2006 Pop Conference Bios/AbstractsMaria Tessa SciarrinoMaria Tessa Sciarrino is one half of Plain Parade, an independent concert promotion organization. She is also a DJ for WPRB (103.3 FM - Princeton, NJ) and has contributed to
XLR8R and
Rockpile magazines. You may visit her online at http://www.herjazz.org/maria/
Panel(s):Life of the PartySaturday, April 29, 2006, 4:00 - 5:45
Abstract:"
Lost in Translation: Musical Selection in Figure Skating"
Friday night. Hundreds of business school students huddle together, as I sit on a metal bench in this freezing concrete bunker, struggling to hear the strains of the Black Eyed Peas "My Humps" at holiday exhibition of a local university's figure skating club. As the sound wheezes from the too-slowly-dying PA system, an Asian girl swathed in shimmery gold Spandex complete with a perfectly coordinated shrug slowly glides around the ice. So far, a typical display of the sport. Yet, there is a difference; our tiny dancer, instead of reprising the graceful, tasteful, and stereotypically "feminine" performance essential to women's figure skating as we know it, was getting jiggy on ice, thrusting her arms and chest in a flailing, unintentional caricature of an Usher video. This spectacle was primal, overtly sexual, and completely awkward. The juxtaposition of her naïve aping of street culture while skating to one of 2005's most cringe-worthy singles, created a monstrous hybrid of race, class and gender norms that transfixed the arena. This particular performance serves as a microcosm; it is an entry way for analysis of figure skating's never-ending dance around vexed social issues. These issues allow audiences the guilty pleasure of watching a seemingly simple and wholesome competition defined by the rules of demure femininity, rather than a rough-and-tumble sport, a pleasure all more guilty in light of society's Title IX lip service to women's sports as a haven for gender equality.
Propelling this regressive narrative is musical selection. The pressure to select the "right" music—fear of stepping outside the box of what is acceptable—is the fear of fan criticism, or worse, censure from skating's officialdom. What makes a selection such as "I Enjoy Being A Girl" from the musical Flower Drum Song acceptable, but not Tone Loc's "Wild Thing"? Thus music would seem to be at the very heart of this ice princess simulacrum, but both music critics and sport experts instead dismiss music as an afterthought, eliding the possibility of any critique of cultural and aesthetic values of skating's rigidly codified saccharine musical choices. Considering how integral song selection is to these narratives, I will use this cultural lacuna to destabilize the myth that music is portrayed as inessential, or as the least important part of figure skating's cultural project. As a former competitive figure skater and current indie rocker, I will use primary source materials and interviews as the basis of my intervention in the gender politics of skating music.
