My Prince! They are not “bloody nuisances;” Olympics are very much about opening and closing ceremonies!!
Iqbal Latif
Paris
The Duke of Edinburgh has described Olympic Games’ opening and closing ceremonies as "bloody nuisances" and called for them to be banned.
Opening and closing ceremonies destroy the spirit of the games; it is about competition and not extravaganza. "They ought to be banned. They are a pain in the neck," he added. The Duke also said that he hoped to do "as little as possible" during the 2012 Olympics in London by which time he will be 91 years old. Shivers goes down my spine as I think if Londoners follow his suggestions! I think Olympics are neither about competition nor festivity; it is about the ‘struggle’ to weave a global culture as we nurture. The Olympic Creed reads: "The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part, just as the most important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle. The essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well."
Paula Barila Bolopa completed a unique double for Equatorial Guinea's swimming team by swimming the slowest Olympic race in history. Her feat matches that of her famous team-mate Eric "the Eel" Moussambani in a heat of the 100m freestyle. Bolopa's effort earned her the unenviable nickname "Paula the Crawler". Bolopa and Moussambani became two of the stars of the Sydney Olympics much like Eddie "the Eagle" Edwards became a hero at the 1988 Calgary Olympics for his brave but laughable attempts at ski-jumping.
In 1921, Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the modern Olympic Games, borrowed a Latin phrase from his friend, Father Henri Didon, for the Olympic motto: Citius, Altius, Fortius ("Swifter, Higher, Stronger"). Pierre de Coubertin got the inspiration for this expression from a speech given by Bishop Ethelbert Talbot at a service for Olympic champions during the 1908 Olympic Games. Created by Pierre de Coubertin in 1914, the Olympic flag contains five interconnected rings on a white background. The five rings symbolize the five significant continents and are interconnected to symbolize the friendship to be gained from these international competitions. The rings, from left to right, are blue, yellow, black, green, and red. The colours were chosen because at least one of them appeared on the flag of every country in the world. The flag, flame and doves are representative of purity, endeavour for perfection, and global peace. The Olympic anthem articulates ‘Create in our breasts, hearts of steel!’
The suggestion to prune down London Olympics opening and closing ceremonies is somewhat loaded coming from Price Philip. Maintaining tradition is a pet assignment of the ‘Top out-of-sight: the super-rich, heirs to huge fortunes.’ Royals are masters of pageantry and spectacle; no one puts a better extravaganza for state occasions merrier or sad. From crowning of the ‘Queen’ to marriages of Charles and heartbreaking funerals of Lady Diana, the world at large has joined the Royal family in their joys and aches. The world has become an ingredient of the Royal family’s happiness and sorrow. In this interconnected world, more than life-size occasions are part of this new global civilisation. Personality and celebrity cult has taken the entire world with a storm. The Duke described a ceremony at the 1972 Games in Munich as "absolutely, appallingly awful". "At the Olympics in the old days, when they were more or less amateur, the last event of the whole Games was the show jumping in the main stadium because the horses used to cut up the ground. "Well, blow me down I was suddenly told, at Munich I think it was, that we couldn't have the main arena for show jumping because it had to be prepared for the closing ceremony. So I said, “What are the Olympics about? The competition or the closing ceremony?”
The Olympics has seen a plethora of eye-catching ceremonies. Los Angeles 1984 had a stuntman flying through the air on a jet-pack; the highlight of Barcelona 1992 was an archer lighting the flame with a blazing arrow; and in Atlanta the show was stolen by Mohammad Ali. The Australian organisers, with their colourful national history played out in song and dance. Some like the Duke of Edinburgh may think these ceremonies are an irrelevant distraction from the main event, simply a waste of time and money. But perhaps for the billons of people around the world the common people, who have been denied such unique shows of peace and tranquillity, these are the very embodiment of mankind coming in concert. This is rise of a new global culture, very untraditional, but very much in line with new population explosion from the turn of this century, and expression of a new class that enjoys such spectacle beyond ‘classy dressage equestrian events’ loved by the Prince.
