, and extending the limbs in explosive motions.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcH3UTjGVnk
She's also portrayed as an anti-social out-of-control kind of person, not just carefree and spontaneous. It's shading into the focus on weird, seedy, etc. kind of characters that the discordant phase is so fond of.
Also, an early example of a prominent yuri-baiting kiss between Elizabeth Berkley and Gina Gershon, showing that the sexes were just starting to re-segregate in 1995. Not as flagrant of an example as Cruel Intentions from later in the '90s, but still notable.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BB_1LSxIC4o
To wrap up today's lecture, a brief look at contrasting lyrics, for songs that are all about doing a specific dance, or dancing in general.
ReplyDeleteUsually they try to encourage the listener / crowd to dance, but from the discordant phase, the 1962 dance-craze song "The Loco-Motion" (by Little Eva) also admonishes the audience to still be control freaks, and not to get wild.
"Do it nice and easy, and don't lose control"
Nice and easy -- gentle, slow, careful, calculated, not explosive and abandoned, which they would've felt to have been reckless and endangering. You don't wanna go crazy and wind up snapping your neck like those swing dancers from the '30s, now do ya?!
Then the specific control-freak language about don't lose control. A proper dance song is supposed to tell you to give up the worry about who's controlling what, and just go crazy. Prince's song "Let's Go Crazy," "Self Control" by Italodisco singer Raf and covered more successfully by Laura Branigan, and a long list of encouragements to get wild and out of control in "Conga" by the Miami Sound Machine / Gloria Estefan --
"I know you can't control yourself any longer"
"Don't you fight it"
"Let the music move your feet"
And so on. Don't be such an uptight control freak -- we're not in a panopticon like they were back in the '60s, it's the '80s and we can cut loose and not worry about it!
You have written several posts on this blog in defence of the "Dark Ages". Would you say you have any particular location or date range(s) that you would most like to see?
ReplyDeleteHmmm, I re-watched the "Side to Side" video for the first time in several years, and they do have hair whipping after all.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXiSVQZLje8
But overall, the choreography is still on the slow, sensual, sinuous side, not explosive and high-energy and limb-extending.
Especially the arms -- they really don't use their arms in choreography after 1995 or so. Have a look at those Non E la RAI dancers, and see how common it was to be extending, waving, swinging, or otherwise throwing their arms around.
In fact, that was the main thing that the crowd at '80s night noticed most about me -- swinging my arms around rhythmically, not just lower-body motions that you associate with dancing, based on the feet and legs and hips. They'd try to do a little imitation of it, cuz it was so novel to them -- very cute looking back on it. ^_^
Dances from the last discordant phase didn't really swing the arms around either, other than "the monkey" from the '60s, but that's nowhere as extreme as arm movements from the swing / big band era, or the '80s and early '90s.
Back to the head / hair whipping, when they do it in "Side to Side," it remains part of the whole sensual sinuous framework. It's not like they're going crazy, and head / hair whipping is one effect of being in a possessed frenetic state.
It's a very slow, deliberate, overly fluid motion -- almost like it's a put-on or affectation, or on-the-nose, etc. Self-conscious, deliberately aimed at getting a rise out of the audience, using it as one trick in their larger bag of tricks to spellbind the audience and wrap them around their finger.
And it's never part of a whole-body tremor or seizure like the out-of-control girls are doing. So you can still distinguish what kind of head/hair whipping it is.
They don't spin very much or at all either, and that prevents a certain type of hair whipping -- where it raises up on its ends and is carried around in a circle during the spin. Horizontal circular whipping.
And they don't shake their head from side to side (facing left, then facing right, and back again), which also creates that horizontal circular whipping motion in the hair.
And because they don't really get their arms worked into a frenzy, they don't do the powerful hair-fluffing motion that the carefree and spontaneous girls do quite regularly. When their arms are so busy, that fluff really sends the hair into motion, much like the whipping effect.
So my hunch about head/hair whipping is still mostly right.
As one example of arm-involving dances from the swing era, one of the earliest -- the Charleston -- from the late '20s, has the arms extended, and waving or swinging around while extended.
ReplyDeleteYes, even for the women -- arm motions are not about strength, but coordination. They're not lifting heavy objects with their arms, they're swinging them around rhythmically. None of those dancers from Non E la RAI have much musculature on their arms or shoulders. Swinging, not lifting.
Another iconic '80s example, the dancing scene from The Breakfast Club. Every movie had to have a dancing scene back then, and some were entirely about dancing!
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VG78fq6KAPA
Notice that everyone makes some kind of rolling or whipping motion with their neck, head, and hair.
Bender is doing some head-banging -- a practice that gradually died out after the mid-'90s, but I remember doing that all the time with the metalhead types in middle school, including at school dances, or while moshing around in the shower (with our clothes on, and with no one else present in the shower -- kids stopped taking naked showers in school by that point). Speaking of whipping wet hair around...
Claire is shaking her head quickly from side to side, sending her hair into a horizontal circular whipping motion as a result.
