Style Wars is one of my favorite movies of all time. I watch the documentary about street art in New York City at least once a year.
Whenever I’m going through a creative bender, or am feeling especially low, I play the film and marvel at the literal children, young enough to be considered legally minors, but old enough to create masterworks in spray paint in the deepest darkest corners of the New York City underground.
I have hung around graffiti writers in Seattle and B-boys in Buffalo. I was never good at either activity. My hand isn’t steady enough for spray paint and I have the dance moves of an elephant with two left feet, so I highly admire both artforms because I know each has a unique set of skills that can take years to master.
Making a “piece” as it’s called is a highly involved multi color affair that accompanies a writer’s own personal font, usually developed over writing their “name” or moniker over and over again on walls and in books until the letters become an abstraction of their original recognizable forms.
“Wild Style” for instance is a form of artistic lettering where each symbol becomes almost unidentifiable from its original alphabetical origins. Each character can only be deciphered by the creators of the artwork and a chosen few, usually other writers, who can still see the symbology underneath the ornament. It’s words and letters as decoration and covert messaging. That’s called art.
B-boying or breaking is as much about artistry as it is about innovation. It's the dancing equivalent of jazz where improvisation is not just encouraged but celebrated. However, in order to be able to create spontaneous moves on the floor, one must spend years mastering rhythm and how to anticipate the whims of the DJ who, like a conductor, leads each performer with their eclectic and occasionally erratic musical selections. The best dancers are the ones that can seamlessly adapt to each new shift in genre and cadence.
You may have deduced from the title of the film, but Style Wars is also about competition. The documentary follows writers and breakers who compete for who has the best aesthetic form–or style. For instance, in the graffiti community, you have people who make “pieces”, and you have those that “bomb.”
Bombing is antithetical to Piece Writing. Pieces are complex intricate artworks with layers of spray paint sometimes taking hours if not days to complete–bombing on the other hand is marking your territory with a scribble on a wall. The tension with graffiti writers in the movie revolves around this dynamic between these two opposing visual styles.
“Breakers” on the other hand are those that communicate their artform with their entire bodies. The “style war” for the breakdancers in the movie focuses on the competition between rival dance crews. Their battles are fought on asphalt pavement in the streets and open basketball courts beside austere inner city high rises, and their triumphs are documented on the waxed floors of community centers.
In the film, Rock Steady Crew, whose members include some of the greatest break dancers of all time, most notably Crazy Legs (birth name Richard Colón) battles rival crew Dynamic Breakers, who is led by Airborn, (birth name Jose Lopez). On occasion, the dance spars between the two crews become more physical than just busting moves on each other. However, nothing documented in Style Wars leads to any gratuitous violence, more egos are bruised than limbs and flesh.
The “style war” itself is more plot device than theme. The actual focal point of the movie is the cutting edge and sophisticated art being produced by kids in late 70s early 80s New York City. An art movement that was propelled mostly by working class Black, Dominican, and Puerto Rican kids. And how, this urban forward art, influenced and changed American Culture as we know it.
What no one could foresee even then, in 1983, the year the movie was made, was how hip hop, the catchall phrase for this trifecta of rap music, break dancing, and graffiti art would also alter global culture forever. For instance, K-Pop, that manufactured hyper pop music on crack cocaine from South Korea, is indebted for its entire existence to black and Latino kids from Brooklyn, Harlem, and the South Bronx.
I never thought I would write an essay about my dismay at seeing breakdancing as a competitive sport at the 2024 Paris Olympics, and yet here we are. I was actually trying to avoid watching the Olympics all together. I lost interest years ago with every new addition to the pantheon of stupid sports.
Like seriously, who really wants to watch Olympic golf? However, People in my lab are diehard Olympic fans so talking about the global sporting event was unavoidable. When one of my colleagues told me breakdancing would be included this year, it was really hard for me to mask my anger. I wasn’t mad at the messenger–just the concept of breakdance being evaluated by stuffy judges on an international stage.