The Duke of Edinburgh still competes at carriage driving. The opening and closing ceremonies have become the spectacle of Olympics more than the sport itself. Opening and closing ceremonies are demonstration of chipping in; they are the true joy of poor nations. Think of that flag bearer for Mongolia when he walks in the stadium, it is breathtaking! His undemanding attire and grand attitude balances the gaudy affluent moneyed nations who have no end of money to spare for sport. Congratulations to the Mongolians, Bhutanese and other small nations, for whom getting to the games are truly an Olympian feat. I'm astonished that anyone witnessing the great opening spectacles of Olympics could possibly think of those as ‘bloody nuisances.’ Has the world ever seen such a fantastic Opening Ceremonies as the ones in Barcelona, Sydney or Athens? And does the feeling of "Unity" as one earth not move us? Albeit just for a few hours? Surely that is what the Olympics is all about? Surely even the hardest of critics felt something when Korea walked out as one nation in Sydney together for the first time in so many years clasping hands? It brought many close to tears. This is the power of Olympics, to cement nations and bring them together.
Pageantry and pomp bring calm to billions from pains and violence that we witness every day. These global events, like next week’s World cup football matches, bring a soothing effect to chaotic life of more than 5.5 billion people. They are looking for some color and verve in their routine living, and these global events afford them some hope and some serenity. These global arenas and showmanship are the harbinger of greater understanding and unity amongst mankind. Much as the world is impacted by violent forces of nature like Tsunami and Earthquakes telecasted right into our living areas, these synthetic non-traditional events bring some joy and happiness to billions of very ordinary folks whose only joy is watching these events.
Tradition is a rich man’s luxury; maintaining status quo in the name of tradition is detrimental to our huge bulging global population who equally wants some spectacle universally shared beyond the restrictions of well-heeled, loaded and moneyed equestrian events. Billions may not even find the need of those in an Olympic game. May be the Duke should be reminded that ‘Equestrian events’ were only included in the Olympic Games for the first time in 1900 and then in 1912, in a format very similar to that which were used at the Athens 2004 Olympic Games. Equestrian consists of three disciplines: Jumping, Dressage and Eventing. In the past, the three-day event (Eventing) was restricted to military officers, while the jumping and dressage competitions were open to civilians, but only a handful of civilian riders competed up to 1948. Not until May 1921, delegates from only 10 national equestrian organisations met in Lausanne to discuss the formation of an international federation. Equestrian events still remain preview of a limited few rich nations. Imagine massively watched opening and closing ceremonies being replaced by a very elitist sport. That is not fair to the world we live in; we already have quite a few imbalances and inbuilt unfairness built in the sports, let’s not reduce the appeal of the sports further.
Sports, as a whole, are all about sponsorships and are virtually not amateur anymore; underprivileged and broke nations have no chance if they don’t have proper coaches and facilities. That is a hard fact. Yes, I know that this is winner-takes-all society, but let’s not rub this any further. The joys of splendours of opening and closing ceremonies are a great adrenaline-pumping occasion for mankind! Archery is a rich man’s game; shooting is not a poor man’s option; show-jumping a prevue of rich nations and rich elite. In present day, the list of games – Aquatics, Archery, Canoe / kayak, Cycling, Equestrian, Fencing, Modern Pentathlon, Rowing, Sailing, Shooting, Softball – are not simply affordable for the 70% of the global population. Few games of the ‘past’ that are quite popular today with far greater number of masses can be added like Cricket, Croquet, Rackets, Golf, Rugby, Tug of war and Polo.
