The Beijing Olympics didn’t quite cure China of its pesky predilection for censorship, as hoped. People in the free West finger-pointed and wrung their hands over how Olympics news was reported externally compared to what the Chinese media told its citizens. There was a kind of sense of pity for those poor Chinese dupes, ignorant of the bigger picture, waving their flags and loving the spectacle whilst untold abuses lurked out of reach.
I’m starting to wonder if something similar might be happening here. Not to sound like a paranoid conspiracy theorist or anything, but if this site – or I! – disappear with no explanation then you’ll know I’m onto something.
Ok, so “untold abuses” might be a bit strong when talking about the situation in the UK (though really, who knows), but I’m noticing a somewhat perturbing spilt between the public face of the Olympics and the private; the stuff that they (the ODA, and various Olympic stakeholders) want you to see compared to the stuff that’s really going on. As with the Tour and The Torch, it’s weirdly disconcerting to see something that you know and have experienced get spun out and transformed into something else in public. And this spin always aggrandises the aforementioned ODA, its stakeholders and advertisers at the expense of, well, the little people they depend on, that is: you and I.
This happened at the handover ceremony in central London on Sunday 26 August.
By chance I came across the place where you could apply for tickets, and I got some. I was interested in watching a live crowd’s reaction to the live feed from Beijing. It was hard to find any clear information about what the event really entailed, possibly because none of the organisers knew, or they didn’t think it was worth telling the thousands of expected attendees what they were in for. All I knew was that it was going to be a fantastic street party!
What it was really like:
The party was a series of metal barriers, first to keep the tourists out, then to keep the area around the stage carefully crowd-managed. I saw one of the barriers breached by panicked people trying to get over it so that they could see the stage. People were running and pushing in the crowd, it was scary. A security guy berated a woman who was trying to help her family over the barrier, they had become separated. Beefy security men confiscated people’s bottled water.
Dreadful entertainment. Really nasty low-rent stuff. Is McFly really the best that the ODA can do? Horrible Heather Small singing that pukey song about being proud. The cast of We Will Rock You. A terrifying, nationalistic, brain-washy, over-loud version of We Are The Champions. A competition to win t-shirts. Inane presenters. Is this what the Cultural Olympiad is going to be about?
Long queues to buy merchandise and burgers, £18 t-shirts (manufactured where? in China?) and expensive “collector pins”.
Blank screens with complaining people sitting around them, waiting for something to happen.
There was nothing to see, but people still watched hopefully
The BBC reported that 40,000 party-goers had enjoyed watching the live handover from Beijing, but this isn’t true because the screens were blank, the feed wasn’t working, and only a fraction of the people at the event could get to see the main stage, far fewer than the reported 40,000, since it was positioned in an awkward spot. Neither could anyone else in the Mall see because there was no broadcast feed from the stage, all we could hear was the sound.
Waah! We can't see!
Here’s the obligatory dodgy phonecam footage of the “fun” (.mov, 1.30mins, 2.2mb).
I know these are small untruths in the wider scheme of things, but it grates. A steady stream of tiny little harmless lies are beginning to add up to a picture of how great the Olympics is, how everyone (apart from a miniscule minority of party poopers, bad eggs and terrorists) is completely behind the games, how there was nothing worthwhile in East London until the Olympics came along, and yes, how winning medals is everything, about how great Great Britain is, how excellent the Union Jack is, how this country is a happy place where everyone just gets along, blah blah, etc etc.
Unless you go to any of these events and look at things with your own eyes, how would any of us know what really happened? Who do you trust to tell you? The PR of the horrendous 2012 blog, that seamless, robotic, smiley propaganda machine?
What I want is a truthful, adult, critically-engaged representation of the Olympics. I want independent reporting by people who were there rather than a regurgitation of ODA press releases. I want the beautiful, thinking people of the UK to be able to make up their own minds about things, to be encouraged to do so. My feeling is that the ODA and the IOC are going to fuck with my neighbourhood anyway, but that they can’t expect to do that without scrutiny.
No doubt I’m going to end up at more of these ODA-sponsored events. I’ve been to three of them now, and at each one I’ve ended up feeling cheated and used. I’d like to say that I’ve had my fill, but, like Homer Simpson I’ll probably keep coming back with a D’oh! each time. Hopefully I’ll learn to leave well alone in time, but right now I feel compelled to witness stuff so that I can better recognise the spin and the half-truths being slung my way.
Charlotte
