Nightmares in East London
Opening Olympics Ceremony, Little to Applaud
by Charles Strohmer
Apparently the opening ceremony of the London Olympics is about half over. I’m taking a break from it while the countries file into the stadium. I’m watching this on NBC-TV here in the States. It’s been taped. NBC did not start showing it until 7.30pm, Eastern Time. Earlier today, to get a feel for what the ceremony was like live, I found an interesting piece on ESPN that puffed it pretty well. So with a sense of anticipation I began watching at 7.30, a couple hours ago. I hope when I’m finished here at the keyboard and get back to watching it that I find something to applaud. So far, I have found little. I certainly don’t blame the Brits. England is my home away from home, and I know many very talented artists of all types there. They certainly could have put on an event worth applause. So I guess I’ll blame the guy who’s been called the Olympics mastermind, filmmaker Danny Boyle.
But there’s blame to go around. Let’s start here in the States with Matt Lauer and Meridith Vieira, the two NBC presenters who kept interrupting the art of the ceremony to explain what was going on. Nice going guys! I don’t mind getting the odd clue about art, but don’t tell me what to think about it. Keep your experience to yourself and let me have my own. Next, still in America, we have to stop ever 7, 8, or 9 minutes “for a commercial break” that last 3-4 minutes. Another professional way to showcase the art! Let’s sell cars, hamburgers, and cokes instead.
Jumping across the Pond, Boyle’s romantic treatment of the industrial revolution was revolting, because it was a cheat. His glorification of the carnal nature through much of the music was uncalled-for. And the nightmares he dwelt on? Of both the children and the adults? The NBC presenters called them dreams. Come on, mastermind, we’ve got enough real demons in our world to deal with. At about this point in the ceremony, Meridith, whom I usually like, told us that we had been looking at the theme of “generosity and respect” that was the theme of the ceremony. Pardon? I could hardly believe my ears. I must have missed something when I went outside during a commercial break to move the garden hose.
I did applaud occasionally. The children’s choirs were lovely at the get-go, and I was glad to see James Bond keeping the Queen safe, and to learn that Rowan Atkinson could outrun Eric Liddell and Harold Abrahams. And I thought the forging of the rings pretty neat. Well, the ESPN piece said Sir Paul was going to perform, so I’m thinking that will be something else to applaud. So its back the telly. Cheers.
Hey Charles – don’t know of any international TV ceremonial sporting extravaganza – not least the Olympics – that could boast no less than 4 traditional (and dare I say evangelical) hymns as its mainstay. Billions watched…and surely it can’t have done them any harm even if the irony in ‘Jerusalem’ passed them by. You’d never get it anywhere else:-)
I gotta admit we’d never include hymns over here!
Enjoy/didn’t enjoy, that’s up to each individual. But opinions are another thing, they need to sit on something, a reason, an understanding. So some questions might be in order, beginning with a confession. I set out to be critical of the ceremony and only tuned in when Abide with Me was happening. This is crazy! Such a small thing, so anachronistic. But I know Boyle, he is better than that. So I knew that this little piece was almost certainly only sensible in a bigger story so I waited until I could see the whole thing and let it make its own context. Then, oh, then! So, the questions, take them all under the prefix “Where else would you see…” or “Who else would dare to…”
The telling of the industrial revolution a cheat? How much more graphic can you get, how much more obvious that this particular revolution turned humans into part of a machine that profited a few at the expense of all? How much more obvious does Boyle have to be that a nation, all nations, are forged from painful change, in inequality (the whole of the trades union movement was there), in the fight against injustice (how many more Emily Pankhursts were needed to make that point)?
Who else would dare to make this period the foundation of the story that this is a nation born in dissent and conflict, and that it is these things that are to be celebrated?
The head of State is happy to take part in a comedy that tells its joke at the expense of her dignity. What does this say about the myth of British aloofness, of that much vaunted but undeserved national pretension?
How dangerous was it to so celebrate the National Health Service in front of Mitt Romney’s ignorant eyes, or even of David Cameron’s conceit and contempt for ordinary people? This wasn’t nostalgia, this was a reminder that revolutions have happened before and they can happen again.
Who else would look at the destruction of the individual so pompously the subject of Beijing’s ceremony and say such a resounding no to everything that this represented. When nothing exists but the the collective all you can do with the people is to make patterns with them. Beijing shrieked at us that only the State exists. Boyle, in direct and deliberate opposition said no, the State only exists for the people.
It was the subversion of the rock music that was the point. In front of the Queen played the Sex Pistols, whose anarchic recording of the national anthem was banned from British radio at the time. Not now. That is the point. Not any more! Dissent is important.
There can be no pretending that this was, in any sense, the ‘Story of Britain’. But these were stories from Britain’s story. And it is in this editorial task that Boyle’s achievement is so remarkable. I could say that this was a redaction that was, to our great discredit, twenty years out of date. But not much more than that. This was a warning about what we are about to lose. But the main eloquence of the redaction lies in what was left out.