These unfortunate lesser privileged enjoy the opening and closing ceremonies and see their nations walking past as eagerly as three-hour box office hits; they like the egalitarianism accorded to them by the Olympics. Let’s not take the little we all enjoy collectively as humans. The opening and closing ceremonies are representative of our collective heritage and collective effort to bond with each other. Olympics are bigger than dressage of equestrian events; they launch ideas and movements that have no borders. Olympic “symbolism” has destroyed many insurmountable hurdles. Three events by three sportsmen are momentous in history of Olympics that changed forever the world we live in. It is sheer raw power of the poor and truly amateur that brought pride and hope on the faces of billions who longed to see a day like that for them; they identified with the underdog. True to its anthem, other than struggle for betterment ‘Olympics’ have wrecked bigger walls of hatred, unshackled heavier chains of bigotry and helped destroyed superior myths of abhorrence than anyone realises.
Abebe Bikila was a young member of the Imperial Bodyguard of Ethiopia when he ran the marathon in the 1960 Games in Rome. Up until that time, no black African had ever won a gold medal in the Olympic Games, let alone a prestigious track and field event like the marathon. But Bikila, running without his shoes in the chilly dawn of a Roman summer day, broke that dry spell, and set a new world record at the same time. It was fitting that his win came in Italy, the nation that had invaded his homeland three decades earlier. His feat captured the imagination of the entire world. Four years later in Tokyo, he repeated it, becoming the first man to ever win gold in two Olympic marathons (a feat only duplicated once).
In 1936, Nazi Germany played host to the Summer Olympics, and Germany's Adolf Hitler was determined to prove the superiority of the Aryan race. African-American track star Jesse Owens, a son of a sharecropper and the grandsons of slaves, had other plans. In a display that dealt a tremendous blow to the Nazi's racist ideology, Owens won the 100-meter dash, the 200-meter dash and the long jump. He was also a key member of the 400-meter relay team that won the gold medal. He set records in three of those events. He was the first American to ever win four medals in an Olympic Games.
But as Owens himself later noted, his single-handed destruction of Hitler's myth of Aryan superiority did little at the time to advance the cause of African-Americans in the US. Perhaps, for the blacks, it definitely expedited the process that led to desegregation.
"When I came back to my native country, after all the stories about Hitler, I couldn't ride in the front of the bus," Owens said. "I had to go to the back door. I couldn't live where I wanted. I wasn't invited to shake hands with Hitler, but I wasn't invited to the White House to shake hands with the president, either." German broadcasters and journalists always referred to the African-American Owens as “the Negro Owens.” The other eighteen Afro-American athletes were referred to as “America’s Black Auxiliaries,” as if they were not full-fledged team members. Owens became an instant superstar in Berlin. German fans chanted his name whenever he entered the Olympic stadium and mobbed him for autographs in the street. Hitler, however, never met him.
On the first day of the track and field competition, Hitler left the Olympic Stadium as rain threatened and darkness fell, and missed greeting the three American medal winners in the high jump, two of whom were black. This upset Olympic officials and they advised Hitler that either he should receive all of the medal winners or none of them. Hitler decided to receive none of them from that point onward, including Owens. Owens later said he didn’t feel snubbed by Hitler. According to him, at one point during the track and field competition, he glanced up at Hitler in his box seat and the Führer stood up and waved to him, and he had waved back at Hitler.
Olympic spirit gives voice to the disenfranchised. The first Aboriginal athlete to compete for Australia, Cathy Freeman ignited the Olympic torch in the main stadium at the 2000 Sydney Games. Ten days later she literally ran for an entire continent when she won the gold in the 400 meter dash.
The black power salute in Mexico will live in the memory of Olympians forever. It was the most popular medal ceremony of all time. The photographs of two black American sprinters standing on the medal podium with heads bowed and fists raised at the Mexico City Games in 1968 not only represent one of the most unforgettable moments in Olympic history but a landmark in America's civil rights movement.
