Thinky thoughts on the Olympics Opening Ceremonies
My sister and I have this big ritual around the Opening Ceremonies which we weren't able to do this year due to some *very* poorly timed travel (AHEM - check the calender next time, missy!) and I was kind of maudlin as a result, which made me pensive.
So, what I really want to talk about was the intense political dimension of these ceremonies. Not the NHS thing, although, that was totes awesome (and I think someone I know was in it, which is so cool) but what came before. The good folks at the Cove of Privateers had come through for those of us cord-cutters as don't own televisions, but the recording, oddly, seemed to start after the ceremonies had started, and I was kind of bummed, until I realized from the commentary that this was not the actual opening ceremonies, but rather a sort of prelude, in which, pre-industrial Britons danced at maypoles, ploughed fields, and generally acted like some sort of live action toile fabric. The actual ceremonies didn't start until the arrival of Isambard Kingdom Brunel and the Industrial Revolution, in which the fields and maypoles were replaced by smoke stacks. The Olympic rings were then "forged" under his watchful gaze.
Let's think about this for a moment: The ceremony, and the world it celebrates, didn't start *until* the pastoral world before was destroyed. Not only that, but that was was required to create the Olympics themselves. More than anything, it reminded me of Rousseau, and his idea that the destruction of the ideal primitive world was necessary to form civil society, usually referred to as the "noble savage" thesis. The world may have been beautiful, but it had to be destroyed if we were to grow.
This of course, presupposes that the world *was* beautiful, which is somewhat unlikely. Hobbes in Leviathan described life in a state of nature as "nasty, brutish, and short," which is probably far more accurate than either Rousseau or Danny Boyle. The question is did we have to make it worse before we could make it better, and have David Bowie and modern healthcare and the Olympics. Could the toile world depicted in the prelude have birthed the Olympics?
Probably not. One of the other things Rousseau said was that modern society started hand in hand with inequality, when the first person fenced off a piece of land and said "this is mine." The impulse to compete; to battle would not have been part of the psyche before. The Olympics are almost the epitome of that competitive instinct to express superiority. It may all be in the spirit of good sportsmanship, but at the end of the day only one country gets to the hear their anthem. It's politically correct warfare at its most refined.
Danny Boyle got it exactly right.
So, what I really want to talk about was the intense political dimension of these ceremonies. Not the NHS thing, although, that was totes awesome (and I think someone I know was in it, which is so cool) but what came before. The good folks at the Cove of Privateers had come through for those of us cord-cutters as don't own televisions, but the recording, oddly, seemed to start after the ceremonies had started, and I was kind of bummed, until I realized from the commentary that this was not the actual opening ceremonies, but rather a sort of prelude, in which, pre-industrial Britons danced at maypoles, ploughed fields, and generally acted like some sort of live action toile fabric. The actual ceremonies didn't start until the arrival of Isambard Kingdom Brunel and the Industrial Revolution, in which the fields and maypoles were replaced by smoke stacks. The Olympic rings were then "forged" under his watchful gaze.
Let's think about this for a moment: The ceremony, and the world it celebrates, didn't start *until* the pastoral world before was destroyed. Not only that, but that was was required to create the Olympics themselves. More than anything, it reminded me of Rousseau, and his idea that the destruction of the ideal primitive world was necessary to form civil society, usually referred to as the "noble savage" thesis. The world may have been beautiful, but it had to be destroyed if we were to grow.
This of course, presupposes that the world *was* beautiful, which is somewhat unlikely. Hobbes in Leviathan described life in a state of nature as "nasty, brutish, and short," which is probably far more accurate than either Rousseau or Danny Boyle. The question is did we have to make it worse before we could make it better, and have David Bowie and modern healthcare and the Olympics. Could the toile world depicted in the prelude have birthed the Olympics?
Probably not. One of the other things Rousseau said was that modern society started hand in hand with inequality, when the first person fenced off a piece of land and said "this is mine." The impulse to compete; to battle would not have been part of the psyche before. The Olympics are almost the epitome of that competitive instinct to express superiority. It may all be in the spirit of good sportsmanship, but at the end of the day only one country gets to the hear their anthem. It's politically correct warfare at its most refined.
Danny Boyle got it exactly right.