The 2016 ISIL Games: Closing Ceremony Pt.2

This should be read as a direct continuation of Part 1; http://watchitdie.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/the-2016-isil-games-closing-ceremony.html

Carmen Miranda: With the Brazilian flag raised the arena floor was thrown open to Brazilian popstar Roberta Sa in the guise of Carmen Miranda.

A long time before to the song "The Girl From Impenema" which featured in the Opening Ceremony Carmen Miranda was many people's only introduction to the strange and exotic land of Brazil.

After becoming one of the first recording and movie stars in the Brazil in the late 1920's Carmen Miranda moved to the US first performing on Broadway in the show "The Streets of Paris" in 1939. She made her first Hollywood movie "Down Argentine Way" in 1940 and appeared in 26 other US & TV Shows making the highest paid woman in all of America in 1945. Just ten years later she died at the age of only 46.

One of Carmen Miranda's most famous movies is 1943's "The Gang's All Here." The Dropkick Murphys' song of the same name does not appear on the soundtrack.

However if you were to watch videos by that Massachusetts based band on Youtube  I'm sure that eventually you'd catch sight of Boston City Hall. This rather neatly combines the natural, flowing libertarian lines of the Modernist movement that famous Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer helped found with the ruler straight, authoritarian Brutalist designs that followed.

Carmen Miranda of course collaborated with the Brazilian composer Ary Barroso. His song "Isto Aqui, o que É?" was used in one of the final sequences of the Opening Ceremony adding a nice symmetry to proceedings.

Famously Carmen Miranda's signature was an elaborate hat made up of all sorts of brightly coloured and exotic fruit. This itself was a reference to the common practice at the time of Brazilian women - often widows - who would sell fruit they kept balanced on their heads. If you could wink in the right way pineapples weren't the only type of exotic fruit some of these women were prepared to sell. If you get my meaning.

In American pop-culture there is a long-standing joke about Mexican immigrants selling oranges of freeway on ramps. As we all know everything south of Texas is just Mexico.

As Roberta Sa danced images of Carmen Miranda's famous bowl of fruit was projected on to the arena floor around her. This video projection also included a representation of her shadow that seemed black, inky and blotish.

This was a reference to the famous "Rorschach" inkblot tests that were used in early psychology. This seemed to be a warning that unlike the Opening Ceremony which told a story this Closing Ceremony would instead show a series of random images and ask the viewer to interpret them. This was a technique that was used extensively during the 2012 London Olympic ceremonies.

In writing about the Rio Opening Ceremony I talked about how the athletes were asked to plant their seed in giant seed banks as a way to unsettle them and put them on edge. Far from being something unique to Brazil this type of mild hazing is considered an accepted part of the home advantage that comes as reward for going to the effort of staging the games.

During the 2012 ceremonies the UK used a combination of fire, explosions, smoke and discordant medley's of seemingly random musical genres. This bordered on the type of psychological disorientation techniques used in enhanced interrogation/torture. By comparison Rio's seedbanks were laid back and quite harmless.

At times the inkblots surrounding the Carmen Miranda dancer seemed to very closely resemble the animation projected onto the back of the stage during Iceland's 2016 Eurovision Song Contest entry "Hear Them Calling" by Greta Salome.

Amongst Eurovision watchers that was widely viewed as a passionate support of the US' decision to re-open the Cold War Keflavik Air Base in Iceland in order to "keep Europe safe from the ever growing threat of Russian aggression." It was so passionate you began to wonder whether it was all just sarcasm.

Although they were dumped out of the Song Contest in the first semi-final the entire World sort of fell a little bit in love with tiny Iceland during June's Euro2016 football tournament. Their fans terrifying Thunderclap chant seems to have been copied by football fans the World over.

Particularly by Brazil fans who changed the grunt to a shout of "Zi-Ka!" to freak out mad as a box of frogs Team USA goalkeeper Hope Solo.

