What stands out to me in the piece is the high budget combined with a lack of any celebrity and the use of an original composition.
Someone was paid to write an original composition and another to choreograph the dancing.
Those are expensive cameras dancing on a proper soundstage operates by professionals and shot with a multi-camera setup by another set of professionals…it’s all choreographed, rehearsed, directed, and edited.
Nothing like that happens today without a celebrity.
In 1970 most people hadn't heard a Moog before. So this was pretty abstract and futuristic.
The modern equivalent would be a stage full of Boston Dynamics robots choreographed by an AI with an AI-generated trap music score.
Although it reminds me that the BBC had musique concrète station idents in the 70s. Also used more famously for incidental music for Dr Who and a few other shows.
There was a LOT of this sort of stuff on 70s UK telly. On kids TV too. "Adventurous" is one word for it. I'd rather have had an episode of Battle of the Planets, myself.
Going on a tangent: the social protests from this collection of spoken-word pieces in this 1991 episode are, sadly, essentially unchanged - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HY7pKQ-Imco .
I'm curious how they did the wearable lighting on that Buck Rogers roller disco. That would have been around 1978 or so. Only red LEDs existed then, and the lights they're wearing are green. How would they have been powered? Batteries don't seem like they'd power so many incandescents for very long.
It would have been between September 1979 and April 1981 says Wikipedia.
We had red, yellow, and green LEDs by then. While I don't know the history, I stuck "green led" into archive.org and found things like "At one-fifth the current, these red, yellow and green LED seven-segment numeric displays are equal in brightness to the previous displays." in a 1975 advertisement at https://archive.org/details/sim_i-d_july-august-1975_22_4/pa... .
Though I think you mean high-intensity green?
That said, what green lights do you mean? The closest I could spot was in the skates, and they didn't look all that green. Can you give a time code?
The shots are only a few seconds long. There's plenty of time to replace batteries as needed.
Or perhaps it's more that they reflect green well, rather than emit green?
The lights are just on the skates right? The necklaces seem like just very reflective of other lighting, but I looked on a phone, and the image quality isn't great.
I suspect those would be incandescent in a greenish tube, though. I've got a replica glowing lifeclock from Logan's Run (supposedly molded from production molds), and it's a little mini incadescent. Stuff some batteries in the skates, change them between takes if you need to.
Not that I can see. A couple of unglowing ones on ebay though.
Had a Logan's Run themed birthday party for my wife's 30th. Party favors included ankh necklaces (ankhs from some party supply for $1/each or something). I'm a year younger, so I wore a red life clock, and made her a flashing one... But I'm no movie magician, the timer kit and battery and wires to go with it were waaaaaay too cumbersome. If only she had rollerskates on her hand, we could make it work ;)
Also, I was powering with a 9V battery... It was important to keep some with varying states or charge, because with a fresh battery, the light was too red.
If you email me to remind me (in profile), I can try to find the ebay receipts from several years ago and see if there's anyway to contact the seller. I may also be willing to part with mine. Gotta find it first, but I'm past renewal age now, gotta move on to reciting cat poems.
It may have been adventurous, but this was definitely not mainstream. It was fringe and probably shown on public broadcasting in very limited markets, and at a late hour (i.e., low viewership).
This explains an aspect of sci-fi I never really got (aside from how simple it is to depict): "Entertainment" across species often means bringing in scantily-clad dancers. Apparently the writers were just partially mimicking some of what was already on TV.
(I like it more when they don't do that, since they had more room to play with reactions - like Phlox at movie night in Star Trek: Enterprise. He found it a lot more interesting to watch the audience.)
Hmm, I'm not sure I call this more 'adventurous' than TV today - definitely cool. Did 70s TV (in the UK) offer greater variety of programming? Performances of dance (including contemporary dance) have a long history on UK TV.
It’s hard to imagine where you might see something like this today
Ironically, you are more likely to see something like this on YouTube than on TV (I mean not just viewing old TV clips).
Aside: The BBC Archive channel on YouTube is a great dip into some of the BBC archives.
NHK Japan morning shows for kids are still this type of quirky in some way. Including the classic Pythagoras switchi. I think from a 70' point of view this was their chatGPT, an exploration of new music and style of dance which these days we just do in the internet.
I learned recently that Danny Elfman’s band Oingo Boingo started life as a surrealist theater troupe, started by his brother Richard. That incarnation appeared on The Gong Show. It was just pure chaos, and they won anyway.
