The 2014 Olympic Opening Ceremony.

Last night the 2014 Winter Olympics officially opened in Sochi, Russia with the traditional opening ceremony. If I had to identify a main theme of this ceremony it would be;

"Russia: There Long Before Communism. Still Here After."

It is traditional for Olympic opening ceremonies to welcome visitors by teaching them a little bit about the host nation's history and culture. For Russia this is particularly important because when you ask people about Russia everyone immediately talks about the Communism of the Soviet Union completely ignoring the long and rich history of this vast nation. In a way that is the Russians own fault because under Communism any reference to Russia's pre-Revolution history or cultural giants were banned for being too bourgeois or subversive to revolutionary ideals. Also due to the Cold War mentality many in the west still find it difficult to say anything nice about the old enemy.

From the start the opening ceremony set about to change this with the opening video centring on the 33 letter Russian alphabet. Each letter was represented by a famous Russian or a Russian achievement in science or technology. So for example there was novelist Alexander Pushkin, artist Wassily Kandinsky, playwright Anton Chekhov, classical composer Peter Tchaikovsky, Igor Sikorsky who founded the Sikorsky helicopter corporation and physicist Albert Einstein along with famous Russian leaders such as Catherine the Great and Peter the Great.  Noticeable by their absence were any of the great icons of Russian Communism such as Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, Alexander Bogdanov or Joseph Stalin which was a conscious effort to play down that element of Russian history. The video did address the fact the Russia was the first nation to put an object into orbit and the first nation to send a man into space but managed to gloss over the political backdrop to these great achievements making no reference to either the Cold War or the Space Race with the US.

The opening act established the narrative for the ceremony of a little girl called Lubov (Russian for love) taking a journey across Russia and its history. This began with Lubov being hoisted onto a high-wire to give the impression of her flying over nine islands that were also suspended in the air. These nine islands were supposed to represent Russia's nine different timezones and environmental regions that stretch from the Asian deserts of Russia's borders with Mongolia and China through to the frigid arctic cold of Siberia.

Above Lubov and the islands there were further pieces of set which initially were in the shape of the moon and stars to represent time, navigation and travel. However a crescent moon was used. Hostorically the crescent moon represents the Roman moon god "Sin" while the stars have been used to represent "Venus" the Roman goddess of love. Of course since then the crescent moon and star symbol has been co-opted by Islam and the Ottoman Empire in particular which stretched up to the border of the Russian Empire in the Caucus region where Sochi is located. Therefore the use of the crescent moon and stars could also have been interpreted as a reference to the security threat to the games from Islamists in the Caucuses or the medieval Islamic nation known as the Fertile Crescent which is roughly made up of Lebanon and Palestine and borders the Levant which the Syrian insurgents are desperately trying to create in order to bring about the end of the world.

It was as this sequence was drawing to a close and Russian President Vladimir Putin along with other VIP guests were preparing to take their seats that the ceremony lurched firmly into existential ink-blot territory. By this point the 'stars' had turned into 'snowflakes' to represent those infamous Siberian winters and, well, the winter Olympics. The 'snowflakes' were brought together in the centre of the stage and began opening like flowers to become the Olympic rings. The problem was that the final snowflake failed to open out into an Olympic ring.

At a games where the facilities have been plagued by poor workmanship and low standards this could have been a genuine technical failure. Alternatively it could have been a deliberate act of sabotage by the production staff to embarrass Putin. Many in the gay rights community were quick to suggest that the rings refusal to 'come out' was a protest against Russia's anti-gay propaganda laws and you can certainly get a million and one smutty gay jokes out of the spectacle of a ring failing to open.

Furthermore although all the rings were white the specific ring that failed to open was the red ring so its failure to appear could have been a reference to the Communist red that had been noticeably absent from history of Russia so far in the ceremony. Also there is a popular misconception that the five Olympic rings represent the five continents with the red ring representing north America. Therefore the failure of the ring could have been a specific slight to the US or a comment on the US' boycotting of the 1980 Moscow Olympics and debate about whether the US would boycott the Sochi Olympics.

