As I explained on the night the stated theme of the para-Olympic opening ceremony was "Enlightenment." Officially this meant using science to dispel the myths about disability. This was done by just quoting word for word parts of William Shakespeare's "The Tempest." The central character from "The Tempest" is a father called "Prospero" who along with the help from a spirit "Ariel" who had been given to him by "Sycorax" - the witch (irrational magic) who previously inhabited the island but is never seen during the play - uses his knowledge of science (rational magic) to conjure up a storm or Tempest in order to shipwreck the man who banished him and his infant daughter "Miranda" to the island. For the purposes of the opening ceremony this was meant to show that scientific knowledge can conquer ignorance.
However as some 500 years after his death Shakespeare is still considered one the greatest playwrights ever to have lived his work clearly works on many levels. For example from my extensive study of "The Tempest" (wikipedia) I know that as Shakespeare's last play many people interpret Prospero's rational magic to be the theatrical tricks - such as making it appear that a storm is taking place inside the theatre - that actors and stage hands use to fool audiences and Prospero's rejection of such magic was Shakespeare announcing his retirement. However a deeper analysis is that Prospero's rational magic represents the human desire to harness and defeat the powers of nature through science and knowledge. This interpretation is highly relevant to the current global debate about how to respond to global warming/climate change which is one of the issues brought forward from the Olympics for more detailed discussion. On the one hand there are people who think humans can adapt to the effects of climate change by building levees, dams, pump-stations and big complicated machines that can control the weather. On the other hand there are people who think we really need to cut our greenhouse gas emissions to reduce climate change. As the big complicated machines are still only at the theoretical stage and recent events in the China, the USA, Spain and the Philippines demonstrate that when nature gets angry all humans can really do is run and hide I'm inclined to agree with the latter viewpoint and contend that Prospero's rejection of magic was simply a commentary on the ideology.
Edited at around 23:55 on 2/9/12 to add:
Act 1 should have begun with a fly-past by a fast-jet piloted by a physically disabled pilot in order to demonstrate that physically disability need not be a barrier to achievement. Unfortunately though because fast-jets are really difficult to fly rather then because of his physical disability the pilot turned up ever so slightly early. As a result rather then opening to the thunderous roar of jet engines the ceremony instead opened to the sound of jet engines quietly fading into the distance. We then handed over to our narrator for the evening Professor Stephen Hawking. As a sufferer of Motor Neurone Disease Pfr Hawking cannot speak naturally and must use a computer to communicate which doesn't make him a natural choice for a narration role. However Pfr Hawking is probably one of the most intelligent people alive anywhere in the world at the moment. Therefore his inclusion was to highlight the way in which science and technology can overcome the problems presented by physical disability and to demonstrate that physical disability is most certainly not always a indication of mental impairment. His inclusion was also a little dig from the British political left to the US political right. In their opposition to President Obama's health care reforms they asked people to think what would have happened if Stephen Hawking had been born in Britain claiming that the National Health Service (NHS) would have put him in front of a death panel and ruled him not worth treating. It was at this point someone pointed out that Professor Stephen Hawking is in fact British and has been treated by the NHS on many occasions.
Professor Stephen Hawking's practical role in the ceremony was to introduce/explain the major scientific discoveries that featured in the ceremony. He began by urging us to stop looking at our feet and start looking up at the stars. This was very much the ethos from which the para-Olympics were born with Dr Ludwig Guttman telling soldiers wounded in World War 2 to stop looking a place where their legs used to be while feeling sorry for themselves and instead get up and get on with it. Hawking's point was emphasised by a giant metal orb representing a star/moon/planet suspended above the stage forcing the audience to look up. Suddenly the orb crashed to the ground amid a bright flash of light. This was supposed to represent the "Big Bang Theory." This is the widely accepted theory of how the universe and everything in it began so it has to be the starting point for any discussion about physics (chemistry and biology are just physics for stupid people). It could also have been a reference to the now world famous US TV Show "The Big Bang Theory." As the central character "Sheldon Cooper" has many high functioning autistic (Asperger's Syndrome) personality traits one of the reasons the show got commission and then sold really cheaply to Britain's para-Olympic Channel 4 was that the US was hoping that I would watch the show alongside my father and help contribute to the knowledge of a not particularly well understood condition. Britain is keen to have this known now because it implicates the USA as a co-conspirator in my case. However the USA have since changed their Head of State and if there's something I don't like on TV I can always withdraw my consent to watch it by turning the TV off. As a result the show has gone on to make six seasons (so far) which have both entertained and educated millions of people about some of the more complex principles of science which I happen to think is no bad thing.
