2012 Olympic Opening Ceremony Flashcards
Drop-in session
- Danny Boyle - Slumdog Millionaire
- Pastoral start
- Choirs from 4 nations
- Industrial revolution. Smoking towers
- Votes for women
- Forging the Olympic rings
- Daniel Craig goes to collect the queen. Churchill statue comes to life on his way
- NHS/ English children’s lit
- Chaotic feel
- Olympic Opening Ceremonies always there to propagate national narratives - their fundamental purpose
- Danny Boyle mash-up
- Ceremony - various phases of Br hist
- 1st section, pastoral, green and pleasant lands
- Ind Rev
- 2 wrld wars
- Digital revolution
- Key national institutions and legacies - Bond, HM the queen
- 4 hrs long (2 hrs of athletes)
- McCartney and Paul Oldfield
- 7 and a half thousand volunteers
- Camera starts source of Thames then East to Olympic stadium
- 4 choruses. Eng, Jerusalem. NI Londonderry Air, Scotland, air of Scotland, Wales bread of heaven
- Deployment of nostalgia, nationhood
- 2nd section, Ind Rev, Pandemonium - capital of hell in Paradise Lost. Ceremony - diff groups marching round - T Unionists, migrants, etc
- Blurb - some countries rev of nation. Br one that changed whole world. Rebooted human existence
- Section 3 - happy and glorious - Bond. Parachute in. Playing w Brit ideas of icon
- Mashes into NHS then nightmare figures and other children’s fiction refs
- Chariots of Fire music w Mr Been
- Then Tim Berners Lee WWW
- Nostalgic
- Reviews by commentators - all commented on nostalgia. Slic - Blake, Brunel, Ind Rev, Nurses in 1950s uniforms not modern - evern NHS celebrated in nostalgic, old-fashioned way
- Key point - national identities gain cohesion through inclusion and exclusion
- 2012 controversial. This opening ceremony political - in celebration of NHS. Overtly political point
- At time, Independent argued polit intent not hard to decipher. Praise for NHS would have infuriated those who wanted to see it gone
- Daily Mail - NHS saved many lives but why no other nation taken it up? Boyle emphasising that it was relic of bygone age
- Several commentators decried idea of declining quality of life in modern Br
- WWW, but now largely run by US enterprises
- Whole thing Br nostalgia
- Criticism - opening ceremony silenced imperial past. Doesn’t mention darker aspects
- Problem of opening ceremony - given Br’s long hist, complex ethnic and cultural make-up - is there such a thing as a single Br nat identity?
- Tbf Boyle tries to tackle. Ambivalence around industrial rev. Double-edged opening ceremony
- One of the most overtly political opening ceremonies we’ve seen in yrs
- Probably be given still image from opening ceremony and be asked to deconstruct what kind of reading of Br hist that gives you
- No ref to Tudors. Not royal hist. From perspective of working people, social history. History from below
- Not just nostalgia - also showing off
- Couldn’t have included imperial history
- Consider what the purpose is - Opening Ceremony, athletic achievement. Not supposed to be great long exposee of Br hist
- Humour import point
- This is just one interpretation of Br hist
- Inherently political
- Thinking about music, way it’s lit, volunteers
- Community spirit as a theme
- Divisive ceremony - articles surveying response. Ppl loving it vs ppl who thought mired in nostalgia and celebrating all the wrong things
- Lots of the articles short and worth having a swizz at
V and A about to open extension on part of old Olympic site
That part of Opening Ceremony highlighted
US media coverage
hailed the British eccentricity of the opening ceremony, praised the humour, puzzled over some in-jokes and mused on what it all said about the country’s search for a post-imperial identity.
The New York Times headlined its review: “A Five-Ring Opening Circus, Weirdly and Unabashedly British”.
Sarah Lyall, the newspaper’s London correspondent, wrote: ”With its hilariously quirky Olympic opening ceremony, a wild jumble of the celebratory and the fanciful; the conventional and the eccentric; and the frankly off-the-wall, Britain presented itself to the world Friday night as something it has often struggled to express even to itself: a nation secure in its own post-empire identity, whatever that actually is.
“It was neither a nostalgic sweep through the past nor a bold vision of a brave new future. Rather, it was a sometimes slightly insane portrait of a country that has changed almost beyond measure since the last time it hosted the Games, in the grim postwar summer of 1948.”