The two men were Tommie Smith and John Carlos. Teammates at San Jose State College, Smith and Carlos were enthused by the idea of a young sociologist friend Harry Edwards, who asked them and all the other black American athletes to join together and boycott the games. The dissent, Edwards hoped, would bring attention to the fact that America's civil rights movement had not gone far enough to eradicate the injustices black Americans were facing. Edwards' group, the Olympic Project for Human Rights (OPHR), gained support from several world-class athletes and civil rights leaders but the all-out boycott never materialized.
Still passionate about Edwards' words, Smith and Carlos secretly designed a non-violent protest in the mode of Martin Luther King, Jr. In the 200-meter race, Smith won the gold medal and Carlos the bronze. As the American flag rose and the Star-Spangled Banner played, the two closed their eyes, bowed their heads, and began their protest.
Smith later told the media that he raised his right, black-glove-covered fist in the air to represent black power in America while Carlos' left, black-covered fist represented unity in black America. Together they formed an arch of unity and power. The black scarf around Smith's neck stood for black pride and their black socks (and no shoes) represented black poverty in racist America.
Life of the rich and famous draws enormous awareness and interest. The curiosity to follow these icons is a new cult. Live telecasting beams the pomp of the Upper-upper class and the Lower-upper class into homes of very ordinary folks, "Old money" and the "New money." Social anthropologist Warner would have divided the present elitist culture into the former ‘Royals,’ like the Duke of Edinburgh, who have been born and raised with wealth; the latter are celebrities like Madonna’s, Michael Jackson’s and Tiger Woods of the worlds, individuals who have become rich within their own lifetimes. Cult-like following of celebrities in present day and age is the result of huge increase in global prosperity and a population that is viewing events live. A global celebrity culture is actually a new promising common consciousness of man. In early 19th century, we were 1.65 billion people living on this earth, totally disconnected on real-time basis, yet to break 40 mph barrier on a consistent basis comes 1950, we multiplied to 2.6 billion people, a connected 10% could be connected on real time basis; satellites were still a ‘distant’ future. Next 50 years, by year 2000, at the onset of the new millennium there were 6 billion people, most of them connected through satellites. Geographic separation finally came to an end. In one century we see a fourfold increasing population and unprecedented universal connectivity. Civilisations, as diversified as Inca and Mesopotamia within the last ten thousand years, have an important ingredient – that of geographical separation which led to blossoming of 100 flowers, as Mao would put it. Here, as universal connectivity triumphed, a new global culture is bound to emerge. This is not a violation of existing balance of tradition; this is a new tradition blossoming. The world coming together has given rise to universal icons, universal festivities and universal personas.
A culture develops as human proximity breeds collective traits into a common language, a structure and a common heritage. Distances of the past meant thousands of cultures developing parallel around various parts of the world. Much as we need to protect traditional prosperity, we need to appreciate tradition itself; it is not the name of maintaining exclusion and enforced poverty. Traditions cannot be maintained when population grows by four-fold in one century. Science and advancement comes into play to avoid the ‘destruction’ predicted by Malthusian prognosis. Traditions in such a dynamic fluid society are the first victim.
What was in the past the luxury of ‘royalty,’ has passed on to a common man. The luxury enjoyed by the very poor like that of ‘iced water’ was a luxury an Emperor could only have demanded. Indian Emperors used to get their ice to sweltering Delhi from the Himalayas. Traditions are great as they demand a lot of labour, a bunch of underclass to perform an act with minimal returns. This underclass today is vanishing and this is the underclass that enjoys the great opening and closing ceremonies in billions, like the World Cup shall be witnessed by 4 billion people, so will be the Cricket World Cup. The merrier the openings are, the better the sentiments for population at large would be. Why should the daily sick dosage of continual killings be the only legacy of this new age?
The world at large is hungry for occasions of state and shows of global peace that may show that we humans are one race and can celebrate. Times when we see growing divisions within civilisation as a result of campaigns of abhorrence, occasions of global pomp aimed towards unity of mankind are great displays. Olympic opening and closing shows are just that kind of grand exhibitions of great coming together of man. Athens 2004 and Barcelona 1992 were the ceremonies that put new standards without doubt.
