Media Events
The Olympics, occurring every four years, is a sporting event in which countries who have qualified are able to compete against each other in a range of events. This paper concerns the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympics, a theatrical and musical show to celebrate the initiation of the competition. The purpose of this essay is to explore the global significance of this event using ‘media events’ theory. In order to do this it is first necessary to define the nature of a ‘media event’ and discuss in what way the London 2012 Olympic Games Opening Ceremony fits into this classification. It will be shown that, although this event is intended to be as such, the changing nature of technology and global communications has heavily impacted its viewership and thus its significance. In addition that issue of propaganda and nationalism arguably come into play due to its scripted nature. And that moreover the tradition of media events has become progressively redundant through changing desires of audiences and increasingly cynical views toward large organizations and government. It is important to clarify at this point that the Opening Ceremony is part of the Olympic Games as and as such cannot be explored as entirely separate.
It was perhaps the advance of radio and satellite technology itself that contributed to the inception of the “media event”, as Dayan and Katz state; it was a “new narrative genre that employs the unique potential of the electronic media to command attention universally and simultaneously in order to tell a primordial story about current affairs (1994:1). Media events are characterized by their call to audiences to “stop their daily routines” and participate in the viewership of a televised events (1994:1). It is paramount to understand that media events are rare and in particular, a deviation from the “everyday”, “they are interruptions of routine; they intervene in the normal flow of broadcasting and our lives” (Dayan and Katz, 1994:5).
In
It was perhaps the advance of radio and satellite technology itself that contributed to the inception of the “media event”, as Dayan and Katz state; it was a “new narrative genre that employs the unique potential of the electronic media to command attention universally and simultaneously in order to tell a primordial story about current affairs (1994:1). Media events are characterized by their call to audiences to “stop their daily routines” and participate in the viewership of a televised events (1994:1). It is paramount to understand that media events are rare and in particular, a deviation from the “everyday”, “they are interruptions of routine; they intervene in the normal flow of broadcasting and our lives” (Dayan and Katz, 1994:5).
In
Bibliography: Evans, M(2010) 'Mandela and the televised birth of the rainbow nation ', National Identities, 12: 3, 309 — 326 Dayan, D and Katz, E (1994). Media Events: The Live Broadcasting of History. Cambridge (Massachusetts) and London: Harvard University Press. 1-24. International Olympic Committee | About the Institution | Olympic.com:, n.d. access September 24 2012, < http://www.olympic.org/about-ioc-institution> Katz, E. (1996). Deliver Us From Segmentation. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. 546, 22-33. Katz, E and Liebes, T. (2007). ‘No More Peace!’: How Disaster, Terror and War Have Upstaged Media Events. International Journal of Communication. 1, 157-166. Opening Ceremony - London 2012 Olympic Games, 2012, online video, accessed 23 September 2012 <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4As0e4de-rI Porter, H, ‘The Olympic Opening Ceremonies: Danny Boyle Explains Britain to the World, and to Itself’, Vanity Fair Daily, 28 June 2012, accessed September 24 2012, <http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2012/07/olympic-opening-ceremonies-danny-boyle-britain>