Washington Post:“If the Opening Ceremonies of the London Games sometimes seemed like the world’s biggest inside joke, the message from Britain resonated loud and clear: We may not always be your cup of tea, but you know — and so often love — our culture
China response
“2008 Beijing was solemn, 2012 London is humour. Solemnity and stateliness tells the world you are strong. Humour lets the world feel you are strong; it’s about confidence.”
Huang Jianxing, one of the best-known sports commentators in China, also stressed the light-hearted nature of the ceremony. “Its strength was its humour
Australia
The Sydney Morning Herald said Danny Boyle displayed artistic genius in a brilliant balancing act.
His show did not take itself too seriously, but was never trivial.
This is a country of royals and aristocrats, but Boyle’s show rejoiced in the commoner
Greece
praised the ceremony as an entertaining show, but criticised what they described as a performance that was “too British” and lacking in messages of the original Olympic spirit“sense of exaggerated British national pride and a sense of humour which not all the world understands.
“It was a successful, entertaining show, more like a big musical, a rock opera, a big party, rather than an Olympics ceremony,” said Panos Samaras, dispatched to London to cover the ceremony for Greece’s state-run NET TV network,
France
Le Parisien said: “So British….an opening ceremony that was magnificent, inventive and offbeat drawing heavily on the roots of British identity”.
Germany
German newspaper Die Welt
“spectacular, glitzy but also provoking and moving”. It also focused on the Queen’s cameo roleDie Zeit hailed the London ceremony as the perfect “counterweight” to the opening ceremony in Beijing, which, for all its wonders, had “authoritarian traits”.much more relaxed. It was creative, it was the Spirit of London,”
Russia
Several Russian observers seemed bemused by the episode in the Olympic Stadium dedicated to the NHS. “incomprehensible to non-Britons”.
Medvedev, Russia’s prime minister and the head of its delegation in London, appeared to be enjoying the show.
Simon Jenkins,The ‘Isles of Wonder’ Olympic opening ceremony: I smell a rat, 14 June 2012
According to its impresario, Danny Boyle, the title of the show, Isles of Wonder – a metaphor for Olympian Britain – was “inspired by” Shakespeare’s The Tempest, specifically Caliban’s speech.
Have those Olympic corporates actually read the play? Caliban, monster offspring of a witch, makes no mention of isles of wonder. Instead, he inhabits an island awash in conflict, drink, sex and dark arts. He does at one point call it “an isle full of noises, sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not”, but that is when he is trying to seize it and return it to primeval anarchy.
I am reliably informed that this is all a highly crafted – and risky – bit of spin. Two weeks ago Boyle gave a totally different interview about the ceremony,”partly inspired by Frankenstein”,
year. The ceremony would be “more like a cauldron, with all the people hovering over and around you.”
The second act is a total contrast, the dark side of Blake’s vision, a tableau of storm clouds and satanic mills, of industrial Britain as a place of noise and filth, suffragettes and striking miners.
that 10,000 people have needed 157 rehearsals to get the scenes right
hardly credible that the evening will comprise nothing more than £27m-worth of historical cliche. Boyle’s record as a demon of radical film and theatre rather suggests a Rocky Horror Picture Show, a Gormenghast of special effects, perhaps a spectacular assault on the candyfloss chauvinism and corporatism of Olympiana.
Willgress, London Olympic opening ceremony team was ‘put under political pressure to remove section about the NHS’
The programme comes after reports written at the time of the opening ceremony suggested Jeremy Hunt, who was culture secretary from 2010 to 2012 before moving to health, wanted changes to be made.
Mr Boyle, who does not name Mr Hunt on the programme, is said to admit there was “some stand-offs”, adding: “The forces wanted us to cancel one of the sequences, cut the NHS sequences is what they wanted to cut.” It was allegedly suggested instead that performers could just “walk around the stadium”.
spokesman for Mr Hunt said his “only concern” was in relation to the length of the show, “simply because we needed to be sure everyone would be able to get home safely”.
Birrell, The London 2012 opening ceremony, and a night that set NHS reform back years
20 minutes that made Britain feel better about itself.
National Health Service is sacrosanct — the one arm of the State beyond criticism.
ask ourselves why, if it is quite so wonderful, no other major nation has adopted our system.
last time the World Health Organisation ranked countries’ health systems, Britain came in below Greece, Malta, Oman and Portugal. More recent studies found we had the worst patient care among seven leading industrialised nations and among the lowest cancer survival rates in the Western world.
Britain’s sentimentality over its health systemis preventing real reform,
the NHS is a relic of a bygone age in dire need of life-saving surgery.
little affection for this outdated institution.
