closer wrote:Extralife wrote:Beijing - colourful and beautiful celebration of thousands of years of history.
London - a girl from X-Factor and David Beckham kicking a football off the top of a bus, surounded by a gang of hoodies rolling around on the floor.
I guess that really puts British 'culture' into perspective.
Utter, utter ********. Thousands of chinese people doing exactly as they are told, (or its the salt mines for you...). Then Jimmy Page belting out 'whole lot o' love' from the top of a london bus. I'd be the first to complain if we piss it up but 'our' eight minutes just blew away the whole of the rest of the closing ceremony big style.
The whole chinese presentation, (choreographed to death), has played exactly into our hands. 'All' we have to do is stress democracy, individualism, mavervik freedom and humour. I want to see Johnny Lydon singing 'God Save the Queen' whilst surrounded by dancers all dressed by Vivienne Westwood. I want to see the best of british music belting it out loud. I want to see the best of our technology celebrated to the max. in stadia designed by our best architects.
(I do not want to see morris dancers, pearly kings and queens, sodding beefeaters etc etc.)
Stop ******* moaning and appreciate what huge talent this country has got.
And that logo - its excellent - despite what the popular press told you to believe !!
I agree with all this too. I was feeling a little uncomfortable the whole Olympics really, but the closing ceremony really summed it up. All the IOC and anyone else inane enough to get on TV to talk about the Olympics have been telling us over the past year is that the sport and politics should be kept apart, yet the Beijing Olympics has been the longest and most exposed political event I've ever seen. The bizarre Cirque Du Soleil in cycle helmets closing ceremony was just the pinacle of over 2 weeks of propoganda.
Focusing on the ceremony alone though, even ignoring the creepy feeling of how many human rights had to be broken to do it all, while it was very flashy, it was rubbish. I guess this applies to pretty much all opening/closing ceremonies, but what the hell is going on in them? Everyone seems to marvel over an hour of lots of funny dressed people doing the same thing, but it just looks like an expensive mess. I could not discern anything even vaguely related to "culture" or "art" that Huw Edwards was having a tommy tank over. In a week or so everyone will have forgotten about any ceremonies, and all people will remember are the handful of incredible athletic achievments. And that, and only that, is what should be honoured in Olympic ceremonies.
Hopefully the London Olympics will be a lot more low key, and as a result retain some sort of dignity. While the bus and the silly dancers was all a bit musical theatre, it at least didn't attempt to reach some divine level of Machiavellian campness I sat through for an hour.
Having said that, our logo is still turd.