Agreed! 1970 "Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp". Watch an episode on YT[1]. Totally bonkers. This should could not be made today. (Chimps forced to snow ski with a Peregrine Falcon tied to it's shoulder? So dangerous)
That was my first thought, but my second was nothing new on YouTube has that kind of budget.
I mean there’s the three broadcast cameras dancing plus operators plus more broadcast cameras shooting operating on a full soundstage with crews of gaffers and grips and catering and scale wages.
I am not saying that YouTube and TikTok aren’t possibly as creative. Only that nobody is putting that level of resources behind a TikTok because nobody will put that much money at risk.
In terms of creative expression, I think TikTok and YouTube are vastly more egalitarian allowing greater artistic expression by many many more people.
And I think they are certainly filled with better dancing in terms of technique, aesthetics, and expression.
What they don't have is the production value of a crewed soundstage...plus three additional studio cameras in the dance. There's the equivalent of a few million dollars worth of hardware as a "prop."
>What they don't have is the production value of...
Yeah but they kinda do nowadays don't they? I mean I look at 70s tv clips like these ones and stick that search term into google and do not see a drop in production values from one to the other. Picture quality is frequently an improvement, yay tech advances? Sound mixing can sound great using inexpensive equipment and some recently learned expertise? Lighting, kind of couples with camera tech but seems to be able to be ok without it costing everything?
In fact my guess is a bunch of professional dance companies get grants and funding to professionally video their stuff and stick it on the web while being totally under their own artistic control, not needing to wait for an invitation to a broadcast tv station and not having to give up so much for the requirements of that medium?
I dislike the way youtube does things, but I'm not doing it better so there's that. There is surely an ocean of manure there. I really do like the diamonds in amongst all that stench that otherwise would not have been made, let alone found an audience. Especially and particularly the educational resources.
This immediately reminds me of that trend of 'light dancers' that was prominent on America's Got Talent for a few years until people got bored of them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvrCyIZb5q8
I agree, but at a personal level I find it sad how that, given the gargantuan amount of media available, and the ease of consuming it, how quickly things fall into the "old fad" bucket.
For example, I find that there is a lot of content on TikTok that is truly amazing. I like watching parkour videos, and I'm amazed at these people's skills and daredevil tricks. But it's so easily to quickly scroll through hundreds of these videos that they lose their unique luster too quickly, and after a while it feels like "meh, that was cool, what's next".
I guess I'm arguing that this overabundance of consumable media content has some big negative consequences, similar to how the overabundance of food in the middle part of the last century had grave health consequences for most Western nations.
Isn’t this just the nature of novelty? The most interesting thing about something is often the idea and the fact that it’s new and unexpected. The first time you see it, you’re surprised and delighted. Novelty drops off quickly unless people using the same idea add significant innovation to it.
Bretton Woods (WB/IMF), WTO and NAFTA made it so I had no choice but to leave when everything hit a fever pitch in 2008. After the loss of steel, automotive and tools industries, there was no work and my community had descended into needing welfare assistance. I couldn't exist anymore with any pride. I was forced out. I wish I could know what could've been. Maybe one day I will come back.
In the 1970s, The Black and White Minstrel Show was still on TV. I don’t think this one clip proves anything.
I think it is true that there used to be more of an attitude to broadcasting ‘things the public ought to see’ more than the things they actually wanted which meant more things like classical music, history, dance, etc. Although I’m not sure if this clip was due to that attitude. If you look at TV today, things like nature documentaries can still be very popular and high quality.
Some of the ‘high-brow’ content was relegated to special channels and so just seen less. Nowadays, it seems like Netflix, YouTube, etc is actually a good place for more niche things to be able to reach a wider audience.
This doesn't look adventurous to me. It's more like an extension of "Page 3" culture that spilled over to TV. It's not that much different to the "Hot Gossip" dancers on Kenny Everett's TV show or "Top of the Pops" at the end of the decade.
Old UK TV shows look weird to todays audience (not adventurous) because they are a reflection of a time we have long moved on from. The pandering racism of "Love Thy Neighbour" and "The Black and White Minstrel Show", the scantily clad "totty" in Benny Hill.
I suppose on an incredibly naive way it might seem adventurous but I'm very glad we've moved on.
You get that both parties - the white guy and the black guy - were bigoted racist idiots, neither were right, and their wives who actually got on fine were exasperated with them, right? I mean, you've actually seen the series, I'm sure?
Because if you'd seen Love Thy Neighbour, you'd know that both guys were racist bigoted idiots.
You'd also know that even in the 1970s when it was aired, everyone thought it was shite.