Brian loosens his neck and makes his head point alternately up at the ceiling, rolling down to face the floor -- more of a wobbling than a whipping, but still part of losing self-control and looking possessed, not deliberate and composed.
Andrew violently shakes his head to the side and back a few times, but he has short hair so it doesn't look as dramatic, and most of his dramatic moves are whole-body gymnastics anyway, where you hardly notice his head.
Allison is similar to Brian, not really getting worked up into a whirling dervish frenzy, but still loosening her neck to look up at the ceiling, bow it down toward the floor, and look possessed, until she gets exhausted and collapses.
It's a trust-building exercise -- don't trust people who dance too calculatedly and sensually, when it's time to just cut loose and lose control as a signal of trust.
Claire also does a few fast spins, which whips her hair around in a circle.
ReplyDeleteFinal thought on this topic -- I learned a great word in Italian from the comments to those videos (and several others like them from that same show):
"Spensieratezza", meaning a state of being carefree, unburdened by worries, etc.
Someone was commenting on the girls having that quality, and by implication what kind of qualities their descendants today have (deliberate, calculating, self-conscious, anxiety-crippled, insecure, etc.).
So spontaneous and carefree. It's not just the ripe scantily clad bods, it's how they're animated by the person's energy, personality, etc. Aura, vibes, persona, stage presence, whatever you want to call it -- it adds a lot, and these qualities have changed drastically for the worse over the discordant phase of the cycle.
Some more signposts from y2k choreography. First, "Bootylicious" by Destiny's Child, where the singers and backup dancers are hardly moving at all, and where most of the movement is in the lower body at that. Basically no head or hair whipping.
ReplyDeleteAlso an early example of using dancing as a weapon against same-sex rivals, as the three girls booty-bump each other out of the way, in order to be in front-and-center position. Every social occasion is becoming a competition, not a cooperation or collaboration.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyYnnUcgeMc
Then from Beyonce's solo career, "Crazy in Love", which to its credit has two retro-themed segments. The first one where she's wearing daisy dukes and a bra-less tank top, set in gritty Noo Yawk loading dock -- very late '70s and '80s. She does some explosive movements, and several head/hair whips.
Then a later one where she kicks off the top of a fire hydrant and the water is gushing all over a Noo Yawk street -- also recalling the '70s and '80s and early '90s when that was a common sight. She gets her hair drenched and whips it around, sending water everywhere.
Other than these distinctly retro-themed segments, though, she and her backup dancers don't whip their head and hair around, don't extend their arms or use their upper body much at all, and most of the focus is on the hips, ass, and legs. In the segment where they're all wearing bright jewel tones, their arms go through a slight chugga-chugga motion close to the torso, not extending them -- the days of arm motions are over by now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViwtNLUqkMY
One of the most iconic videos with choreography ever, "Dirrty" by Christina Aguilera. Not only is most of the focus on the lower body movements, this video popularized what later was termed the "slutdrop" during the "everything has to be branded with SLUT" zeitgeist of the 2010s -- squatting down as far as possible and popping up fast. Also known a "drop it like it's hot" during the 2000s.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Rg3sAb8Id8
The floor work is getting more into floor-humping, in that curvilinear sensual way, not a la the scene from Showgirls where the choreographer is shouting at her to "thrust it!" meaning her pelvis thrusting upward while on the ground, in a more explosive motion.
There's a segment that is just BEGGING for the girls to be whipping around their drenched manes of hair, but they only do it halfheartedly once or twice. They're more into humping the flooded floor and moving slowly and sensually enough that hardly any water is thrown into the air by their bodies, aside from Christina giving the water on the floor a kick with her feet, which is on the antagonistic side. A very far cry from the Flashdance water-poured-onto-the-chair scene.
Other staples of the discordant phase -- a prominent catfight scene in a boxing ring, weird / deviant sexuality (possibly the first appearance of furries in a mainstream music video, or any media format), combative alienated Fight Club attitude overall, and as Christina later explained herself, a focus on being a power-tripper and control freak (she's a strong independent woman who's front and center, controlling everyone and everything else, etc.).
The makers describe it as a "post-apocalyptic orgy," but there's no hint of any sex taking place, or even making out or intimate up-close dancing. It's performatively sexualized and fetishistic, but that means anti-sexual -- fetishes being a replacement or displacement away from the real thing.
And as every guy found out during the 2000s and 2010s, the girls who dance in slutdrops are not actually sluts in the sense of nymphomaniacs eager to hook up with some guy that night. They're doing it to booty-battle their same-sex rivals in a dancing competition, and to wrap the guys in the crowd around their finger just to power-trip and control-freak them, not to chase after them and wind up in bed later that night -- which will be spent alone, after she leaves with her "girls night out" female friends who she showed up with and spent the whole time with.