While I argued in an earlier piece that art is in fact sport. I never meant sports as in representing a country with trophies and medals where each move is boiled down to a cheap trick executed to maximize accrual of points. What I meant is art is a sport in terms of exercise and practice. A dedication to a craft and a pride in one’s creative voice and style which gets stronger with repetition and age.
I thought I at least dodged the bullet of watching breakdancing at the Olympics until last Friday when it was unintentionally imposed on me. The details are irrelevant as to how this visual assault on my eyeballs initially happened, but I left the room after 20 minutes of being subjected to what I perceived as cultural butchery on a world stage. The event–to me at least felt like a minstrel show.
The athletes, if you could even call them that, seemed to be performing a form of hip hop kayfabe. Kayfabe for the ignorant is a term commonly used in professional wrestling–you know, of the WWF variety, or a staged soap opera-like play with pre planned events and storylines.
WWF is the antithesis of the actual Olympic sport of wrestling–the kind where you shimmy into spandex and roll around on a mat versus jumping off the ropes with a metal folding chair in hand. Which leads me to the side argument–if break dancing can be an Olympic Sport where presentation, style, and aesthetics are just as valued as athletic prowess, I propose the World Wrestling Federation should petition for its inclusion in the global pantheon of sports as well. Stone Cold Steve Austin would make a great sports moderator.
Back to the Olympic breakdancing abomination, there were the outlandish outfits, like the Lithuanian competitor “B-Girl Nicka,” who donned a durag while dancing. Which, if you don’t know, is a tight head wrap traditionally associated with African American street culture–not to my knowledge a common head garment worn outside of urban enclaves in America let alone the European Baltic States.
Then there was the Olympic “hype man,” who wore an outfit that appeared to be taken out of a 2005 Justin Timberlake music video–also did any other events have a guy in a beret and stunna shades “amping up” the crowd? Did track and field have a hype man? What about rowing? Everything about the competition just felt off.
I normally don’t like to use the term “cultural appropriation” to describe the commodification of art. Especially since it can be argued that every global culture takes pieces of other eras, peoples, and countries, and incorporates them into their own practices. However, the forced nature of the event where clothing appeared to be more like a costume, and street attitude was used as an accessory makes me feel more comfortable calling a spade a spade.
I also wonder what Crazy Legs and the other veterans of the 1970s breakdancing movement think about watching the moves they invented, the culture they created, become a curiosity for the global elite. For the brief period of time I was watching the event with my coworkers it became obvious I was the only one in the room who knew anything about the origins of the art-form. I cringed when one woman shouted: “wouldn’t it be funny if normal people danced like this?” And I wanted to say honey, 15 year old kids invented this type of dance. But sometimes keeping your mouth shut is best practice.
I guess this is what eventually happens to all art forms that become mainstream, the original people who developed the culture become distilled down to their parts. In this case it's trackpants, hoop earrings, chains, and too much ego. Which leads us to the event's most infamous contestant: Australia’s B-Girl Raygun. If my coworker wanted to know so badly what “normie break dancing” would be like–all you had to do was watch her performance to find out.
36 year old Rachel Gunn has a PhD in cultural dance. If you have watched the video (which you really should) which is now internationally viral you can see Ms. Gunn appears to have a mental breakdown on stage. She hops like a kangaroo, and wiggles on the floor in a move I have only seen in people who are having seizures—and before you come at me, I am unlucky enough to have seen more than one seizure so far in my lifetime. “The tragic effects of a caffeine overdose” is just one of a million different captions to clips of her epic performance.
There are plenty of people scolding those of us laughing at her antics, which the judges universally panned. We are told that even though Gunn was awarded a resounding zero points for her performance which put her solidly in last place, everyone's a winner on the world stage. That statement in itself is bullshit. The Olympics isn’t a kids intramural soccer game where every participant gets a trophy.
If Gunn could somehow transport herself back to 1980s New York and try to “battle” any B-boy crew in the city I can say with some confidence she would have been booed off stage. That’s what those kids used to do to dancers that sucked. However, in a world where participation seems to be just as good as mastery and kindness is more important than honesty, we–the public apparently cannot tell Gunn she blew it. Safetyism and protection from harm are more important than exceptionalism in sport or in art.