Where in all of this did you see anything about the British Empire? This was a story told by those who have utterly rejected all that imperialism does and wants to do. And this was also played out fully in front of Romney and the world he represents.
Where else have you seen an Olympic ceremony that made any attempt to tell some sort of truth, let alone to tell that story and to love it?
Hey, Chris,
Thx very much for your post. Expect for couple minor points, noted below, I really don’t have any push back, because, he says confessedly, my only “reason” for the original post was simply a gut reaction in which I vented about a few aspects of the presentation. In my mind, my post wasn’t meant at opinion.
Sitting down to watch, I didn’t set out to be critical or uncritical, just to enjoy the show, as they say. I had no idea what to expect, except for a few bits I’d read in that ESPN journalist’s article earlier that day. Of course, I didn’t sit down in front of the tube tabula rasa. I knew that the presentation was not coming from modern China, whose cultivated space put on an opening ceremony that left most commentators, at least in America, breathless in front that “perfected” machinery of philosophical materialism (I doubt most know what they were seeing.)
As for what follows, I’m kind of working from lapsed memories of the presentation, so bear with me as I try to give reasons.
While watching, I did think it bold of Boyle to tackle the subject of the industrial revolution (international relations), and to strut someone as gifted as Branagh around in a key role to do that. Brill. If I would have been writing an opinion peace, I would have written thoughtfully about the segment. And now after reading your post, I would not have used the word “cheat.” But, still, my impression remains pretty strong that the segment as a whole romanticized the international relations, at least from what I understand it to have been. I think I could back up that impression, but that would have to wait for another time.
I did say that I quite enjoyed the comedy with the Queen and James Bond. I didn’t comment on the NHS segment, of which I know little, expect to say, here, that my limited experiences with it have to date all been positive.
Re the subversion of rock music, I get that and was part of that subversion for many years. It can even at times perform a prophetic role. But there is more to it than just saying it can perform a subversive function. E.g., what kind of subversion is it? What, how much, is it seeking to subvert? What’s its moral base, and what teleological path is that morality seeking to put us on? What’s its anticipated future?
Having had more a decade of way too serious involvement in the mission of rock music to subvert social and political norms of Western culture, I’m always left thinking of the irony and the tragedy of the subversion. No doubt powerful songs like Steppenwolf’s “Monster,” and Quicksilver’s “Fresh Air,” or the more familiar “Ohio” (lyrics by Neil Young) and “American Woman” (the Guess Who), were prophetic. Even the number of the lesser known titles, such as these four, is extensive, if forgotten, and they played needed subversive roles.
But these are to pluck individual songs out of the rock music industry, an industry whose songs also promote illegal drug usage and “free love” a thousand times for every “prophetic” time. The titles are to numerous even to begin listing, but start with “Dead Flowers” (The Stones) and “Needle and Spoon” (Savoy Brown) and go from there. That kind of subversion cannot be divorced from the connotations, if not the denotations, of rock music. Hence my comment about an implication of the rock segment, which to me, another confession, so overwhelmed the point of the Pistol’s banned anthem that I didn’t catch that bit.
I agree with your point about the redaction. Nice insight, that. And that Boyle had a tough editorial chore, and that, from the way you framed what he was up to, it was a remarkable achievement. But I don’t know what you mean but “this was a warning about what we are about to lose.”
I can’t say, however, that I don’t see anything about the British Empire in the presentation. After all, even America can’t take credit for firing up the international relations! (Though we gave it no end of fuel.) Without the international relations, would Britain have got to the height of empire that it did? But maybe I’m misunderstanding what you meant.
And perhaps you know something I don’t, when you say that the story was told by those who have utterly rejected imperialism. That’s good to know. The problem we have over here is that most American’s, of whatever political persuasion or religion, have never even heard of “open door” policy, let alone how that has evolved, through what amounts to a covenant between banks, corporations, Congress, the White House, and our mainstream media, into a Pax America, with a military presence in, what is it now, 150 countries around the world?!
Thx for helping me get some reasons out. Your further thoughts?
Charles
For sure the romance seemed dominant, both the rural idyll, which never was, and the heroism of the industrial revolution, which was reserved for the few. How one might avoid this in a tableau setting I have no idea! In film, easy, but in a stadium? Interestingly, and surprisingly for me, it was the rise of the chimneys, the darkening of the world and the smug mug of Brunell that brought me immediately to tears. To say nothing (as I did) of the international aspects of this.
I think too that Boyle’s rich tapestry can be forgiven for being a bit out of date because he was not, as I understand it, setting out to make a political piece. The motivation he admits was much more personal, he wanted to depict the Britain that his father loved. But as we all know, the discourse is inherent, implicit and does not need to be entirely intentional. Some aspects I am quite sure were both deliberate and pointed. The apposition to Beijing and the Health Service were very deliberate. And now, as with any art form, the work is out there and belongs to everyone. We make of it what we will.