And now for more breaths of fresh air from the early '90s, as a contrast from the harmonious phase of the cycle.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of floor-humping, there's a brief pair of segments from "Good Vibrations" by Marky Mark & the Funky Bunch that appear to be floor-humping, beginning around 3:45, one with 3 girls, followed by one with 3 guys:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kctwd4w7R0
However, I'll note a few differences from the floor-humping of "Dirrty" and similar choreography. First, in the early '90s type, the legs are fully extended and somewhat apart from each other, similar to a wrestler's sprawl. Only the feet are being used for support, not the lower legs, knees, or upper legs. And their upper body is held up by just their hands (for the guys) or their elbows and lower arms (for the girls). Their torso is off of the ground, not relaxing against it, and it's either parallel to the ground (girls) or at an angle to it (guys), rather than upright.
All of these combine to give the impression more of a push-up than simulated sexual riding, grinding, thrusting, etc. It's a push-up, but where the core area (including the butt on the back side) is rising up and down, perpendicular to the ground.
This integrates it more into the theme of working out, exercise, fitness, etc., that shows up throughout the video. There *is* a sexual scene in bed, but neither the guy or girl are shown making explosive motions or doing choreographed moves of any kind -- it's a naturalistic portrayal of two hot people starting to make out in bed. It doesn't resemble the choreography whatsoever -- which means the choreography is not supposed to look very sexual, and indeed is mainly acrobatic and gymnastic and fitness / gym related, true to the swing / big band revival zeitgeist of the New Jack Swing era.
The floor-humping in "Dirrty" and routines like it, is more of a simulation of a girl riding or grinding on a guy in bed. Their legs are bent at the knees, not extended, and they're resting on their feet + lower legs + knees, not just their feet. Their torsos are more upright, or at a slight angle, not parallel to the ground like a push-up. And their motions are more writhing, sliding, grinding, etc. -- fluid sensual motions like actual sex, not the explosive rising and falling motions of the "Good Vibrations" video, which are meant to mimic high-energy exercise routines, not sex.
And the slutdrop is more like the riding sex position as well, where her torso is moving up and down, perpendicular to the bed / floor / ground. The "Good Vibrations" girls are raising and lowering their torsos *parallel* to the ground, like a push-up, not a squatting or sitting motion that mimics sexual riding.
No one's going to deny the sexual tinge to that floor work in "Good Vibrations", but it's just a faint tinge -- it's 95% a high-energy exercise routine, with 5% sexual-ish teasing tinge. The "Dirrty" floor work is 100% sexual simulation.
ReplyDeleteNow for the pinnacle of '90s choreographed music videos, "If" by Janet Jackson from '93. If you were alive and watching MTV during the '90s, this by far made the greatest impression on you for "music video with choreography in it". Nothing else comes close. And sure enough, part of the New Jack Swing era.
ReplyDeleteThis version of the video is almost entirely the dancing, the usual version has the dancing intercut with other shots from around the nightclub with other non-dancing characters. This version shows off the choreography better.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1RzHAKODP8
The intro and the verses of this song are fairly mellow, not what you'd think would motivate explosive choreography. But the pre-chorus and chorus build and build toward a climax, and the instrumental bridge has a fair amount of tension in it as well. Even for a song that isn't the most hardcore danceclub banger, it still has the most memorable choreography for the decade, and it isn't mellow to match the music.
Generally, the arms extend fully and swing around as well, the legs extend fully into kicks, and there's head/hair whipping. The sequence during the bridge uses taut, springy, rigid movements, not smooth fluid sensual ones. Similar to the "making boxes around the face" from "Vogue" at the outset of the '90s.
Speaking of floor-humping, there's not much floor work here. The girls lower the guys slowly down toward the ground, but it's more like a gender-swapped dip from dancing, not mimicking a sexual position. When the guys are flat on their backs, the girls do a very slight drop while straddling them -- but their knees don't even make it to 90-degree angles, let alone a further squat down on top of them a la riding cowgirl. It's just the faintest tinge of a sex position.
A bit more suggestive is when the guys are kneeling with their faces just inches away from the girls' crotches, and yet they don't simulate the guys thrusting their heads forward or the girls grinding their pelvises toward the guys' faces. The girls roll and swing the guys' heads around, another example of the head whipping around -- albeit here due to someone else controlling it. And at the end of this sequence, the girls whip their own heads and hair strongly backward, then strongly forward on the next beat. It's more explosive than fluid, thereby dialing down the sexualization.
Then there's the part where the girls grab the guys' crotches from behind and then quickly shove them forward toward the ground, before that very light drop. It certainly goes through a sequence that evokes a sexual encounter -- the girl leading the guy around by the dick, then shoving him onto the bed, and proceeding to ride him. But the sequence is so broken up into snapshots rather than a continuous tracking shot, as it were, and the motions are not slow fluid and sensual, that it's more impressionistic than a graphic simulation.
Nice meshing of the lyrics of "If" with the choreography. It's about a girl chasing after a guy who might be unaware of her.
ReplyDeleteBut instead of a calculated clinical seduction, she uses innuendo rather than direct references, and she makes it clear that she's not in control of herself -- she just can't help it. And therefore, she couldn't possibly be manipulating, tricking, deceiving, or exploiting him -- she lacks the self-control and discipline to plot, scheme, etc.
