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Recent Comments by shoany

ugh, definitely in the valley and definitely closer to coming out, which means really, really offputting. right from the start, there was something very, very slightly and yet horribly off. uncanny valley is such an interesting phenomenon...

written by shoany | 2 weeks 3 days ago | CH

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Little girl deemed not cute enough to represent China

As a sweeping generalization coming from my own upbringing and experiences, I think Chinese people (and their government) tend to value aesthetics greatly, and thus a decision like this is upsetting but not very surprising. At the same time, though, this sort of mindset isn't at all an Evil China exclusive; look at magazine photos (where in some magazines, they're more painting than photo now anyway), musician/performer successes, diet trends, fashion trends, the meat of the advertising world ("You're not good enough. Buy this and maybe you'll be less horrible.") etc. And I definitely can't endorse high-and-mighty comments about how evil China is; they're just as evil as everywhere else, but they're not as good at covering it up. You say the Chinese media is state-run like that's uncommon. Did CNN lose its "Joke" status? China's just more transparent about it.

Returning to the topic, I read an article on this earlier in the week (which carried a little more substance to it) and apparently the story is that the girl you SAW was selected early to perform (she IS a singer, and a nice one), but during the last rehearsal a powerful politician decided her voice had to go. Thus the music director scrambled to find another good voice, which he did, but then the owner of that lovely voice was deemed not cute enough to represent China. Both kids and their families say they are okay with it (of course, they might have been instructed to say that), the singer that she's just happy her voice was used to represent China. I think that's a classy way to come off it, and whoever's handling PR for China seems to have done the best they could after the fact (ie not denial). I still don't agree with the decision, as I think both kids were adorable, and I feel confident that if the visible girl made it through auditioning and rehearsals, she was indeed a great singer anyway. It's unfortunate that this one dude with all the power decided otherwise, but hey, that's art.

And finally, to whoever posted that quip about slave labour being related, that's gotta top my personal list of dumbest correlations ever. And further, a country that is known to use slave labour might be a sad thing, but is it much better to be in one of the many countries that quietly but enthusiastically continue to fund said labour?

My overall point is this isn't a good deed by any means, but I suspect that the world is chomping at the bit to cry foul at China, given the one-sided press it gets. And as another poster commented, on the grand scale, who really cares about lip-synching? (Pavarotti lip-synched in the 07 Winters, I think... due to age and cold air?)

PS: Milli Vanilli was AWESOME. Blame it on the Rain was such an awesome song I'm not even upset about the whole lip-synching faking debacle.

written by shoany | 3 weeks 2 days ago | CH

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