No edge intended in the post, Charles. I know your post was a personal impression. What surprises me is so was my response. All of this hit me as the scene unfolded and really quite hard. Other aspects less so. I think the section of the domestic world failed and rather badly. The scale and the intimacy were conflicted and did not communicate. Except for the last point, the little figure of Tim Berners-Lee, the message impossible to miss in the huge letters around the stadium, ‘This is for everyone’.
It is his work that is under such political threat at this point. The internet scares the state, it is far too free. The myths that drive the security services and police forces to want to own it all and have the power to limit those freedoms is one of the things we are about to lose. As is the NHS which, in the hands of this government, suffers the ultimate insult of political betrayal. Whether or not this is Boyle’s point I do not know. Perhaps he has just celebrated both the compassion and the inventiveness of these things, and perhaps it is for others to realize the signs of the times.
I, too, was quite moved when the smokestacks began rising (and kept rising!) and it became apparent that the “scene” was darkening. Now that I’ve pondered a bit more about the art as a whole, in context of your insights from both posts, I can see that when the ir segment started emerging, I got a bit too hopeful. With the ir segment beginning so powerfully as it did, it hugely conflicted inside me with the children’s choirs, which had sent me off in a certain direction. With the ir segment, I can now see, I went into default “film treatment” mode in my imagination. Silly me. As you say, it was a stadium. I must re-contextualize. So I set myself up to be let down. But just maybe the art itself can be somewhat implicated.
I think I “get” what you’re on about, when you say that because the art hit hard at times, your first post was personal response also. You have lived British history, culture, and politics, with all its ambiguity, in ways that I’m not even close to, will never “get.” So I took your post as personal response without edge but stretching my thinking via the kind of deep British roots that it should have. I must put the shoe on the other foot. E.g., I once got a note from a well-meaning guy in Europe commenting on American imperialism. He had a point or two, but having been born and raised here, and what with research for the new book, I had a view that he did not.
Alas and alack, the state is indeed maneuvering to control the internet. Is there any state that wishes it were not China, or worse, in this regard? The power of internet caught the state by surprise. Sad to say that we may turn out to be the only generation to have lived with a pretty free internet. Anyone who does not see the state as an all-encompassing authority for all of life, should revisit Hobbes “Leviathan”! Which, interestingly, is chockablock with biblical references – not to suggest that they are all properly exegeted!
By the way, I see I’m not the only person carping about NBC’s presenting of the Olympics. On my way to something else today, I ran across this. See the Comments section: http://boingboing.net/2012/07/28/olympics-ceremony-honors-tim-b.html
I guess there is nothing in history that cannot be wry. Would we in the UK be quite so vehement on imperialism if Britain had held its Empire? It is easy to reject what you have lost.
Interesting, though, to hear the follow through, here and elsewhere, the ceremony is being cited in terms that tell us that people are frequently not quite sure how to categorise it but feel that something quite important happened.
Including with Princes William and Harry on the beeb earlier this evening congratulating their grandma on her new career!
You’re making me a bit envious, telling about the variety of opinions you’re getting over there. This side the Pond, we’re getting chiefly NBC coverage, which is all-American. Can’t really blame NBC for some of that, but one would like them, since they’re there(!), to stick their cameras and mics in front of important non-American athletes and events taking place. Our PBS-TV is a bit better at that, but its coverage of the events is terribly limited to very short, spotty, daily reporting.
That’s very cool what you said about what the princes said of the Queen! And someone from England just sent me an email saying the the beeb has/is(?) running a bunch of moc docs on behind-the-scenes planning for the Olympics. He said I could see the series here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00yw1t9, but when I go to this link, the BBC site there is confusing. It tells me “go here to see each series” (or some such thing), but when I go there, I only get access clips, 1-2 mins long. But they are wicked funny! The chairman is the star of Downton Abbey. Do you know anything about these? Apparently there are 6 in the series. Perhaps these short clips are all there were/are? Would love to see the longer shows, if that’s what they are instead of these short things.
Hey Charles,
Just a couple of question to clarify: 1) By “it was a cheat,” did you mean Boyle’s treatment of the industrial revolution, or the revolution itself? 2) By “carnal nature” did you mean sexuality, or the broader sense of “human sinfulness?” BTW, refresh my memory, but how did he glorify it?
Anyway, I wasn’t too impressed with it either, but I’m not sure why, and I’m not finished processing it all yet.
Thanks for sharing the post.
Ben
Briefly, I meant 1) Boyle’s treatment of the industrial rev. and 2) much of the art of the music exalted sexual appetites undisciplined by moral behavior, let alone modesty. Thx for posting.
PS: After I got back to the telly, I did like the carrying-in, multi-youth handling and lighting of the “torch,” and the fireworks, but these probably had little to do with Boyle. And I have to amend my earlier remark about applauding Sir Paul, because Hey Jude is probably my least fav Beatles song, next to Revolution 9. Nice song to do anthem with the crowd, however, which apparently was what he had in mind. Not my cuppa, however, so I went elsewhere for a few minutes.