So it touches on the "girl taking the initiative" theme, and not in a power-tripping, control-freak, you'll worship and obey me cuz I'm a queen / goddess, etc. kind of way. She's hoping that he is equally lacking self-control in her presence, so that they can both just give in and lose themselves in the moment.
It's about cooperating toward a common goal -- sparking a hot passionate torrid love affair -- not competing against each other, or making a sexually antagonistic fetish out of the battle between the sexes. It's about mutual surrender of control, not mutual competitiveness to gain the upper hand and have the last word.
Her allusion to closing her eyes, thinking of the two of them, and then getting "there" so many times, is similar to "I Touch Myself" by the Divinyls from the outset of the '90s. It does mention masturbation, but not to glorify it or normalize egocentric "sex" acts -- rather to say, I can't stand merely pleasuring myself while I imagine us together, I GOTTA HAVE THE REAL THING, PLEASE!
It's emphasising the power that others have over us, and our helpless pining-away feelings, making us want to connect with others -- not to anti-socially dismiss others and praise our own masturbatory acts as equal to or better than real sex with another human being.
Finally, a trio of videos by En Vogue, Salt-N-Pepa, and both of them in a collab. First, "Free Your Mind" by En Vogue, from '92:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7iQbBbMAFE
This mainly R&B song crosses over with hard rock, and that shows in the choreography. The guitar player with long dreadlocks is shown headbanging and whipping his hair around, much like in any rock video of the time -- a practice that stopped some time in the late '90s, I'm guessing (without investigating) from the Marilyn Manson era onward through emo. He had long hair that he could've head-banged, but I remember his stage presence being more about slow slinking fluid -- yet creepy -- motions, like a serial killer trying to weird out his victim.
Also, toward the end of the video there's a guy who stage-dives and proceeds to crowd-surf -- a typical trust game being played from the early '90s, and which also died out by the late '90s (just like moshing, which is another form of losing control and appearing to be actively possessed).
The setting is a runway fashion show, whose real-world examples rarely involve slow sensual slinking around -- typically, it's confident strutting around like you know what you want and aren't shy about going after it. Taking the initiative, confidence, self-esteem, etc. And their arms and legs do move in bursts, not fluid continuous motions.
Most of them have up-do's, but the one with her hair long and down does whip it around and use her hands to give it a powerful outward fluffing.
They don't use quite so much arm work as in other videos, since runway models are mostly about their "walk", i.e. their legs, while keeping their arms fairly still. And yet, within that constraint, they manage to use motivated props to achieve a similar effect as explosive arm or hair movements -- they have long flowy black capes that they thrust out to the sides and sweep around in horizontal circles, much like whipping the hair around or swinging their arms around, but in keeping with it being a fashion show and focusing on their clothing as much as their bodies.
Come to think of it, it's like the stripper from Beverly Hills Cop using part of her costume as a prop in lieu of extending her arm or whipping her hair -- casting out her feather boa to drag over a patron who's sitting close to the stage. It's not aggressive like a whip, it's lighter and more playful and soft, but still in the same family of extending her "self" outward. It is a deliberate move, not a loss-of-control move, as though she's trying to reel him in like a fish. But it's the least aggressive and manipulative that such move could be.
"Shoop" by Salt-N-Pepa from '93, which only has choreography in one of the three settings, but still notable. Lots of extended arms, swinging around, and some head/hair whipping. A bit more floor work, including some of the girls on their knees (i.e. legs bent, supported by their knees, lower legs, and feet) in a somewhat suggestive way.
ReplyDeleteBut also including a brief sequence with the same kind of taut, springy, rigid arm movements like "Vogue" and the bridge from "If". It's a very mellow song overall, not a dance anthem, so choreography is not expected to be really powerful. And yet, what there is does use a more explosive than fluid / sensual form of motion.
The slow, fluid, sensual motions are reserved for the beach setting, where the girls are sitting down watching the guys, while writhing around in their beach chairs cuz they want what they see so bad.
I wanted Salt from this video SO BAD when I was a teenager, I never got tired of how constantly this video was played by MTV. One of the rare super-feminine baby-faced honey bunnies who not only "can pull off" short hair, but looks *better* with short hair. Lots of volume (the Aqua Net era), and long enough to have a visible direction and movement, but stil clearly on the short side. And with such a teasing, confident baddie attitude -- the part where she repeats back the phrase "smell it!" as she opens her thigh into the camera, Lord help me...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vaN01VLYSQ
And "Whatta Man" by Salt-N-Pepa ft. En Vogue, whose music video is from '94. Like "Shoop," it's a very mellow song, a slow jam, so no explosive choreography is to be expected, and yet there is.
ReplyDeleteMainly they're gently moving side to side or dipping slightly while standing up. And the segments with Pepa in the bathtub, Salt standing on the bed, and Spinderella on the bear rug (lol) all show them making slow, fluid, sensual motions.
However, toward the end there are quite a few acrobatic and gymnastic moves by the backup dancers -- leaping, tumbling, twirling around while leaping, etc. Pretty explosive moves for a slow jam.
And the simulated lapdance is more explosive than the slow fluid sensual motions that a real lapdance would use. It's more like the segments in "If" where the girls are moving the guys around in a highly stylized way, not simulating a sex act.
