The Olympics in an Age of Anxiety
The Olympics draw to a close. Many watched. Many did not.
Historically, the fostering of athletes has been to nations what the display of martial plumage is in nature – a device to impress, intimidate and deter prospective enemies. Not so long ago, in a world of neatly symmetrical if scary Cold War balance, there was something especially compelling and therapeutic in the spectacle of rivalry played out decorously and peaceably on the fields of athletic honor.
From the beginning, war has been the paradigm. In ancient Greece, the fiction of a sacred armistice during the games belied the constant contention among the city-states. At the close of the 19th Century, the modern games were envisioned by Baron Pierre de Coubertin as a potential balm to France's wounded ego in the wake of ignominious defeat in the Franco-Prussian war.
The pride and patriotism of athletes were reciprocal to the pride and patriotism of spectators, each contributing to and enhancing the other.
The Olympics today seem different. But then, everything does. Commerce, war and innocence have all been altered. Our rivals among nations no longer seem worthy of our previous high-minded, sportsmanlike regard. And, worse, our true current enemies are nowhere represented on the fields, but lurk silently elsewhere conspiring for a very different and desperate kind of victory.
Sincere patriotic conviction on the part of some athletes is still evident, and uplifting. In the case of others, however, it may stand in question.
Is it too cynical to wonder what the typical, private concerns of today's losing athlete are? A young person who has exhaustingly and single-mindedly devoted him or herself to many years of rigorous privation in training; has foregone pleasures, sacrificed comfort, become alien to cultural normality – when such a person fails, is that moment's unfathomable disappointment still consoled by the nobility of an effort well-made and a nation humbly gratified? Or are the moment's honest anxieties really entailed with future professional prospects, commercial viability and sponsorship contracts?
Honor and the sublimation of war no longer compose the essence of the Olympic experience. An element we might call the spiritual has fled; what remains is, well, bodies: self-absorption, narcissism, freakish physical exceptionalism and (take 4-woman volleyball, for instance!) sometimes almost lubricious carnality.
The meaning of the games are now collapsed into literalness; they are concrete, calculated and commercial. What was once a sacrament is now a commodity. What were the viewership numbers, the sales racked up, the deals brokered?
This blogger hopes that games four years hence in Beijing, and eight years hence in New York (I know, I know, London remains the bookmakers' odds-on favorite for that one), occasion will be ripe for profound revision of this year's valedictory remarks.
Historically, the fostering of athletes has been to nations what the display of martial plumage is in nature – a device to impress, intimidate and deter prospective enemies. Not so long ago, in a world of neatly symmetrical if scary Cold War balance, there was something especially compelling and therapeutic in the spectacle of rivalry played out decorously and peaceably on the fields of athletic honor.
From the beginning, war has been the paradigm. In ancient Greece, the fiction of a sacred armistice during the games belied the constant contention among the city-states. At the close of the 19th Century, the modern games were envisioned by Baron Pierre de Coubertin as a potential balm to France's wounded ego in the wake of ignominious defeat in the Franco-Prussian war.
The pride and patriotism of athletes were reciprocal to the pride and patriotism of spectators, each contributing to and enhancing the other.
The Olympics today seem different. But then, everything does. Commerce, war and innocence have all been altered. Our rivals among nations no longer seem worthy of our previous high-minded, sportsmanlike regard. And, worse, our true current enemies are nowhere represented on the fields, but lurk silently elsewhere conspiring for a very different and desperate kind of victory.
Sincere patriotic conviction on the part of some athletes is still evident, and uplifting. In the case of others, however, it may stand in question.
Is it too cynical to wonder what the typical, private concerns of today's losing athlete are? A young person who has exhaustingly and single-mindedly devoted him or herself to many years of rigorous privation in training; has foregone pleasures, sacrificed comfort, become alien to cultural normality – when such a person fails, is that moment's unfathomable disappointment still consoled by the nobility of an effort well-made and a nation humbly gratified? Or are the moment's honest anxieties really entailed with future professional prospects, commercial viability and sponsorship contracts?
Honor and the sublimation of war no longer compose the essence of the Olympic experience. An element we might call the spiritual has fled; what remains is, well, bodies: self-absorption, narcissism, freakish physical exceptionalism and (take 4-woman volleyball, for instance!) sometimes almost lubricious carnality.
The meaning of the games are now collapsed into literalness; they are concrete, calculated and commercial. What was once a sacrament is now a commodity. What were the viewership numbers, the sales racked up, the deals brokered?
This blogger hopes that games four years hence in Beijing, and eight years hence in New York (I know, I know, London remains the bookmakers' odds-on favorite for that one), occasion will be ripe for profound revision of this year's valedictory remarks.
posted by Chet G @ 1:00 PM
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