PLAYLIST: The Summer Olympics (Part One)
I watched every summer Olympic opening & closing ceremony since 1984 and I'm losing my mind
I don’t watch sports. I particularly don’t like The Olympics. I remember being a TV-addicted kid who was so frustrated that everybody was suddenly talking about SWIMMING a lot. But I like the ideals of the Olympics.
A bunch of countries coming together to promote peace is a nice thing, despite the shame of their burden on local communities. Not to mention, the IOC wants the Olympics to be apolitical, but double standards with which country is allowed to compete is always an issue bogged in partisan politics. Hell, in 1936, the event was used as nazi propaganda.
Still, I find the opening and closing ceremonies very fascinating. All of the pomp and circumstance, a collision of art, music, production, and people walking in matching blazers. After seeing some of the unique offerings at this year’s events, I decided to go into the past 50 years of events and watch every ceremony. It’s a huge task, but if you skip all the “athletes walking and taking selfies" parts, it’s doable.
1984
I began with the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. This is the “before times” when the whole thing feels like more of an afterthought. It’s less like a production and more like the last day of theater camp mixed with a pep rally.
Sure, you get segments like “Pioneer Spirit” with covered wagons and people in cowboy hats act-running (that’s acting while running—which happens a lot in these). There’s also Etta James, Lionel Richie a jetpack man, and many cutaways to President Reagan.
The new Olympic fanfare is introduced by John Williams, who is good at this sorta thing. After a marathon of these, a stirring piece of music can get to you and this is one of them.
Team USA looks as cool as they ever will in the Parade of Nations, in a simple tracksuit. I’ll highlight their typically dorky sartorial choices because that’s where I’m from, but year after year, the representatives of the Polynesian countries always look the coolest.
1984 Highlight: THE ALIEN
They play “Also sprach Zarathustra” and then a flying saucer appears and everybody loses their shit. Then the saucer begins shooting green lasers. Then THE ALIEN comes out. He is only referred to as THE ALIEN. He delivers an underwhelming speech with the most “normal man voice” imaginable.
1984 Lowlight: Everything else.
What can I say about this? It’s like someone walked in and wrote PIZZAZZ on a chalkboard. If I’m being nice, it’s slightly above the Thanksgiving parade level. This is that just multiplied. Want me to ruin “Beat It” for you? Click here.
Look at these people holding hands singing “Auld Lang Syne” for some reason. Sucks. But I’m glad I started here before these all became a weird Cirque du Soleil thing.
☆
1988
Seoul is a huge leap forward production-wise. It’s colorful and there’s some intention with the way they stage things. Still, they haven’t figured out the trick to making shapes out of people, they get all lopsided.
In all of these non-American ceremonies, these countries have centuries of history so there’s a lot more traditional stuff. Like, I appreciate culture but something literally ancient just has less razzmatazz than a Lionel Richie performance. So yes, a lot of this is simultaneously beautiful and boring. Don’t worry, there’s an overcorrection to this problem coming.
The American team looks librarianesque here.
1988 Highlight: Koreana “Hand In Hand”
The official song is “Hand in Hand” by Koreana, which is the kind of soaring late 80’s schmaltz you can only get from the same duo who produced “Take My Breath Away” Tom Whitlock and Giorgio Moroder. Some of my favorite Moroder is the cheesy stuff.
1988 Lowlight: The birds
So they let the doves loose as they used to do every event, and the doves are terrified. They fly in every direction and it looks crazy—then they land on the torch and accidentally set some on fire. Like, c’mon. You can’t get more symbolically chaotic than a dove on fire. Thankfully, they stopped letting doves loose after this.
☆
1992
Barcelona is full of flamenco and lots of opera, which I don’t mind. Also, they are better at making shapes out of people! An archer lights the torch with a flaming arrow which is a cool visual.
Also, it’s the first appearance of two of my favorite reoccurring “things” they do on the Olympics: runway models modeling—it happens in Rio with Gisele Bunchen, Sydney with Elle MacPherson and high fashion is naturally all over the Paris Olympics.
The other is children climbing a tower made up of other children. This happens again several times!
I have never heard the official songs of these games. The first is easily the squarest piece of music to feature Freddie Mercury, a duet with opera singer Montserrat Caballé originally recorded in 1987. It weirdly works, though—in the way a lot of Freddie Mercury stuff would be intolerable if made by someone else.
