Just a few random observations of the Olympics those far.
The Opening Ceremony
The Beijing Mass Games Olympic Opening Ceremony cost up to $300. It was a nice, bombastic show of nationalism. Lefty film critic Roger Ebert could thinking of only one event in recent history that compares:
The closest sight I have seen to Friday night’s spectacle, and I mean this objectively, not with disrespect, is the sight of all those Germans marching wave upon wave before Adolf Hitler in the documentary “Triumph of the Will.”
(He was so mesmerized by the ceremony that he forgot to bash Bush until the very end of the piece.)
Clearly Ebert has never heard of the Arirang Mass Games. You give a $300 million budget to the North Koreans and they would present a real freak show.
I just hope that the British live up to their reputation for understatement during the 2012 games in London. Otherwise, I fear that the opening ceremony will feature a spectacle of 1000 acrobats dressed like Shakespeare carting around a replica of Stonehenge on miniature steam trains while the HMS Beagle flows above the stadium with holographic finches and tortoises flowing in its electrolight wake.
The Sports
In the “I wish I hadn’t eaten that second helping of chocolate cheesecake” category, my sympathies go out to Im Jyoung-hwa. She tied for third place in the 48K women’s weightlifting competition but did not get the bronze because she weighed half-a-kilogram more than Taiwan’s CHEN Wei-Ling.
Leave it to the Americans to bring a black man to the pool. They won the gold and broke the world record.
62 Comments
Congratulations on your gold medal.
And don’t worry about the cost of the games. China’s loaded. That $300million is less than they lend America before lunch on any given business day.
Are nukes that cheap these days?
I feel obvious jealously in your post. But that’s expected, since it’s about China that we are talking. If Japan had done it, not a word would be said.
China did great, and Olympic games opening ceremonies are supposed to be like that, one better than the last one. I don’t get why so much bitching.
Congratulations to China for a beautiful ceremony.
I was especially amused by all the dancers and performers in minority costumes, considering that real minority groups from the provinces were . . .eh . . . how to put it? Unavailable? Something about not being allowed to travel or book into hotels . . .
Andy, is this what constitutes the ad hominem attack on Ebert?:
“To cut taxes and raise spending, our national policy under President Bush, is suicide. In a century or two, our most lasting heritages may be the idea of personal freedoms and the role we played in helping make English an international language. But we could be a bankrupt nation.”
Frankly, I think Ebert’s body of work has earned him more than enough chits to make a political comment here or there. And this one is hardly off base. Even some people in your beloved political party bemoan the republican’s loss of fiscal discipline.
On the more important issue, there’s no doubt that Ebert is from another era. I doubt anyone here at the hole was really surprised by all the coordination. Indeed, I thought it was sub-par compared with what the folks up north do. But is Ebert so ignorant just because he’s old (the Hitler reference was off..) and out of touch?
read the panda paradox for another explanation:
http://www.time.com/time/magaz.....10,00.html
It was a nice, bombastic show of nationalism.
No, it was a spectacular opening ceremony which was light on propaganda. Every country that has hosted the Olympics has trumpeted themselves up to a point, and China went no further on this count than any of the others, including the U.S.
Nice sour grapes, Andy. Nothing like being a good sport, eh?
Congratulations, China (and Zhang Yimou) on a spectacular opening ceremony.
Also, congratulations, Dear Old and New China, on naming the stadium as Bird’s Nest Stadium. In America, we don’t call our stadiums by their real names anymore. Real stadium names were sold out a long time ago. Zealots will give you a hundred “reasons” why that’s a good thing. But I can’t come up with even one.
$300?! Wow! That’s cheap!
The ceremony definitely reminded me of the film “Curse of the Golden Flower”, which was made the director of the event.
The “air walk” was the highlight for me, especially since it was one of the rare moments that highlighted individuality.
As for nationalism, I liked the Chosun.com headline: “Japanese Surprise & Envy at Pak Taehwan Wave of Gold”
I’ll say this for the Koreans, they’re not afraid to lay their hang-ups out for the world to see.
“The Beijing Mass Games Olympic Opening Ceremony cost up to $300.”
No wonder they couldn’t afford to squeeze in anything about the Cultural Revolution. Maybe if they’d spent $400, they could have thrown in something about the Great Leap Forward.
