Mathman said:
That is just the question that I am struggling with. I understand this theory. But I wonder how much it really plays out in practice.
Personally, I think that the skating tastes of skaters, coaches, choreographers, and judges are shaped by the skating culture they grew up with and the other influences they've been exposed to, so it's more likely for individuals with similar backgrounds to have similar tastes, but within any given culture there are going to be variations and exceptions.
I also think that international judges are going to try to do the best that they can for "their" skaters within good conscience according to the skating presented. Different individuals may have different levels of conscience or different definitions of what constitutes judging to produce desired results rather than just judging the skating as they see it.
But I wouldn't assume a apriori that a judge whose tastes and political allegiances differ from mine is necessarily more likely cheating when s/he gives the highest marks to a skater I don't think deserves it. That judge or others from that culture might think the same thing about judges who share my preferences.
Let's say Russia reaches into it's balletic roots and decides that the elegant and graceful body lines of Gordeeva and Grinkhov are just the thing that their cultural tradition values most.
Then along comes Irina Slutskaya, and all of a sudden it's, oops, did I say balletic lines? I meant powerful stroking.
Well, Gordeeva and Grinkov had powerful stroking too. They just performed it with more elegant body lines.
I think sometimes we draw one dichotomy and expect everything to fall on one side or the other, and in reality a different division is more salient to some of the people making the decision.
For example, you could ask, do we favor artistry or athleticism, a favorite either/or of the US commentators in the 80s and 90s. Baiul vs. Kerrigan could fall along those lines, and so could Kwan vs. Slutskaya, let's say, but on opposite sides. So if a judge consistently chooses both Americans in those matchups, or both Russian/Ukrainians, does that mean the judge is being inconsistent?
Well, maybe we weren't asking the right question. What if we defined the dichotomy as extroversion and power vs. subtlety and restraint, for instance? In that case both matchups would fall along the same national lines rather than opposite. So no inconsistency.
But it's still only an either/or question. And there are always going to be many more than two qualities to any skating performance. Different skaters will have different qualities in different degrees.
Does the cultural tradition of Japan value the athleticism of Midori Ito or the understated grace of Yuka Sato?
That could be a hot debate at Japanese Nationals if we'd ever had Sato in her 1994 form competing against the Ito of a few years earlier. I don't know, who would be the most opposite among the Japanese ladies now? Onda vs. Ota? They were never competing head to head for the top spot, but are there any patterns in how Japanese judges rated them against each other when they did meet.
Does the cultural tradition of the US value the athleticism of Debi Thomas or the understated grace of Kristi Yamaguchi? I think we value whoever is at the top of the game for whatever they're best at, and other countries do the same.
My especial question had to do with whether there is really such a thing as a (cultural) "Western bloc." Do the "skating cultures," of, say, the United States, Italy, Japan and Sweden have so much in common that this causes them to judge skating competitons alike?
No, not really. But I would say that the U.S., Canada, Britain, and Australia have common traditions in ice dance especially that would cause them to judge alike, and that judges from Japan or other western European countries that don't have their own strong ice dance tradition would probably share tastes with either the Anglophone or the Russophone tradition depending where most of their coaches came from or were influenced by.
Also during the Cold War there was probably anti-Soviet feeling and isolation causing westerners to distrust the Soviet bloc (and vice versa) that affected judging allegiances at that time without the need for active collusion to explain it, and some of that may still persist in judges' perceptions of "us" vs. "them."
But you can also bet that some non-Russian Eastern Europeans harbor resentment of the big bad Russians and won't do them any political favors. Even if their skating tastes are more similar.
When judges socialize before and after competitions, at training seminars, etc., who can they talk to? Everyone has to know English now (and when some of the older judges were first starting out, the ISU official language was German -- actually I'm not sure what year that changed, if not today's judges then their mentors anyway), but I'm sure lots of socializing goes on in Russian too among those for whom Russian is their first language, or the first foreign language they learned at school. That will affect international spread of tastes and preferences, without anyone on either side ever discussing how an upcoming competition should be judged.