For those familiar with Eurovision Sweden's shock victory over Hope Solo's women's football team may well have seemed like an effort to keep Europe safe from the ever growing threat of American aggression. We wish the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) the best of luck.

To add insult to that injury it seems that Hope Solo may now have a rival in the "Just say the first thing that comes into your head" stakes in the form of China's 'Human Emoji' - swimmer Fu Yuanhui.

However at around 20:35 on 23/8/16 (UK date) I feel I'm definitely going off on a tangent. I'll pick this up tomorrow. 

Edited at around 18:45 on 26/8/16 (UK date) to add above and below;

Parade of Nations: Rather than leaving the stage the Carmen Miranda tribute simply melted into the background to help set the mood during the Parade of Nations.

As with the Opening Ceremony it is a matter of International Olympic Committee (IOC) protocol that the Closing Ceremony must feature the flags of the competing nations along with athletes from those nations being paraded in the arena. 

However it is traditional that whereas the Opening Ceremony is a formal introduction of the host nation and the competing nations to the World the Closing Ceremony is a much more informal celebration of what has just taken place. For example the Closing Ceremony for the 2012 Para-Olympics was in many ways just a free Coldplay concert for the athletes.

As such it is normally only the flags of the nations that are paraded. The athletes are allowed to sort of meander in as they like in no particular order. The spectacle of athletes from different nations mixing freely together is to promote the notion of sportsmanship - that after the contest is over both winners and losers shake hands and remain friends.

Brazil very much kept with this tradition. In order to accommodate the athletes who were brought in early to watch the rest of the ceremony fold up chairs were arranged for them around the arena floor. This obviously reduced the amount of the arena floor that could be used as a stage. With the athletes not being obligated to actually sit in these chairs this did have the effect of making it look as though there were thousands of empty seats for at least half the ceremony.

This obviously raised the issue of the thousands of empty seats that had been display in the arenas at what had been far from a sellout games. The situation for the upcoming Para-Olympics looks like it will be much worse. At the time of the Closing Ceremony they were talking in terms of only 12% of Para-Olympic tickets being sold causing a massive budget shortfall and the possible cancellation of the event entirely.

However all these empty seats also promoted discussion about Olympic legacy.

The Rio games are rather picking up the conversational baton from the 2012 London Olympics. Having built a massive 80,000 athletics stadium in east London to host the games London quickly discovered that there is absolutely no other use for an athletics stadium in east London. Eventually it was agreed that the Olympic stadium which is officially known as; "The Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park" would become the home of West Ham Utd football club.

West Ham played their first game at their new home on the day of the Closing Ceremony against Bournemouth. They played their last game at their old home of the Boleyn ground against Manchester Utd on May 10th (10/5/16) during the Eurovision Song Contest's first semi-final. Kick-off in that match of course had to be delayed due to what I would term comedy levels of crowd violence that saw the windows of the Manchester Utd team coach smashed in.

What made the Boleyn ground so legendary was that the crowd was sat right up alongside the pitch creating a fantastic atmosphere. I once explained this to a Manchester Utd "supporter" who'd never been to a live match by saying; "It's great. You can call a player a w*nker. And they'll hear you." 

Originally designed as an athletics stadium the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park of course has this great big running track between the stands and where a football pitch would go. This created a lot of concern that this would ruin the atmosphere if it were to be used as a football stadium. 

In order to solve this they've added temporary seating over the running track that can be folded away should it ever be used as an athletics stadium again. This is what the temporary seating during the Closing Ceremony was supposed to represent.

Although they were free to mingle amongst themselves rather than being ordered in national formation the athletes still arrived in the stadium along the ruler straight runway/landing strip lined by stewards that was used in the Opening Ceremony. This spectacle of a disorganised rabble dressed in casual sportswear trampling all over what would be the playing area gave the entire parade the air of a pitch invasion by football hooligans.

The crowd trouble at the closing of the Boleyn ground was to some extent staged as a reference to the April 26th (26/4/16) ruling that the 96 Liverpool fans crushed to death in the 1989 Hillsborough disaster had been unlawfully killed. Although it took 27 years for British Courts to finally deliver justice the Hillsborough disaster almost immediately saw standing terraces banned in the UK and all seater stadiums introduced.