If $300 can get you that kind of a show, it’s obvious why company after company is closing up shop in West Virginia and headed to North Baizhou.
I didn’t see too much nationalism either… I did like it how that block-wave-flower-tide thing ended (gasp! Oh my god, there were people under there!). And the painting by coordinated dancing at the beginning. Much better than Athens 2004’s so-weird-and-apparently-edgy-and-artistic-that-it-makes-cirque-du-soleil-look-like-a-Nebraska-state-fair opening.
I did feel really bad for those acrobats who had to walk around upside down on a globe thing while being hung by cables attached to their waist. And those cheerleaders (I guess that’s what they are) who had to dance and clap for like 2 hours while athletes entered the stadium.
@#10
Speaking of sour grapes…
kpmsprtd:
“In America, we don’t call our stadiums by their real names anymore. Real stadium names were sold out a long time ago. Zealots will give you a hundred “reasons” why that’s a good thing. But I can’t come up with even one.”
I always thought it was odd how Korean and Japanese baseball teams were Lotte this or Samsung that or Yomiuri this instead of Seoul this or Osaka that. Now Americans have done it with baseballs stadiums. I must not know any zealots because I don’t know anyone who likes it.
Not sure what the Koreans are saying about the Japanese dude who took out the Breaststroke in an awesome finish.
Propaganda or not..I can’t wait to see the Arirang Mass Games in September!
Korea needs reporters who can understand English.
HERE is a “Seoul Sinmu” article entited, “Australian Media ‘Bak Tae-hwan made Hackett angry.’”
What did the newspapers really say?
Well, it seems the Korean took quotes from different articles. Here are the ones’ I found:
Did Pak Tae-hwan really make Grant Hackett angry?
HERE
HERE
Was the newspaper really being sacrastic?
HERE
Gbevers, the nonsense about Hackett’s anger, like the nonsense about Japan’s envy over Pak Taehwan, is meant to be the icy on the cake for Koreans. These reports of angry defeated foreigners always come out at World Cup & Olympic time here.
Opps, I forgot to blockquote the comparison of the opening ceremony to the Hitler show. That was Ebert’s opinion, not mine (mine is to the Arirang Mass Games).
From the tone of some of the comments here its seems that many folks think that having the opening ceremony of the 2012 Games feature a spectacle of 1000 acrobats dressed like Shakespeare carting around a replica of Stonehenge on miniature steam trains while the HMS Beagle flows above the stadium with holographic finches and tortoises flowing in its electrolight wake would be a good thing.
I just hope that Chicago (if it gets the 2016 Games) doesn’t go quite so over the top.
What, no hate for the ‘black guy at the pool’ comment?
“You give a $300 million budget to the North Koreans and they would present a real freak show.”
…as if they can’t produce freak shows on a tight budget.
Yeah, I’m a little disappointed by the black guy comment. They are underrepresented in the pool but your remark seemed a little cattish.
#18
Thanks, I was looking for something like that.
Frankly, I wonder why the South African team didn’t have at least one black swimmer on it.
No wonder the race was so close and why the French swimmer thought the French team would “trample” the U.S. 4×100 freestyle relay team!
I didn’t like the guy running through the air at the ceremony. They already had a lot of people flying through the air and it was just too much like some of these Chinese martial arts films. It was sort of corny and predictable (even though I didn’t and wouldn’t have predicted it). The most visually stunning lighting of the flame belongs to spain IMHO.
“Andy Jackson:
Frankly, I wonder why the South African team didn’t have at least one black swimmer on it.”
For the same reason the US running team has only one or two white guys?
Not to be politically incorrect or anything, but truth is black people just aren’t (on average of course) as good swimmers as whites (and asians), while they are quite superior (again, on average) in the running department.
If you have to rely on a “black people can’t swim” line to make the post interesting, I’d suggest adding more omph elsewhere. I guess you’re holding the “Chinese swimmers look like men, haha!” line for the next update.
The Opening Ceremony was excellent, by the way. To suggest that any nation on earth would produce anything less nationalistic is ridiculous. The local Wal-Mart has as much patriotism, and about as many soldiers. Hell, about as many guns, too.
