Anthony Lane goes to the Olympics
The funniest critic in the biz writes of the opening ceremony:
I arrived well in time for the crash course in audience participation. “The world has given its love and trust to China, and today China will give the world a big warm hug,” one of the masters of ceremonies said. While admiring their faultless English, you had to wonder why they had chosen to learn it by watching “Barney’s Great Adventure.” How, in less than twenty years, does a place go from mowing down student dissent with tanks to offering unconditional hugs? Was this a front, or had the government realized that the patois of mushy togetherness is now a lingua franca, not least in commercials, and thus well worth acquiring? On every seat was a sack of goodies, and we were duly taught to rattle our drums, wave our Chinese flags, shake our funky light sticks, and finally, at the avian highlight of the ceremony, “imitate the movement of the doves with your hands.” Aside from the risk of developing repetitive wing injury, this was all too peaceful for me, and I felt a sudden, heretical yearning for the Paris Olympics of 1900, when the shooting competition used live pigeons.
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