All I Want to Talk About Is the Olympics
This is not a theater review, but it's also not NOT a theater review
As a New Yorker with a penchant for weird theater, I sometimes forget that most people are not exposed to baffling, intense spectacle quite as often as I am. So when folks all over the world tuned in for this year’s Olympics Opening Ceremony, I was thrilled to have this many people to share my reactions with.
Because, let’s be clear, the Opening Ceremony was an epic piece of theater. Like many epic pieces of theater, it could have stood to cut an hour or so off its run time. But it also had all sorts of fascinating themes running through it that I’ve been thinking about all week.
The Opening Ceremony is a celebration of both the Olympics itself and the host city and nation, and those elements can often be in tension with one another. Given that what I most love about this occasion is the international politics of it all, let’s just say that the French self-perception as articulated in the Opening Ceremony is a truly rich text.
So, what narratives did the French have to share about themselves last week?
We’re not too proud to make fun of ourselves
Out of the entire Opening Ceremony, I was most surprised by this motif. Beginning the prerecorded opening segment with a mistake—the torchbearer has come to the wrong place—and then setting off a series of mishaps, this was a chaotic narrative framework to say the least.
They made fun of the Paris Metro for breaking down! Can you imagine New York City ever joking about its constant subway dysfunction on international television?
But here’s the thing: Even though this was the scripted meta-narrative of the whole evening, leading us neatly to discovering where Paris had hidden away the Olympic cauldron, many of the other themes you can pull out of the ceremony directly contradict this articulated sense of humility.
Such as…
You have not come to conquer; you are tourists in our city
Let’s talk about the boats, and what the Parade of Nations is supposed to symbolize.
Traditionally, the Opening Ceremony has some sort of theatrical spectacle at the beginning, then an extended parade of all the athletes walking in during which the commentators update us on international politics. (No good political updates this time, unfortunately; doesn’t seem like that’s Peyton Manning and Kelly Clarkson’s specialty.)
The entire delegation of a country wearing matching uniforms and marching into a stadium while bearing a flag is a profoundly militant image. It projects dominance.
Take those same delegations and ferry them down the Seine, instead? You’ve taken their power away. The athletes are being transported under the control of the French ship captains. They can only follow, not lead.
What makes Paris special is human, not machine
The last several Olympics have taken place in countries that pride themselves on their technological advances—China, Japan, South Korea—and the Opening Ceremonies have been getting progressively more tech-heavy to match.
Not so for Paris. There were no drones this time around (as part of the actual entertainment, at least; I expect some of the filming and security was drone-assisted). Instead, there were people, performing the kinds of spectacles that only people can do…
…with mixed results, unfortunately. Especially on a stage as large as a miles-long stretch of the Seine, the performances needed a larger-than-life scale. And while some acts utilized the vertical plane well (think the stilt-walkers and acrobats), Lady Gaga and some dancers prancing around on a staircase just wasn’t enough to hold up under the microscope of international television.
We are one with nature
I honestly wonder how much I would have thought about the natural world if it hadn’t rained so hard for so much of the ceremony. But walking in a fashion show or dancing all out on a pedestrian bridge over a river while streams of water pour down your entire body is a striking image that reminds us that Mother Nature is the most powerful of us all.
That deep focus on water made it particularly ironic when the commentators pointed out that as of the day of the Opening Ceremony, the Seine was still too toxic to safely swim in.
We are a liberated country; our fascist days are behind us
Of course, one of the things France is most known for is the bloodiness of the French Revolution, and having our Assassin’s Creed-reminiscent torchbearer drop in on a production of Les Misérables was a clever way to nod to it (even though Les Mis actually takes place during a later French rebellion).
But then, we got dozens of beheaded Marie Antoinettes accompanied by a metal band. We’re celebrating the bloody murder of a former ruler, France? Really?
Speaking of liberation, what was that threesome scene? Given how much the American film industry talks about having to censor itself for international distribution to countries with fewer LGBTQ rights and protections, Paris putting a legitimate menage à trois on air—as well as a “Last Supper”-inspired drag show and a naked blue man who apparently didn’t even make it onto the American telecast—was pretty much an open challenge:
Censor us if you dare. We will not censor ourselves.
Now, France is obviously not immune to the threats of autocracy. While a coalition of parties successfully fended off the far-right National Front in the recent French parliamentary elections, that ultra-conservative bloc still has considerable support in the country. And France has long had troubling issues with Islamophobia.
But the Parisians made it clear what side of history they believe themselves to be standing on, at least.
Culture is a competition, too, and we’ve already won
When it comes down to it, Paris is known for its culture far more than its sports. So despite criticisms of its relevance to the Olympics, we got music, theater, opera, paintings, sculptures, literature, fashion and much, much more. France may not factor in the overall medal count, but they let us know loud and clear that they’ve won where they think it counts.
As we’ve moved into the first week of official competition, I’ve been delighted to see this cultural backdrop evolve in the locations of various events—fencing in the Grand Palais, equestrian at Versailles. Obviously, as a person who also cares far more about the arts than sports, I’m biased.
But I think we could all stand to remember that sports are a pageant just as much as the theater. Each event is a competition to see which people can best follow a set of arbitrary, made-up rules, and we derive entertainment by latching on to engaging characters and watching them try to achieve their goals.
All this to say, I liked Stephen Nedoroscik before he was cool.