Meant to say “Chinese WOMEN swimmers look like men, haha!” so that joke really didn’t work, but you get the idea. In what is considered among the finest swimming relay races in Olympic history, no need for a one-liner about the black guy.
No, you are out of touch and here is why.
#18
“Yeah, I’m a little disappointed by the black guy comment. They are underrepresented in the pool…”
LOL! No need to contact Affirmative Action just yet; I’m pretty sure they’re just fine, dominating most of the other Summer Olympic Sports.
“Yeah, I’m a little disappointed by the black guy comment. They are underrepresented in the pool but your remark seemed a little cattish.”
The comment had me scratching my head, but the local news story you linked brought it up:
Well, why not? It’s only the opening ceremony for an Olympics… Not like it’s some sort of important world event. Personally, I wouldn’t mind seeing the Olympics return to a simple opening ceremony where the athletes stroll into the stadium and the torch is lit, sans all the circus crap. But since that’s not going to happen, I’m sure that the national equivalents of flying bards with druidical apparati on their backs will no doubt continue.
Yeah, black swimmers seem about as usual as white folks named Jackson.
re: Black man to the pool…
I wonder what Metropolitan would say about that…
The 2012 London Olympics should have a Harry Potter theme. I think they have the hi-tech capability to simulate a quidditch match, which I think most people around the world would find very cool.
#29, if a Korean didn’t say it, he won’t care.
I love this title from the Independent:
Archery: Tears as France beat the rain to avenge Agincourt.
Prenez cela Henry V!
Brian and GS missed it. user 81 (#26) got it.
gbevers,
Looks like another mis-translation:
“Park Tae-hwan, who upset Australian medal hope Grant Hackett”… the word upset seems to have been translated as the emotion rather than the verb.
Hackett was not upset, he was upset.
(ie. He was not angry, he was beat).
@#34
God, I hate it when Korean reporters who barely understands the English language ‘translates’ the articles and show it to the Korean public without a second thought. This is what happens when a reporter slacks off, needs to make deadline, and whips up some article with ankle-deep research to please the editors (with some inflammatory contents).
@28: Alan Jackson, Andrew Jackson, Action Jackson …
Uh, Action Jackson was black.
Has anyone seen a reply of the the Judo 73kg silver medalist, Wang Ki-chun?
Director Peter Jackson.
General Sir Michael David Jackson of the British Army.
Alan Jackson
Stonewall Jackson
Laura Riding Jackson
Phil Jackson
Obviously someone doesn’t know how African-Americans English got their names in the first place.
Must be that SNU education shining through again.
I tell ya, between this and the post about North Korean soldiers shooting South Korean children in the back at the swimming pool, the hilarity is through the roof.
That is how African-Americans got their English names…
Where did all the money go? Apparently some of it was spent on computer graphics for the TV audience.
http://jamesfallows.theatlanti.....ut_new.php
The same way a lot of Koreans got their last names.
They were slaves and once freed, assumed their master’s last names.
actually in a way, given the fact that masters in both Korea and the US South were prone to wander their dicks into the slave’s vagina,
some of those progeny are indeed real owners of such blood lines, by today’s standards.
however, I believe the slaves took these names, even though they really had no sharing of any blood whatsoever.
what happenned when the slave’s dick made its way into the Manim’s vagina?
well, some Manims would manage to pull off the “it’s your son, remember, when we had sex?” with the Yonggam,
but in the US, it was harder to pull off.
it’s like convincing Yuki Ono that Apollo is really his son, given hypothetically that Apollo had no East Asian features at all.
why am I commenting here?
People will hate me.
Fan Death (#34),
Exactly. The reporter thought “Park Tae-hwan upset Grant Hackett” meant “Park made Hackett angry” instead of its intended meaning of “Park gave Hackett a disappointing defeat.”
Then the reporter when on the claim, seemingly based on her ignorance of the verb “upset,” that all of Australia was angry at Park. Her article seemed to be trying to make Park Australia’s Ohno. And, of course, that mistranslation caused the article to reach the “Number 1″ slot of the most viewed articles on Yahoo! It also caused hundreds of anti-Hackett and anti-Australian comments.
It seems that Koreans would like to believe that the world is jealous of Korea and Park Tae-hwan.
What does spruiked mean?
