You can repost your comment to the mid-season version of the post above, add more to tomorrow’s ratings post, both or neither!

Oh look, now some Chinese monks are performing a routine, because apparently that’s all they have for dance in crazy, backward-ass China, Shaolin. That’s right, the epitome of Chinese dance is lift a man and rest his chest on two spearheads. And look, nines and tens all around!

The FCC should levy millions of dollars worth of fines on NBC for The Superstars of Dance. It’s as if t.v. executives have taken a time machine back to the twenties to coopt their ideas of having a celebration extravaganza to show us Americans all dem weird foreign cultures. They have dancers from India, South Africa, China, Ireland, Russia and Argentina, but apparently they are completely isolated from the current world dance standards, so all they do are the most stereotypical “cultural” dances possible. The Indian dancers have the most ridiculously over the top Bollywood ensembles I have ever seen. The Chinese judge is dressed like a Buddhist monk to match to match the Russian judge next to him wearing a bright blue kosovorotka. All the celtic dancers appears to be background dancers from Riverdance and most egregious of all, apparently the only dancers from South Africa are Zulu dancers, who even when competing on an American t.v. game show still dress in their traditional garb.

Also, from what bits and pieces I’ve seen so far, all of the American, British, Irish, Russian and Australian dancers are white, while all South African dancers are black. There was a dancer born and raised in the U.S., but of Indian descent and they have her competing as an “Indian Dancer”. As a fan of So You Think You Can Dance I hoped that this show would be an opportunity to collect the best dancers in the world and have them compete and demonstrate their dancing chops as individuals, beyond borders. But instead this garbage has been nothing more than NBC playing “let’s see how many national stereotypes we can exploit and reinforce.” The dancers aren’t individuals, they’re only conduits for the stereotypes that NBC wishes to feed the viewer. I weep that this show has even made it onto air. NBC honestly deserves to have its must-carry privileges revoked – their new programming philosophy is to make as many cheap, ###### reality shows as possible and hope that enough people randomly leave their t.v.s on at night to make them show up on the Nielsen numbers. This garbage should not be broadcast on the public air waves.