After months of breathless anticipation, the Athens Olympics got under way last Friday, presenting a worldwide television audience of billions with an opening ceremony that, in the tradition of Greek drama, had us howling in a mixture of belly-laughter and gut-wrenching pity.
Opening ceremonies, as such, have evolved over the past 20 or so years into a populist art form on which some truly phenomenal amounts of money get spent. No self-fascinated international conference or sporting event is considered properly launched without one of these flamboyant productions.
Opening ceremony extravaganzas are once-off events, the only lasting beneficiaries of which seem to be designers-cum-producers, corporate sponsors and fireworks manufacturers. Think back to the celebrity-bedecked Aids conference in Durban a few years ago and the pretentious opening ceremony produced by the government-sponsored NGO, loveLife. Ten million smackers was the cost of that burlesque; the lofty excuse being that it ‘got the message of HIV/Aids across to the people”. LoveLife’s apparent belief is that ‘the people” most desperately in need of information about HIV/Aids were living in suburban comfort, with colour television sets and working electricity. It made all the sense of identifying starving street children as the target market in an advertising campaign for caviar.
It’s quite hard to remember which was the most poignant moment in the three-hour Athens production. The version we got in South Africa was relayed courtesy of the diligent possums of Supersport. As commentator there was an Australian gentleman of impeccable Antipodean accent who certainly knew his stuff. He dealt facts out as if he was a counterhand at the Hellenic Quick-Fry History & Myths Snack Bar. From Homer through the philosophers, Greek art, tragedy, literature, architecture and Maria Callas, it was all there. The only problem was that the Aussie never seemed to stop talking so that we could sit back and bask undirected in the stimulating array of Aegean hero-kitsch on offer.
Central ‘concept” for the spectacular was having the arena flooded with a vast shallow pool of bilious-looking water. In the grey lighting it was reminiscent of those rained-out afternoons of English summer cricket. You kept looking to see if the covers were still on.
Early use of this giant paddling pool was as aquatic accompaniment to a couple of young lovers sporting in its shallows. Floating, swooping and soaring above these and much else that took place was a reject aerialist from the Cirque du Soleil. Dressed in midnight-blue tights and with cute little wings attached this was, of course, the Greek God of Amorous Love, Eros.
As consequence of the lovers’ passions there then came walking slowly across a darkened ramp, a massively gravid woman, draped in white sheets and proudly presenting her bared swollen belly as a metaphor of increase and gain. In case any non-Grecian idiots out there didn’t get the symbolism first shot, the mommy-to-be then pressed a hidden switch and her tum-tum was suddenly illuminated from within by a yellow electric bulb. Even Eros did a loop at such mystical art.
An enlarged version of an origami-folded boat came floating across the pool, then some cubist manifestations dipped down and around and lo, the pool had vanished. The Aussie commentator was amazed. ‘It took six hours to fill and only three minutes to empty,” he wondered, not realising that this was actually a tribute to long-overdue improvements in Athenian plumbing.
Visual delights referring to the great traditions of Greek culture and civilisation came in the way of the highly original idea of a procession of floats carrying frozen tableaus. As expensively turned out and dressed as they were, these never managed to dispel the effect that we were watching a better-than-usual university rag procession.
It was here that it became clear that the Athenian opening ceremony budget hadn’t stretched far enough to pay for the hire of more than three terrestrial television cameras, all firmly cemented into place lest athletes from one of the poorer countries tried to steal them. Number one for close-ups, number two for medium shots and number three, a wide-angle somewhere up in the stands. Number four was in geo-stationary orbit at about 20 000 feet. The float parade came sliding across the number-two frame. With the two-dimensional effect and swooping Eros it had a distinctly Pythonesque feel about it.
Music was present, mercifully heard at a great distance. For the interminably tedious parade of athletes accompanying sound was, like the cameras, decidedly low budget. A disco operator — Zorba the Geek? — looked after that. Far cheaper than a whole band.
Proceedings rounded off with the lighting of the Olympic flame. Nothing too fancy here. A gigantic steel shaft bowed down obediently, was ignited and then rose in Viagratic triumph to lend the final effect: to any one passing it would look like the 2004 Olympic Games were taking place under the waste-gas flame of an oil refinery.
The Aussies still hold the prize for an opening ceremony worth the ticket.