As the father of a child with profound and multiple learning difficulties, I have seen too many blunders, too much insensitivity and too little care
sickening to hear constantly the mantra of how brilliant the NHS is from people who do not rely on it and are not engaged in a near daily struggle against its inertia and ineptitude.
I have received countless letters and emails from pensioners, parents, sons and daughters — all angered at how the post-war dream of decent healthcare for all has turned into a personal nightmare for their families. They told of deadly mistakes and missing case files, of dirty hospitals and uncaring staff
Spot checks by the Care Quality Commission watchdog found ‘alarming’ failings in basic care for the elderly at more than half the hospitals visited
Earlier this year, the Mail exposed how dehydration or malnutrition was linked to the deaths of 1,316 patients in 2010.
have friends who have been confronted by doctors’ shocking indifference to the death of their child.
The problem is the NHS was designed for the world that existed in the aftermath of World War II and focused on the fight against infant mortality, infectious diseases and industrial injuries.
Now we face a new challenge: to modernise
Britain’s population is ageing
We also have more people living with disabilities
These are the patients soaking up more than two-thirds of NHS spending
We must shift focus and funds on to long-term conditions such as dementia, depression, diabetes, cancer and coronary disease.
The only way to do this is by freeing up money from the old infrastructure, which means closing dozens of hospitals, concentrating specialist units and diverting funds into personalised care based around the home and community
Many doctors know this, even as their union leaders fight against threats to entrenched powers.
we must lose our irrational fear of the word ‘privatisation
vast majority of general practitioners are already private contractors and many consultants spend much of their time on highly lucrative private work.
Mulholland, 29 July 2012, Opening ceremony was a Trojan horse for socialist values, says Labour MP
Paul Flynn, MP for Newport West, praised Danny Boyle for highlighting the NHS, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and the futility of war.
Prime Minister David Cameron and Tory loyalists distance themselves from a tweet by Tory MP Aidan Burley, who called the event “leftie multicultural crap”.
Boris Johnson
“nonsense” to suggest “it was all leftie stuff”. He added: “I’m a Conservative and I had hot tears of patriotic pride from the beginning
But Flynn claimed that Johnson and Cameron had no choice but defend the show’s contents because he said both had hyped up the event beforehand.
The Labour MP said he echoed the sentiment of Labour colleague Carl Sargeant, minister for local government and communities in the Welsh assembly government, who had tweeted that the opening ceremony was “the best Labour party political broadcast I have seen in a while
His comments received short shrift from his own side. A Labour party source said: “The Olympic opening ceremony was a great event and a brilliant achievement that has united the whole country
But Flynn claimed that Johnson and Cameron had no choice but defend the show’s contents because he said both had hyped up the event beforehand.
The Labour MP said he echoed the sentiment of Labour colleague Carl Sargeant, minister for local government and communities in the Welsh assembly government, who had tweeted that the opening ceremony was “the best Labour party political broadcast I have seen in a while
His comments received short shrift from his own side. A Labour party source said: “The Olympic opening ceremony was a great event and a brilliant achievement that has united the whole country
Director Danny Boyle
He denied that the show was political but acknowledged some might have found it controversial
Regarding the sequence that paid tribute to the National Health Service, Boyle said free universal healthcare was “an amazing thing to celebrate” and that he had no agenda “other than values we feel are true
No 10 source said while the government was not the creative director, it had been kept updated for months and
would not have agreed to double the budget last year if it had not been fully behind the plans.
Biressi, Nunn, The London 2012 Olympic Games Opening Ceremony: History answers back
in straitened times British citizens are being asked to
make do, to accept the rolling back of state provision and to modify their expectations
of a civil society on the basis of historical myths as well as current realities
national events such as the Royal Wedding and the Diamond Jubilee
have been deployed to conjure up wartime fortitude and a nostalgic community
spirit.
This also true of coverage in run-up to London 2012 Olympic Games
last took place in Britain in 1948 and were consequently known as the ‘Austerity
Games’
much anticipated London 2012 Games provided
opportunities for the media to advocate keeping calm and carrying on, including
through references to the earlier Austerity Games, the ongoing preparations
and security and even in the opening phrases of the BBC commentary.
