Constantly risking Winter Olympic absurdity

For the sake of the modern world, I really hope the ancient Greeks were wrong in their religious beliefs. Maybe the gods have been ignoring our lack of animal sacrifices for the past couple millennia, but all those myths about an angry god not getting enough worship and going on a killing spree make me a little nervous for the future of civilization. As I watched Friday night’s opening ceremonies for the 2010 Olympics, I half-expected Zeus to send a vengeful lightning bolt right through the multimillion-dollar roof of Vancouver’s BC Place Stadium.

In middle school, most of us were taught that today’s Olympics are a continuation of an ancient Greek tradition, in which the finest athletes from different Greek city-states came together in competition to worship the gods (and, presumably, get their asses wrecked by the Spartans). But aside from the shared name, the ancient Olympics resemble the modern games about as much as Lady Gaga resembles Lady Bird Johnson. If anything, today’s games have become a worship ceremony for ostentation, pointlessness, and Visa.

The games, from my understanding, are theoretically supposed to be about global unity and celebration. In practice, the one thing they celebrate more than anything is a colossal waste of money. This year’s games are setting Canada back an estimated $6 billion, which is a mere penny on the sidewalk compared to the $44 billion China spent in 2008. Even if we weren’t experiencing a massive global recession, I’d still venture to guess that nobody would’ve watched the dancing Inuits, flying ice skaters covered in lightbulbs, and ear-numbing Nelly Furtado-Bryan Adams duet and thought: “Wow, now this is money well spent.”

But even if you were able to put the ceremony’s hefty price tag out of mind for a few hours, a key issue remains: most of the ceremony has absolutely nothing to do with ancient Greek tradition, sports, or the global community—at all. The opening ceremony was just Canada celebrating and validating itself in a laughably overdone series of dances featuring more people than the entire population of the Yukon. The whole effort was counterproductive, too. The only thing anyone learned about Canadian culture is that the artist who designed this must have been on one hell of an acid trip.

Before you start to think that Canada might finally have reason to shed its famous inferiority complex, rest assured that our neighbors to the north weren’t the only ones insulting classical culture. Not to be outdone, we Americans brought such a herculean level of red-white-and-blue ridiculousness to the opening ceremonies that the global community could only watch in awe. While other countries marched their finest, select athletes into the arena with pride and dignity, America herded in its titanic, 216-member team, the flag-bearer waving like the Grand Marshall of the Macy’s Day World Domination Parade. Doesn’t the rest of the world already hate us enough without having to watch our small army of Ralph Lauren-clad, juiced-up curlers flooding what’s supposed to be the global stage?

And finally, what would a sporting event be without some good old counterintuitive American consumerism? The airing of the opening ceremony was interrupted every few minutes with blocks of Olympic-related advertising. Visa’s “Go World” ads—which curiously feature American athletes much more frequently than their foreign competitors—have become a staple in the more recent games.  McDonald’s is right behind them all the way, encouraging kids to be like their muscular idols by eating disgusting amounts of trans fat. 

But the real travesty of the Olympic ordeal is that all of the host country self-aggrandizement and schlocky advertising obscure the games’ stated purpose—the appreciation of athletics. The ancient Greeks held their athletes in the highest esteem, as they performed feats of strength that seemed superhuman. But our own potential Olympic heroes today don’t have a fighting chance at the Hellenistic glory of old. Instead they’re stuck sour-faced on the sidelines, clapping obligatorily while commercialism and showiness get the attention.