Site Presented By
Friday, Jul 10, 2009
Screen shots from mrbell/YouTube
Kylie Minogue at the Closing Ceremonies for the Sydney, Australia, Olympics in 2000.
Some love the games for the competition. I love them for the Opening Ceremonies kitsch. Bring on the belting divas, plush bears and dancing cows!
By Thomas Rogers
Read more: Olympics, Arts & Entertainment, Arts & Entertainment TV Features, Thomas Rogers
Aug. 8, 2008 | When the Olympics kick off in Beijing, they will do so in the most politically charged atmosphere in recent memory. Many of the world's leaders, including British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, are boycotting the Opening Ceremonies, and much has been made of China's environmental problems, its human rights record and its restrictive policy toward the media. But Olympics organizers hope that, when the games' Opening Ceremonies begin, viewers will stop thinking about all those unpleasantries (Tibet, who?) and gaze in wonder at the oversize Ming Dynasty-themed props.
Of our many entertainment extravaganzas -- the Super Bowl halftime show, the Academy Awards, "America's Got Talent" -- nothing can outdo the Olympics Ceremonies for sheer bat-shit craziness. Every two years, the ceremonies offer a chance to see what happens when a group of producers, choreographers and float builders who have nothing to do with athletics are given millions of dollars to turn one of the most ascetically straitlaced events in the world into a Vegas stage show. The result is always over-the-top, sometimes offensive, and, as will likely be the case in Beijing, highly political.
China, as we've often been reminded, has a lot riding on these games. Organizers have spent $100 million on the Opening Ceremonies, which will feature approximately 20,000 performers and 33,000 fireworks (including thousands of "smiley face" rockets). When footage of the Beijing rehearsals leaked onto the Internet several days ago, it showed an impressive combination of kitschy set pieces and trapeze acrobatics -- which suggests that while Beijing's ceremonies may be the most expensive ever created, they'll also be sticking to the same basic formula that has made previous ceremonies so much fun to watch.
There's something genuinely magical about every one of these ceremonies, partly for the obvious clichéd reasons: the world coming together for the love of sport, the celebration of pure human achievement and the thrill of international brotherhood. But the Olympics ceremonies are also that rare moment when two completely different spheres -- the arts and athletics, the showy and the self-effacing -- come together for several hours of dazzling pageantry. The two don't always fit well together, but therein lies part of the fun. It's like inviting the high school football team to a drama club party, and watching the sparks fly.
For me, the Opening and Closing Ceremonies have always been the most exciting part of the games. I know I'm not alone in feeling that way -- they regularly garner the highest television ratings of any part of the Olympics -- though my reasons are probably more personal and embarrassing than most. I've been involved in sports since I was a kid: first swimming, then running, then rowing. I had friends who went to the Olympics, and many more who aspired to, and every two years, my family would treat the games like Christmas. Competitions would be recorded on multiple VCRs, watched, and rewatched and rehashed over dinner.
But when I reached the age of 15, two things happened: I began taking my sports more seriously -- joining the provincial rowing team, practicing a dozen times a week -- and, more important, I started listening to Abba. By the time 12th grade rolled around, I was driving to early-morning practice while singing along to Cyndi Lauper. While I loved sports -- painful, character-building sports -- it was increasingly clear that I didn't quite fit in. I eventually figured out why (it rhymes with "hey"), but at the time, I thought I was just a teenage jock with a healthy appreciation for sugary pop music.
So when I snuck down into my family's living room to watch the Sydney Closing Ceremonies, and Kylie Minogue, dressed in a pink showgirl outfit and headdress, began dancing around the Olympic Stadium while singing "Dancing Queen," I fell in love. How could something so contextually inappropriate feel so right? Although, at the time, I wasn't ready to reconcile my jockishness with my love of camp, at least I now knew that every two years the Olympics Opening Ceremonies would do it on my behalf. And I haven't missed a ceremony since.
Next page: How did the games get so campy, anyway?
1960: The birth of today's games
Let the Games begin!
