What a spectacular opening to the XXIX Olympiad in Beijing on August 8.
The world watched amazed at three and a half hours of pure magic where a fusion of human creativity and technology resulted in an unprecedented show of the visual and performance arts.
The key word here is "show".
The opening and closing ceremonies have been billed as high profile events directed by famed Chinese film maker Zhang Yimou and solidly backed up by American film maker Steven Spielberg, Head of the French Entertainment group ECA2 Yves Pepin and Ric Birch, Director of the Sydney Olympic games. And yet, in a span of five days, at least two negative stories have made news headlines.
First that the giant fireworks footprint was faked and then that Lin Miaoke – the angel in the red dress who sang Ode To The Motherland – was actually lip synching to a recording by another little girl called Yang Peiyi who didn't quite have the stage presence. Neither story has been denied by the Chinese authorities. Both have been explained as a move to make the opening ceremony "the most spectacular ever". As a matter of fact both stories were first published in Beijing newspapers.
There's no business like show business. It is well known that special effects are used in the world of entertainment without a second thought. After all, the end goal is to wow the audience for a set span of time.
Lip synching
The men who put the opening ceremony together are all showmen. And lip synching in the entertainment business is the rule rather than the exception, until the performer drops the microphone and is then criticised more for bungling the act and getting caught. The biggest cases were that of Mili Vanilli, Ashlee Simpson and Luciano Pavarotti. The nightingale of India, Lata Mangeshkar, has recorded thousands of songs for hundreds of hit Bollywood films and yet never actually made it to the silver screen because she is not a photographer's delight. However, she has made a plethora of sexy sirens even more famous because they lip synched to her songs.
The Olympics come by once every four years and has always been about the indomitable human spirit in sport. Let's celebrate that and the sportsmen and women who have trained very hard to go for gold and please let's stop whining about what has offended our senses.
Some of us may not agree with China's politics but this has nothing to do with the sporting spirit. And entertainment is just that. When the closing ceremony rolls around let's just enjoy the show.
Nirmala Janssen
editor@alnisrmedia.com