The principle of all seater stadiums is not really that everybody has to sit down. Instead its to ensure that everyone has an assigned roughly 1 metre/yard^2  in which they can watch a match without being crushed to death. The problem is that all seater stadiums do rather spoil the atmosphere during matches. As a compromise the Scottish Football Association is trialling a new form of terraces in which everyone has an assigned roughly 1 metre/yard^2 area to stand.

During the Closing Ceremony enough seats were provided for the athletes and they were each assigned a numbered seat. However they were under no obligation to actually sit in that seat or indeed sit at all. This was the Closing Ceremony's take on the terracing issue.

So basically even during the Closing Ceremony the Brazilians got bored and started talking about football instead.

With the athletes parading down this runway/landing strip before being channelled to their seats along with the sheer number of athletes involved it did take rather a long time for the Parade of Nations to end. 

With hindsight of what followed I did slightly get the impression that this was deliberate in the hope I would get bored and go to bed. After all nothing spoils a Rorschach test like someone shouting out the answers.

Unfortunately my preparations for the Closing Ceremony went to the extent of taking an early evening nap so I'd still be wide awake at 3AM. However as a compromise I did start rather making up my own ceremony. Seriously it wasn't until the following day that I realised Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe made an appearance. Let alone that he came dressed as one of the Super Mario Brothers.

In order to keep the atmosphere flowing during the parade a series of performances took place on the stage adjacent to the runway/landing strip.

The Carmen Miranda dancer was of course the first of these. She was replaced by a - I assume - Brazilian band whose name and setlist continue to elude me. I did notice though that they featured an accordion player. This struck me as a reference to Russian Polka music

As I've mentioned the London 2012 ceremonies employed extensive psychological disorientation techniques in attempt an unsettle those attending. However by not deploying Polka during the 2014 Sochi ceremonies Russia declined to use similar techniques despite clearly having the tools to do so. 

That obviously says a lot about British aggression versus Russian hospitality.

Although this apparently nameless band never really left the stage the focus soon shifted to a demonstration of the traditional Brazilian "Frevo" style of dance. This actually has something of an interesting history.

The Opening Ceremony featured a short reference to Capoeira. This is often mistaken for a form of dance. However it is actually a type of combat sport like Karate or Judo.

Around the start of the 19th century rival gangs would fight each other during Rio's famous Carnival using a mixture of Capoeira and knives/swords. When the police started cracking down on this the gangs would disguise their weapons as umbrellas and their Capoeira as dancing. Thus Frevo was born.

Following the principle that you can crowbar pretty much anything into discussion of these type of ceremonies I'm sure that during this spectacle of umbrellas being waved about during a parade I could make some reference to Northern Ireland's Orange Order. They're the guys who like to march along places like Garvaghy Road in their uniform of bowler hats, sashes and umbrellas.

After the Frevo demonstration the band were joined on stage by DJ Mika Mutti who is a famous Brazilian electronic music DJ. However rather than being trapped behind turntable he likes to play his music from a brightly coloured electronic almost accordion strapped to his chest. I though felt it also resembled the "Simon" electronic game from many 1980's childhoods.

The use of an electronic accordion onstage alongside a traditional accordion raised the contrast between old and new. Within the Olympic movement there is a bit of a rivalry between the traditional sports such as gymnastics and skiing and the new sports like snowboarding and sports climbing.

The wearing of a brightly light electronic device also brought in this issue of smart fabrics that is very fashionable at the moment.

If it is a nation that is in love with its gadgets it is Japan. Not only does Brazil have a very large ethnically Japanese population Japan is the next summer Olympics host. This ceremony may have mentioned that once or twice.

Finally it fell to the band with no name to play mood music until all the athletes had found their seats and the Parade of Nations drew to a close.

21:00 on 26/8/16 (UK date).