Saturday, April 08, 2006

Stupid tagline alert!

There's a ballroom dancing movie called Take the Lead, and the tagline is "Never follow".

That's a very strange thing to say. Generally when a movie tagline says "Never [verb]", it means the message/morals of the movie consider the action represented by the verb to be undesirable/dishonourable/shameful. Never let go. Never give up. Never surrender. Never die. But in ballroom dancing, there is nothing wrong with following. One partner leads, the other follows. That's the nature of this style of dancing. Half of all ballroom dancers must be following at any given time for ballroom dancing to succeed. If no one follows, no one can lead, so the whole "take the lead" thing wouldn't work out too well, and the ballroom dancing would be pretty messy too.

Actually, that applies for all forms of leading, not just in dancing. If one wants to lead, one must have respect for and value the idea of following. After all, you can't be a good leader with the attitude "Only LOSERS would FOLLOW!" because then no one would want to follow you, and you wouldn't be a leader any more.

So what do they mean by this tagline?

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