Mad Hot Ballroom

[lauradi7dw]

RJPB had a thoughtful post about this film a few days ago, and I commented before seeing it. Florence and I went last night (same theater). I agree with most of what he said about the competition at its base, but it's impossible for me to not filter other aspects through the mom in a wealthy suburb experience. I thought it was manipulative in a variety of ways (which children to root for, which to cry along with, how good we're supposed to feel that the kids who were clearly in trouble before turned themselves around because of dancing) and worse to me, they set some kids up to be laughed at. But there were things that did seem wonderful to me in small ways. The dancers are about 11 years old. At that age in Lexington, most of them would have been on competitive sports teams or regimented into organized after-school programs. Kids who dance would already be wearing heavy make-up for performances. On the other hand, it's hard to think of many people in the schools here as ladies and gentlemen. The NYC kids may not be either, but at least they were constantly addressed as such. The children whose personal lives were followed played outdoors in a park, or had friends over for foosball, or practiced the dances outside of school. For the final competitions they were carefully dressed and had their hair groomed, but were wearing sensible dancing shoes and were not wearing makeup. And I was relieved to see that while some of those dances (tango, merengue) are highly sexualized when you see adult dance competitions, none of that was even implied in the way the kid versions were choreographed. Certainly an improvement on the stuff kids that age sometimes see on TV.

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addendum

[lauradi7.livejournal.com]

Today's (Aug 21) "Flashback" Doonesbury seemed relevant to my suburban mom rant:
http://www.doonesbury.com/strip/dailydose/index.html