Shanazel

Dear Belly_dancer and A'isha,

Ya'll cut it out! My tummy can only take so much hysterical laughter!

Sincerely,

Shanazel

Kharmine

I don't think we're ever gonna know who first got up and said, "Ooh, look, I can make my hips do THIS!"

All I know is that cultures that try to control people's thoughts, from theocracies to Communism, are the most uncomfortable with anything that appeals to the senses, and that which is difficult to control always gets put down.

__________________
What if the hokey pokey is really what it's all about?

belly_dancer

does this mean we are "difficult" to control?

belly_dancer

I read somewhere that "belly laughs" use the same muscles it takes to flutter.... so just think of it as "practice"

belly_dancer

hehehehehehe
HELL no!!!! (I prefer the definition of virgin that means "un married young woman" NOT "un sexed" (for lack of a better word I could actually type here))
of course.... WE NEVER (uh... hmmmmm) danced THAT way when I was young..(at least not in FRONT of the parents!!!!)
but, what I have noticed from my daughters high school friends.... it seemed generally (but of course not ALWAYS!!!) that mostly the true virgins (according to popular definition!) & the true sluts were the sleaziest dancers!!!

Kharmine

Of course!

Art has always had a subversive element because, when it's done honestly, it exposes our deepest feelings, and it takes the risk of offending others.

Governments often want to control artists because they want to control the message of who and what a country is, and artists often represent some aspect of the culture that they're not crazy about.

__________________
What if the hokey pokey is really what it's all about?

cathy

A'isha--"Hester Prynncess" is one of the funniest puns I've heard in ages. I absolutely loved that novel. I was totally in love with Dimmesdale around my late teens and for whatever reason, this feeling was related to his guilt and suffering.

As long as we are talking Hawthorne, anyone else read the essay "The Scarlet Letter should have been I" for Incest? The writer thought he was in love with his own sister.

This reminds me though. The business of repressing all sexual expression (whether Puritan in origin or otherwise) labels things as sinful, wrong, dirty, etc. I have a theory that in and of itself, the sinful/wrong/dirty makes them more exciting to the imagination. I sometimes wonder whether in a society totally free of such repression, people would still find a way to invent transgressive fantasies just because they seek the thrill. In other words, is there some deep human desire/need to be naughty?

Cathy

cathy

Hi Kharmine,

Your comments on this thread are very insightful. Maybe this explains why I like the real stuff best. The kind of ME dance that is most commercially successful holds little appeal for me.

Here are two questions for you. Are there any types of government (or culture) that DON'T try to control the message in your view? And do you think anarchy is possible?

Cathy

cathy

Kharmine,

Not a subject I know a lot about, but in thinking more it seems to me that until about the nineteenth century, all or most art was just produced as part of daily life/folk traditions. There were craftspeople and guilds. The idea of the "professional artist" especially as being at odds with society, came about I would guess more 19th century. Until then weren't artists more like hired hands with patrons? Therefore they had to produce what was pleasing to who hired them? But I would say many of them still found ways to express their deepest feelings within those contexts.

Same as paid professional artists today, except "the patron" has been replaced by "the market."

Yes there are artists whose message is controversial and repressed but now that I think about it, it has not always been the case that artists are at odds with society. Bach for instance, Michaelangelo. Mozart on the other hand was controversial and did not support himself in his lifetime. Weren't the Impressionists the first painters to aim at the bourgeois buying public and be able to support themselves through their art without a patron? This in and of itself was controversial.

Today we have the debate about which artists/what art is suitable for tax funding....

Cathy

cathy

(Sorry for so many posts! Maybe I've had TOO MUCH coffee.)

I wonder--what is subversive about Oriental dance today? (I am not talking about Badia Masabni's time now or the idea that in the Middle East even today it is shameful for a woman to dance, especially for pay, in public. I'm talking about the West.) I am thinking that the received wisdom/the patriarchy pretends that the teasing seductress is subversive or "naughty" but in fact that image is such a cliché and one of the oldest money-spinners. The thing that seems subversive--and this is what strikes me as so bizarre-- is the idea of real people of all kinds enjoying this dance for fun. I mean as opposed to making it about sex, or about entertainment even as in star entertaining audience. I kind of dislike the word "entertainment" because it suggests the business and profit element, and the passive consumption approach, as opposed to the pure and more participatory enjoyment, which gets back to the folk traditions idea.

To take it back into the economic/political context, maybe the idea of people having fun with no appreciable profit to be gained can be subversive. It doesn't have to be the message itself.

Cathy