Yeah, I'm not much of one for organized sports as a rule... but there are a few oddities that can grab my attention. Take the Olympics for example... even though they don't do the pankration anymore, I can usually stumble across at least a few competitions that will hold my interest. Of course, since this event only happens once every few years, they have to do a whole ceremonial thing to kick it off. I had heard that this opening ceremony was going to be something special, even by the measure of past events, so I decided to watch it for once.
OMFG!
What can I say... if you haven't seen it already, find it online somewhere (preferably not through NBC's systems, but I'll come back to the why of that later). I haven't had anything evoke the feelings of awe and sadness that I got from that performance in a long, long time. Sticking with the awe side of the equation for now, and not getting into too much detail... anything starting with a couple-thousand men beating on ancient war drums modified with pressure-sensitive lighting effects is just intimidating on a primal level. After that, they go into a variety of technologically impressive segments employing thousands of people in perfect synchronization, providing a view of the history and culture of China from ancient times to modern days. It's all outstanding, although there was one section where I had to laugh, since it reminded me a little too much of a bit from "Logan's Run" (the "last day carousel", to be precise). The "artistic" portion of the opening ceremony takes up the first hour and fifteen minutes of the whole, after which comes the traditional parade of nations' athletes.
For me, the parade is pretty skippable (and, if you're so inclined it takes up the next 2:15 of the ceremony)... somebody decided that the parade should be somewhat more formal than in past Olympics, so the athletes dressed up a bit, either in regional cultural garb or tailored suits (that's the path the US took... complete with a Ralph Lauren insignia on it... *facepalm*). Most of it worked well (although the Hungarian look was... erm... interesting), and they even tied it into the earlier artistic portion by having the paraders basically walk over huge stamp pads before progressing across a huge painting created throughout the earlier artistic portion, filling in a large open area with color.
Finally, the speechification was gotten out of the way (and, mercifully, kept short and sweet), the torch was run into the stadium, the flame passed from runner to runner until they used wirework to have the last runner do a sky run around the entire stadium against an evolving animated backdrop to light the fire. If someone were to package the whole on a DVD set, with subtitles for what the participants were actually saying, and maybe include a "making of" piece, I would seriously consider buying it, that's how good the whole was.
Of course, that brings me to the "sad" part of the whole... while I was watching this show, I was all too aware that, in my lifetime at least, I doubt I will ever see the U.S. be able to match, let alone exceed, what the Chinese presented to the world last night. To see why, one need not look much further than NBC's presentation of the whole affair. While the Chinese were presenting us with a thing of beauty, NBC cut in every 10-15 minutes with commercials for McDonalds, Coke, Nike and the like. When they were covering what was happening in the stadium, it was being covered like a sports broadcast, using a "Chinese cultural specialist" (if I recall right) for color commentary. They did so in spite of the event taking place not less than 12 hours before it was going to be broadcast back at home... they could readily have kept the artistic piece intact (I'm sure I missed some fantastic transitions between set pieces) and made up for it by doing more "brief detail" displays of parading countries (which they already did some of to make up for their commercial breaks during the parade proper). Oh, and, just maybe, telling us what's being said by the participants while you're at it.
No, if we wanted to run something anywhere near the scale and precision the Chinese did, well... first off, no one city could afford to do it financially, and no level of government could sell it these days politically. No technology firms would be likely to provide the necessary hardware "at cost" or as a donation... and why should they, when the whole event would be plastered with corporate sponsorship logos, to the greatest extent that the IOC would allow. Beyond that, nobody in show business in this country would have the courage to do something expressly symbolic, for fear that Joe Sixpack wouldn't "get it"... and replace all those children and performers with big name stars and technology... and where are we going to find enough fireworks... and... and...
Erm, well, enough U.S. ranting... the Olympic games are open, best of luck to all the athletes involved... make us all proud!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Finally got a torrent of this that will run on my laptop. Got about halfway through the opening while waiting for volleyball to run its course last night. I saw it that first Friday on TV but Beth had not. I think she said "No Way!" at least once during each segment.
I think I have the BBC coverage. No commercial breaks and, while there is commentary, it isn't as pervasive or inane as NBC's was.
Speaking of inane, a quick rant. We did our best to watch the Men's All Around Gymnastics Final last night. We made it into the 6th rotation (little after 1 am) before the coverage drove us insane. They spent over 4 minutes with a camera trained on the face of the American contestant waiting for his results, occasionally switching to a Japanese athlete who was waiting to start his last station. In the background, WE COULD HEAR PEOPLE COMPETING! We could hear people vaulting. We could hear the crowd cheering what was happening. But all we got was more closeups on the American, then the Japanese, then the American.
And the NBC commentator kept trying to get into the head of the Japanese athlete with comments verging on racism. "The Japanese value honor above all else. He is standing there trying to figure out how he can mitigate the shame he may bring to his family. That's what he's doing alright. And later tonight he will only have a few minutes to eat noodles with squid eyeballs before climbing into his mecharmor to fight Godzilla. All this is going through his very Japanese culture-rich mind right now. I know it would be going through my mind if I were Japanese."
Yes, I'd weep for the state of TV in the US these days... if I weren't totally desensitized to its inanity and stupidity. It's a big part of why I dropped cable... lovin' that Roku box! :)
Post a Comment