Again, not notable for its overall explosive or possessed choreography -- but for how explosive it is for a slow jam. No slow jam from the late '90s onward is going to involve acrobatics or other loss-of-control / possessed by a spirit activities like that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vgV_dVkXN4
Another thing that makes the floor-humping not so sexual or tawrdy in "Good Vibrations" is that the dancers are in a geometric formation -- something as simple as being in a straight line across, and facing the same direction.
ReplyDeleteThis makes it look like they're structured by some larger force -- perhaps just a gym coach, an aerobics instructor, or a drill sergeant at boot camp, who is facing these files. "Drop and give me 20!"
It makes it look more like an exercise routine in a gym.
Whereas in "Dirrty," only some of the time are the dancers in the shower arranged in formation. Most of the time they're not facing any particular direction, grouping around Christina but not as part of a geometric shape -- just writhing around her individually, not as in they're following her commands or someone else's commands to "drop and give me 20!"
That's the only scene that looks like it might get sexual any moment now -- yuri-baiting, of course, since it's all girls writhing around in an orgiastic pile with their focal babe in the center.
NOT the kind of formation you'd see in an aerobics class, high school gym class, or boot camp drills.
Contrast the "Side to Side" video with its '80s inspiration, "Physical" by Olivia Newton John.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWz9VN40nCA
Many of the exercises involve extending the arms fully outward, especially the fat ones who really need the drill sergeant / boot camp treatment, to get in shape. Stretching or reaching their arms upward, jumping jacks, and so on.
You couldn't show jumping jacks in an aerobics-themed video from the late '90s through the early 2020s, since that would be too explosive and taking-up-space of a movement. During the socially discordant phase, people want to just keep to themselves, making small fluid motions and taking up minimal space with their body.
You might think it'd be the opposite way -- that during discordant, hyper-competitive times, people would try to puff up their chests, walk around with their arms extended, etc., in order to invade others' personal spaces and pick a fight.
But it seems to be more about the loss-of-control / active possession vs. control-freak micromanaging thing. Have another look at those dancers from Non E la RAI -- quite often there's two girls facing each other, only inches apart, doing very wild limb-extending motions. But it's not like a contest to intimidate the other -- it's more like they're amplifying each other, creating a positive feedback loop of possessed energy.
In the "Side to Side" video, the girls are hardly moving around with limbs fully extended, certainly not their arms. And the guys toward the end are literally just sitting around, hyper-composed. They can't even manage a simple full leg extension like "standing up", and their arms are folded too, like they're toy Ken dolls.
NOT wild-and-crazy active possession -- languid, opium den / gay bathhouse, melting-away rather than soaring upward.
A brief note on the direction that the face is pointing during a head/hair whip -- in the wild / possessed-by-a-spirit type, it often faces upward. At least the neck craning backward, perhaps aided by the spine bending backward as well.
ReplyDeleteIn the deliberate, calculated, vampy, wrapping the audience around your finger type, they almost never look straight up. Regardless of head whipping or not, they're looking parallel to the ground, or slightly downward.
Whipping the head and hair is one of the few ways they might mix this up, with a chance to be facing upward. But 99% of the time, they whip their head/hair so that it just moves horizontally, not upward.
There are three directions you can move your head in, using your neck, to cause it to whip, and bring the hair whipping along with it:
1. Tilting forward or backward. This is the only surefire way to be staring upward (by tilting backward), and gives the hair a vertical circular motion, parallel to the line of sight.
2. Shaking side to side, or a panning motion in camera terms. Does not result in looking upward, and the hair travels in a circle parallel to the ground.
3. Tilting left or right, i.e. changing the angle that the side of the neck/head makes with the shoulders. Does not result in looking upward, and the hair travels in a circle vertically, but perpendicular to the line of sight (a la the PJ Harvey album cover).
Re-watching the discordant phase hair whipping, they all involve some mix of 2 and 3, so it can take on a somewhat vertical motion, and somewhat horizontal as well. But they never face upwards.
They're very intent on not facing upwards -- even in a pronounced head/hair whipping movement, they still have to be facing forward, to the side, or somewhat downward -- anything but upward.
Facing upward is a key part of what makes the Breakfast Club dances look possessed, losing self-control. Brian cranes his neck back, Bender does head-banging that involves facing upward for part of the motion (head-banging is mostly the 1st kind of head motion, from the previous comment -- tilting forward and backward), and Allison faces upward for a moment before collapsing.
ReplyDeleteAlthough she's not making a movement, Olivia Newton John is facing upwards in the shower portion of the "Physical" video. So is the dancer in the "water poured onto the chair" segment in Flashdance.
And yet in the "Dirrty" video, they're in a shower room whose shower heads are on the ceiling and pour straight down. So it would be the most natural thing in the world for the dancers to crane their heads back, face upwards, and get the water poured onto them just like in "Physical" and Flashdance.
But they don't! That would involve facing upwards, and this is too much of a loss-of-control / possessed motion, so they just ignore the shower heads above them.