Yes, I'm old enough to have seen the show when it aired in period. No, I don't think the show was self aware enough to have the nuance you are ascribing to it. It was outright pandering to people who felt that saying "nignog" in public should still be allowed, and gave them a licence to do it by allowing a black man to say "honky" on TV occasionally.
That the show was shite is neither here nor there.
It's a reasonable point, but I think both points of view are valid and I offer no answers.
The first is the reason the dancers are there is classic "for the dads" tv to check out the bodies of some young, fit, conventionally physically attractive women. The men being involved in the dancing is a fig-leaf to enable the pretence that its motivation is some higher, more noble artistic endeavour for both performers and audience. If there is some small amount of "for the moms" going on as well then fine but that's not why its there.
The second is that this is dance. By its nature dance is sexual "vertical expression of the horizontal desire" and all that. There is nothing inherently exploitative about having a choreographed, mixed group of young fit humans, dressed for dance on tv dancing. Dancers self-select for physical fitness. Conventionally physically less-attractive dancers don't fare much better than conventionally physically less-attractive movie-actors. Pick your fight with what humans like but don't cry exploitation.
So would these dancers be on tv without a background "for the dads" mindset from tv producers? If not, does that matter?
(For me, those last two are "no" and, "yeah, maybe it does." At least to the extent its worth point out but not necessarily raging against). YMMV.
A lot of that era of dancing involved men it's true, but largely as props for holding the women in provocative poses. You might argue that is some extension of classical ballet (or of the natural strength advantages that men have) but it makes no difference to the titillation factor of TV dance segments of the era.
I'd actually make much the same argument about classical ballet as it developed only with different technology, (stage, theatre) and a different, more segregated and selected audience, some of whom counted more than the rest combined. Tremendously fit women showing off their shape and astounding levels of flexibility has always been a large part of that appeal and I believe knowingly so. I say that without trying to denigrate an art-form I don't understand and appreciate (or even like) on a refined level.
The man who hasn't seen a ballet dancer of either sex they found attractive doing remarkable things with their body and let their imagination go at least a little probably has some pretty profound health issues and my sympathies. Something similar may well be true for women in the audience, not sure if this is really the place to ask for people to speak up on the point.
> By its nature dance is sexual "vertical expression of the horizontal desire" and all that.
A 4 year old dancing to music is NOT AT ALL an "expression of the horizontal desire". For the same reason, adults can and do dance for the joy of it.
If you view dance through the viewpoint of sexual desire, then sure, ALL forms of human interaction are a result of sexual desire.
That wouldn't be wrong, abstractly speaking. But there would be no reason to single out dance.
As someone who used to dance a lot, your interpretation seems bizarre and strongly at odds with my observations and experience.
For perspective, I could make the BS argument that American football is popular in the US because it's a culturally-safe way for males to satisfy their suppressed homoerotic feelings. The vast majority of fans will disagree. The onus therefore is on me to present a strong and compelling case that they are wrong.
It's completely fair that saying everyone dancing is being sexual in all circumstances is nonsense. Totally. The quote is one of those chestnuts. Wilde? Shaw? And was tipping the hat to being a little hyperbolic. Have you heard it before? I'm sure there's more than a few you think are extremely well known that I haven't.
Taking dancing in the manner we are discussing in this thread? TV, body hugging lycra etc. Yeah, ok, maybe not always..? Mostly? I think the point being made remains.
There are no children in those clips and rightly so.
Yes, I know the quote. My point is the quote is deeply wrong, as is any argument using it as support.
My view is that you think this kink you describe is far more common than I do. I want to see evidence supporting your view.
We know the BBC developed programs for "man appeal", as seen in the choice of the very name "Emma Peel" in The Avengers. We can look at "Hill's Angels" in Benny Hill, or Leela of the Sevateem in Dr. Who (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leela_(Doctor_Who)#Conception ) to see what the BCC in general viewed a "dad appeal."
These Moog dancers don't fit that mode. I mean, the second dance ends with about 40 seconds just watching the cameras, which have crowded the frustrated dancers off-screen. How is that "dad appeal"?
Yes, there are bare midriffs, but that's all that's needed for "dad appeal" then there are far easier and cheaper ways to do it.
And the third video is in mostly in half-darkness with the women in flowing dresses, where if the goal is to "check out the bodies of some young, fit, conventionally physically attractive women" then it failed miserably.
This looks like standard avant-garde/modern dance, which has it own audience. A small one, yes, but that's why these shows aren't common.
> These Moog dancers don't fit that mode. I mean, the second dance ends with about 40 seconds just watching the cameras, which have crowded the frustrated dancers off-screen. How is that "dad appeal"?