Hawking's narration made way for a parade of performers all carrying umbrellas while stage 'rain' (sprinklers and LED's) lashed the arena while a remixed version of Rihanna's hit "Umbrella" played. This was both a joke about Britain's famously changeable weather and a reference to both the storm or Tempest that opens the Shakespeare play "The Tempest" and the international superstar Rihanna. As with Summer Glau at the Olympics Rihanna is a high value target for Britain at the para-Olympics. To make matters worse Rihanna has been living in London throughout the summer as she works on a British TV that has recentely been panned by the critics. She will also be performing at the closing ceremony alongside British band Coldplay and they will definitely be playing their recent controversial hit "Princess of China." Rihanna first came to Britain's attention when her break out hit "Umbrella" stayed at the top of the sales charts for most of the summer of 2007. As it rained for most of Britain's 2007 summer people started saying that it was the Rihanna song that was causing it to rain. For most people this was just a joke but for people with a working knowledge of "Chaos Theory" and "Quantum Field/String Theory" it was a legitimate opportunity for further research. Rihanna further cemented her reputation in Britain by becoming involved in an abusive relationship with Chris Brown and her death warrant was signed when many participants in the August 2011 riots were recorded quoting lyrics from the song "Run This Town" which she did with Jay Z and Kanye West. Since then Britain has been trying to engage Rihanna in emotionally stressful situations such as getting her to perform at the 2012 BBC Radio 1's "One Big Weekend" in the riot hit London borough of Hackney and teaming up with the British DJ Calvin Harris to record "We Found Love" - a song about abusive relationships and self-destructive behaviour. As Rihanna sells a lot of records on the British market she keeps getting forced to keep coming back despite the fact the British state want to do her great harm. Amateur psychologists could compare this situation to an example of an abusive relationship such as the one Rihanna had with Chris Brown. Therefore I think Britain's dream for the closing ceremony is that it features Rihanna having a complete nervous breakdown/psychotic break in front of a live audience of around 4 billion people. Failing that they'll settle for me using the Internet to give Rihanna my advice about how to avoid a nervous breakdown/psychotic break furthering their knowledge of a not well understood condition.
The umbrella parade made way for a display of circus skills performed by amateur performers with various physical/mental disabilities while modern 'street' dance troupe Flawless performed on stage. The significance of this is that prior to Britain's current obsession with dancing as a cure all for absolutely everything which began in 2006/7 it had a similar obsession with circus skills. As a result we now have a significant number of "Mind in Croydon" style 'charities' banking lots of taxpayers money in order to teach circus skills to disabled people with negligible levels of success. In this time of reduced government spending I'm actually surprised more of these groups haven't had their metaphorical throats cuts. After all the best way to kill a circus is to go for the juggler/jugular (sorry bad pun). Also the use of amateur performers who don't need to be paid Equity (union) rates promotes discussion about the British government's "Workfare"/forced work program which is part of the 2011 Welfare Reform Act that also brought about the ATOS/DWP "Work Capability Assessment" that has been talked about so much at the 2012 para-Olympics.
00:55 on 3/9/12.
