Ebb and Flow: Les Olympiades and Elche

In both "Les Olympiades" in France and the shoe manufacturing industry in Elche, Spain have created hybridity by breaking down traditional European boundaries between "home" and "work."



In the former, the residential/commercial complex has been repurposed and blended to create a community that takes on characteristics of self-sufficiency -- homes, food markets, restaurants and artisan shops all reside within the structure.



In the latter, home space has been co-opted to allow housewives -- and even children -- to become part of the manufacturing process without leaving for a factory building... or being subject to regulation of working standards.



While these new arrangements provide an environment of opportunity for socially (and thus economically) disadvantaged individuals to find work and support their costs of living, they also serve to isolate and insulate those involved. The immigrants in "Les Olympiades" could conceivable live, eat, work and recreate in the building complex and never leave it for weeks, or longer. Likewise the clandestine nature of the shoe industry in Elche encourages the female workers to shut their homes away from view, and makes them subject to coersion from both landlords and the shoe industry.



Both situations have transposed features on the urban landscape that would normally be either dispersed or centrally located. In "Les Olympiades," all of the features of what would normally be an entire neighborhood have been condensed into a contiguous set of structures, making vertical an environment that must normally be traversed in the horizontal. Conversely, in Elche the traditional environment of industrial production -- the factory, usually a complex of centrally located buildings -- instead finds itself dispersed to encompass an entire neighborhood.

So You Think You Can Dance?

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Shown above are three clips of solo performances from three different versions of So You Think You Can Dance? (Fuller and Lythgoe, 2005) The first clip is of Jason Glover during Season 5 of the original American version of the show. The second shows Talia Fowler from Season 2 of the Australian incarnation, while the last clip comes from the Scandinavian version's contestant Robin Peters.

As can be seen in each of these clips, the format of the show is virtually identical in all three versions -- right down to the set. Contemporary music, particularly American favorites, also tend to provide the sound track for the dance, with some variation. In fact, a critical eye shows that perhaps the only thing unique about each clip is the dancer and his/her unique style (the solo dances in particular, in contrast to the couples' dances, are self-choreographed).

This points to a strong homogenizing force in the franchise; in the absence of close familiarity with any version of the show, or any spoken dialog outside of the performances, a casual observer would not be able to tell that these three clips came from versions of the show in other countries entirely. Conversely, the deployment of this franchise is still fragmentary. You do not find audience members of one show having much context to speak with audiences from the other shows, since neither will be familiar, very probably, with the contestants from the other shows.

Perhaps, though, there is some strength in the show that stems from its cookie cutter programming. This homogeniety -- the format, the set, even the repertoire of music and dance genres -- can function as a sort of blank canvas onto which the contestants can stand out starkly in their individuality. The success model of the show would seem to thrive upon audience members finding at least one contestant to admire and empathize with. This is facilitated -- whether by design or simply by some egalitarian nature that the field of dance possesses -- by the broad spectrum of ethnic, social and formal backgrounds possessed by the contestants who are chosen for the show.

So, while the franchise programming in and of itself does little to bring people together on a global scale, it does create a common context within each market which promotes cultural hybridity in its locality -- that is, the nation. With the world's societies, especially in Europe and the English-speaking world, becoming increasingly multi-ethnic, a form of expression that has naturally evolved to be lend itself to fusion and fluidity across the borders of genres if not nations, might actually be a common ground of the small scale in which cultures meet -- in this case, around the proverbial water cooler as people talk about last night's show.