Maybe that's a question of taste? Of opinion? You're obviously not wrong I just disagree it's so clear cut. This stuff is not Benny Hill. Note that the "Moog dancers" don't have to be tailoring their stuff to "Dad appeal" for some tv exec to look at it and think, "yep, that works and we can defend it on the grounds of high art when Mary Whitehouse and her ilk start yelling corruption of youth" or whatever. Obviously to view it completely solely through a lens of sexuality is as silly as viewing anything in life in those terms. There is colour, there is movement, there are visual patterns ranging from the simple to the more complex, there is order that degrades and is restored, it can be appreciated and discussed completely ignoring the sexual elements and there are circumstances where it is utterly reasonable to do so.
Benny Hill had some really terrific, visually clever and hilariously funny gags [1] that weren't about women with big tits bending over or a man with the head of a swan coming out of the fly in his trousers. The Moog Dancers really aren't much like that kind of brazen "for the 12 year old in the dads." Note that I've argued both sides of this w.r.t. the moog dancers and don't claim to have "the" answer. Your opinion is as good as anyone's. "Not as bad as ..." Doesn't mean "has absolutely nothing in common with."
[1] I wanted to link a sketch here that I remember that is probably on youtube but google in their infinite wisdom are murdering searching for what you want in favour of algorithmic curation of what they want to show you so there's no way I can find it, or anything Benny Hill that doesn't involve bikini clad women and additional misogyny concerning women who are of a different age and shape. He got the rep for good reason.
Again, this is all very conjectural of you. This argument can be used to assert that a show with an attractive woman is on TV because the woman is attractive, and not because of other merits. It's demeaning.
That's not saying it isn't true. Like I said, there is solid evidence that "Dad factor" did influence the BBC.
But it demands something besides conjecture. Else we could conjecture that the BBC scheduled association football because the TV execs wanted to appeal to the repressed homoerotic feelings of its viewership.[1]
> Note that I've argued both sides of this w.r.t. the moog dancers and don't claim to have "the" answer.
"Argue" is what people do in a bull session. Give some evidence that one or the other has basis in reality.
My experience and understanding tells me that the decision to program this sort of act because of the "sexualising the women", in the "both points of view" you see IS NOT TRUE.
While people can and do sexualize just about anything (people have probably shipped Rumpole of the Bailey), what I see in these video shows no signs of deliberate titillation, and yet with many opportunities to do so. And I see many parts which are a turn-off, like the crowding out by the camera.
Further, unless this was part of a continuing series of sexualising acts, why would a tv exec care? It's not going to affect ratings.
While on the other hand, we do know modern dance and avante-garde performance exist, and some look like this of their own accord without attempts to sexualize, and we know variety acts of that era also included novelty performances for the oddity of it.
[1] Personally, I only watch Time Team because of the pure eroticism of Philip Harding, and anyone who hasn't looked at him and "let their imagination go at least a little probably has some pretty profound health issues and my sympathies".
I grew up in Australia. At this time (many years ago) TV was basically a mix of ABC (ie the Australian version of PBS) and British TV (mostly BBC but also some ITV and Channel 4). I cannot adequately describe just how good TV was from this era, particularly children's TV.
Prime example: Dr Who. This was the era of Tom Baker as the Doctor. Honestly, it was amazing. But there were other shows that were just plain goofy like The Goodies and Monkey. On the sci-fi front you had Blake's Seven, which was way ahead of its time in moral complexity. To this day, Avon is an amazing character.
We saw very little American TV. Sesame Street was a notable exception. At the time this even dealth with complex issues (eg the actor who played Mr Cooper died IRL and his death was on the show).
As I got older you got into shows like Grange Hill, which actually dealt with issues like a kid dying of a heroin overdose.
In my teens I got into more adult shows like Yes Minister (which, to this day, is amazing). We had in-depth news program that was of exceedingly high quality (ie Four Corners and the 7:30 Report) that included such gems as [1] (referring to the Kirki [2]).
But what happened in the 1980s to the BBC in particular was that children's TV got really dumbed down. Dr Who was viewed as "too scary". So all this innovation basically disappeared under the guise of the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
It wasn't really until the 2000s that TV recovered from this and even now I believe even now that children's TV is simply awful. None of it seems to be intellectually engaging at all and certainly not "adventurous".
"Dr Who. This was the era of Tom Baker as the Doctor. Honestly, it was amazing. But there were other shows that were just plain goofy like The Goodies and Monkey. On the sci-fi front you had Blake's Seven, which was way ahead of its time in moral complexity. To this day, Avon is an amazing character."