Edited at around 23:55 on 3/9/12 to add;
Flawless made way on stage for famous British actor Sir Ian McKellen who starred as "Gandalf" in "The Lord of the Rings" films which also featured a character called "Golem" and were filmed close the Mount Togaririo volcano in New Zealand. McKellen is also quite famous for publicly coming out as a homosexual during the 1980's to protest against Thatcher's Conservative government "Section 28" law. At the time gay-rights groups claimed that this section of the 1988 Local Government Act made it illegal to say that it is ok to be homosexual. However having discussed it at great length with people who are both homosexual and government lawyers the problem was really with people mis-interpreting the law rather then with the law itself. This of course leads into a discussion about Britain's rather confused relationship with the European Human Rights Act and the police's failure to arrest people for squatting in residential properties under Section 7 of the 1977 Criminal Law Act. McKellen's practical role in the ceremony though was to play the part of "Prospero" in Shakespeare's "The Tempest." So after giving us a word for word rendition of one of Prospero's speeches from the play McKellen introduced us to Prospero's daughter played by wheelchair bound actress "Nicola Miles-Wilden." Raised from the age of about three to the age of around fifteen when the play begins Miranda always represents innocence/social naivety and sexuality/passion. Also in the back story she is supposed to have fought off a rape attempt which is never shown in the play and not reference in the ceremony and because Prospero tries to marry her off to a prince for political reasons Miranda also raises all those questions about rape, paedophilia and appropriate sexual behaviour which have been a major theme throughout the 2012 Olympics. Miranda also always promotes discussion about arranged marriages that exist in many societies particularly in India and the differences between arranged marriages and the forced marriages which have become something of a cause celebre for groups like the English Defence League (EDL) in their battle of civilisations with Islam. However Britain's not really in much of a position to criticise though because one analysis of Prospero's education of Miranda that culminates with him setting her free to go on her own journey (represented in the ceremony by Miranda sailing off on an umbrella) was actually an artistic protest by Shakespeare trying to make the patriarchal society of 17th century Britain understand that women must be allowed to marry who the choose rather then who their father tells them too. By having Miranda being played by an actress Britain was also trying to raise questions about the right of and the practical problems presented by disabled people having sex. On one level this has not been specific to the para-Olympics because Britain was obsessed with the athlete's sex lives at the Olympics too. This is because some athletes are married to each of other and as with a university campus when you have a lot of people in the physical prime living together with not much to do people are going to have sex. Back in the days of the Cold War when homosexuality was illegal in the majority of nations this sexual activity was hugely important because it provided homosexual athletes the opportunity to engage in illicit affairs (helping to change attitudes towards homosexuality), a sexual relationship could be used as a cover for espionage and romantic relationships between individuals from two nations could be a way to strengthen cultural/diplomatic relations between entire nations. This last point was examined in the 1977 James Bond film "The Spy Who Loved Me." So when we talk about which athletes will be taking their duvets home with them we might be talking about something else that's been keeping them warm at night. The main reason though for bringing up the topic of disabled sex at the opening ceremony was to allow Britain to present itself as a global flag carrier for disabled rights helping to win friends in developing nations where disability let alone disabled sex are considered highly taboo.
00:35 on 4/9/12.
Edited at around 00:30 on 5/9/12 to play my party trick of uploading what I typed up and then burned to CD on an offline machine. So try and imagine how much cheaper this would be if my PC USB ports actually worked.
As the disabled Miranda was paraded to the audience we were also introduced to two of the three big peices of movable stage furniture that would be used at various times throughout the ceremony. The first of these was a giant apple being ridden by a woman in a wheelchair. During the first act the apple was not assigned any meaning but in the later acts it was used to represent the apple that fell on famous British scientist Sir Issac Newton's head helping him discover gravity, Apple computers and the Higgs boson particle that was first proposed by British scientist Professer Peter Higgs. Although the apple didn't become the Higgs particle until around act 6 I'll explain it's meaning here for now because it is relevent to the Rihanna/Umbrella thing. The recent discovery of the Higgs particle proved that absolutely everything in the universe including not just your physical body but your thoughts, dreams and emotions are simply tiny particles of electrical energy. I cannot emphasise enough just how broad and headache inducing that definition of everything is because it not only includes everything you can see, touch, imagine or concieve of but also the process by which you see, touch, imagine or concieve of them. These particles of electrical energy are only assigned mass and meaning to become things like computers, fingers or happiness etc by colliding with particles like the Higgs boson which make up something called the Quantum Field. As it is only in the last few months that we've proved the existence of this field we're still not sure exactly what it is let alone what it is like. However at a stretch I suppose you could compare it to the water in the Olympic swimming pool or that special honeycomb layer within the Olympic track that has been producing all those world records. If you're really pushing your luck I suppose you could also compare it to the carbon fibre that is used to make many of the prosthetics used by para-Olympic athletes. Some people say that the matrix in the film "The Matrix" was a reference to the Quantum Field. The reason why this area of physics is considered so exciting is because the theory is that if we can find some way to manipulate the Quantum Field - say by getting everyone to hum the same song at the same time - we will be able to control everything in the universe including say the weather or eathquakes. This could be one possibly explanation for the "Butterfly Effect" featured in "Chaos Theory" (a butterfly flapping it's wings in Brazil causes an earthquake in Australia) and why witches and wizards might actually be real. Obviously the potential for this sort of knowledge to be used as a weapon is absolutely immense but I should point it is so theoretical that we're really more sort of waiting to someone to conclusively prove why it can't happen rather then being about to start using weather controlling ray guns.
