Tag: homophobia

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Dancing With the Stars Season 11 Finale, Night II

My favorite dance of the night, maybe of the whole show: Jennifer and Derek’s waltz:

I also found The Situation’s “I’m Too Sexy” dance hilarious fun and Kurt and Rick’s competitive duet a total hoot. Of course some homophobic sports fans on Twitter watched the show for some reason (why?) and pronounced that dance the “gayest” ever on the show. Ugh, don’t watch a dance show if you’re going to be freaking out about guys dancing…

Anyway, so are you guys happy with the results? I really thought Jennifer would win. I didn’t really have a favorite to win, but thought this was one of the best finales in recent history. I was just happy with the fact that there were three very different dancers / very different personality types up there, each of whom brought something wholly different to the dance. Still disappointed – and kind of shocked – that people made it more about politics than dance. Of course Sarah Palin now has to ruin it all with this speech she wrote analyzing other reality competition shows, like American Idol, and reprimanding contestants she considers lacking talent from not recognizing that and dealing with it like grown-ups (by not trying out for the show). Which is going to bring out more criticism of her daughter’s performance on this show… Anyway, that is an issue for another day; I’m tired now 🙂

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IS SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE "CULTURALLY RADICAL"?

Here’s an interesting perspective from the Huffington Post’s Miles Mogulescu on So You Think You Can Dance:

“Here, the culture wars of the past 30 years appear over, at least for an hour or two, and the progressive side–which has stood for racial equality, gender equality, and gay rights–is the undisputed winner, without the need even to overtly comment about it. I’m not sure what Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, or the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal would have to say if they were watching. But then, Rupert Murdoch has never been known to let his conservative political views get in the way of making a buck.”

I’m not sure that I agree with him that the show represents a huge but unspoken triumph for women’s or gay rights but I find the race issue interesting because I’ve had several people comment on my own Huffington Post pieces on the show saying how great it is that blacks and whites and Asians and Latinos are all dancing together without issue. I guess I never even noticed because it’s so ridiculous to think that it should be any other way. And it’s not, in New York. Is it still in other parts of the country??? I mean, really, both on the concert dance stage and in social dance clubs there just doesn’t seem to be a race issue, unless I really have my head up my butt…

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IS MAINSTREAM AMERICA STILL HOMOPHOBIC?

So, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamantion called Nigel Lythgoe on his anti-gay comments on SYTYCD last week and Lythgoe apologized. I missed last week’s show, but according to the Times he told a male ballroom duo that he didn’t think the show’s audiences would be receptive to them and that, though they’d had men dancing with other men on the show before, they’d never danced “in each other’s arms.” (The pair danced Samba). Lythgoe said on the show that he’d like to see them both “dancing with a girl.”

Lythgoe rightly apologized for his comments and word choice but my question is, is such a couple really not right for the show’s audience (which is mainstream America)? Would people these days really get so upset over watching two men ballroom dance together? I’ve lived in New York for so long now (and been part of the dance world) that I feel I’ve kind of lost touch with middle America. I mean, would the average American seriously be offended?