Avon is indeed amazing. And it's no accident Terry Nation, the creator of Blake's Seven, was the author of what made Dr. Who a smash hit with his script for the second serial titled "The Daleks."
Just squeezing into the "1970s" in 1970 was ITC/ITV's UFO which was also great SF, I watched it a few years after in weekly syndication in the US. Didn't get a chance to watch the previously mentioned BBC shows until the 1980s.
We must be about the same age. I adored Tom Baker Doctor Who, Goodies, Monkey, Blake's 7. Also loved: Kenny Everett Video Show, The Curiosity Show.
A friend who lived in Newcastle went to the corner store to buy rubber bands while watching The Curiosity Show. The bewildered shopkeeper asked why so many kids were coming to buy rubber bands at that moment. What a heart-warming story, I never knew if anyone else watched it.
Recently rewatched Blake's 7, the SO loved it. I mentioned that to a friend in Bulgaria, she said "What?? Blake's 7?? We used to play Blake's 7 in the street when I was a kid. Guess who I was? Gan haha"
"We saw very little American TV." Weird, I watched an awful lot of terrible US series that I'm too ashamed to list. With ads! Moonlighting was about the only really good one.
Oh I'd forgotten about Kenny Everett. What a trip.
My early years I spent in a rural year where we only had one channel: the state broadcaster. That's why we saw American TV rarely. By the teen years it was different: we got a second channel! With ads. Actually we had some of that when visiting family in a large city (with 3 then 4 channels!).
The A-Team, Different Strokes, Cheers, the Dukes of Hazzard, Family Ties, LA Law (which was dope), The Wonder Years, the list goes on.
There is plenty of Kenny Everett on Youtube. It's not as funny as I remember but it's worth revisiting if you skip the music (which makes the original show about 10 minutes long in total).
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[ 5.4 ms ] story [ 283 ms ] threadSomeone was paid to write an original composition and another to choreograph the dancing.
Those are expensive cameras dancing on a proper soundstage operates by professionals and shot with a multi-camera setup by another set of professionals…it’s all choreographed, rehearsed, directed, and edited.
Nothing like that happens today without a celebrity.
Now that's an interesting insight.
Dance groups still do works like that. Here's ODC San Francisco.[1] Not many people watch that sort of thing.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oyi9-01Gx7E
The modern equivalent would be a stage full of Boston Dynamics robots choreographed by an AI with an AI-generated trap music score.
Although it reminds me that the BBC had musique concrète station idents in the 70s. Also used more famously for incidental music for Dr Who and a few other shows.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlscKj5L4Q8
Or more generally, to the degree humans are hardwired and/or culturally programmed to watch dance, I think it is to watch people dance.
Watching waves break on rocks, clouds blow by, and fires crackle is a different type of experience for me than watching dance or sport or juggling.
I have a higher degree of isomorphism with other humans than non-humans and I believe that creates a different context for my experiences.
Unlike this clip, it was built around celebrity and commercial music.
That probably explains why it had such a long run.
Incidentally, Wikipedia says it started in 1971 the same year this clip purports to be.
I'm rather fond of the dancing in Raumpatrouille - https://youtu.be/evx-1CtRlek?t=25 .
"Alive from Off Center" had some avant-garde modern dance in the 1980s and 1990s - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3O6YHHN5dA .
A bit more light-hearted: "Nine Person Precision Ball Passing" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaidOy8-Hdo . Only 29 views.
More avant-garde dancing - https://youtu.be/ITBIagJImNk?t=249 .
Going on a tangent: the social protests from this collection of spoken-word pieces in this 1991 episode are, sadly, essentially unchanged - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HY7pKQ-Imco .
We had red, yellow, and green LEDs by then. While I don't know the history, I stuck "green led" into archive.org and found things like "At one-fifth the current, these red, yellow and green LED seven-segment numeric displays are equal in brightness to the previous displays." in a 1975 advertisement at https://archive.org/details/sim_i-d_july-august-1975_22_4/pa... .
Though I think you mean high-intensity green?
That said, what green lights do you mean? The closest I could spot was in the skates, and they didn't look all that green. Can you give a time code?
The shots are only a few seconds long. There's plenty of time to replace batteries as needed.
Or perhaps it's more that they reflect green well, rather than emit green?
I suspect those would be incandescent in a greenish tube, though. I've got a replica glowing lifeclock from Logan's Run (supposedly molded from production molds), and it's a little mini incadescent. Stuff some batteries in the skates, change them between takes if you need to.
Oh my god! Are they still available?