The second peice of movable stage furniture was a giant book clearly labelled in massive capital letters as the Universal Decleration on Human Rights (UDHR) which was rather unsuprisingly meant to represent the UDHR. Although not in any way legally binding the UDHR is one of the very first documents adopted by the newly formed United Nations (UN) in 1948. Specifically drawn up as a response to the horrors of the Nazi holocaust the UDHR set out specific rights that all humans regardless of age, race, gender or physical ability are entitled to. Primarily these are the rights to life and liberty but the document actually runs to around 16 seperate articles. In 1976 an ammended version of the UDHR became the International Bill of Human Rights (IBHR) which is legally binding and provides the basis for human rights legislation across the world including the European Convention on Human Rights Act. In an effort to emphasise the fact that the book was a reference to the UDHR and also confuse us about which scientific disoveries would be covered in the ceremony the word "LIGHT" appeared in massive capital letters on the stadium's big screens while a volunteer choir sang a specially composed a song which was basically just the preample to the UDHR only with the word "light" replacing the word "life."
As the UDHR or more accurately the legally binding IBHR more then any other document has improved the lives of disabled people and people generally across the world it's inclusion in the opening ceremony was to celebrate the progress that has been made and promote Britain on the world stage as a flag carrier for disabled rights and human rights. However as several aspects of my case along with the extraordinary rendition of prisoners and the use of torture as part of the global war on terror show that Britain is in clear violation of very large sections of the UDHR it's inclusion was designed to provoke a reaction about Britain's controversial behaviour. This point was really driven home by the fact that the UDHR sequence was immediately followed by the raising of the British Union (jack) Flag, the singing of the national anthem (God Save the Queen) and the arrival in the stadium of the Queen, the Duke and Duchess of Wessex and the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge who may as well have introduced themselves with the words; "We know what we've done now come and get us bitches!" Provocation aside though the choice of Royal guests was interesting. Prince Edward, Duke of Wessex is widely recognised as both a closeted homosexual and the runt of the Royal litter. His wife Sophie once fancied herself as a TV producer who knows all the tricks of the trade but only ended up bankrupting her production company. Prince William, Duke of Cambridge's wife Catherine comes from a middle-class rather then upper-class family and as such has faced accusations of being a social climber. Basically these are people who pretend to know more about high culture such as classical music and literature then they really do in order to trick their way into upper-class social circles and snare a rich husband. The upper-classes often take great pleasure in revealing thier shortcomings. #isitok to bring up etiquette and the British class system at this point?
This was really the end of the first act. Fortunately though the later acts really just empahsised or expanded on the issues raised in the first act so provided you could understand them and remember them during the very long parade of nations there was nothing new to learn.
00:40 on 5/9/12.
Edited at around 00:40 on 9/9/12 for hopefully the last time;
At the end of the first act British viewers were treated to an advert break. This highlighted the main difference between the Olympic coverage that was shown on the BBC - a non-commercial broadcaster - and the para-Olympic coverage that was shown on Channel 4 - a part state funded commerical broadcaster. The inclusion of advert breaks would become a major issue with Channel 4's coverage with major moments of sporting action being missed due to them. Therefore these leads into the global debate about the prominance given to the para-Olympics which I will get on to later. However in the openening ceremony Channel 4 was clearly working very closely with the ceremony organisers so where in the Olympic ceremonies we got a band doing a quick song to distract from the stage being reset in the para-Olympic ceremony we got advert breaks instead. One of the main adverts featured in this first break for for the Olympic sponsor British Petroleum (BP) encouraging the viewer to use social media (Facebook/Twitter) to vote for their favourite TeamGB athlete with the winner being featured in future adverts. This desire for viewers to take to social media was really driven home by the first song played during the Parade of Nations -"Push the Button" by the "Chemical Brothers" - imediately after the advert break had finished. Apart from being an attempt to 'people-farm' viewers reactions to the ceremony this was to promote a discussion about the role of advertising in the social media age. Basically TV advertisers hate social media and the TV stations those adverts pay for have a love/hate relationship with it. This is because while it can gather huge amounts of information about potential customers in this age of iPads and smartphones as soon as advert breaks come on TV lots of people ignore them and use social media instead. As a result while an advertiser may pay for an advert in a program with 20 million viewers there's a good chance only 5 million of those people will actually watch the advert. Due to their financial problems Britain's Channel 4 is really in this debate going so far as to set up a Freeview channel (4/7 - channel 47) dedicated to showing the Channel 4 shows from the past seven days that have been most talked about on social media. The joke being that the programs that people talk about the most on social media are actually the shows that people find the most boring so use social media as a distraction.
