Olympic commentators are fawning over the winter sports dynasties, some of them actual petty-royal lineages, from European feifdoms and colonial sultanships, family trees full of resort-dwelling ski bums, literally, jetsetters. Agree the commentators: “It’s in the genes!”
You might wonder why a polo player features so prominently on the official clothing of the 2010 Winter Olympics. Well of course, because the haberdasher au contract is Ralph Lauren, who one-upped Lacoste so many years ago when so many of the hoi polloi began sporting the little alligators that yuppies needed to differentiate themselves once again.
Of course a snotty sport like polo is not unrepresentative of winter sports. It’s exclusive, requires expensive equipment, and near full-time access to snow, meaning globe-trotting jet setters. What’s appropriate too about this logo is its size. You didn’t remember it being so big? It’s targeted at generation Ralph Lauren, now needing reading glasses.
Today I watched the opening ceremonies of the White Olympics in Torino.
Yes, White Olympics. Virtually all the athletes are white. White because winter sports take place in northern climes where most everybody is white. White because winter sports require equipment beyond what tropical non-developed countries can afford their athletes. White because that is the color of the world aristocracy.
But the Summer Olympics were very much the same. Compared to World Soccer, or the NBA, or the NFL, or the AFL-CIO, the Summer Olympics are lily-white.
So everyone at the Winter Olympics is white, the entire South African team is white. The few dark faces among the white are citizens of white countries who trace their roots elsewhere.
When the American team made its entrance, I wondered, where were the boos? The American athletes were smiling and waving, many were hamming for the camera, one was talking on her phone. An audience was never shown, either booing or applauding.
But there would not have been booing at this pageant. This was a fete for the developed countries, presently at war with darker skinned countries. This was a white man’s club. The few delegates from dark countries were vestiges of the old colonial representatives, cousins of the western nations, returned home having lost their lands and authority to land-reform and indigenous efforts to reclaim territorial autonomy.
So this celebration was the bi-annual gathering of the ruling class, their athletes who can afford to practice their athletics full time, and the spectators who can jet around the world and attend the events.
And the symbol of power from which the ruling classes owe their supremacy was visible in the Olympic flame. Some might also find it was appropriate for the industrial city of Torino.
I thought it looked right out of Antonioni’s stark 1964 film Red Desert about industrial ennui, the multiple-funneled smokestack that is this year’s Olympic cauldron.