Had a Logan's Run themed birthday party for my wife's 30th. Party favors included ankh necklaces (ankhs from some party supply for $1/each or something). I'm a year younger, so I wore a red life clock, and made her a flashing one... But I'm no movie magician, the timer kit and battery and wires to go with it were waaaaaay too cumbersome. If only she had rollerskates on her hand, we could make it work ;)
Also, I was powering with a 9V battery... It was important to keep some with varying states or charge, because with a fresh battery, the light was too red.
If you email me to remind me (in profile), I can try to find the ebay receipts from several years ago and see if there's anyway to contact the seller. I may also be willing to part with mine. Gotta find it first, but I'm past renewal age now, gotta move on to reciting cat poems.
This was back when there were two BBC (public) channels and one commercial channel. And they all shut down at bedtime.
https://youtu.be/lkontjT7uvg
https://youtu.be/xe95sn0cN3k
(I like it more when they don't do that, since they had more room to play with reactions - like Phlox at movie night in Star Trek: Enterprise. He found it a lot more interesting to watch the audience.)
https://www.arte.tv/fr/videos/RC-014037/tracks/
https://www.youtube.com/@TRACKSARTEFr/videos
It’s hard to imagine where you might see something like this today
Ironically, you are more likely to see something like this on YouTube than on TV (I mean not just viewing old TV clips).
Aside: The BBC Archive channel on YouTube is a great dip into some of the BBC archives.
https://www.youtube.com/@BBCArchive/videos
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsmwVWELBBc
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3ctZI9_oyo
YouTube or TikTok, because broadcast TV is all but dead.
I mean there’s the three broadcast cameras dancing plus operators plus more broadcast cameras shooting operating on a full soundstage with crews of gaffers and grips and catering and scale wages.
I am not saying that YouTube and TikTok aren’t possibly as creative. Only that nobody is putting that level of resources behind a TikTok because nobody will put that much money at risk.
Try:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FwiMlDQ7rI
I did not look hard.
In terms of creative expression, I think TikTok and YouTube are vastly more egalitarian allowing greater artistic expression by many many more people.
And I think they are certainly filled with better dancing in terms of technique, aesthetics, and expression.
What they don't have is the production value of a crewed soundstage...plus three additional studio cameras in the dance. There's the equivalent of a few million dollars worth of hardware as a "prop."
Yeah but they kinda do nowadays don't they? I mean I look at 70s tv clips like these ones and stick that search term into google and do not see a drop in production values from one to the other. Picture quality is frequently an improvement, yay tech advances? Sound mixing can sound great using inexpensive equipment and some recently learned expertise? Lighting, kind of couples with camera tech but seems to be able to be ok without it costing everything?
In fact my guess is a bunch of professional dance companies get grants and funding to professionally video their stuff and stick it on the web while being totally under their own artistic control, not needing to wait for an invitation to a broadcast tv station and not having to give up so much for the requirements of that medium?
I dislike the way youtube does things, but I'm not doing it better so there's that. There is surely an ocean of manure there. I really do like the diamonds in amongst all that stench that otherwise would not have been made, let alone found an audience. Especially and particularly the educational resources.
https://youtu.be/LiXg_70rMeM
I agree, but at a personal level I find it sad how that, given the gargantuan amount of media available, and the ease of consuming it, how quickly things fall into the "old fad" bucket.
For example, I find that there is a lot of content on TikTok that is truly amazing. I like watching parkour videos, and I'm amazed at these people's skills and daredevil tricks. But it's so easily to quickly scroll through hundreds of these videos that they lose their unique luster too quickly, and after a while it feels like "meh, that was cool, what's next".
I guess I'm arguing that this overabundance of consumable media content has some big negative consequences, similar to how the overabundance of food in the middle part of the last century had grave health consequences for most Western nations.
Big Chuck and Little John come to mind
I think it is true that there used to be more of an attitude to broadcasting ‘things the public ought to see’ more than the things they actually wanted which meant more things like classical music, history, dance, etc. Although I’m not sure if this clip was due to that attitude. If you look at TV today, things like nature documentaries can still be very popular and high quality.
Some of the ‘high-brow’ content was relegated to special channels and so just seen less. Nowadays, it seems like Netflix, YouTube, etc is actually a good place for more niche things to be able to reach a wider audience.
Old UK TV shows look weird to todays audience (not adventurous) because they are a reflection of a time we have long moved on from. The pandering racism of "Love Thy Neighbour" and "The Black and White Minstrel Show", the scantily clad "totty" in Benny Hill.
