There is a really good comment on my post 'Maybe it's the end'. It is from Cami, and I didn't want it to remain relatively hidden at the bottom of the post as it is full of ideas for discussion. Thank you, Cami ...
Cami says -
'You make excellent points, about how the identity of artistic gymnastics is changing. that�s the nature of sport though. i feel artistic gymnastics is still unique from any other branch because it is gymnast and apparatus, and nothing else. they are artists with their own bodies (no balls/hoops/or partners). a gymnast must be entirely focused on their physical, emotional, and mental self-awareness.
but if you are to give a gymnast a numerical score, there must be objectivity. in hockey, soccer - all goals are worth the same regardless of how much style they have. in basketball, �easy� shots are 2 points and �hard� shots are 3, regardless of whether they�re jumpshots or layups, half-court or right at the 3point line.
Gymnastics has tried to mimic this with the dichotomous d- and e-scores. but ultimately we cannot be like that because our athletes don�t just complete, they perform. as an american, I argue that Simone Biles is artistic because her gymnastics performance is a reflection of her, like painting reflects its painter or a composition reflects its composer. you see it in the way she quirks her hips or throws her shoulders back or directs her line of vision, not just in her flips and jumps. It�s what makes her difficult gymnastics different than say, Aly Raisman�s difficult gymnastics; it�s a difference not just in toe-point and leap-extension but in the ability to draw people in. I feel Aly�s lack of artistry gave her zero cushion in her scores today (especially on BB�), where as oppositely her unique big tricks gave her cushion room in 2012.
my current favorite american floor routine actually belongs to Bailie Key, one of our non-travelling alternates to worlds. in 2015 she�s struggled some with skills due to a growth spurt, but her floor artistry is loads better. I can tell that she has dedicated a lot of time into how she can best use her body and her strengths to tell the story of her routine. if you haven�t seen it yet, there are several online videos of her on FX this past summer, and I�d love to know your opinion. another american i�d like to know your opinion of is Brenna Dowell (she competed on floor today without her music), who just finished the 2014-2015 year competing on the american university level. it�s a whole different environment for gymnasts, with lower difficulty but many more contests/performances. she�s back on the elite stage now with nothing to lose, and I�d love an outsider�s before/after opinion.
I won't pretend to know as much about gymnasts from countries other than my own, but some of my recent favorites are vika komova (i thought for sure she was going to win AA in 2012, watching rotation by rotation...), jessica lopez of VEN, several JPN gymnasts, and i'm totally in love with this new crop of NED ladies. if russia and romania represent the "old guard" of artistry, i tend to prefer romania - no offense to you - simply because they seem to have more variety, at least among the girls chosen for worlds/olympics/etc. this is just my opinion watching the competitions, the finalized versions of each routine, not knowing their stories or how they individually approach gymnastics.'
I would just like to add my own take to this -
Objectivity is not the same as fairness. Objectivity is a philosophical stance, a way of seeing the world that involves measurement and calculation. Fairness is a state of making judgements that are even-handed and free of bias.
It is important to understand objectivity if we want to adopt it in any methodology. I am simplifying here but want to try to make this clear. Objectivity takes the position of viewing the world from a distance, as if individual phenomena can be observed as a separate entity from other phenomena and from the person doing the observation. It assumes that phenomena can be MEASURED and CALCULATED. Objectivity seeks to identify the phenomenon in detail according to existing knowledge and is dependent on a set of assumptions we call a 'paradigm'. These assumptions are critical because they are the basis of the objective view of the world and if they are off, can lead to continued misconceptions and a skewing of the vision and measurements. So for example if our paradigm (assumptions) is that the world is flat and we want to calculate how to travel from one side of the world to another, we would have to take into account the possibility that at some point we would fall off the edge of the world. If we assume (it is our paradigm) that the world is round, then we can calculate our distance in a straight continuous line.
Since the early 1990s the FIG has repeatedly emphasised their opinion about the importance of objectivity to fair judging, but WITHOUT STATING THE ASSUMPTIONS or making clear its world view/paradigm of gymnastics. A fair description of what was the intended meaning of 'artistry' appeared in the Code of Points as recently as 1989 but at some point was removed without discussion or debate and was never replaced with anything else. There has never, to my knowledge, been a clear statement of what the FIG believe the sport is, nor of the assumptions behind the decision to pursue a stance of objectivity in the marking. I believe that the FIG blithely uses the term 'objectivity' as a synonym for 'fairness' without really considering the implications, or operationalising the Code in a way that is consistent with its world view, assumptions or paradigm of gymnastics. I also think they would find it very hard to articulate their paradigm without conducting some significant research amongst their members or at the very least undertaking a thorough literature review.
As you mention, gymnastics' identity has always been fraught with creative tension and it changes all the time - that is why we have so many different forms and sub-forms of the sport. At present though, women's artistic gymnastics is being torn apart in various ways by the many forces to which it is subjected (too much to write now but there are whole fields of thought involved and while this era isn't yet provoking a rich vein of literature, hopefully it will soon and not just me).
At the end of the day, are people happy with the way the sport looks? Is the competitive field deep and rich and diverse? (I know it is internationally, but I mean in terms of the gymnastics - look at the floor final for a start.) I understand why fans are delighted to see the artistic presentation of the NED and BEL teams - they are making strides forward - but get real - they finished in 8th and 11th respectively as teams - this is hardly likely to transform the sport.
Finally, you make a fair point about the relative measurability of hockey and football compared to gymnastics and the idea that the aesthetic doesn't really count there. The big question is - do we think the aesthetic counts in gymnastics at all? Your point therefore is really about deciding our chosen paradigm of gymnastics. If we don't want it to be artistic, it doesn't have to be ... But then isn't that another sport? Do we want acrobatic gymnastics to replace artistic gymnastics at the Olympics? We really have to think about this!
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