Immediately after the advert break ended we went straight into the second act - Parade of Nations. This was a break from tradition because the Parade of Nations normally takes place towards the middle/end of Olympic/para-Olympic ceremonies. In part this was to find out if members of the Olympic family believed my accusation that the athletes were brought into the Olympic closing ceremony early in order to stress them out by exposing the the disorientating and generally weird ceremony. Mainly though this was to promote a discussion about the prominance given to the para-Olympics versus the Olympics. Essentially there are two schools of thought on this. Firstly there are the people who see the Olympics as just an excuse to discuss politics with the Olympics being the broad and general discussion and the para-Olympics being the place for more detailed and specific discussion. These people are not keen for the public to know that any form of political discussion is going on and most certainly don't want the public to know anything about the very detailed discussions. The second group are people who see the Olympics as simply a sporting event and therefore want to share it with as many people as possible. In order to present itself as a defender of human and disabled rights Britain wanted to convince everybody that it was in the second group but being an totaliterian nation it's really in the first group. So they made a big show of giving equal prominance to the para-Olympic ceremony but also made sure the least exciting part of the ceremony - the parade of nations - began at 21:00 (local) which is the prime-time slot on British TV where all the best shows start in the hope that people would simply change the channel and forget about the para-Olympics. Similarly by holding the ceremony in the middle of the working week and making sure that it badly over-ran they were hoping that most people would simply go to bed. Obviously this is a constant debate between the International Para-Olympic Committee (IPC) who own the broadcast rights and all the global broadcasters who broadcast the games. Britain's Channel 4 coverage was actually the best para-Olympic coverage ever but that really says more about the general level of coverage given to the para-Olympics rather then Channel 4's coverage. Although they did improve under pressure from viewers rather then showing sport Channel 4 focused on a studio based format rather like a 24-hour news channel that featured presenters introducing recorded highlights rather then live events. This coupled with the fact a lot of the Channel 4 presenters were presenting live TV (not an easy job) for the first time meant that it was almost impossible to follow a specific sport from start to finish. I think Channel 4 were also trying to satires the BBC News Channel which these day's seems loathe to cover any actual news.
The third act was the flag ceremony and was rather tame. It began with a blind opera singer peforming an orginal composition which was supposed to be dedicated to the victims of the July 7th 2005 (7/7/05) London bombings which came the day after Britain won the right to host the 2012 games. Apart from bringing up all the arguments about that and the provocative way this was handled in the Olympic opening ceremony this was an attempt to show a person with a disability doing something impressive that requires a lot of skill. The flag was carried in by very uncontroversial members of the British under 22 basketball. It was accompanied by an instrumental version of the hymn "I Vow To Thee My Country" which like "Abide With Me" in the Olympic opening ceremony is a British military hymn but is actually very rarely used at funerals/memorial services. The tune of the hymn though does sound very similar to "World in Union" which is the theme music for the Rugby Union World Cup so casual viewers - especially rugby fans - might have got the songs confused making themselves look foolish in the process.