I suppose on an incredibly naive way it might seem adventurous but I'm very glad we've moved on.
You get that both parties - the white guy and the black guy - were bigoted racist idiots, neither were right, and their wives who actually got on fine were exasperated with them, right? I mean, you've actually seen the series, I'm sure?
Because if you'd seen Love Thy Neighbour, you'd know that both guys were racist bigoted idiots.
You'd also know that even in the 1970s when it was aired, everyone thought it was shite.
That the show was shite is neither here nor there.
The first is the reason the dancers are there is classic "for the dads" tv to check out the bodies of some young, fit, conventionally physically attractive women. The men being involved in the dancing is a fig-leaf to enable the pretence that its motivation is some higher, more noble artistic endeavour for both performers and audience. If there is some small amount of "for the moms" going on as well then fine but that's not why its there.
The second is that this is dance. By its nature dance is sexual "vertical expression of the horizontal desire" and all that. There is nothing inherently exploitative about having a choreographed, mixed group of young fit humans, dressed for dance on tv dancing. Dancers self-select for physical fitness. Conventionally physically less-attractive dancers don't fare much better than conventionally physically less-attractive movie-actors. Pick your fight with what humans like but don't cry exploitation.
So would these dancers be on tv without a background "for the dads" mindset from tv producers? If not, does that matter?
(For me, those last two are "no" and, "yeah, maybe it does." At least to the extent its worth point out but not necessarily raging against). YMMV.
The man who hasn't seen a ballet dancer of either sex they found attractive doing remarkable things with their body and let their imagination go at least a little probably has some pretty profound health issues and my sympathies. Something similar may well be true for women in the audience, not sure if this is really the place to ask for people to speak up on the point.
tl;dr sex sells and always has.
A 4 year old dancing to music is NOT AT ALL an "expression of the horizontal desire". For the same reason, adults can and do dance for the joy of it.
If you view dance through the viewpoint of sexual desire, then sure, ALL forms of human interaction are a result of sexual desire.
That wouldn't be wrong, abstractly speaking. But there would be no reason to single out dance.
As someone who used to dance a lot, your interpretation seems bizarre and strongly at odds with my observations and experience.
For perspective, I could make the BS argument that American football is popular in the US because it's a culturally-safe way for males to satisfy their suppressed homoerotic feelings. The vast majority of fans will disagree. The onus therefore is on me to present a strong and compelling case that they are wrong.
Just like there is now for your views on dance.
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2016/09/11/dancing/#:~:text=%E....
Taking dancing in the manner we are discussing in this thread? TV, body hugging lycra etc. Yeah, ok, maybe not always..? Mostly? I think the point being made remains.
There are no children in those clips and rightly so.
My view is that you think this kink you describe is far more common than I do. I want to see evidence supporting your view.
We know the BBC developed programs for "man appeal", as seen in the choice of the very name "Emma Peel" in The Avengers. We can look at "Hill's Angels" in Benny Hill, or Leela of the Sevateem in Dr. Who (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leela_(Doctor_Who)#Conception ) to see what the BCC in general viewed a "dad appeal."
These Moog dancers don't fit that mode. I mean, the second dance ends with about 40 seconds just watching the cameras, which have crowded the frustrated dancers off-screen. How is that "dad appeal"?
Yes, there are bare midriffs, but that's all that's needed for "dad appeal" then there are far easier and cheaper ways to do it.
And the third video is in mostly in half-darkness with the women in flowing dresses, where if the goal is to "check out the bodies of some young, fit, conventionally physically attractive women" then it failed miserably.
This looks like standard avant-garde/modern dance, which has it own audience. A small one, yes, but that's why these shows aren't common.
Maybe that's a question of taste? Of opinion? You're obviously not wrong I just disagree it's so clear cut. This stuff is not Benny Hill. Note that the "Moog dancers" don't have to be tailoring their stuff to "Dad appeal" for some tv exec to look at it and think, "yep, that works and we can defend it on the grounds of high art when Mary Whitehouse and her ilk start yelling corruption of youth" or whatever. Obviously to view it completely solely through a lens of sexuality is as silly as viewing anything in life in those terms. There is colour, there is movement, there are visual patterns ranging from the simple to the more complex, there is order that degrades and is restored, it can be appreciated and discussed completely ignoring the sexual elements and there are circumstances where it is utterly reasonable to do so.
Benny Hill had some really terrific, visually clever and hilariously funny gags [1] that weren't about women with big tits bending over or a man with the head of a swan coming out of the fly in his trousers. The Moog Dancers really aren't much like that kind of brazen "for the 12 year old in the dads." Note that I've argued both sides of this w.r.t. the moog dancers and don't claim to have "the" answer. Your opinion is as good as anyone's. "Not as bad as ..." Doesn't mean "has absolutely nothing in common with."
