Opening ceremonies of Olympic Games and their cultural applications

Essay from the year 2010 in the subject Communications - Intercultural Communication, grade: 1,0, University of Southern Denmark, language: English, abstract: The Olympic Games are without doubt an intercultural mega event. In this essay I have a look on the opening ceremonies of the two last Olympic Games 2010 in Vancouver and 2008 in Beijing. I shed light on the various cultural aspects encompassed in those ceremonies, differentiating between national and Olympic symbols, heroes and rituals expressed during those shows and analyze the underlying values and beliefs that form those cultures. In the final part of this essay I discuss the development of opening ceremonies towards national advertisement disregarding minorities in the national and Olympic societies. I use different theories about culture and its appearance to interpret the opening ceremonies in Vancouver and Beijing. I compare both Olympics, even though it must be stated that there is an enormous difference between Summer and Winter Olympics with regard to participating nations and sports. The idea of analyzing the opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games rests on the expectation that those were the moments at which cultural differences become most obvious for the worldwide TV audience. It is expected that especially cultural differences between the athletes can be seen during the different competitions, but as I have no source about what happened behind the various TV cameras I can hardly analyze those aspects of intercultural interaction. Furthermore all Olympic opening ceremonies share some elements that are implemented in the idea of the Olympic movement. It should therefore be possible to find those elements, analyze their meaning for the Olympic movement and separate it from all the other 'show' elements that are essential for today's opening ceremonies. In this essay I answer the question how we (the non-host community) perceive the host nation's culture as it is expressed during the opening ceremony. I also analyze critics of the Olympic opening ceremonies, not only concerning the 'ignorance' of minorities, but also the use of 'fakes' to make the whole ceremony look bigger and more glamorous than it really is. I will also pace the question whether it is really necessary to make every new opening ceremony bigger and more expensive than the ones before and whether this does clash with the values of the Olympic movement.