Watching the opening ceremonies of the Beijing 2008 Olympics almost made me ill. What sickened me at first was the obvious effort to show off, to overspend, to exaggerate. I think I heard they spent 10 times more than Athens did on their opening ceremonies a few years ago and even that was a huge number.
Let’s be real, what does the ceremony have to do with the “spirit” of the sports, athletes or even the nature of Olympic games? Maybe instead of synchronized drum works, individual athletes’ achievements could be highlighted. The hard ways they have had to take to get there. Or how some countries don’t have a single venue within Olympic standards and have yet to managed to produce world quality athletes.
However, the more nauseating element of NBC’s coverage was having to listen to the commentators. Bob Costas and Matt Lauer only read from the scripts they were given and stuck to the prepared “talking points” not only in praising the host nation (sometimes in overly dramatic ways such as mentioning how the nation that could not protect its youth at some point is now strong, during the flag raising ceremony) but also politicizing the event by not focusing on athletic, but political introductions as many of the athletes entered the stadium.
Well, now I can finally breath easier as if the smog has lifted from Beijing’s sky. It turns out what we were watching was in parts faked by magic of digital imagery. So, when Lauer was almost climaxing with “This is actually almost animation,” it wasn’t really that magical.
To make things palatable for TV viewers, Crystal Digital Technology Co. was called to help and as Beijing organizing committee spokesman Wang Wei describes, “because of the poor visibility of the night, some previously recorded footage may have been used.”
Ah! China. The land of fake Rolex watches and Gucci belts, has now progressed further into the realm of virtual reality opening ceremonies. How divine!
Makes me feel less guilty about making fun of those photoshoped Iranian missile test.
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This piece was first published in my blog at eyeranian.net