The other song is a duet with Sarah Brightman and José Carreras, penned by Andrew Lloyd Webber which sounds like a Phantom of the Opera b-side.
1992 Highlight: SEA WAR
Ryuichi Sakamoto created the music for this segment which is kinda cool and the first real high-concept stuff. We also get the first of many “tall man puppets” which is all the rage in the 90’s. We’re getting weirder here.
1992 Lowlight: Hats
This is also the beginning of the tradition of making Team USA wear dumb hats. I’ve never ever seen an American wear, like, a blue blazer, khakis and a white hat—I don’t know why they want the world to think we’ve ever dressed like that year after year. Most of the athletes just hold their dumb hats because they know how dumb they look. Especially the NBA players—except for Magic Johnson, who is a good sport.
☆ ☆
1996
America gets a second chance to put on a show for a generation, and even though it’s just 12 years later, it’s night and day. The production is cinematic and they utilize the stadium in unique ways. You got James Earl Jones, Celine Dion, Gladys Knight, and Boyz II Men all doing their thing, and Muhammad Ali lighting the torch is genuinely moving.
Also, this is the first time the Olympics get weirdly scary and I’m all for it, more throat singing, please.
They look like Mounties this year.
Also, this is the year Paul Walter Hauser set off a bomb in Centennial Park.
1996 Highlight: The All-Star Band
America blows every country out of the water with their closing ceremony concert because they invented rock n’ roll in the past century and a lot of the best to do it are all still here.
Paul Schaffer assembled an all-star band with a few familiar faces from his Letterman band, Little Richard & Stevie Wonder on keys, Tito Puente and Sheila E. on percussion, B.B. King on guitar, Buckwheat Zydeco on accordion, Wynton Marsalis on trumpet, and vocals from Gloria Estefan, Pointer Sisters, and Al Green. It sounds like it should be a mess but it isn’t! (Though Faith Hill seems a bit out of place.)
I always imagine someone in some remote village somewhere tuned into the Olympics on television and seeing Sheila E perform “The Glamourous Life” on the world’s stage and I think that’s cool.
Also, there’s a moment where they cut to Al Gore clapping to “I’m So Excited” that must be seen.
1996 Lowlight: "Y'all come back now!"
There’s a part of the closing ceremony where a bunch of children all yell that in unison. Any time there’s children in these, it bums me out.
☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
2000
[Michael Keaton voice] “You wanna get nuts? Let’s get nuts!” The 2000 Sydney Olympics is when we enter the Cirque du Soleil era of opening ceremonies.
This ceremony begins with a segment called “Deep Sea Dreaming” where a child (named the “Hero Girl”) skips out to play in the sand and pretends to put sunscreen on until she’s SHOT UP INTO THE SKY. I laughed so hard at this visual. Then, she’s herded by an aboriginal tribe in a terrifying visual that I’m sure is a core memory for many children watching the event.
This segment, and the event in general, is doing some heavy lifting in trying to heal the deeply complicated history of Australian colonialism. This is two years after the creation of a day of reconciliation with the most Australian-sounding name possible, Sorry Day. It seems like the right thing to do but also reeks of “oy, the world is watchin’ us, we beeta try and be less rayceest—let’s do a Sorry Day, then!”
There’s also a celebration of the industrial age via tap—somehow they manage to work tap dancing into every one of these it seems. In this one a group called Tap Dogs performs while they build the set live, Stop Making Sense style.
The American team looks appropriately dorky as usual.
2000 Highlight: The Parade
The closing ceremonies feature a parade. Now stop reading for a moment, and imagine what would be celebrated in a celebration of Australia? Be as gauche as possible…
Would it be Crocodile Dundee singing “Down Under” with Men At Work surrounded by giant lizards? How about a set from Savage Garden and an army of surfers? Or maybe the Bananas in Pyjamas, coming down the stairs?
It’s also the gayest Olympics opening ceremony, which sounds like an oxymoron. There’s also Kylie Minogue as a grown up version of the Hero Girl singing “Dancing Queen,” and a Priscilla, Queen of the Desert float. And with all the bullshit backlash about drag queens being part of the Paris events, it’s nice to see that drag was celebrated already a quarter century ago.
2000 Lowlight: Nikki Webster “Under The Southern Skies”
This sucks. Who wants this? The problem with these ceremonies is that they try to be everything to everybody, and you get all of these clashing ideas and an annoying little theater kid singing as if she’s uniting the world.
☆ ☆ ☆
TO BE CONTINUED….