Lifje has been hard at work, producing these picture collages comparing Olympians Alexandra Raisman and Gabrielle Douglas with their Russian counterparts, Aliya Mustafina and Viktoria Komova. I'll let both pictures speak mostly for themselves, but the differences are absolutely glaringly obvious in the first shots of Raisman and Mustafina. . The Douglas-Komova comparison is more, as Lifje says, a question of the details such as toepoint, extension and hands. I would add to that, back and shoulders.
The dance photos suffer from selection bias. You don't learn much from comparing a beautiful pose to a random transition. The skill-to-skill comparisons are better.
ReplyDeleteI was thinking the same thing...
DeleteI think this criticism holds for the fourth pictures, the dance poses of Douglas v. Komova. It is difficult to compare the two. The comparisons of Raisman and Mustafina are fair, since they are very similar, and they show Raisman's lack of grace and flexibility, and Mustafina's natural expression.
DeleteDiscussion question: How much should a gymnast be penalized for bad choreography? Since the gymnast does not choreograph her own floor routine (usually), the choreography is in many ways out of her control. It seems fairer to judge the gymnast's performance of the choreography, even if the choreography is bad.
It's not as counter-intuitive as it seems. I've seen actors give great performances in terrible movies with terrible dialogue, and I've seen actors in Shakespeare plays give horrific performances. (And I DO mean horrific.)
nice comparison haha, i love the russian gymnasts.
ReplyDeleteGreat examples, and I can`t believe that the most of the judges could`t see it, or did not want to... I hope that the judging system in the future could include like in tennis, some technology so they can SEE the differences...
ReplyDeleteThats true! Judges play the blind!
ReplyDeleteHowever.... You could compare musty vs pavlova and you will notice that musty also has a lot of form errors, I think there's not a gymnast with better form than pavs.
Pavlova is Pavlova...
DeleteGrishina has great form.
DeleteIronically, I think Gabby and Ali (except on bars) know how to point their toes. They just don't stretch the top of the foot and the instep like Aliya and Vika do. Possibly the ballet training that the Russians get makes the difference?
ReplyDeleteWhile I agree that Russians are more graceful than the Americans, it doesn't seem fair to penalize the USA gymnasts because they have muscular bodies or weird legs. After all gymnastics isn't a beauty pageant. Moreover, it would be dreadful to see gymnasts like Raisman perform ballet like Mustafina or Komova.
ReplyDeleteAnd this is the real problem for gymnastics: there is such a wide range of participants coming from different ethical backgrounds. It's unfair to penalize one group just because they're different from the other cultures. Take Raisman, who despite the fact that she can't dance to save her life, actually does a routine to a Jewish song and Jewish choreography, thus expressing her identity like the CoP expects gymnasts to do. How is this different from Komova, who does ballet because ballet is in the Russians' blood?
And yet we enjoy Komova much better than Raisman.
And then there are some gymnasts like Wieber and Sacramone, who are horrendous and muscular, and yet they both can dance and dance well. No, they don't do ballet. But their choreography are fast, audience-captivating and you can tell that they enjoy doing it!
What my point is that in this case, gymnastics is very subjective. What is artistic to one person might not be the same for another. And we can't judge artistry by only form, for we are not beauty pageants and as time goes by and the need for more difficult skills arises, we can't blame gymnasts for looking what they look like.
And yet, if we don't penalize some choreography, we as well shouldnt call it artistic gymnastics.
The question is how we should determine which performances are artistic or not, and this none of us can answer, but I just don't think it's fair to say that "Russians are more artistic than Americans and therefore they are better" because this is obviously biased.
Raisman's artistry, presentation and form are not inferior because she is Jewish, they are inferior because her training neglected these aspects of her gymnastics, because the American system does not emphasise them, and because the Code and the way it is applied by judges favours difficulty and execution over such notions.
DeleteMany of the Soviet and Russian gymnasts, indeed many classical dancers are Jewish.
If you want a sport where the aesthetic doesn't matter, well ... with Aly Raisman as Olympic floor champion you have got it ... well done!
PS The subjectivity of artistry does not make it impossible to judge fairly ... and ignoring artistry just because people find it difficult to articulate is grossly unfair.
DeleteI can understand why people find it a complex and difficult to understand subject, but when there is a wealth of literature and research available this does not really excuse the FIG and the judges for failing to address it.
I have begun to review the subject on this blog and there is more to come - if you want to try to understand the issues and need some starter reading, and references to wider reading, search 'Clive Palmer' on this blog and see the posts listed. Email me if you have problems using the search system and I will send you the links.
I think that you can like a style or not... I mean... I don't like Biles style, but I can't say she didn't deserved here medals, here skills sere very hard and she made them in a perfect way. She danced not like a ballerina but more like a modern dancer... I get why she won many titles, but I can't stand when gymnasts that have no artistry and just do hard skills and not perfectly, get higher scores than other gymnasts. I like the fact that we now have an open-ended code, but I would personally love to see more balance between difficult skills not well performed and easier but perfect skills.. I am not a native English speaker, so I hope I could express what is on my mind ;)
ReplyDelete