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Those Were the Days
![white-christmas-movie-poster-1020283120[5]](https://cdn.ricochet.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/white-christmas-movie-poster-10202831205.jpg)
After the end of the semester and a particularly awful work week, I finally got a chance to bake some cookies, put up my Christmas tree, and just generally do Christmasy things. One of these things was to watch my second favorite Christmas movie, White Christmas (feel free to inquire what my most favorite is).
I could listen to Bing Crosby sing all day — even if he did get that baritone timbre by smoking a pipe. I love classic movies, and sitting on my couch watching Danny Kaye and Vera Ellen spin around the dance floor one thought jumped out at me — “Gosh, I wish people still danced!”
Now, of course people still dance, but twerking like Miley Cyrus with a bad case of tardive dyskinesia doesn’t count as dancing in my book. I wish the classic ballroom dance forms were still common to the culture the way they once were. This summer, I took a couple ballroom lessons, and I have never felt more elegant than I did when I was foxtrotting and waltzing across the floor.
Then I started looking at the clothes the characters were wearing in White Christmas and thought, “Man, clothes were so much more flattering and tasteful back then.” A certain longing for days of yore crept over me.
So I’m curious — what aspects of times gone by do the esteemed ladies and gentlemen of the Ricochetti long for a return of? What fashions, habits, and parts of culture do you fervently wish would be reinstated in contemporary society? Obviously, I would start with dancing.
Published in General
A friend of mine married a Cuban girl from Miami, and they had a salsa band at their wedding. And many wizened old Cuban grandads and uncles who were superb dancers. I couldn’t quite keep up with them, to be honest, but I think they were happy to dance with a younger girl who wasn’t entirely clueless about partnered dancing and was at least willing to try.
Alas, my bashful nature makes me doubt that I’ve ever had a photo taken of myself in rib-baring clothing.
You, of course, had the distinct advantage of not being expected to lead. :-)
Very little is capable of making me feel inadequate—my gargantuan ego precludes it—but the mere prospect of dancing puts me there more effectively than any dunce cap ever could.
What, did the camera break? Buy the shoes you found and prove your point! Or maybe I’ll just have to slip 6’2″ a Benjamin Franklin to be a bit more… aggressive but subtle… with the camera at the next Meetup you’re both at!
In my Lutheran church we had party events at least once a year when the ladies would make us guys take some dance lessons with the girls. Since there was no choice, we had to learn, and what they taught us was polkas. Three-count and Four-count. As a young boy, my buddies were all crying what a useless exercise this was; nobody was ever going to dance those dances, ever. I didn’t mind them; it was fun to me, and more engaging than some other dreadful activities that the adults wanted the kids to do.
I was a high school senior when I found myself in Venezuela. I discovered to my great delight, that the same polka steps can be used to dance salsas. Just pick up the pace, and listen for the rhythms.
Great fun.
‘There are no shoes capable of making rib cages sexy. You may quote me .’
You haven’t seen My rib cage.
Sorry if this has already been pointed out, but at one time the foxtrot was considered vulgar.
So was the waltz; all that touching!
I always suspected as much. Her skeletal appearance is a huge distraction and not appealing at all. I feel so sorry for people with those kinds of disorders; I hope she found some relief eventually.
I miss how people used to sit outside on the front steps. Those summer evenings spent playing on the block (without a patch of grass in sight) were just so…. nice. Now we have block parties where everyone takes the day off of work, leaves the A/C, cable TV, and comfortable furniture to come outside and mingle with the neighbors. That used to happen most nights in the spring, summer, and fall.
I miss having most of my family (including extended family) within a three block radius. I miss feeling a part of a tight community radiating out from my family, to the parish, to the neighborhood, to the park, to the city as a whole.
Taking cues from White Christmas, I wish we still had “clubs” like that: classy dress, dinner, dancing, socializing, and entertainers. Instead we have clubs where conversation is impossible because the music is too loud and dancing is more a solo act or advertisement rather than something you do with a partner.
Don’t even get me started on the rhumba! Scandalous! Where are my smelling salts?
oohh la la! Cha Cha anyone?
Or Samba:
Ghost: He moves so much better than she does. (SYTYCD is one of two reality shows that I’ll watch.)
And here I was expecting a bevvy of beautiful girls in colorful costumes to strut their stuff:
One of the few samba songs I know is truly bizarre, as it’s, um, all about Uncle Sam for reasons I can’t exactly explain:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTXWpdkAp6Y
(* all typical Brazilian foods, I think)
It wasn’t clear to me that what they were doing was dancing.
Wow! That’s quite the, um, show they put on. I feel like some of those moves might be a CoC violation!
Gödel’s Ghost
It wasn’t clear to me that what they were doing was dancing.
Since Lacey isn’t a ballroom dancer, they weren’t. It was just choreography.
BYU’s kids can dance
I seriously don’t know what it is about Mormon women. In a previous life, I was a contributing editor for a small trade magazine whose management was entirely Mormon. We went to the two major trade shows every year, and without fail, at the afterparties, the women literally (see above) dragged me onto the dance floor. Very embarrassing fun. It’s fascinating to me how cultural and religious mores intersect (or don’t) around dancing and the more-or-less-explicit erotic references that it embodies.
HEY, no making fun of ball caps! ;-)
Well, maybe as long as it’s a UK cap it would be ok…
So long as it’s not glued to your head, and you wear it with the bill in front. ..
One word–Disco.
You miss Disco? (I’m not making fun: Hustle is hard and Arte made it look sooo easy)
Chaste, marriage-minded women face a problem in today’s mating market: How do they signal their availability as a mate without creating a social expectation in men’s minds of sex up-front?
Well, one way would be to become good (or at least non-bad) at an activity where men and women are expected to meet and touch each other in a rather romantic or even erotic fashion, but that touch is not expected to create an obligation to further sexual activity.
Social dancing, where it’s expected that people will change partners frequently, dancing for the sheer fun of it rather than for any promise of sex later, is a comparatively safe way for a gal to meet and flirt with a lot of guys, none of whom should reasonably feel she’s obligated to have sex – or even a romance – with them once the dance is over.
Learning social dancing also gives shy women a physical script to follow in their interactions with men. Rather than worrying about what kind of small talk to make with a man, or what the man’s expectations might be beyond the cues he gives as a leader in the dance, they can focus instead on being a good follower. Turn here. Chasse there. Don’t make faces at your dancing partner. Really, it’s much simpler than the alternatives.
I always make it a not to remove my hat when indoors.
As to the overall post, I think you pretty covered it. I suppose what I miss the most is the innocence of the times portrayed by the characters in White Christmas. My wife and I watched this on Friday last and I felt the same way as you did. It’s what I love about the holidays, the classy music and a sense of old Victorian America.
Anyone here seen Whit Stillman’s Last Days of Disco? He made the discothèque seem almost elegant, a place where people dressed up and went out for a night of social dancing, far removed from the cheesy stereotype image of cheap polyester suits, John Travolta and the Village People.
I was really only kidding. But I do like Jitterbug, country western swing, and some waltz like dancing–German Festival stuff. Some disco is fun I guess. A bunch of us went “in costume” to a local club having a disco night and we had a blast. Hey, I learned to dance–and how to ask girls to dance–in the disco’s of West Germany back in the late 80’s.
I heard it from somewhere that JimGoneWild longs for the Macarena.
No to detract from the comments about dancing…but I wish letter writing was a thing again. Real, cursive, hand-written letters of substance. What will our children have in the future? Love FB messages?