[Tango-L] Videos of Dancing at Milongas

[Caroline Polack]

This is such a grey area.

There wouldn't be National Geographic magazines educating us about cultures 
around the world if no one permitted their pictures to be taken.

Imagine if I were researching tango on the internet and all I saw were 
blurred and blanked out photos and videos, with the exception of licensed 
ones. I would have gotten the impression that tango is rather impersonal. 
It's the expression on people's faces that draw me in. In fact, it's Law 101 
in graphic design, that a person's face is the most eye-catching element of 
design in existence. When models are photographed - the photos that get 
selected the most are the ones in which models are looking directly into the 
camera. Why? because they are more forgettable if they don't. Most people 
being filmed at milongas are not looking directly into the lens, hence they 
tend to fade into the crowd making themselves rather unnoticeable.

Privacy has now reached such a point that when you turn on the TV - 
everything's blurred out - faces, names, logos, numbers. Which I find highly 
distracting and somewhat disturbing. Yet on the other hand, we've never had 
such universal access to the media as we do now in this day of internet 
technology. Perhaps there needs to be some form of control so as to protect 
our ever dwindling privacy. When you're in a store, you're being watched. 
When you are in public buildings such as airports or government services 
offices, you're being watched. They are now even erecting security cameras 
out on the street to monitor pedestrians. Privacy is fast becoming a 
precious commodity.Perhaps because of this, we are now becoming rather 
sensitive to being filmed without our knowledge or permission. It's one 
thing to know that only several people would see the video but quite another 
to know that the entire world can see it on Youtube.

What I find very interesting though is that those who complain about 
publication of videos that were made without the permission - they are 
evidently watching those videos too.

As for myself - when I watch videos, it's not with the intent to memorize 
every face so I could stalk them later. Nor is it because I want to write 
scathing critiques ridiculing every person shown on the camera. And I'm 
intelligent enough to know that a 3 minute video is not even close enough to 
encompassing the vibe of the milonga on any given night.

To be honest, i can't even remember any faces from any videos of milongas 
that I'd seen nor do I really care.

Yet, to continue in the vein of honesty - I was imagining how would I have 
felt if I looked up a video on Youtube and found myself in one of the 
videos. I think I would have been rather embarrassed if I looked less than 
stellar. But then, I would have been the only one embarrassed since I would 
be the only one who cared if I was in the video or not. Nobody else would 
have given a fig. My face would be immediately forgotten once they've 
finished watching the video. When one has watched literally dozens and 
dozens, if not hundreds of video, it's impossible to remember all the faces 
which might actually be an advantage to whomever was filmed in milonga 
videos.

In fact, watch 10 videos of milongas on youtube then see if you can remember 
the people the next day without watching the videos again. See if you can 
remember their faces, their clothes, the way they danced. I'm willing to bet 
that you'd won't be able to.

So, there's the issue of exerting privacy by control versus the reality of 
the matter which is that one's privacy is already safe by the mere fact that 
they are not THAT memorable anyways due to the constant deluge of images we 
are dealing with every minute of every day.

Stradddling the fence here. Sorry to be so Swiss.

_________________________________________________________________
Like puzzles? Play free games & earn great prizes. Play Clink now. 
http://club.live.com/clink.aspx?icid=clink_hotmailtextlink2