Dr. Strangelove,

You keep referring to me as 'Krisfalusi' as though I had degrees after my name and published work to criticize. I'm not your peer and can't support my comments with my own research (though I do appreciate the dialogue on this page with you). The published academic or journalist is one who has to support what they say. The online commenter can deride, applaud, add further evidence to support the writer, assert opinions that deride the writer's claims and enjoys considerably greater degree of freedom of expression than does the professional writer. This imbalance of unmatched challenges on the comment boards is not an answer to the power of the megaphone voices of the elite in the media, it is a social media dynamic that is slowly unsettling the larger voices. In this exchange with you I find that I have the upper hand. Sorry, but I was bound to especially the more you engage with me. You are an elephant fighting a fly.

continued...

They eat horses, do they? I had no idea. Thank-you.

"The styles, codes, and forms of behaviour from a highly eroticized commercial media system are being normalized by mainstream Middle America"

Well Dr. Strangelove, what a surprise! Has history taught you nothing?

Opera is one such sexualized commercialized musical genre. Oh those naughty 17th century parents! Castrating their young men! I say these girls are getting off easy....

"By that fact alone, opera became a commercial product." &lt;a href="http://books.google.ca/books?id=4zuuaqcVExoC&pg=PA9&lpg=PA9&dq=commercialized opera&source=bl&ots=mHFyMM-HQ8&sig=-a1Ec4WHjG_NR1sp96KPaiILDII&hl=en&ei=5Xv4S4DeLsP48AbYu_XWCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CCUQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=commercialized opera&f=false" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;a href="http://&lt;a href="http://<a href="http://;http://books.google.ca/books?id=4zuuaqcVExoC&...%3C/a%3E" &quot;="" target="_blank"><a href="http://;http://books.google.ca/books?id=4zuuaqcVExoC&...""" target="_blank">;http://books.google.ca/books?id=4zuuaqcVExoC&..."" target="_blank"&gt;<a href="http://;http://books.google.ca/books?id=4zuuaqcVExoC&...%3C/a%3E%22" target="_blank"><a href="http://;http://books.google.ca/books?id=4zuuaqcVExoC&..."" target="_blank">;http://books.google.ca/books?id=4zuuaqcVExoC&..." target="_blank"&gt;&lt;a href="http://<a href="http://;http://books.google.ca/books?id=4zuuaqcVExoC&...%3C/a%3E%22" target="_blank"><a href="http://;http://books.google.ca/books?id=4zuuaqcVExoC&..."" target="_blank">;http://books.google.ca/books?id=4zuuaqcVExoC&..." target="_blank"&gt;<a href="http://;http://books.google.ca/books?id=4zuuaqcVExoC&...%3C/a%3E" target="_blank"><a href="http://;http://books.google.ca/books?id=4zuuaqcVExoC&..." target="_blank">;http://books.google.ca/books?id=4zuuaqcVExoC&...

You might enjoy this dancer's take: "My two months as a Brazilian passista not only taught me a great deal about samba, Brazil, Japanese mariachi bands and the names of thirty different types of seaweed, but also made me really question the identification and creation of popular culture" &lt;a href="http://www.drclas.harvard.edu/revista/articles/view/1020" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;a href="http://&lt;a href="http://<a href="http://;http://www.drclas.harvard.edu/revista/articles/vi...%3C/a%3E" &quot;="" target="_blank"><a href="http://;http://www.drclas.harvard.edu/revista/articles/vi...""" target="_blank">;http://www.drclas.harvard.edu/revista/articles/vi..."" target="_blank"&gt;<a href="http://;http://www.drclas.harvard.edu/revista/articles/vi...%3C/a%3E%22" target="_blank"><a href="http://;http://www.drclas.harvard.edu/revista/articles/vi..."" target="_blank">;http://www.drclas.harvard.edu/revista/articles/vi..." target="_blank"&gt;&lt;a href="http://<a href="http://;http://www.drclas.harvard.edu/revista/articles/vi...%3C/a%3E%22" target="_blank"><a href="http://;http://www.drclas.harvard.edu/revista/articles/vi..."" target="_blank">;http://www.drclas.harvard.edu/revista/articles/vi..." target="_blank"&gt;<a href="http://;http://www.drclas.harvard.edu/revista/articles/vi...%3C/a%3E" target="_blank"><a href="http://;http://www.drclas.harvard.edu/revista/articles/vi..." target="_blank">;http://www.drclas.harvard.edu/revista/articles/vi...