There's exactly one girl in the "Side to Side" video who faces upward in the shower scene, for a brief moment. Otherwise, they don't face upward, whether in the shower or elsewhere, and whether they're whipping their head or not.
What is it about facing upwards that signals possession and loss of control? It looks like you're facing, or addressing by eye-contact, whatever larger spirit or force is possessing you. Acknowledging something so larger than yourself that it literally hovers over you or is so big you need to crane your neck back to see its face.
ReplyDeleteIt's also not part of the audience -- you're temporarily not looking at them either. It tells the audience that it's larger than them as well.
You could avoid the audience by looking downward, but that wouldn't suggest that what you're looking at is *larger* than you or the crowd, but *smaller*. You have to look upward to signal the presence of something larger than you or the crowd combined.
The longer you hold that upward-facing position, the more it looks like you're communicating with it, perhaps receiving a message or a set of body instructions, as though it were coming from a great big drill sergeant or aerobics instructor up in the sky.
And as though its communication was pouring down onto you, much like the water pouring down from a shower head. Your face is the opening of the empty vessel that is your body, and you're a muse being taken over or filled up by the spirit pouring its energy downward into your face from the sky.
It also signals trust in the social environment, since you're at your most vulnerable by turning away from your surroundings in every direction -- everyone milling around in the plane of the floor / ground level. They could attack you from any direction, and you wouldn't see it coming.
Facing upward was another standard move for me, back when dance clubs were still open and bustling. Not looking up all the time, but peppering the dance with a facing-up head position.
ReplyDeleteSometimes for a little while, like when you're doing alternately high kicks and bouncing or hopping off of the lower leg. Your legs are already soaring upward -- might as well tilt your head back a little so you're facing upward as well.
Staring straight ahead, into your own feet / shins while you high kick is a bit on the vampy / calculated side, like you're doing the kick just for the hell of it, not as part of an integrated soaring-off-the-ground movement.
Or if you go from standing to squatting, you can tilt your head back on the way down, and still on the way back up, and return to looking straight ahead when you're standing up again. Your torso and body is moving vertically, why not accent that by looking up vertically? IDK, but it's a natural thing to do.
Similar to looking straight up while you're squatting down to pass under a limbo bar. I guess my "squatting" motion also involved a little bending-back of the spine, too, like doing the limbo. Not like in a squat press.
If you want to look wild and possessed in the club -- tilt your head back, maybe even your spine too! ^_^
The shuffle dance craze from the 2010s was similar to the twerk-y kind of dancing from rap / R&B, but for the techno-dance genre. Minimal arm movements, rarely extended arms, let alone swinging around the arms. Arms kept close to the torso, and bent at the elbow.
ReplyDeleteFancy footwork, which prevents the legs from extending fully, let alone off to the side or kicking, or anything like that.
And NEVER looking upward, indeed usually facing clearly downward.
Maybe the occasional hair whip when they do the odd whole-body spin, but not moving or whipping the head around, certainly not to face upwards.
As a reminder for pre-Zoomer generations, see the LMFAO video for "Party Rock Anthem" ("every day I'm shufflin'..."), and two of a zillion compilations of shuffling (not necessarily to the same music they were dancing to, but synced up to the same tempo).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQ6zr6kCPj8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qN34WpTPPL0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qTFGmgfei4
MOOMBA GOOMBA ROMBA, Part II: Electric Goob-a-moom! Will continue the lecture later...
ReplyDeleteJust to wrap up that discussion on shuffling, it goes to show how it's not only the ripe scantily clad bods that are so appealing about those Non E la RAI dancers. The 2010s shuffling babes look just as nice.
ReplyDeleteBut basically all of the early '90s girls are smiling or looking possessed, whereas maybe half of the 2010s girls are smiling and the others look poker-faced or deep in calculated concentration / focus -- the opposite of carefree, spontaneous, and devil-may-care.
Look at the shuffling video set to "Blue," and notice the guy with the fedora -- he couldn't look more calm and collected and composed, both body and facial expressions, considering that he's dancing up a storm with his feet. All the activity is so localized to the feet, and somewhat the lower legs.
Shuffling barely uses the upper legs, let alone hips, torso, arms, or neck/head. So even the type who wants to work up a sweat dancing like crazy, still have this control-freak need to not be possessed by something else.
It's like they want to quarantine the dangerous energy to only the most necessary body part for dancing -- the feet. If they allowed that frenzy to work its way up to their torso, arms, and head -- danger! look out, loss of control ahead! You're gonna go bouncing around like one of those swing dancers from the '30s, or New Jack Swing backup dancers!
The fact that shuffle dancers tend to look downward at the ground adds to the feeling of them being calculating and in-control -- like, planning out their next step, observing their feet to make sure the right moves were carried out, or surveilling their surroundings on the ground to make sure nothing poses a threat to their dancing.
Staring somewhat downward gives off a vibe of being vigilant, while staring somewhat upwards gives off the vibe of not being worried about immediate threats -- either trusting the environment, or surrendering to fate.
