Sunday, February 26, 2006
Dancing Dunciad
The popular culture has a way of discrediting itself with alacrity. This is probably — more than postmodernist rhetoric — what generates so much ironic distance in the general culture — we are swimming in the fraudulence of media hype and the foolishness of commerce selling itself.
Yet another confirmation of this self-discrediting came from Dancing With the Stars tonight. A wonderfully conceived and executed show, with a terrific chemistry between dance partners, with enormous audience involvement, devolved in one stroke into a joke in the final voting. They didn't devise a strategy to tally votes that would yield a satisfying result.
The sound you hear, of a diverting and fun show going down the drain, started when they pulled the plug on Stacy and her partner — voted off first in the finale. There was an audible gasp both from the audience and competitors. It's pretty evident leaden-footed Jerry Rice never should have been in the finale (and whatever he says, he knew it), and that the enormously talented Stacy should have won the competition.
The judges learned from vociferous audience reaction that it is no fun to be judged. The male judges were fairly accurate in their votes after initially stumbling, even if their rhetoric played to the audience, they were credible finally in their voting. The woman judge, beaten down by audience disapproval of her comments and judgments, simply stopped making negative comments and retreated into the cracks, playing to audience prejudice, which finally is what the show was all about.