Olympics end on bittersweet note

After the triumphant finale, the closing ceremony was a joke

By Liam Kavanagh

Late on Sunday evening, the 21st Olympic Winter Games ended to a resounding cheer from patriotic Canadians all over the country. By and large, the recently closed Winter Olympic Games were tremendously successful for Canada; the Great White North set a new record in the amount of gold medals won.

That this history-making moment occurred on home turf made it a have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too kind of situation. In the past few days, a lot of talk has arisen in national and international news sources about how the Games have bolstered Canadian national pride.

Then, just mere hours after Sidney Crosby’s winning goal, the world was subjected to the closing ceremonies. Australian David Atkins, the executive producer for the Olympics’ ceremony team directed the closing.
It was Atkins’ third Olympics; his production company’s been involved not only in Vancouver’s opening ceremonies but also the opening and closing ceremonies for the 2000 Sydney Summer Olympics and the 2006 Doha Asian Games.

The fact that Atkins is of Australian extraction is not irrelevant. The choice of musical acts chosen to represent modern Canadian pop culture felt like the work of someone who was given the chance to make a practical joke of international proportions and grabbed it by the balls.

The selection (almost exclusively) consisted of artists that have not been relevant for 10 years. Either that or artists the majority of Canadians loathe and could never have become successful without the financial backing of the Canadian government. Unfortunately, some of the performers fell into both camps.

As this schlepped-together concert unfolded on international television, tweets and status updates flew across computer screens. Facebook and Twitter users across the country suggested a myriad of Canadian acts that they would have found less embarrassing than having Nickleback linked to Canada’s national identity.

On the topic of national embarrassments, the “cultural section” of the program wasn’t great either. It consisted of a parade of national stereotypes: Giant inflated moose and beavers, larger than life table hockey players, and classiest of all – burlesque Mounties.

The organizers hopefully intended all of this as a satirical take on Canadian stereotypes. The major problem with presenting Canadian culture in this light is that a large portion of the viewing audience will not get the joke, thus enforcing the stereotype and offending a significant number of Canadians. It should also be noted that many of the “parodied” stereotypes are American-based. However, as always, there is always a grain of truth in stereotypes. In my experience, though, I’ve found that moose and beaver, voyageur, and “Eh?” stereotypes are mostly reflective of the culture and history of Ontario and Quebec and do not apply to the eleven other provinces and territories.

Canadians tend to rattle on and on about how different Canada is from the aforementioned American stereotypes. The closing ceremonies would have been the perfect opportunity to show the world what modern Canada is. Instead we gave the world a brief glimpse into what the duty free shop at Pearson International Airport sells.

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