Week 5: Strictly Ballroom (1992)

1. Courage and conformity

This Baz Lurhmann film touched the themes of courage and conformity. It seemed to focus on those who do not conform to the rules of ballroom -- you get ridiculed when you are different from the rest. When Scott's character decided to incorporate his own dance moves into his dance routines, he was frowned upon -- it was something that you should not do, everyone had known this. When he broke the rules by doing so, people were surprised and did not know how else to react other than negatively. In order to be creative and innovative, one must take a risk. Scott took a risk that was out of the norm in the world of competitive ballroom dancing, and people did not like it.

By taking a risk and following his heart by doing so, this risk could have led to failure as no one supported him and no genuine feedback was given to him. At some points in the film, Scott was close to giving up and giving in to do what was expected of him, rather than what he felt was good for him.

In the end, though, Scott ended up going with his instincts and decided to take that leap, even after being disqualified. The positive and encouraging reactions from the audience surprised the judges and proved them wrong. This action takes a lot of courage to perform and go ahead with.

2. Control and self-expression

Barry and the rest of the people of the Australian Dancing Federation (ADF) treat the dancing industry as a business, even Scott's mother thinks the same. Barry seems to be afraid of losing his power. He says that if one cannot dance it, one cannot teach it. With an increasing amount of young talents rising up, it is not surprising that Barry would be intimidated that someone else more talented would take his place and shoo him out of his current position instead. By having this sort of control in the competitions, the competitors will feel the need to follow these rules in order to win -- hence why not many people have attempted to do their own moves during these competitions.

These unreasonable rules seem to be a distraction from the bigger issue -- that Barry gives an illusion of his own control, almost to a point of brainwashing the rest into thinking that there is only one way to dance. Which is pretty ironic, considering that dance is widely known to be a freedom of expression of the self. Thus, to let it be contained in an ideal box and having checklists of certain moves to make sure that everyone stays within their safety net seems quite paradoxical. Barry is afraid to let go and try new things, thus his obsession with holding onto power, even driving him to do horrible things such as lie to Scott about the demise of his parents' careers as ballroom dancers, for his personal gain.