Supporting a uK SucceSS Story: The impacT of - Research Councils ...

The ceremony of
opening and closing
The Games
Olympic opening and closing ceremonies are a
time when the eyes of the world focus on the
host country. Professor Helen Gilbert from Royal
Holloway, University of London has looked at the
history of these ceremonies, what they have said
about the host country and what they sought to
display to the world.
In particular, Professor Gilbert has researched the
complexities of Aboriginal and native people’s
participation in opening and closing ceremonies
in Canada, Australia and the United States, and
the difficulty in translating cultural traditions
for a vast media audience. She has found that
although the host country ideally wants to display
a united front to the world, many indigenous
people’s performances in Olympic ceremonies
have subtly highlighted particular concerns and
contradictions.
Professor Gilbert now hopes to chart these
historic messages by looking at specific Olympic
performances in ceremonies across the past
35 years in her work funded by the European
Research Council. “The Olympic ‘spirit’ promotes
utopian notions of a ‘common humanity’ that asks
us to put personal and political tensions aside”,
Professor Gilbert says. “Amid this celebration of
global communitas, rigid formulas for Games
ceremonies govern what can be said and shown.
Nevertheless, key issues in the cultural politics
of host nations are often writ large on the global
stage during Games ceremonies, and they are
certainly under tremendous scrutiny.”
Vancouver Winter Olympics Games 2010
“Although the host country ideally wants to display a united front
to the world, many indigenous people’s performances in Olympic
ceremonies have subtly highlighted particular concerns.”
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SECTION FIVE : THE GAMES: past, present and future