The Locomotion, but not by Little Eva

As I mentioned in http://robocono.blogspot.no/2014/07/confusing-fashion-tip-in-popular.html, while at a wedding recently I noticed a generational difference in the way people dance. Under the age of, say, 40, they all jig up and down on the spot and wave their arms in the air in time to the music. All of them, in exactly the same way. 

Of course different generations have their own styles of dancing, and between the 1950s (in the UK, with jiving, in the US a bit earlier, with the Lindy Hop) and some 15 years ago, different youth groups had their own styles - punks pogoed, skinheads did the moon stomp, bikers headbanged,  and so on. 

But generally speaking, since the passing from fashion of moving around clasped in each others arms and following the steps of the waltz, or the military two step ("Oh what a pity the pubs in the city all close at half past ten" / "Oh what a pity she'd only one titty to feed the baby from") or whatever the music dictated, individual dancers moved individually, perhaps echoing their partner in doing The Twist, or The Hitchhiker or whatever, but not in any case repeating the same movements all night.

I've noticed another generational difference in movement, this time on the street, and I've watched it appear and grow in popularity over the past five years or so.

In walking, the natural way to move your arms is to swing them backwards and forwards, in turn, at the side of your body, in line with the direction of travel. This action is seen at its most exaggerated in soldiers marching, when the arms are raised level with the shoulders.

Some years ago, I started to notice young women in their twenties swinging their arms from side to side across the front of their body when walking. Then I noticed slightly older women doing it, and then I noticed young men doing it.

I've tried doing it myself to see if there's anything in it, and it feels not just counterintuitive and odd, but actually contrived and awkward - it breaks the rhythm of your pace, and you have to swing your upper body from side to side to accommodate it.

I'm not saying everyone under the age of forty walks like this, but it's definitely getting more popular.

Where does it come from? Who started it, and why?


Old, left, New, right

Contrived Opening for Anaphoric Humorous effect

Speaking of titles, which sounds laboured, but I was, here, in May; I reckon I can help 20th Century Fox out if they ever decide to make another Die Hard sequel. 

They had Die Hard, Die Hard II,  Die Hard  with a Vengeance, and then I felt they lost their way a little. "Live Free or Die Hard" and "A Good Day to Die Hard" don't quite have the same ring. 

How about Die Hard with a Fucking Vengeance and Die Hard with a Fucking Vengeance You Bastard?

 Bloke in a vest © Reg Smythe

Confusing Fashion Tip in Popular Musical Hit

I went to a wedding recently, and due to the age of the happy couple and the bulk of the celebrants, I was exposed to music that would make me whizz the tuning dial past the station as fast as I could if I came across it on the radio.

I felt sorry for the mob on the dance floor - every tune sounded the same, and they all danced to every tune in exactly the same way, jigging up and down with their arms in the air, waving them in time to the music. And they weren't even on Ecstasy.

The music consisted of maddeningly catchy melodic hooks and choruses repeated without variation above a heavy baseline, with bursts of electronically enhanced yodelling and melisma. (Apparently, the first pop record to feature melisma was "To Sir With Love" by Lulu, 1967, although Stevie Wonder and Whitney Houston must surely have more to answer for in this respect, via a shared background in the conventions of US gospel singing.)

One tune that was repeated a few times, presumably by request, was "Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It)" by Beyoncé Knowles. I remember this from when it came out, and was reminded of the mental response the chorus elicited when I first heard it. 

It goes: "If you like it then you should have put a ring on it". 

Number one, if the lyrics are directed at single "ladies", as the title suggests, and "putting a ring on it" refers to removing men from the market for sexual liasons by marrying them (or getting engaged?), it's surely not the men's third finger the women like.

Plus, it's necessary to interpret "it" as being used here to either = unattached men in general, or as an insulting, non-gendered substitute for "him". 

2, if you don't know the title, the other lyrics are difficult to make out, and you might assume it referred to unattached women.

Either way, the logical interpretation is that the theme of this song is a recommendation of genital piercing. 

Period Piece About Old Hooker Having the Painters In

Jewel-like Extravagance on a Minuscule Scale

Insects and arthropods inhabiting forest floor detritus, all less than 2.5mm in length (illustration from child's encyclopedia of science).

He likes his brown

The subject of this fly-on-the-slice-of-life vignette here enjoys pride of place at the centre of the composition, in the hand of the narrator and contiguous with the tip of the side-splitting old dear's nose.

Men's hats in TV period dramas

1. Worn over the tops of the ears. 
I first noticed this one with the hero's batman in the adaptation of Sebastian Faulks' Birdsong. In the style of youths today who wear boxfresh baseball caps over the ears and low on the brow, with completely flat peaks. 

Which brings me to my next point:

2. Ironed flat brims, like man on the Sandeman's Port label's hat - a flamenco dancer?

Exclusively on Foyle's War, this one, throughout the different series, as a kind of trademark.
Looks ridiculous, and just like all the styles I comment on here, absolutely wrong - no-one ever wore their hats like this. 
The brims had some curl to them when they came out of the factory, never mind when people wore them. 

Which brings me to my next point:

3. Brims curled the wrong way. Pulled down at the front AND the back. 
This is the way people often wear hats with brims now, but attention to old newsreels and crowd photos will reveal to wardrobe people that this style was less often seen, and when it was, it was more often in America. The general rule is, up at the back, down at the front.
The other thing that that attention will reveal is that trilby or fedora hats were not so very common in Britain, right into the 50s.

WBMTMNP:

4. Everyone wearing trilbys, everywhere, all the time.
Once again, study of contemporary source material will reveal relatively fewer men in any crowd wearing trilbys. 

It was more often flat caps for working class men, bowlers for clerks, the middle class and anyone in a supervisory position (and nearly all plainclothes coppers), and toppers for toffs in the city or at formal events. Trilbys or 'soft hats' were for off duty, perhaps seen as a bit flamboyant or bohemian, what was worn in Yank films, an attitude that persisted until after the war. 

The most absurd example of this being on Foyle's War again, one of the Cold War Foyle's. Foyle has to visit Oxford, and we see one of the Inns of Court in London standing in (I think Middle Temple) for an Oxford college. Hurrying between the different entrances and criss-crossing the court, we see dozens of men wearing undergraduates' short gowns, EVERY SINGLE ONE WEARING A TRILBY. No, no, no. Students did not wear hats at or inbetween lectures, and even if they did, they wouldn't all be trilbys anyway.

WBMT My Final Point:

For people who dress up in 'vintage' clothes: 
Men did not usually wear hats indoors, and definitely not at dances or in nightclubs.