It's a Wonderful Life

Maybe the 20's and 30's are starting to come around again. Both decades were marked by a fad for dance contests and the current craze for Dancing with the Stars and So you Think you can Dance sort of look back to that trend. I'm not sure what to attribute the 20's/30's fad to and I don't feel like I can comment with too much authority since I wasn't there to experience either era. As for the modern trend? Personally I link it with my reason so many people have a taste for reality shows: you can watch people acting like idiots without their behavior impacting you personally.

Those of you who've read Blue Suede Souls know I've got a real nostalgic streak but that streak doesn't extend to the fad for dance contests. There are a couple of reasons for this (and they apply to the modern fad too). First off, the whole idea that any judge or panel of judges could, on any given day, make a decision on who is the 'best' at any dance style (or worse, compare say Waltz and Jive and come up with a 'best') is ridiculous. It falls into that old algebraic conundrum of dissimilar terms, they can't be compared.

Another difference between the 'good ole' days' and modern times is that in the 20's/30's there seemed to be a focus on quantity rather than quality. Dance marathons were the rage with contestants dancing to the point of barely remaining upright so that they could win cash prizes. Maybe this was just part of 20's youth culture – an emphasis on virility, endurance, and strength over refinement, skill, and experience. As I said earlier, I'm not qualified to interpret and I can only imagine what the experience must have been like. Jam 200 teen-somethings onto an improvised (or actual) dance floor and the band kicks off the event with all the festiveness of the first day of a carnival. After a few hours the weaklings are culled from the heard, after a dozen hours only the most determined remain and the crowd of onlookers thins. Sometime after about twenty hours the crowd returns to see the end, it's like waiting for a matador to dispatch the bloodied beast he's been tormenting. Finally one of the couples drop and the other is crowned victorious. The swell of adrenalin is just enough to get them to smile for the photos – then they're asleep before they're out of the venue.

How do I hook this up with the holiday? Well, one of my very favorite movies contains a nice dance contest scene. It's a Wonderful Life depicts a Charleston Contest. George Bailey gets roped into accompanying Mary Hatch to a high school dance and then finds himself in the midst of a Charleston contest. I love the teetering on the edge of the pool portion of the scene – they move up and back, unaware they're about to plummet into the swimming slowly opening gymnasium swimming pool. Sometimes dancing feels like that scene. You're out there, having a good time and going at it like wild but totally unaware that disaster looms just at your heels. At least in the movie the disaster only ended in winning a loving cup and plundering the high school locker room for dry clothing! Anyway, I did my best to find a clip to show but You Tube came up bare. A still will have to do for this post. Maybe at some point the video will fall into my hands and I'll air it.

Oh, and a little something to show I'm not all about flashing back to the way things were in 1946 when It's a Wonderful Life is set. The movie contains one of the hardest scenes in cinematography for me to watch – the scene where drunken druggist Gower slaps a young George Bailey in the head until his ear bleeds. The violence is troubling enough by itself but the 'angelic' commentary provides a window into the thinking of the era. Clarence doesn't show a hint of horror at what has happened to George, he doesn't remark on the violence at all except to say 'is that the boy who got his ear slapped back…' when he sees Bailey as a grown man. Omission, for me at least, is acceptance of normality and that says a lot about the era of this film. I guess not all that's old glimmers with a soft, sepia-toned love light.