"Krisfalusi's denial of the sexualized character of the children's dance routine may be part of a wider social phenomenon, the general unwillingness in Western culture to acknowledge childhood sexuality".
Knowing a bit about childhood sexuality (since I have a child and he's approaching puberty and I was a child) I can assure you my 'denial' was not a 'flat-out denial' and I am willing to acknowledge childhood sexuality. That's a whole other discussion. If children, up to the age of 10 or so, exhibit overt sexual behaviours you have to think first of ABUSE (physical or emotional). That's pretty much my view. I could be wrong!

Later...
Something interesting. Twice I made the same grammatical error, which Strangelove repeated. Neither of us wrote 'Be Sick". Now there's something to think about. "I would have to....sick.....". I think that we have in common an intuitive respect for the power of writing. And I might add that I'm a touch inconsistent if I think of abuse first when I see overt sexual actions in children, but don't speak out (like Dr. Strangelove) about these girls doing overt sexual actions. Yet I stand by my reaction because the context for the girls actions is a performance, an imitation, of a powerful, influential cultural meme. It is 'safer', to me, for that reason perhaps because my own child is not victimized by it. The children's performance is distant from me. From my own child. Beyonce's performance is closer yet I have the power to resist it somewhat. I'm not 20 and I'm not heading to the clubs downtown tonite. Ah well. Debate is healthy....

Dr. Strangelove,

I just left a conversation (in real life / real time) where an acquaintance I know witnessed a man jerking off in his car while watching young girls practice ballet at a dance academy here in Toronto where I live. He's going to call the police and advise the academy of this pedophile's licence plate number. I'm well aware that there are pedophiles amongst us. But should those cute pink ballet outfits and 'high kicks' be disallowed by (obviously..in your view) irresponsible parents because a sick individual likes to jerk off to that sight? NO! Likewise I think you display more than a little class prejudice when you don't talk about child ballerinas in the same breath as children in this article. It's convenient for you to quote Sarah Kaufman (whose writing is far more obscene than any child's performance of Beyonce's choreography) to spread further the sexualization of children that you claim to deplore. My writing, by contrast, seeks a balance to what your writing inflames. With this response perhaps I can bring the crimes of your writing to light and we can agree (to a degree).

You have blamed the parents of the child dancers for what you view as their children's sexualization. Yet you also include the Dance School however you don't delve deeper to explain a truer dynamic between these two parties to the children's performance. The children's Dance School is more at fault (in my view) for making the choreography of the children's performance exactly like the choreography of the commercial video. The parents defer to the Dance School to decide exactly what the performance will be and further, the parents may not have the where with all to direct changes to the choreography that perhaps they would have liked. Just as Hockey parents struggle to temper increasing violence in junior hockey leagues. Your view of the parents is completely unforgiving. Well I'm a parent myself and I know that there are always a lot of people involved in the activities that my child does. Whether at school, in sport or socializing with friends, other people are involved with my child and as a parent I don't have full control. If I suspect a problem of course I will act. One situation at a time. Yet it is very difficult for parents these days due to the levels of sexualization of adult women and violence in sport (for example). Is your response to those issues appropriate? NO! It only serves to worsen the problem. Your headline "Little Girls Going Hard"is repeated a few times on your twitter page, again on this site and on your own blog. Did you have to choose such a headline that demeans and sexualizes girls to make your points? Or are you simply imitating the MSM (mainstream media)? I forgive you for doing that, just as I forgive the parents for not tempering their children's performance somewhat. In the evolution of culture there are many acts. Each of us performing them is innocent according to our understanding and experience.

And yes, I, Me, would have to sick to respond to the sexualization of children with a sexual response. You claim that I'm sick because I don't see it. I do see it. However I don't make as broad a claim as you when I try to temper your writing with positive assertions (talented, entertaining). That is, I don't claim that "Such a performance gains meaning from the wider social context, and that context makes clear to all that this type of dancing is a prelude to sex, an erotic performance – fundamentally an adult act. ". It is NOT AT ALL CLEAR that the children dancing are making a prelude to sex. The meaning of any performance is within each observer. You don't know my context and you haven't the skills (done the research) to measure, assess and describe a commonality of meaning within 2 million viewers who saw the performance.