@ Fan Death Avenger re #34:
““Park Tae-hwan, who upset Australian medal hope Grant Hackett”… the word upset seems to have been translated as the emotion rather than the verb.”
I don’t think it is a case of verb or adjective, because the meaning it was misunderstood to be is also a verb (”make (someone) unhappy, disappointed, or worried”). It’s the first one listed in my free dictionary which oddly doesn’t contain the meaning this other dictionary has (I guess “to defeat unexpectedly” is covered by “to cause disorder/disrupt”).
Gbevers is right that this is an irresponsible journalistic practice, and it seems to be very common. But I don’t agree that “Koreans would like to believe that the world is jealous of Korea and Park Tae-hwan”. Reacting to what should be an accurate report is different form “wanting” to believe one’s country is the target of jealousy.
Spruiked? Looks to be an Aussie word
I can imagine the headlines in the Hankyoreh and the Rodong Sinmun…
“Evil American Phelps Cheats his way to Third Gold over Korean Swimming Prodigy”
“But I don’t agree that “Koreans would like to believe that the world is jealous of Korea and Park Tae-hwan”.
I dunno. When you look at Korean-foreign relations as adversarial and zero-sum, as Koreans invariably do, you need to know that your 행복 is the foreigner’s 불행. The Hallyu craze never made the Koreans exult quite like any of their sports victories. If they were making the Japanese happy, how good could it be?
“as Koreans invariably do”
You lost me. I can’t think of a single thing that “Koreans invariably do”. Maybe in the Marmot’s Hole commentary world, but not in the real world.
There’s a distinct difference between placing responsibility for misinformation on shitty journalism and placing that responsibility on the people whose only source of information is… that shitty journalism. Guess which one doesn’t make sense.
All right, my pedantic user-81 friend. Can I say that Koreans tend to view Korean-foreign relations in that way?
In the future, I promise I will say that Koreans tend to eat kimchi, tend to speak Korean, etc.
South Africa racializes its sports into “white” and “black” sports. Crossing those color lines seems to be pretty rare for them. Rugby is a “white” sport, while soccer (football) is a “black” sport. That’s why it was notable for Mandela and Mbeki to so effusively support the Springboks, and for the Springboks’ Rugby World Cup victory tour to be routed through Soweto as well as the white cities. Guess swimming is one of South Africa’s “white” sports.
Plus, everybody knows that blacks are just bad at sports.
It’s not being pedantic, my bigoted Alejandro Marivosa friend. Lots of people don’t see Korea/non-Korea in zero sum terms like that, the idiots in the press and the netizens notwithstanding.
But I will be pedantic enough to point out that “Koreans tend to” and “Koreans invariably do” are very different. You must be from one of those countries where people are invariably poorly educated.
“Plus, everybody knows that blacks are just bad at sports.”
Word. That’s why no blacks made it into MLB until 1947.
So use of “invariably” makes me a bigot?
Would you have called me a bigot if I said Koreans in Korea invariably spoke Korean? Would you have been pedantic enough to point out that a few autistics or mutes, say, don’t speak Korean? I doubt it. What bothers you is that it was a critical statement.
But I’m curious. Can you think of any dealings, cooperation, agreements, etc between Korea and foreign powers - in history that are seen in Korea as win-win?
And to back up my original point: The Chosun Ilbo website is now claiming, in screaming big headlines, that China is going out of its way to ignore the achievements of Korean athletes. (As if Koreans could name a single Chinese gold-medalist.) Where else in the world, user-81, would you see this sort of paranoia? That’s not a rhetorical question either.
Wow, and a local has been arrested in an Air China bomb threat.
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap.....Threat.php
#40 Found it!
http://kr.youtube.com/watch?v=AbFpcx6xJvg
High school all over again (except I got my American flavors from tv!). While people are playing sports or relaxing while watching/cheering for them, the nerds and lonely fatties are debating the linguistics people are using to describe them! Just head to the pool, ya weirdos
“the linguistics people are using”? Someone seems to have spent a little too much high-school time at the pool.
A featured story on Yahoo right now relates how the Chinese pulled a Milli Vanilli move - having an arguably more photogenic girl lip-synch to an ugly duckling’s vocal performance. I guess at the 2012 games, the flying Shakespeares will have to lip synch ‘God Save the Queen’ to top this one.
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