Vive la Difference

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I try never to skip the Olympics. It’s only every four years and there isn’t any real reason to miss the human drama and genuine excitement. Everyone seems to especially love the gymnastics, especially the womens’ gymnastics. Track and field and swimming also draw significant numbers of viewers. And occasionally one gets to dip into such athletic esoterica as skeet shooting, canoeing and archery. Watching such less known sports is educational if not leap-out-of-your-seat exciting (unless you happen to be a shooter, canoe enthusiast or archer).

There happens to be another spectacular two-week event that is held every four years: the Festival of the Pacific Arts. I wish some network would televise it, or at least show the highlights over a few nights. How Disney or Discovery can take a pass on this one I’ll never know.

Back to the Olympics. Over the decades the opening ceremonies have followed a fairly similar blueprint. I used to teach the history of documentary film at Los Angeles City College, and two of the films I always included were Olympia, the film of the 1936 Berlin Olympics, and Tokyo Olympiad, the official film of the 1964 Games, held in Japan. There are of course differences in the way the opening ceremonies are presented, but the formula is much the same. Olympic torch arrives, athletes parade around the stadium, the torch is lit, and the games are declared officially open.

The French, it appears, are different.

It’s not that the US doesn’t have culture. Far from it. But an argument could be made that the general American public values sports more highly than culture, where in France the opposite is true. Certainly the French love certain sports, such as football (soccer) and bike racing, and they have come to embrace basketball and much else. But they take an especial pride in the long and glorious traditions of French art, music and literature, which is why the tenor of the opening ceremonies for this year’s Olympics did not surprise me.

However, to my delight and surprise, the content sure did, and my reaction was hardly a solitary one. There was so much culture and so many historical references packed into the opening ‘ceremonies’ that one hardly knew where to look first. Heavy-metal musicians positioned on porches and in windows, a bit of a bacchanal, figures swaying atop long flexible poles á la Cirque du Soleil, a performance by a top singer in France who happens to hail from Mali and who resembles Edith Piaf about as much as Taylor Swift does Tatiana Schmayluk. Lady Gaga performed as well.

As a writer of science fiction and fantasy, my favorite déviation from the familiar was the robotic horse elegantly galloping, in perfect slow motion, up the river Seine while carrying a rider and the Olympic flag (I want that horse!). You can guess what I write because I mention a robot steed before I do Celine Dion’s marvelous performance from the Eiffel Tower. These are both right up there with the mysterious masked figure carrying the torch through much of historic Paris, weaving an important part of the Olympic opening with a compact tour of some of the city’s highlights while simultaneously treating us to a little parkour (well, actually it’s parclours, but English is notorious for adopting words while changing their spelling).

For me, the biggest letdown of the opening ceremonies was the much-ballyhooed parade of the athletes. Instead of marching through the stadium hailing the assembled crowd while waving their national flags, the athletes were confined to a variety of boats traveling on the Seine. One … after … another …. This introduction of the athletes certainly was different — but it was also slowww. So slow (I suspect for concerns of safety and security) that marching athletes would have moved faster. Also, those spectators fortunate enough to have decent places from which to view the lugubrious aquatic procession could only see half the athletes: those facing them from port or starboard. At least the athletes seemed to be enjoying themselves, the rain notwithstanding.

Praise must go, certainly, to whomever thought up the entire phantasmagorical performance, and much more praise to those authorities responsible for coordinating it all. Watching the watercraft chug along I couldn’t help but flash on the watery accident years ago when the container ship Ever Given broke down, slipped sideways, and blocked the Suez Canal for days on end. I don’t think any of the boats used in the Olympic parade, had they lost power and turned sideways, were long enough to block the entire river. But it could have been a mess.

Somehow, despite inclement weather and doubtless many, many headaches, it all worked. Merci, les autorités françaises.

Right now I’m watching the surfing competition that’s being held in Tahiti (French Polynesia, but be careful among which Tahitians you use that moniker). It brings back memories of being there half a century ago, living with a local family, and picking wild oranges south of the surfing spot.

I enjoy the Olympics, but some things do beat it.