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I am really trying here, ok?
(feddit.org)
GIF of the breakdancing lady at the olympics with the caption "Me explaining mass spectrometry"
I had a whole argument with a bud about her PhD in breakdancing.
My take was that she pushed breakdancing into the human consciousness significantly more than anyone in history ever has so she deserves that PhD, very few people know the name of the person who won the gold but a ton more remember raygun or at the very least 'that breakdancing lady'. Regardless of how skillfull she actually is. Also, iirc she was actually a classical dance teacher at that school and this was just in response to the Olympics adding breakdancing, I watched an interview where she said something along the lines of 'I didn't even care for breakdancing'.
Interesting thought exercise, but a WILD take. Notoriety shouldn't be considered the same as actual accomplishment. Otherwise, John Wayne Gacy should be considered the best clown of all time.
Phil Kim/Phil Wizard (the gold medalist) is a pretty accomplished breaker/bboy.
In 1971, Rep. Tom Moore, Jr. of Waco, Texas sponsored a resolution commending Albert de Salvo for his unselfish service to "his county, his state and his community." That resolution read, in part:
Albert DeSalvo had another claim to fame.
And that is a WILD comparison!
I agree that notoriety shouldn't necessarily be considered the same as accomplishment but here we are lul. I'm willing to bet she's inadvertently pushed breakdancing people to greater hights inspite of/to spite her lul. Yea Phil is great.
Reminds me of poreotix in ABDC. Except they were good lul.
What's your take on the judges not awarding points for originality? I'm not saying her moves were good but they were definitely original. Some of her moves nobody else did at the Olympics at all. I would have guessed she should at least get a couple of points for that, it honestly made me lose respect for those judges. What's the point of having categories you score on if you're gonna let other categories influence the score you give on certain ones.
No, I think the score of 0 is fair, because imo her Olympics performance was straight up trolling. If you watch any of her previous performances (like her Olympic qualifiers) she's actually pretty decent. Comparing those to what she did at the Olympics honestly felt like BM to the entire artform.
And your comment is why I lost respect for those judges who probably agree with you.
You're letting her previous performances color your opinion of what should be a fair and unbiased judging of this one performance and this one category in a vacuum. It's originality, she was more original in her performance than a lot of other breakers, regardless of her skill (which is a separate category they rate on). I would have hoped she would have scored at least a couple of points there and just 0s on all the other categories.
I agree with your BM comment though.
But it is not about originality.
People watch the Olympics to see peak humans perform amazing feats of athleticism. It is a competition of the ages spread over all countries.
If someone performs something every regular person would be capable of, especially on purpose, it mocks the sport and the Olympic competition in general.
Sorry to break it to you but it factually IS about originality. That's one of the categories the judges for this sport specifically rate on according to the olympics, or should at least, it's obvious they didn't in this instance.
Here's some sites that specify originality is one of their 5 scoring categories.
Mm, you're not wrong about the originality, especially considering it's given equal weight with the other four categories (the scoring is another issue here I could go on about). I guess in the judges eyes her "original" moves didn't have anything to do with breaking (like the T-rex thing? That was odd...), so it was irrelevant to the judgement.
I can only speak for my own interpretations though.