We watched the Olympics all day so that you didn’t have to.
And now we finish it off with a look at the Closing Ceremonies. I wasn’t planning to write about the Closing, but having seen it, I was so taken aback by how weird it was (which is the polite term), that I thought it deserved comment. In fairness, I know that they were dealing with a worldwide pandemic, and there are simply things they could not do. So, I did my best not to judge it by normal standards as much as reasonable. Mainly, I tried to use the Opening Ceremonies as a comparison point, seeing what they had at their disposal and could do there. And I wasn’t bowled over by that. But by comparison, the Opening Ceremonies were Shakespeare as done produced by the extravagant Ziegfield Follies. The Closing Ceremonies were really weird and for my taste fared poorly. First though some comments about the NBC broadcast itself. When Tara Lipinski and Johnny Weir made their initial appearance for the network, it was a few years back during the Winter Olympics, and they were not the #1 skating announcing team. They were sort of auditioning on a minor NBC channel (I forget which one) that was carrying all the skating, as opposed to the main NBC with their #1 team on primetime. And I kept writing what a terrific job Lipinski and Weir did, along with anchor Terry Gannon. They were fresh, smart and interesting. And they still sort of are – when they are doing skating. Though I find that they’ve gotten a bit sloppy, and less insightful. But audience rightly loved them at first when eventually transferred to NBC as the new #1 – and since then, NBC tries to use them as much as possible. And for my taste, they just aren’t up to be as good with “everything” as they can do (at their best) with skating. Further, though their devil-my-care attitude was fun initially, they seem to have taken it to heart and decided that they are the show, and the event they’re covering is secondary. That’s always a big mistake. And it’s carried over a bit to even skating. But especially when it’s not skating, it’s overpowering. And trying to fill two hours with commentary for a topic that’s not their field – and the Closing Ceremonies of the Summer Olympics is not the field for these two ice skater – the flamboyance and thinness was very overpowering. There are so many times you can be told that the memories will stay with these athletes forever. Also, it’s a big mistake by NBC not to have a sportscaster who has been covering the Games on the broadcast. That allows the person to pick out faces of the American and international athletes in the crowd and talk about what they did during the game. Without that, it’s just a mass of humanity. Terry Gannon is a sportscaster, but he had no involvement with covering the Summer Olympics, so he was out of his normal element. At the very least, they could have had spotters in the booth feeding names to the announcing team – but you still need the knowledge of who they are and what they did. And…nothing. They weren’t “bad.” But they weren’t good. And they were a lot closer to bad. Mostly, they were flat, repetitious, and more boring than idea. Their saving grace is that they have engaging personalities, especially when not trying to make themselves the show, and periodically did let that come forth. Which brings us to the Closing Ceremonies themselves. Oh, my. I was actually really impressed with their opening piece, which was a sort of computer-generated waterfall of lights that “spilled” from the top of the stadium to the field and them lofted into the sky to become the Olympic rings. I thought, wow, if that’s their standard, these Closing Ceremonies have a chance of being pretty good. It was not the standard. It was the high point and plummeted from there. And I want to be clear about something. I did say above that I know they had limitations due to the pandemic. But I’ve written here a few times about a Pan-Asian Obon Festival event that is held annually a few blocks from me, put on by a local Buddhist temple. I’ve even posted video of one of the highlights, when they have several hundred members of the temple fill the street and march around doing traditional dances in costume, to music and a big drummer. It’s wonderful. And if they could put that on down the block, that’s a starting point for my comparisons of what the Tokyo Closing Ceremonies producers came up with. Some random thoughts. I don’t begin to know what the person who chose the music for the entrance of the athletes was thinking. It was sort of like someone took the “Monty Python” theme and decided to change the tempo and mix it with bad, fake disco and add some circus tunes they had in their archives. The opening presentation of supposedly “bringing Tokyo to the Olympics” was a mess. At first, I thought it was just the athletes on the field dancing around, letting off steam, and doing “stuff.” But then I realized, no, those are actually performers and this was all planned and choregraphed. And all that “stuff” they’re doing is supposed to be the best of Tokyo. I kept thinking that the athletes watching this on the field must have been bewildered by the “stuff” going on around them. With all the athletes on the field, the best and most moving moment was when the camera caught U.S. women’s volleyballer Haleigh Washington sitting and staring at her Gold medal, overwhelmed by it all and weeping, eventually hugging a friend tight in joy. It was a great moment. It would have been nice if the announcers had a clue about who she was and talked about her part in the Games – and who the other athlete was (who I couldn’t identify), but…nah, silence. Then, they had a sad, dancing tree. There was what I’ll call a kimono dance and one of those terrific, big pounding drums, and that was pretty good, especially compared to the rest of the mess. Not as good as the Obon temple down the block from me, but still, very nice. Then the flag bearers from all the nations came in, and just when you’re sure they’re going to have rousing, Olympic march music to accompany them, it was…well, I don’t know how to describe it other than it was like something mellow from cool jazz pianist George Shearing. And then, we had our NBC announcers tell us that coming next was the presentation from Paris, which is going to be hosting the next Summer Games, so be sure to stick around because “You’re not going to want to miss this.” Yipes. To be clear, it had some nice things in it. Cycling over rooftops was great. And making the Eifel Tower a flagpole was good. And some other things. But this was Paris! The proud holders of world culture. And they’ve had probably eight years to plan what they were going to do, to inspire the world to join them in 2024. And…this is what they came up with? Beginning with perhaps the most inspiring national anthem in the world – La Marseilles!! – a song that drove the French Revolution, performed with an arrangement so lovely and soporific that it slowed the thing down to a pace that could not have invigorated even a sloth. And then, what seemed like an homage to extreme cycling, followed by France patting themselves on the back by featuring like half a dozen French Gold medal winners from the current Olympics. And all topped off – at a presentation for the world’s great event promoting international peace -- by military jets doing a flyover. It’s not that it was bad. It was just empty and without structure and pompous and political. And finally, returning to Tokyo, they finished things off with a lady and seven children (clearly, the obligatory Olympic homage honoring the Children are Our Future), performing a song that I kept thinking at any moment they would be breaking into singing “Do-Re-Mi” that went into long performance piece, rushing around and always looking up into the sky and pointing at something that I suspect they didn’t even know what they were doing, but just told to look like they were full of wonderment. And then the IOC called an end to the Games and called the Youth of the World to come together in Paris in 2024. I will say that since this year’s Olympics were weird all the way through for many reasons, not the least of which that they were held and not postponed again, though managed reasonably well, despite no crowds in the stands, it was only fitting to go out with the weirdest Closing Ceremonies I’ve seen. Even considering the understandable limitations they had. And “weird” is the polite term. If only they’d hired the program director for my local Buddhist Temple Obon Festival.
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AuthorRobert J. Elisberg is a political commentator, screenwriter, novelist, tech writer and also some other things that I just tend to keep forgetting. Feedspot Badge of Honor
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