I add that in all your discourse on this topic you have not described the music itself. The lyrics are sexualized. However the music portrays confident, joyful, energetic STRUT. Music and dance are a team. Lyrics are of course used subliminally at times, in opposition to the primary thematic content of the music they serve. I know that the children respond MORE to the music than to the lyrics and this is why I say that INNOCENT imitations of the dance are inevitable. The music is top-class. It's high art. It's our culture. There are aspects of our society that can and should change but your analysis is not helpful at all to those on that path of change.

And by the way, I didn't read a single comment to this post. I think most commenters read online like that. If there is a debate on the boards you should conceptualize that debate as another 'read'. An interactive read. In print, there would be letters to the editor and reports of reader engagement that fulfill the same niche. It's a type of read. It's not revolutionary. It doesn't generate money. It changes what we do, what some of us do. IE we spend time commenting on blogs when we could be doing other things. Social media 'influence' is so overhyped. Social media is an engagement that is, for the most part, a big time waster and productivity sapper and just replaces TV for most of us. We spent alot of time watchin' TV. TV has influence. Blogs have less. So in that respect spending our time this way may change society but ...so what? Eventually, the little magazines and their little blogs seek a wider audience. They go on TV! If I was sitting in that room listening to that speech I'd say hey -- what are you changing? What's your product? And the answer is just not there.

I view The Mark as a 'team blog'. The team is Canada's elites. This is an exercise in digital elitism. I don't object to it. But I don't want to pay for it anymore than I want to pay for Horse Canada (see Andrew Coyne's article at Maclean's). A blog is an online magazine. A online newspaper is a newspaper that is in the form of a blog. The difficulty with digital print is that despite the bells and whistles of multi-media it is still fundamentally the same thing as print! And if all experimentation here hasn't taught you that yet you're even less deserving of my taxpayer dollars!

Thank-you.

I don't think this argument is sound. First of all, an auditor has the powers of inquiry and the knowledge base to explain the context for reported expenses and to make judgements about abuses or best practices. What this author is suggesting is that anyone can do that if they have the data. That's utter nonsense. Secondly, if full disclosure came to pass the public would be bombarded with media takes on spending as well as the perspectives of special interest groups and think-tanks who have their own agendas. I like my Auditor. Thank-you. I want my government to be accountable to her. Thanks! And I want this type of journalism to go away.....

Well thinking about my personal health conjures thoughts of organ regeneration and genetically tailored food that costs ALOT and reaching into my pocket for money to pay for time at a gym and buying equipment and shopping at more expensive food stores. That is, it makes me think like a consumer. I need money and lots of it to be as personally healthy as I'd like to be.

Well I think Prof. Sommerville is locked into a narrow perspective by focusing her writing on 'secular' VERSUS 'religious'. To keep our interest in this dualistic approach she writes a few lines like "We form society through a journey of the collective human imagination." Let me address just that particular one, since I don't want to get caught up in the same dualistic tunnel. I would argue that we are what we do. What we do that may be classified linguistically as 'secular' in fact corresponds to other things we do that are classified as 'religious'. It is the sum total of our actions that form our society and no amount of writings such as these can change that reality. It's convenient to talk about Death dualistically, but the reality is that everyone dies. Every death is disposed of and dealt with through actions. If I prepare my dad's body for burial, then cremate him and don't have a church service, am I not doing a ritual and experiencing emotions that are the same as in a death ritual that might be classified as religious? The sum total of actions. That's all there is to measure. And I might add that our scientific actions are working hard to repel death. What then?

Well Michael Strangelove would appear to be taking the MSM script to heart and adding very little but his full agreement to it. I thought Dr. Strangelove was into telling us about the democratic context on youtube and fleshing out the positive and negative. All we have here is negative. Instead, I found lots of support on youtube for the costuming. I find Strangelove's absolutism on this a little perplexing. First off, it derides our own dance culture. The 'meaning' inherent in the dance moves is open for re-expression after Beyonce. It can be innocent imitation by 7 year olds. It can be 'professional' imitation by child dancers. It can be Justin Timberlake and SNL parodying. The fact is, to say that a completely viral cultural phenomenon like Beyonce's Single Girls videos expresses only sexuality in the dance moves -- well that's just nonsense! The original commercial video is about alot of things and I view it's dances moves more as 'confident strut' than pole-dancing erotica.
If I contrast the performances of child gymnanists, cheerleader tumblers, etc. I take a perspective that the girls dancing above are doing a great job! It's very entertaining and I've have to sick to imagine that the girls are sexualized in this. They are having fun. They are talented!