So far, so unsurprising. However, the Opening Ceremony itself arguably fashioned
a less predictable national story from commonly shared and widely
recognized historical resources.
ceremony, entitled ‘Isles of Wonder’, was
devised by film-maker Danny Boyle and scripted by Frank Cottrell Boyce. The
two men’s professional credentials were many and varied although they also
shared an Irish Catholic heritage, working-class sympathies and a collaborative
professional relationship
Following a two-minute film and an audience countdown the live entertainment
began several minutes after 9 p.m. on 27 July. The first sequence
encapsulated British economic and social development from a rural economy
to the Industrial Revolution and then on to the 1960s. Scenes of a bucolic
agrarian life were played out against Glastonbury Tor counterpointed with
the four ‘unofficial anthems’ of England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and
Wales. As the performances progressed, vintage coaches entered the stadium,
carrying men in nineteenth-century dress led by the engineer Isambard
Kingdom Brunel. After ascending the Tor, Brunel delivered verses from
he outcast Caliban’s ‘Be not afeard’ speech from Shakespeare’s play The
Tempest. Green fields disappeared as chimney stacks rose from the ground
in a dark and dynamic son et lumière setting signifying a hellish ‘pandaemonium’.
Agricultural workers were banished from the land. Here industrial
workers forged what was to become the linked golden Olympic rings ‘against
the backdrop of industrial turmoil’ and with Brunel looking on approvingly.
This part of the show also included a period of silence in remembrance of the
two world wars, featuring ordinary British ‘Tommies’ and a field of poppies.
A variety of historical subjects arrived on the scene who had contributed
towards changes in British social and political life including members of
the suffragette movement and the Jarrow hunger march of 1936, as well as
Caribbean immigrants from the Windrush years and The Beatles. Real-life
Chelsea pensioners and pearly kings and queens (‘the other royal family’)
also featured. The sequence ended with the performers looking up, dazzled,
at the interlocked Olympic rings.
The next sequence celebrated the National Health Service and children’s
literature with a choreographed show of nurses wearing vaguely mid-century
uniforms and children on hospital beds. The scene segued into a story-book
world featuring the child-catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (Hughes, 1968)
and in which Harry Potter’s arch enemy Voldemort (Rowling 1997) is defeated
by a host of Mary Poppins figures, the fictional English nanny (Stevenson,
1964). Here children were rescued, perhaps by a metaphorical nanny-state, to
be returned to the safety of their beds. The sequence ended with the appearance
of a giant newborn baby. These happenings were accompanied by a
roughly chronological sampling of British popular music and ended with an
appearance by World Wide Web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee. The conclusion
was a memorial to the victims of the July 2005 London bombings. Throughout
the show synchronized performers, viewed from above, formed shapes and
symbols including the moon and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
(CND) logo. There were also filmed sequences, live music of all kinds and
comedy sketches. This was both a pageant and a party and what Dayan and
Katz (1992: 1) have described as a ‘festive viewing of television’. It was also a
depiction of history mostly from the perspective of ordinary people. It was, to
borrow a phrase from Patrick Wright (1985: 5), a fair attempt at ‘a vernacular
and informal history’
Evidently, the sequences fused fiction, surrealist imagery, historical references
and historical storytelling. More than 7000 non-professionals took
part including 600 real-life hospital staff, health workers and patients. It was
also a conspicuously multicultural event with no concession made towards
the historical realism often seen in British costume drama which routinely
excludes black actors.
As Jerome de Groot (2009)
explains in his book Consuming History, historical re-enactment, at the very
least, suggests a democratizing or progressive relationship to history;
Observer newspaper underlined its generally positive but
multifaceted reception with historian and MP Tristram Hunt remarking that it
could be said that ‘while the right has won the economic arguments, the left
took victory in the “culture wars”’ (Ai et al. 2012).
The perceived optimism
of the show also chimed with Boyle’s own programme notes (2012)
that maintained that running through the spectacle would be a glimpse of ‘a
single golden thread of purpose – the idea of Jerusalem – of the better world’
clearly recalled and valorized the
political impulses, principles and philosophy that had underpinned the pursuit
of the ‘New Jerusalem’ under the British Labour government of 1945–51.
‘Isles of Wonder’ arguably offered a counter-history and a counter-argument;
one which reminded British audiences as citizens and social actors why the
public sector (the supported arts, welfare, health and perhaps even public service
television) should be valued and defended and why social enfranchisement
mattered. In contrast to the political and media references to the modern midcentury
that advocated stoicism and compliance, this living historical patchwork invoked a more dynamic and assertive interpretation of the past and its application
to the present crisis.
a ‘history from below’ (Thompson 1963)
rather than simply a spell-binding diversion. A plethora of class and political
protestors, soldiers and health service workers, factory hands and rural labourers
overwhelmingly possessed the historical and televisual field
