I’m not convinced that vapid content on a flashy device trumps valued information scribbled on a matchbook cover. These words have power even if in faded pencil: “Hi Ho Motel, rm 221, bring ice”
You might point out that media and message are tightly entwined. The proof lies before us with the opening ceremonies of
the Beijing Olympics. The message lay in the medium – the grandiosity of a human-being-water-color delivery system.I watched – jaw aflap – as thousands of limber, black-haired Chinese undulated in unison to the world’s worst music. I experienced a new medium – People Art – featuring people as paint mixed around and set in motion to the ecstatic dictates of an uber-state.
There was message in this mad attempt to be God to thousands of citizens – to overwhelm the puny individualism of millions. Using synchronized humans as the medium, Chinese directors drove home the prediction that utopian harmony is heading our way. To the Western mind, steeped in seeking the precious uniqueness of every soul, the Beijing extravaganza was medium in service of an alien message: You lose, Western individualist. It was Orwellian Disney raised to the nth power on a harmonious stage filled with tiny colored pixels – one of which is you.
Brandsinger
12 comments:
Great opening ceremonies. A little hard to see on my iPhone, though. And I was distracted by a few emails. And checking the weather. And a game I was playing. But I caught a few minutes of some guys running around on a globe. Will watch the whole thing on YouTube.
I found the experience to be one of awe and fear.
The fear came as memories of growing up:
-hearing how superior the Soviet students were to us American laggards
- crawling under our desks for nuclear bomb drills
The awe was heightened realizing that the beauty of the event was not the perfection but the subtle, all too human, movements that were just slightly off.
At one point the announcers revealed that the performers had been instructed to smile more to make it less intense.
I smiled too and the fear disappeared.
Let the games begin.
Really? I was thinking Busby Berkeley with LEDs...
Is it still about the games? Or are the games now operating in service to the spectacle - and the money to be made around it?
If you're an athlete, I imagine it's still about the games. I, for one, admire the athletes but have this creepy sense that the Olympics have succumbed to the brands that sponsor them - "officially," of course.
I vote for a stripped down, bare-bones Olympics next time: no worlds on fire, no human "color armies," no "official credit cards," or official anything. Just athletes doing their thing.
Like vines that eventually hide the tree they occupy, the Olympics seem somewhat hidden by the extravaganza-like pageant that envelops them.
Let's get back to the grit and sweat and leave the pomp and circumstance to Broadway.
Larry: You vote for...? Remember you are in Beijing (and the IOC isn't any more open to your vote than The Party.)
Great post. Seurat with humans. And fundamentally scary.
Thanks, Scott - and Jerry - and Larry. I'm with you, Larry - but a brand-less Olympics won't happen. Without the business, there ain't no show.
Hey, CR Morris! Author of Trillion Dollar Meltdown (2008). Thanks for the comment. I love the line "Seurat with humans." Sunday in the Park with Mao's Ghost.
Great set of images
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/08/2008_olympics_opening_ceremony.html
Claude, you accurately captured the feeling I got (or the talking heads told me to get) while watching the opening ceremony that China seeks to leverage its people to create great things. In this case it was art, with a message. Whether that approach serves them well in the long run, we will all have to wait and see. Right now the need to keep straining to see the birds nest through the haze in the long range camera shots has made a larger impression on me that the drummers. One that keeps repeating dozens of times a day.
It all was a bit Orwellian I must admit, but if there is to be spectacle, then this takes the gold medal. The only disappointing part was to learn that the fireworks that were shown bursting into the sky over Beijing were pre-recorded and photo-shopped in - never really took place! And that cute little girl that sang ... her face, but not her voice. It would appear that the Chinese have learned that nothing has to be real, just spectacular.
Thanks, Peter. I admire your nonchalance... "It all was a bit Orwellian...but..." It's like saying, "Yes, there was an aroma of the 1936 Berlin Olympics...but..." I hope that you will not be out there some day hopping up and down in color-coded costume with 2007 other orchestrated humans.
I just received my daily excerpt from delanceyplace.com on the original Olympic history.
Now that's spectacle.
In today's excerpt-the Greek Olympics. For five hectic days and nights every four years from 776 BC until the Christian emperors banned pagan festivals in AD 394-a mind-boggling twelve hundred years-the sensationally popular Olympic games were held in Greece. Each Olympiad was an expression of Hellenic unity, an all-consuming pageant, as spiritually profound for these ancients as a pilgrimage to Varanasi for Hindus or the Muslim hajj:
"[The athletes] appeared one by one-parading like
peacocks, entirely unclothed and unadorned, yet
dripping from head to toe in perfumed oils that flowed in rivulets from their curled black hair. Competing nude was a time-honored tradition of ancient Greek athletics, ... only barbarians were ashamed to display their bodies....
"Of the eighteen core events in the Olympics program, some are familiar to us today-running, wrestling,boxing, javelin, discus. Others seem more outlandish. The Games began with the chariot race-a deliriously violent affair where up to forty vehicles crowded the track and crashes were guaranteed. ... And one of the favorite audience events was the pankration-a savage all-out brawl, where only eye-gouging was banned. The more brutish participants would snap opponents' fingers, or tear out their intestines; the judges (one coach noted) 'approve of strangling.' The gaps in the program seem just as odd to modern eyes-there were no team sports, no ball sports, no swimming events, no marathon, and nothing resembling an Olympic torch. ... Money permeated every aspect of ancient athletics. All contestants were professionals. ... Corruption charges would regularly disgrace contenders. ... Champions would be treated like demigods around Greece and guaranteed an existence of luxury and ease for the rest of their lives.
...
"Splendid religious rituals were observed; in fact, the ceremonies, including the butchering of one hundred oxen for a grand public feast, took up as much time as the sports. There was sight-seeing to be done: the sanctuary of Olympia was an open-air museum, and visitors rushed between events from temple to temple to view famous masterpieces like the forty-foot-high statue of Zeus, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. ...
"And then there were earthly pursuits: The squalid
tent-city [at the Olympic site] was the scene of a
round-the-clock bacchanal where students would squander their inheritances in lavish drinking parties (symposia) and prostitutes could make a year's wages in five days. There were beauty contests, Homer-reading competitions, eating
races. ... Young boys in makeup performed erotic
dances. Competing for attention were palm-readers and astrologers."
Tony Perrottet, The Naked Olympics, Random
House,
Copyright 2004 by Tony Perrottet, pp. 6-14.
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