[1] I wanted to link a sketch here that I remember that is probably on youtube but google in their infinite wisdom are murdering searching for what you want in favour of algorithmic curation of what they want to show you so there's no way I can find it, or anything Benny Hill that doesn't involve bikini clad women and additional misogyny concerning women who are of a different age and shape. He got the rep for good reason.
Again, this is all very conjectural of you. This argument can be used to assert that a show with an attractive woman is on TV because the woman is attractive, and not because of other merits. It's demeaning.
That's not saying it isn't true. Like I said, there is solid evidence that "Dad factor" did influence the BBC.
But it demands something besides conjecture. Else we could conjecture that the BBC scheduled association football because the TV execs wanted to appeal to the repressed homoerotic feelings of its viewership.[1]
> Note that I've argued both sides of this w.r.t. the moog dancers and don't claim to have "the" answer.
"Argue" is what people do in a bull session. Give some evidence that one or the other has basis in reality.
My experience and understanding tells me that the decision to program this sort of act because of the "sexualising the women", in the "both points of view" you see IS NOT TRUE.
While people can and do sexualize just about anything (people have probably shipped Rumpole of the Bailey), what I see in these video shows no signs of deliberate titillation, and yet with many opportunities to do so. And I see many parts which are a turn-off, like the crowding out by the camera.
Further, unless this was part of a continuing series of sexualising acts, why would a tv exec care? It's not going to affect ratings.
While on the other hand, we do know modern dance and avante-garde performance exist, and some look like this of their own accord without attempts to sexualize, and we know variety acts of that era also included novelty performances for the oddity of it.
[1] Personally, I only watch Time Team because of the pure eroticism of Philip Harding, and anyone who hasn't looked at him and "let their imagination go at least a little probably has some pretty profound health issues and my sympathies".
Prime example: Dr Who. This was the era of Tom Baker as the Doctor. Honestly, it was amazing. But there were other shows that were just plain goofy like The Goodies and Monkey. On the sci-fi front you had Blake's Seven, which was way ahead of its time in moral complexity. To this day, Avon is an amazing character.
We saw very little American TV. Sesame Street was a notable exception. At the time this even dealth with complex issues (eg the actor who played Mr Cooper died IRL and his death was on the show).
As I got older you got into shows like Grange Hill, which actually dealt with issues like a kid dying of a heroin overdose.
In my teens I got into more adult shows like Yes Minister (which, to this day, is amazing). We had in-depth news program that was of exceedingly high quality (ie Four Corners and the 7:30 Report) that included such gems as [1] (referring to the Kirki [2]).
But what happened in the 1980s to the BBC in particular was that children's TV got really dumbed down. Dr Who was viewed as "too scary". So all this innovation basically disappeared under the guise of the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
It wasn't really until the 2000s that TV recovered from this and even now I believe even now that children's TV is simply awful. None of it seems to be intellectually engaging at all and certainly not "adventurous".
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m5qxZm_JqM
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirki_(tanker)
Avon is indeed amazing. And it's no accident Terry Nation, the creator of Blake's Seven, was the author of what made Dr. Who a smash hit with his script for the second serial titled "The Daleks."
Just squeezing into the "1970s" in 1970 was ITC/ITV's UFO which was also great SF, I watched it a few years after in weekly syndication in the US. Didn't get a chance to watch the previously mentioned BBC shows until the 1980s.
A friend who lived in Newcastle went to the corner store to buy rubber bands while watching The Curiosity Show. The bewildered shopkeeper asked why so many kids were coming to buy rubber bands at that moment. What a heart-warming story, I never knew if anyone else watched it.
Recently rewatched Blake's 7, the SO loved it. I mentioned that to a friend in Bulgaria, she said "What?? Blake's 7?? We used to play Blake's 7 in the street when I was a kid. Guess who I was? Gan haha"
"We saw very little American TV." Weird, I watched an awful lot of terrible US series that I'm too ashamed to list. With ads! Moonlighting was about the only really good one.
My early years I spent in a rural year where we only had one channel: the state broadcaster. That's why we saw American TV rarely. By the teen years it was different: we got a second channel! With ads. Actually we had some of that when visiting family in a large city (with 3 then 4 channels!).
The A-Team, Different Strokes, Cheers, the Dukes of Hazzard, Family Ties, LA Law (which was dope), The Wonder Years, the list goes on.