But I think the most sinister thing to come out of this fiasco is the discovery of Gunn’s 2017 PhD thesis titled: “Deterritorializing Gender in Sydney’s Breakdancing Scene: A B-girl’s Experience of B-boying.” Gunn opens her abstract with the banger of a line:
“This thesis critically interrogates how masculinist practices of breakdancing offers a site for the transgression of gendered norms.”
So, there you have it. Postmodernism strikes again! It’s come for your visual art, and your perceptions of reality, and now we can add breakdancing to the list too. So glad you can now get a doctorate in post truth urban dance styles originally developed by teenagers.
I wonder if the kids in style wars ever considered they were reinforcing gender norms by creating moves like the “hump?” Maybe they were just being kids having fun and experimenting with what their bodies were capable of at the drop of a beat…but I digress. I don’t have a PhD in anything so what do I know?
Breakdancing apparently is post-structuralist now which explains B-Girl Raygun’s moves since Gunn was just doing what she had been taught or subverting the cultural norm. She was in her own words: “conceptualizing the breaking body as not a ‘body’ but an assemblage of new rhizomatic connections” …whatever that means.
And I deduce from my own studies in postmodernism in art that Gunn’s thesis is essentially an interrogation of why break dancing is such a masculine artform. Her performance at the Olympics was meant to be antithetical to the maleness of traditional breakdancing moves.
I think the part I’m still confused on is why the masculinity of breakdancing and hip hop culture in general matters that much? Especially since it was largely developed by literal urban teenage boys. Style Wars is one of the most important cultural documentaries of the development of hip hop as art–and surely if she has a PhD in breakdancing, she’s seen it.
And furthermore, if she had watched the film, she would have noticed there were women and girls in the writing and breaking scene from the jump. Many of them didn’t seem to ponder the aggressive nature underpinning any of these artforms, they just did them, and did them well. Because Hip Hop is artistic expression not an Olympic sport.
Which also leads me to question why there were gendered categories at all when it came to breaking at the Olympics. Why for instance was boxing the lynchpin of the war on gender this year but breakdancing was a fully sex segregated competition? No one is getting punched in the face while dancing…or at least I hope not. Since breakdancing is an art versus a sport shouldn’t men be able to compete against women since it's about being a talented dancer and not strictly about athletic domination?
I would also love to know why most postmodern takes on art and culture focus so hard on destroying masculinity? No one seems to write postmodern drivel questioning why quilting for instance skews older and more feminine. Is anyone trying to “subvert the feminine nature” of the crafting community? Because I am all for masculine postmodern professors making quilt tributes to death metal in order to rebel against the gender norm. That sounds like an art show I actually would want to go to.
Getting back to Gunn, some people have suggested she was trolling the Olympics by dancing terribly as part of her underlying postmodern worldview of subversion. However, given what information is already available on postmodernism in the visual arts world, it's sufficient to say she probably really thinks she was doing something revolutionary by not being talented.
As art in our modern culture gets dumber and dumber and creative skill becomes less prized, an erosion of our societal values starts to take place. We can no longer agree on what is art and what is sports or what is good and what is bad. This is essentially cultural breakdown. It was interesting to see this phenomenon happen on a global stage.
However, some good has come out of all the controversy, Gunn’s international breakdancing career was short lived. As of now, the Los Angeles Olympic Committee have announced they aren’t bringing breaking back in 2028. I’m cool with that.
Go watch Style Wars instead.
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Now for some housekeping things:
I somehow managed to write three pieces in a week (don’t expect this from me too often) but I’m surprised at the responses to the last two things I wrote-thank you!
I will be in Minneapolis this weekend for Autoptic Fest! August 16th-18th.
I have a playlist for my essays. I’m adding to it as I go. It includes all the essays so far—if you haven’t noticed every piece is a reference to a song.
Anyway thanks for reading. I appreciate it.