Media & Matters
Us and them
SEVANTI NINAN
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Media coverage of the Olympics is more about nationalism than internationalism.
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‘The subtext is, would you like to live in a country like this?’
Photo: AP
Visual spectacle: At the opening ceremony.
In the media, the Olympics turns out to be more about nationalism than internationalism. And when it is held in China, the subjective prism comes into play that much more. It’s not just Indian reporters and commentators who cannot help seeing this as a them-and-us thing, it’s the Brits too. Reporting on the opening ceremony the Times, London could not help a passing mention of what the Chinese achievement in 2008 was going to mean for London in 2012. How were they going to match this?
Thanks to the blogs which many international correspondents wrote as they covered the event, the reporting is tinged with personal takes on the Chinese achievements. And it is sold as such. “James Reynolds’s China” for the BBC correspondent’s blog in which he gives you the organisational mindset behind getting one little girl to mime another little girl whose singing was better but whose teeth were crooked. After all, in the city of Shanghai, strict criteria were advertised for picking Olympic hostesses: among other things, candidates with the best chance of getting picked had to have eye length which was three tenths of the face. (Reynolds said he wasn’t sure how this was measured!)
Elsewhere in his blog Reynolds describes how Chinese basketball players now slam dunk, something they never did before because “the slam was once seen in China as selfish, individualistic, and possibly even morally corrupt — therefore, entirely unsuitable for a diligent, loyal Communist.”
Ideological slant
Another Western correspondent wandered around Bird’s Nest and told you that the top brass who attended the opening ceremony looked cool because they were cool on a hot a humid night: there were air conditioners tucked behind their seating. A San Francisco Day Chronicle reporter who was blogging reported being ticked off by a Xinhua journalist who “interviewed” him. “He asked what I learned about Chinese history. I didn’t know how to answer. He asked how different the Opening Ceremonies would have been in the U.S. I didn’t know how to answer. He asked again what I’d learned about Chinese history. I still didn’t know how to answer. So he told me I must know Chinese history and that I should pay attention next time.”
Meanwhile, a blogger from inside the stadium reported that when the music dipped you could hear the buzzing of helicopters patrolling overhead.
There is just enough in these short takes to stop you from getting an inferiority complex from what you see of the show China has mounted. The subtext is, would you like to live in a country like this?
And for Indians, who have been saved by Abhinav Bindra from getting a crushing inferiority complex, there is more cheer in all those Western reports and in CNN’s stories about some Chinese ways that are very Indian. Spitting and baby pooping, as reported in the blog called The Rice Wine Diaries, and in a CNN story on the booklets the government was distributing telling its people how to behave for the duration of the Olympics.
Subjective prisms
The games in Beijing are also a good example of subjectivity in the viewer and media consumer. We possibly took things less personally when we viewed the Athens Olympics. But here you watch and think, wow. They can get 15,000 people kitted out perfectly for the opening extravaganza, but we can’t get our 57-strong contingent their costumes in time for that ceremony? You squirm first because of the fussy bridal wear everybody is togged out in, and then you squirm because Sania Mirza is wearing only half her outfit with an unmatching bottom because the rest did not arrive in time! Ditto somebody else in the contingent.
The fact that organisation is not our strong point is rubbed in by media stories on officials scrambling to learn lessons from the Chinese to be used in organising the Commonwealth games. The fact that personal freedom is our strong point is also vindicated by continuing reports on Internet censorship there, even as we vociferously report our gold medal achievement as being despite the failures of the Indian State in training its athletes.
The BBC grumbles about its Chinese site being blocked, Business Week reports the bland statement of Wang Wei, executive vice president of BOCOG, the Olympic organising committee. “Yes, we promised to provide free access to the Internet — except for a few that would jeopardise our national security and would not be good for the healthy growth of our young people.”
Then came the reports of those fireworks across the city being computer generated and added to the telecast going out. The Chinese can show you what didn’t happen, on Doordarshan and other Indian TV channels they had trouble showing you things as they did happen, because once the Indian contingent surfaced during the opening ceremony that footage was put into a loop so that all you saw for the next half hour was Indians and Sonia Gandhi waving at them.
Presumed audience interest doubtless governs news value, but this was surely a bit thick?
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