Back to another classic early '90s video, "What Is Love" by Haddaway. This is the kind of song that shuffle dancers like to do their fancy footwork to, but look at how different the choreography was when it was made:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEXWRTEbj1I
The main dancer is the vampire babe... man, they really don't make goth babes anymore. Not after 1995 or so. There's nothing Marilyn Manson / creepy / weird / emo about her costume and persona. It's straight-up goth, the dark femme fatale side of the Romantic environment.
They don't feature girls with striking high-relief facial features anymore either. What a nose! Perfect vampiric physiognomy.
Anyway, regarding her dancing, she moves in long strides down the hall, extending the legs quite a bit. This ties back into the theme of confidence and self-assurance -- no need to take baby steps, or to keep changing direction like in shuffling like you're confused or unsure.
When she's close up, she does lean her head back a bit, looking somewhat upward -- this shows it's not just a good spirit that could be possessing someone, it could be a dark evil one as well.
In Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, the dark priest is staring either straight ahead or somewhat upward -- dark priests, shamans, devil-worshipers, etc. don't look downward, as though trying to visualize their master's purported dwelling in the underworld. They look upward! It's not about where that spirit normally resides, but about signaling their larger-than-life size, if they were present here on ground level on Earth.
The vampire babe tends to extend her arms fully, sometimes swinging them around in large circles, and more often to hold open her flow cape, which she sometimes sends into a flying motion just like the runway walkers in the "Free Your Mind" video discussed earlier. She very rarely keeps her arms bent and close to the torso.
ReplyDeleteNotice how she's invading his personal space just by standing so close, but also sweeping her cape around him and such. You might think this is antagonistic or a kind of contest -- but it's not! Antagonistic and competitive would be trying to shove him away (a la the booty-battle in "Bootylicious"), or otherwise keep her distance, as though he were a lowly untouchable not worthy of her royal highness' presence.
Rather, she's trying to set up a cooperation or collaboration with him -- winning him over to join her on the dark side! Cooperation and collaboration does not have to be for a good cause, it could be for a dark cause, as long as it's not anti-social.
How can dark causes *not* be anti-social by definition? Well, dark in the sense of being a goth sub-culture, hanging out in dimly lit mansions, dancing on the mantle above the fireplace, getting it on with hot vampiric babes wearing dramatic black-and-red capes -- that kind of thing. Not necessarily robbing, raping, killing, selling drugs, etc., like some common street gang.
And she's not preying on him like a predator -- that would involve restraining him, biting his neck against his will, and so on. She's putting on a display of what he could have if he freely chose to join her way of life, and he decides to live a little on the exciting side, and takes her up on her offer.
She is a very confident, direct, persistent saleswoman for the goth way of life, but she's not a predator or harmer. She's too darkly sexy to have to resort to that... ^_^
In fact, he's the one who's wandered into their mansion, he shows no signs of being kidnapped, drugged, tied up, or even locked in a room -- he's freely roaming around their mansion. At the beginning, he's shown slowly opening a door and peeping in on them voyeuristically, as they're dancing.
ReplyDeleteHe's fascinated by them -- cuz they're fascinating physical performers.
And if the vampire babe is such a threatening predator, why isn't he trying to get away or at least keep her at arm's length? Toward the end, he's reaching his arms out to her as she advances toward him. He knows what he's getting involved in -- and he wants it.
The only time he's trying to get away is when the blonde chick is climbing up the stairs, while he tries to crab-walk backwards away from her. OK, so he doesn't dig blondes and is already monogamously smitten with the brunette and her dramatic cape act. Doesn't mean he wants to leave the mansion altogether -- else he'd be heading for an exit, not merely backing away from one of the girls (while wanting to be surrounded by another one of them).
And to conclude today's choreography lecture, a whirlwind tour through dances that prominently feature the arms extending, as one of the many signs of loss-of-control / active possession that we've seen during these early '90s videos.
ReplyDeleteThey're from the harmonious phase of the cycle, as people feel more comfortable letting go of personal control in harmonious non-competitive environments. And when the cycle turns discordant, they clam up or turtle inward -- even the types who like being active, like those shuffle dancers from the 2010s.
The last harmonious phase began in the mid-to-late '70s, and in dance history that means disco. Even if you weren't alive back then, even if you can't dance or hate dancing, or hate disco specifically -- you're still aware of the most iconic single dance move from that era, the skyward pointing!
This came in two variations, a less explosive (and less iconic) version where the arm is bent at the elbow, tricep against the side of the torso, then extending the arm outward and upward. And a more explosive one (the iconic one) that first involves a downward pointing toward the opposite hip, as a winding-up motion for the more dramatic skyward point after that. Like winding up for throwing a ball.
Both of these originate from (or at least were popularized by) Saturday Night Fever -- no surprise there. The less explosive one shows up in the solo dance set to "You Should Be Dancing". The more explosive one shows up in the group dance for "Night Fever," and is what most people think of when they picture "disco-era dancing in a club":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tG5SllettU
We've already covered all sorts of examples from the '80s and early '90s with raised arms. But we'll add another one from rap, to emphasize that it used to be danceable, even if the dance was simple to do, and it involved the arms, extended, and raised.