The Barcelona’s, with the lighting of the cauldron, and the Athens with the new view of the theatrical space – the water was true water after all and not any material which could seem like water (plus the connection with the ancient Olympia). In a word, both ceremonies will be a splendid gathering of youthfulness and life, sports and art, peace and friendship.
Greece enchanted the world. The Greeks surpassed every expectation and it was the best Olympic Games opening ceremony in history. The almost four-hour ceremony set the tone for the eagerly awaited "Olympic homecoming", 108 years after the modern Games were revived in Athens. One of the central pieces of the show was a huge 17.3-meter-high replica of the head of a Cycladic statue rising out of the water that covered the stadium floor. As this prehistoric era statue rose above the stadium, it disintegrated slowly, revealing first the statue of a young man in the stiff style of the Archaic era (known as a kouros) before this too disintegrated to reveal the relaxed and realistic statue of a young man in the style we now know as Classical, which represents the Classical age of Athens in the fifth century BC and which is best expressed by the Acropolis and its temples.
"Athens is the flame which lit up the world," John Mehaffey, Reuter's chief editor of the sports department in London had said. It is just not pomp, it is about culture too. In Sydney and Australia, ‘The single horseman and the Man from Snowy River’ theme brought tears to many an eye and to the eyes of most of the rural people who live in the Snowy River Country.
The Beijing Olympics have launched a global search campaign for ideas that would make the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2008 Games a spectacular and inspiring event. Organizers say they are looking for creative concepts that could turn the opening and closing ceremonies of the Beijing games, which are to emphasize technology, the environment and peace, into "wonders." The opening and closing ceremonies are the most eye-catching parts of the Olympics and are seen as one of the criteria for successful Games.
The opening ceremony of the Beijing Games is scheduled for August 8, 2008 and the closing ceremony on August 24. Modern Olympics is a global social and cultural event which, using sports as the medium, makes friendship enhancement and world peace its goal. From the day it was founded, cultural activities have been an important part of the Olympic Games. Sports have close ties with culture and the Olympic Games open new vistas for cultural understanding. Precisely because of this integration of culture, the Olympics is one of the most celebrated events of mankind.
The Opening ceremony on Beijing has a theme, to promote cultural development, and construct a socialist, spiritual civilization. The Olympic tenet of “Faster, Higher and Stronger” not only inspires athletes but also reflects the concept of advanced cultures. To integrate the development of culture and the socialistic spiritual civilization, enhancing the Olympic spirit will promote a new cultural ethos in the entire society and add new vigour for the development of the culture. A “Green” Olympics, Hi-Tech Olympics and Cultural Olympics are the three major concepts for the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing; Olympic culture has a profound impact in all three of these.
Beijing considers that they are thriving for the concept of the culture of the Olympics. They hope to further enhance Chinese culture and promote understanding, trust, and friendship among the people in the world. Hopefully they will make the Olympic Cultural Festival a promoter of the concept of the culture of the Olympics. I pray that London develops a similar theme and will play its role aptly to do justice with the opening and closing ceremonies that befit the greatest show on the earth in the greatest cities of the earth. The last event of the whole Games cannot be exclusive show-jumping in the main stadium, because horses’ cutting up the ground is forte of the rich. It has to remain the great spectacle, the greatest show, that provides opportunity to the listless to destroy the myth of racial inequalities, and spreads the message of universality of humanity in harmony. The closing ceremonies provide exactly that sort of backdrop. Global Egalitarianism and fraternity at its best; rich and poor, great and small nations, all marching together as equals make a covenant to come back again as equals. That is a very humbling experience. Let’s not lose it to elitist dressage shows or show-jumping of equestrian horses. Much as we all love horses, let’s not prefer animal over universal human expression of unity, these Olympic ceremonies provide us with one, very much indispensable in today’s chaotic world! |