Finally if you caught it at the right angle the unopened ring looked like the fuse of a cartoon bomb that the green ring had been turned into. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used a drawing of a cartoon bomb to discuss Russian ally Iran's nuclear program at the 2012 United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) so the ring failure could have been a reference to that or a joke about the terrorist threat to the Sochi games. After all Russians do have an absolutely wicked sense of humour.

Following the ring failure Putin and other VIP's took their seats and there was the traditional singing of the anthems of the host nation and the Olympic movement and the raising of the flags. While the Russian national flag was being raised skaters dressed in red, white and blue formed a giant Russia flag on the stage and even managed to give the effect of it waving in the breeze by skating forwards and backwards in formation. Appreciating how difficult that was I thought this was rather cool.

Following the raising of the flags the ceremony moved straight onto the parade of nations which saw the athletes enter the area.  This involved the floor of the arena opening up to reveal a submerged ramp in its centre which the athletes emerged from. Again this is technically quite a difficult to achieve. As the nations were emerging lights were used to project an image of each nation onto the floor so each team actually emerged from the nation they were from although this lost a lot of its impact when it came to the landlocked nations. The only real controversy of the parade came from an Austrian athlete who slipped and fell flat on his face. Now this could have just been an accident but the floor wasn't that slippery and no-one else fell so a lot of people suspect that Austria did something embarrassing on purpose as a response to Russia's perceived embarrassment at the Olympic ring failing to open.

Obviously there is a lot more for me to do but I think we need to consider this a work in progress mainly because I still really hungover.

17:15 on 8/2/14 (UK date).

Edited at around 20:05 on 8/2/14 (UK date) to add;

Following the parade of nations the opening ceremony went into a very long second act in which Lubov travelled through the history of Russia from medieval times up to the present day. Helpfully it began with a short video explaining all this. Quite a few people will have noticed the the medieval Russia depicted in the video closely resembled the visual style of the TV show "Game of Thrones." This was a deliberate response to a tendency in the west - particularly in the UK - to portray Russia and former Soviet states as deeply impoverished backwaters where everybody lives in mud huts and travel around by horse and cart. Therefore rather then stealing from Game of Thrones the opening ceremony was using it as a cultural reference point to highlight how inaccurate this portrayal of modern Russia is.

Once the video had ended what I am now terming airborne sky furniture in the shape of a Russian Troika of horses appeared pulling the sun. The sun was represented by a large red ring just like the large red Olympic ring that had failed to appear in the previous act. This was intended to suggest that perhaps it wasn't a genuine technical fault that prevented the red Olympic ring from appearing. A Troika of horses is a very famous icon of Tsarist Russia which is hugely fast with the three horses acting in unison to pull a carriage at speeds of up to 50mph (80kmph). As such it has become a symbol of Russian strength and power with the significance spreading far beyond Russia. For example the combined efforts of the European Union (EU), the European Central Bank (ECB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to bailout Eurozone economies are frequently referred to as "The Troika" no doubt much to the Russians amusement. Troika is the Russian word for Threesome so by including it in the opening ceremony Russia appeared to be mocking it's own anti-gay propaganda laws because surely discussing this great traditional Russian icon couldn't possibly be interpreted as promoting a type of non-traditional sexual relationship now could it?

Following the sun onto the stage came a number of colourful, onion domed buildings in the style of the Kremlin. Surrounded by what were later revealed to be dancers and acrobats these buildings arrived on stage in the shape of a fish. This was a reference to the Fisht arena in which the opening ceremony was taking place. Obviously in English Fisht sounds a lot like Fish but the arena is actually named after the nearby Fischt mountain whose name means something like snow covered or snow domed. Eventually the fish broke apart and revealed a traditional Russia medieval village in order to point out that while Europeans were running around playing Game of Thrones and the US hadn't even been invented the Russians were doing things like building Saint Basil's Cathedral - that colourful, onion domed building that is often mistaken for the Kremlin.

Playing a key role in the medieval carnival were Cossack dancers. Apart from all the Soviet-era things Cossack dancers with their fur hats, waistcoats, flowing trousers and knee-high boots are probably one of the most widely recognised symbols of Russia. However their history is particularly significant to Sochi. Cossacks are sort of a tribe of warriors and their traditional homeland is the area in and around Sochi. Under the Russian Empire the Cossacks were given special status by the Tsars to protect Russia from attack by the Ottoman Empire in the Black Sea region and Sochi was initially settled as a Cossack fortress. Used by the Tsar to fight the revolutionaries Cossacks dramatically fell out of favour in the Communist-era but were re-formed specifically to help protect the Olympics from terrorist attack.