The fourth act featured Miranda's introduction to books/knowledge restating all the issues raised in the first act. This featured the words; "Brave New World" being flashed up on the big screens in the stadium. This of course is the titled of a novel by British author "Aldous Huxley" which tells of a distopion future where science, technoloy and a totaliterian one world government limits the population to 2 billion by cleansing it of undesirables. This obviously rasies all the ethical questions about scientific development mentioned in the first act. However Huxley actually deliberately took the title of his book from a speech in Shakespeare's "The Tempest" so this may well have caught out people who like to pretend they've read books they actually haven't. Similarly the classic music used throughout this act was "Source of Light Devine" by Handel. However this sounds a bit like "Pie Jesu" which is a Latin phrase meaning "Godly Peace" and is used in various Catholic funeral requiems by various composers most famously Faure. British composer Andrew Lloyd Webber also did a populist version of it though that was released by Charlotte Church so again casual viewers may well have got the songs confused making themselves look foolish in the process.
The fifth act featured 16 year old pop-star/musical prodigy "Birdie" performing her song "Birdgirl" while a legless (double above the knee amputee) danced in time to the music before being lifted up into the air on wires attached to his shoulders. The music and the dance routine were perfectly synchronised in order to promote discussion about the shortage of disabled people in the theatre/movies/TV. Apart from the fact that these are very visual mediums where what a person looks like is often the entire point there are practicle problems - for example a person in a wheelchair will not be able to run up and down stairs backstage in order to do a quick costume change. The point of this sequence was to present Britain as a friend of the disabled by showing what a performers with an obvious physical disability is capable of.
The sixth act featured Prospero looking through a giant telescope that was a reference to climate change by referencing Copernicus' uses of a telescope to prove that the earth revolves around the sun. It took the Catholic Church until 1994 to finally accept that Copernicus was correct and this level of stubboness really sums up Britain's attitude towards man-made climate change. Then Miranda led the audience in the mass taking a bite out of an apple. This was to promote discussion about the long running patent dispute between Apple and Olympic sponser Samsung. As Apple is attempting to argue that any smartphone that is rectangular in shape with rounded corners and a touchscreen is infringing on it's iPhone patent if the courts rule in their favour the iPhone will become really the only smartphone you can buy. This raises serious questions about monopolies and competition within a capitalist economy and presents a massive civil rights/privacy issue because if everyone in the world has smartphones and the only smartphone is the Apple iPhone then the Apple corporation will have massive control over large parts of the world population. So Britain was trying to find out what everyone thinks about this debate while cozying up to Samsung by appearing to send the message that someone needs to take a big bite out of Apple. Prospero then sent Miranda off in her umbrella boat to raise all the questions about arranged and forced marriages mentioned in the first act.
The seventh act began with British dance music DJ's "Orbital" playing a thumping set on their Apple iPads in case anyone missed the signifance the mass apple biting. It was during this set that the giant apple turned into the Higgs boson particle and Professor Hawking's explained the significance of the Higgs as it relates to Quantum theory and the Rihanna/Umbrella thing. The dance party suddenly turned into a political protest for disabled rights which was a reference to the way the 1980's Acid House/Rave scene turned into the anti-capitalist/Reclaim the Streets protests of the 1990's through the introduction of the 1994 Criminal Justice Act. A wheelchair bound performer from the west-end musical "Grease" then pretended to be the disabled 1970/80's British punk legand Ian Dury by singing his famous song "Spasticus Autisticus." This song was originally written as a protest against attitudes towards disability specifically the Nazi-like way the medical profession veiw disabled people with it being very hard to tell whether the lyrics were "Spasticus" or "Swastika." The cheesy way if which this 'protest' was acted out was rather well done because disabled people will have interpreted it as a protest for disabled rights while medical people would have interperted it as mocking disabled people for thinking they have rights. The act ended with a giant version of the infamous statue of a pregnent Alison Lapper (who lacks arms or legs) that appeared on the empty fourth plinth in Trafalger Square. At the time this was a commentary on disbled sex and repoduction. It's meaning in the ceremony did not change.
The eighth act was the flame lighting ceremony. The torch was carried into the stadium by Joe Townsend a Royal Marine who lost both legs in Afghanistan descending on a 150m zip-wire which was a reference to London Mayor Boris Johnson's small problem with a zip-wire during the Olympics. Townsend passes the torch to TeamGB blind footballer David Clarke who passed the torch to Britain's first ever winner of a para-Olympic Gold medal (in 1960) Margret Maughan who lit the cauldron.
