So now along with class distinction we have another distinction in Britain; did you like the Olympic Opening Ceremony or didn’t you, or rather, did you think that it was ‘leftie,’ socialist or a downright manifesto for the Labour Party?
It seems that if, like me, you liked the ceremony and didn’t really notice its ‘leftie’ connotations, you are branded as someone who will automatically vote labour in the next election, and that you endorse the spectacle as an vote winner for Ed Milliband. This is mainly due to the fact that the Industrial Revolution, that symbol of British ingenuity and achievement, was depicted in the Opening Ceremony as a bad thing, apparently. Really? While it is true that the actors playing mill owners looked on as soot stained dancers fled out of smoking dens that resembled a scene from Dante’s Inferno, I would have pegged this as stylised, but never the less realistic. The many did make the few richer. That’s not being socialist, that’s just a fact. Thousands of people died young in dreadful conditions in the Victorian equivalent of sweat shops; conditions so bad that after a period of reform successive laws were passed, with the result that working conditions were improved. Another fact. Is it really so terribly leftie to think that a realistic portrayal of the bad as well as the good, in a period that made Britain powerful, is so very bad?
But beyond this, those who make black and white political statement for or against the ceremony are missing the fundamental point; the portrayal of a black, flaming, hellish Industrial Revolution eating up and rising out of a countryside idyll is fundamentally British. Look at the art of the period, the soft depictions of rolling hills harking back to an England that seems to be slipping away. Factories are either drawn clinically and factually to show exactly what worked where, or as smoky, mysterious, often in red or orange hues but never in a positive light. The Opening Ceremony echoed these visuals perfectly.
Similarly there is British literature that expound this view. Hardy continually harps on about the lost traditions of a fading countryside with eldery Wessexians ruminating about the time of their grandparents. In a less wistful and more practical tone, George Elliot also questions the values behind ‘progress.’ Even Tolkien picks up this theme, contrasting rural Hobbiton with the industrial nightmare created and represented by Saruman, a nightmare that the hobbits have to overcome twice in order to return Isengard, then their own home to its natural state of peaceful countryside.
Whether it was meant as a political manifesto or affirmation or not (I think not) on an occasion that is supposed to be about sport, can’t we just concentrate on the er…sport? The Olympics was founded to bring nations from all over the world together in the united desire to celebrate sporting talent. Let’s just do that shall we? I’m off to watch the synchronised diving.
The Champagne Anarchist 