The medieval sequence was swept away by the reign of Peter the Great and the Russian Empire. Peter the Great built the Russian Empire by turning Russia into a great sea-faring nation massively building up its navy particularly on the Baltic and Black Seas. Although this is just the story of how a massively important era of Russian history happened the importance of warm water ports to Peter the Great's navy has some resonance to the conflict in Syria where certain nations have falsely claimed that Russia is only supporting the Syrian government in order to hold onto it's warm water port at Tartus. Also Russia's shortage of warm water sea ports touches on its strategy of speeding up global warming in order to open up arctic shipping routes which Russia indicated it is now abandoning at 2013's COP19/CMP9 Summit. Finally all this talk of sailing ships and navies puts us dangerously into Rihanna territory because while her 2013 tour caused everyone a lot of headaches Russia was hit twice in both the European and South-East Asian legs.

Having established how the Russian Empire had been built the opening ceremony set out to tell the story of Tsarist Russia through a very shortened ballet performance of famous Russian author Leo Tolstoy's epic novel War and Peace. War and Peace of course tells the story of five aristocratic Russian families over the period of about 8 years during which Russia was invaded by Napoleonic France. Ballet is something that Russia is very famous for, is very good at and takes incredibly seriously so therefore wants to show off. As such I think the ballet dancers were supposed to represent the Saint Petersburg Ballet Academy that Peter the Great founded. However in actual fact I think they were from the Bolshoi Ballet which is Russia's premier ballet school. The Bolshoi Ballet recently had a little bit of trouble when its artistic director had his face burned off with acid in what seemed like a Russian hint to the US that they're weren't being fooled by the Chris Brown element of the Rihanna operation. Therefore their inclusion seemed to be another reminder to the US that there is nothing that Rihanna or any other member of the Live Nation family can do that will even remotely trouble a graduate of the Bolshoi Ballet.

Taking a bit of a historical liberty the ballet dancers ended their performance by sort of clumping together and collectively swaying as if being blown around by violent ill-winds. This was supposed to symbolise the unrest that gripped Russia at the end on the Napoleonic-era and eventually led to the 1917 Communist revolution.

Edited at around 13:05 on 9/2/14 (UK date) to add;

Inevitably the fall of the Tsars had to be followed by the rise of Communist Russia. However rather then relying on the traditional imagery of Lenin nobly freeing the workers from their shackles the opening ceremony instead decided to concentrate of the era of Stalin in order to provide a rather negative portrayal of Communism. As a result there was a lot of stark industrial imagery including one piece of stage furniture that resembled the warhead of a nuclear missile. The use of black lighting and smoke effects led to the famous Communist red to resemble the fiery cauldrons of hell. In fact the way that the Communist-era was pulled in on the back of a steam locomotive was supposed to provide a direct contrast to the way the medieval-era was pulled in on the back of a Troika of horses. Under the Tsars Russian mail was moved around and delivered by Troikas of horses until they were replaced by the steam train during the industrial revolution which occurred at roughly the same time as the Communist revolution. I think we can all agree that three handsome horses pulling an ornate carriage bedecked in musical bells is far more beautiful then a dirty, clanking steam train.

Although it's hard to compare them directly to any real world object the stage furniture during this sequence resembled the machinery used in heavy industry such as the cogs of giant machines or the threshing machines and tractors used in large-scale farming. This was all a reference to the centralised socialist economy that was set up by Joseph Stalin through the introduction of the first five year plan. This saw the government take control of all aspects of industry and farming ordering millions of workers away from their homes to go work in far off farms and forced labour camps (Gulags). It was also a complete disaster that led to famines in which millions died. In response to criticism of his failed policy Stalin launched the Great Purge in 1934 which saw political opponents being executed at the rate of around 1000 per day and left around 11 million dead in total.