The show was closed by British soul singer Beverly Knight who despite having a fantastic voice is generally just too much of a nice person to count as a fully fledged pop-star. She sung "I Am Who I Am" from the musical "La Cage aux Folles." As the musical is about a gay couple running a gay caberet club this song is very much a gay anthem about being comfortable with who you are. In the closing ceremony it was meant to celebrate disabled people's pride in their abilites and disabilites. While I'm sure this may have worked for many disabled veiwers - especially gay ones who like the musical - I can't help but think that many of competitors - especially the ex-soldiers - would have found this very condescending and offensive. That of course was the point raising the question of whether disabled people should be pitied or treated as equals who occassionally need a bit of help climbing stairs or getting things off high shelves.
As for the closing ceremony from the rumours I've heard apart from the compulsary parts such as the flag ceremony and the extingushing of the cauldron they'll basically just bring the athletes in early to enjoy a concert by the band Coldplay. The bands set though is supposed to represent the changing of the seasons form spring to summer to autumn to winter. Therefore apart from the introduction of British Summer Time by David Lloyd George during the First World War the main theme will be climate change particularly China's role in climate change negotiations. Obviously there will be lots of surprises and odd things too including apparently a group of 'travellers' trying to invade the stage. This could be a reference to the eviction of the Dale Farm gypsy/traveller site in Essex but I think mainly it's a reference to the new age travellers that sprung up as part of the 1980's rave scene and contribute to Climate Camp. The climax to the show will be Rihanna joining Coldplay on stage to perform the duet "Princess of China." As with all good art this song can be interepreted in many different ways but I think native English speakers will view it as gently mocking China's corrupt local politicians while I think China's corrupt local politicans will view it as something of an athemn.
As for Rihanna any psychiatrist viewing her Twitter feed is going to conclude that she's quite stressed. This is no great surprise because on Thursday she was a the MTV Video Music awards where she had to meet up with her ex-boyfriend Chris Brown and performed a version of the song "We Found Love" with Calvin Harris which won best video and everybody was talking about. On top of that someone's been hacking a Rihanna fan site called "Queen Rihanna" or something. I know nothing about the site or why it was set up but the hack seems to be an attempt to suggest that Rihanna is acting as a 'Queen Bee.' While I'm sure every society has it's own version this is a term of abuse used to describe women who use their feminity/sexuality to get men to do things for them. This is especially common within the pop industry with stars of limited talent *coughs* Madonna who surround themselves with talented people in order to 'ride the trend' to make themselves more famous. The implication is that Rihanna is trying to use me in this way but hey I'm a big boy. Another problem is that celebrity blogger Perez Hilton has leaked the fact that Rihanna will soon be embarking on a "Diamond Tour." This could be a reference to the "Diamond League" which is a prototype track and field competition that nations with Monarchs (Britain, Belgium, Netherlands etc) are trying to put together to get people interested in track and feild events in between Olympics. This is what British Olympic boss Seb Coe was refering today when he was talking about the need for more coverage of Olympic sports. The problem is that the track and feild calender is already packed with international competitions and the Diamond League did appear to be attempting to distract track and field fans from the para-Olympics through the scheduling of it's meets. I think Rihanna's main problem though this that she's been relegated to the role of my girlfreind which makes her a metaphor for all my ex-girlfriends and me a metaphor for all her ex-boyfriends. This also raises an interesting debate about the way we relate to celebrities in the digital age because it must said that Twitter is full of teenage girls who are convinced they know and are in love with members of boybands they've never met. By running a campaign ad that shows a woman trying to break up with a cardboard cut out of Barack Obama the Republican Party are actually trying to mock this sort of thing in order to win the 2012 Presidential vote. I suppose it also feeds into a debate about arranged marriage, forced marriage and internet dating. Although forced marriage is something very different arranged marriage is basically someone's parents and friends suggesting they get to know people that the parents and friends think they'll be compatible. As we 'advance' as a society this practice is starting to die out as old fashioned but more and more people are asking Internet dating sites to find them people they might be compatible with.
As for the ceremony itself my one big tip is to try to enjoy it rather then analyse it because that's what I do and trust me that sucks all the fun out of it. I may be blogging through it but then again I may not because it's one of those things I can't really decide about until it starts at 19:30 local (18:30GMT).
00:45 on 9/9/12.