ReplyDeleteThat is, the ubiquitous at the time dance for "Hip Hop Hooray" by Naughty By Nature -- raise both hands, tilt them to the left side, then to the right side, then back again, like a windmill going back and forth.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rz1Xn1vzOM4
This move was imitated shortly afterward by "Boom Shake the Room" by Will Smith:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AVWZwZq_QU
Both of those videos feature stage-diving and crowd-surfing, the classic trust game "dances" of that time, signaling a harmonious social environment. Awhile ago I showed the video for "Slam" by Onyx, where over half of the video is the rappers crowd-surfing. "Hip Hop Hooray" has one toward the end, and it's more prominent in "Boom Shake the Room".
Another classic rap-derived dance of the late '80s and early '90s is the running man, whose standard version has both arms extending forward, then both pulling backward, and repeating again. This video says there was an earlier version where one arm was extended forward and the other backward, and alternating between them, like some versions of the Charleston from the original swing era (also a harmonious phase):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYpRasK4c9k
I thought the sprinkler dance was from the '80s or early '90s, but Wiki says it goes back to the disco era -- still from the harmonious phase, though. Mixing the "arm sweeping out a circle" and "using the arm to point" trends, both requiring extended arms and no turtling!
The cabbage patch dance from the late '80s and early '90s also extends both arms forward, then pulling them back in, and then back out and so on, much like the running man.
ReplyDeleteLastly, a view from the transition stage of the mid-'90s, as the harmonious phase is going to turn discordant. One of the last major dance crazes, and certainly the last to involve extending the arms for a decent part of it -- that's right, the Macarena!
ReplyDeleteThe English version, and the famous accompanying dance, took over the world in '96. The fully extended arms during the initial steps harken back to the disco lineage, while the sinuous booty wobble at the end of the sequence looks forward to the twerking era, where the arms will no longer play a role.
Later, in 2002, another Spanish-language dance mini-craze was popular, "Asereje" by Las Ketchup. But its dance doesn't extend the arms. They're always bent (even when held overhead), and usually held close to the torso (except for that final overhead motion).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkynEPjkstI
Whether it was Latin crossover, rap, rock, techno-dance, or anything else -- extended arm motions died out during the late '90s and were absent by the 2000s.
OK, one last example, but from the swing / big band era. I've already gone over the Charleston, but the equally mega-popular conga had a version that did not involve putting your hands on the person in front of you (which itself involves extending the arms fully). It was still done in a group setting, but without touching a partner.
ReplyDeleteAside from the prominent "outward kick" on that final beat, the person shoots both arms upward, perhaps also giving their face a little tilt upward. See this scene from Too Many Girls (1940), where Desi Arnaz is leading a massive crowd, seemingly the entire town, like a pied piper, or rather a pied drummer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5QrGD0oUgY
Look at all those arms shooting straight up, and talk about appearing possessed by some larger spirit!
There are other typically gymnastic / acrobatic moves from the swing era, but the Latin crossover dance of the conga was also not shy about fully extending the limbs.
And again, while being in close proximity to numerous other people -- harmonious environments put people up close together, where they're comfortable "invading" or rather co-occupying each other's personal spaces. Discordant phases see people retreating to their own little turf patches, turtling, or actively running away from others / pushing them away, due to low trust and competitiveness.
Girls, the hottest flirtatious move you can do, that is dead simple, and that you can use IRL, in a selfie, or if you're a face-streamer, is pointing at someone close-up.
ReplyDeleteAnd with a smiling, mock-accusatory look on your face. You can say something mock-accusatory like, "You! ... are so bad!" Or, "And you! ... where have YOU been?!" Cute, flirtatious, one of the easiest ways to take a little initiative, yes, even if you're otherwise a passive kind of girl.
It needs to be close enough that it's "invading" or rather co-occupying the target's personal space, which signals your comfort and trust with that person. If you didn't trust them, and wanted them to go away, you'd cross your arms in front of you and move as far away from their personal space as you could.
Other classic flirtatious moves that involve fully extending the arm -- the "come hither" enticing beckoning gesture. And reaching out with the palm upward, using the forefinger to stroke underneath the person's chin -- just like that absolutely fascinating vampire babe does to her target in the video for "What Is Love"!
It's not "invading" my space if I want it...
It's co-occupation of space, for a cooperative collaboration. ^_^
All right, that's it for tonight. Time for X-Files and Picket Fences for a late dinner and maybe a little dessert.
ReplyDeleteThere's a mixed-sex crime-fighting duo in Picket Fences, BTW, if you didn't know. And like Agent Scully, Deputy Max is also a redhead, and also a total babe!
Yeah, back when the battle between the sexes was totally over, and they could be friends and partners (not as a euphemism for significant other), and, y'know... will they or won't they? If they don't, that's always cool. But there's always the option, which does not exist in a battle of the sexes, socially discordant climate.
Luv the early '90s. Such a breath of fresh air. ^_^
Picket Fences created this specific type of duo first, BTW -- debuted in '92, X-Files followed one year later.
ReplyDelete