There was then a short sequence covering World War Two. Soviet Russia's role in World War was immense and decisive against Nazi Germany but it was achieved largely through the extreme brutality of Stalin. For example a popular tactic of Stalin's Red Army was to assemble regiments of political dissidents and undesirables (Jews, Gypsies etc) whose job it was to march into enemy mine-fields in order to clear the way for Russian tanks. Also the Soviet victory in World War Two led to the formation of the Soviet Bloc and the start of the Cold War. Therefore the opening ceremony did rather play down Russia's role in the Second World War because while they are proud of the sacrifices their people made it is not a period of history they want to repeat. Finally the part of Russia's involvement in the Second World War that everybody is most familiar with is the decisive Battle of Stalingrad. Having now reverted to its original name of Volgograd this has been something of a touchy subject in the run-up to the games.

With the Second World War out of the way the ceremony moved into a sequence covering what was supposedly the golden age of Russian Communism that covered the Cold War up until the 1990's. Here happy and brightly coloured people were shown joyously dancing in the streets while iconic cars of the era such as the Moskvich of the workers, the Cahika of the Party bigwigs and the Zim of the KGB drove around the arena. During this sequence everybody was so happy, smiley and enthusiastic that it had to be sarcasm because this referred to a period of Russian history where the Communist Party was constantly drumming into the population that the Soviet Union was the greatest nation that had ever existed. Although unofficial record keeping was very scarce the majority of ordinary Russians simply did not believe this. The images of newspapers that were projected onto the stage represented the state-run media that pumped out this constant Communist propaganda. Chief amongst these was the "Pravda" newspaper that was founded by Lenin and whose name which literally translates as "Truth" quickly became a joke.

The use of newspapers being projected onto the stage and cars being driven around the arena was a reference to sequences within the London 2012 Olympic closing ceremony. Despite the fact that this Winter Olympic opening ceremony was supposed to pick up where the 2010 Vancouver closing ceremony left off the UK have been trying to muscle in on the action. Mainly this has involved trying to embarrass Russia by claiming they won't be able to put on such an impressive ceremony because they lack famous pop-stars of their own. This was Russia's way of pointing out that while it might have lacked the populist appeal of the London ceremonies intellectually and culturally this opening ceremony wiped the floor with the London ceremonies leaving the UK's efforts looking cheap and tacky by comparison.

The golden age sequence peaked with a mass wedding of heterosexual characters. This was very reminiscent of the mass weddings the South Korean Unification Church (the Moonies) used to hold in order to combat the atheist threat of Communist North Korea. This gently pointed out that both sides went a little bit crazy during the Cold War even if only one side is prepared to admit it now. It was also a reference to the mass wedding that took place at the 2014 Grammy awards that was an attempt to further the cause of gay rights in the US and through the inclusion of Madonna irritate Russia. The subtext of that ceremony was of course the Grammys attempting to distance themselves from attempts to force Rihanna into a relationship with Chris Brown although I believe the US is now trying to replace Brown with Drake in that operation. See my aforementioned point about the Cold War.

Following the mass wedding there was a mass birthing which saw all the newly married couples produce a happy and healthy baby. This was a direct reference to one of the root causes of homophobia within modern Russia. During the Communist-era generations of Russians had it drilled into them on a daily basis that it was their duty to get married and have lots of strong and handsome babies who would toil in the fields and lay down their lives to protect the borders of the greatest nation that had ever existed. Due to falling birthrates and, well, the chronic alcoholism the population of modern Russia is shrinking dramatically. This has led to homosexuals being scapegoated because it is extremely rare that homosexual relationships lead to unplanned pregnancies. As such many Russians do genuinely hold the belief that if homosexuals are allowed to live openly and promote their lifestyles the Russian youth will completely abandon heterosexual relationships, no Russian babies will be born and the nation will collapse. If the international community genuinely wanted to do something to improve gay rights in Russia they would attempt to use the Sochi games to challenge this flawed but widely held belief rather then just hurling cheap insults.

Although it was not mentioned directly the second act ended at the brink of the fall of the Soviet Union and we were all left to speculate what would happen to Lubov/Love in modern Russia?


This is also the point where I've reached my word limit for a single so I will continue later in a separate post.


14:25 on 9/2/14 (UK date).