Showbusiness, politics jostle at Games ceremonies
Sarah Marsh
Cramming several thousand years of cultural history into a couple of
hours is the truly Olympian challenge faced by Zhang Yimou on Friday.
Zhang, known in the West for his Oscar-nominated movie "House of
Flying Daggers", is director of the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony
which offers China the chance to show hundreds of millions of television
viewers what it has given the world.
"It is do with national pride - it does become the first gold medal
of the Games," Olympic historian Philip Barker told Reuters.
"For every Games, there is that sense that we are presenting the
nation to the world and that really has been probably since 1980 when
the Games started to become a big television deal."
South Korea, the last Asian country to stage the Summer Games, used
the Seoul Olympics to promote its new status as an industrial powerhouse
and the opening ceremony highlighted the isolation of its neighbour and
rival, North Korea.
Greece used the widely acclaimed ceremony in Athens in 2004 to spell
out its huge contribution to Western civilisation and implicitly face
down critics who said it was too disorganised to stage an event like the
Olympics.
The ceremony has also been used as a platform for overt political
statements even though the Olympic Charter bans "any kind of
demonstration or political, religious or racial propaganda ... in any
Olympic sites, venues or other areas".
At the 1936 Games in Nazi Germany, swastika-emblazoned banners
obscured the Olympic flag.
During the parade of nations at the start of the 1980 Moscow Games,
some countries protesting against the Soviet Union's invasion of
Afghanistan the previous year carried the Olympic flag in the place of
their national flag.
Many Western countries boycotted the Games.
The opening ceremony for the 2000 Games in Sydney was marked by a
gesture of national reconciliation when Aboriginal athlete Cathy
Freeman, who later won the 400 metres gold medal, lit the Olympic flame.
China's ruling Communist Party has seized on the 2008 Games to show
off its development into a modernising global power.
Artists, technicians and producers have been working on the ceremony
for years. Large-scale rehearsals with more than 10,000 performers have
been taking place since March.
There is great interest in which world leaders will turn up at the
ceremony because rights activists have called for a general boycott to
protest against China's civil rights record, especially in Tibet.
China's crackdown on Tibet after deadly riots in March sparked worldwide
protests.
Historians and commentators say world leaders do not usually attend
the Olympics opening ceremony.
"The purpose of hosting the Olympics is to prove to the Chinese
people that the rest of the world acknowledges the Chinese Communist
Party as legitimate leaders," said David Wallechinsky, author of The
Complete Book of the Summer Olympics.
LONDON, Tuesday, Reuters
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