PRESENT TENSETHE NEWS THAT China faked parts of the Olympic opening ceremony is hardly the most surprising of the week, perhaps lying somewhere between the revelations that Vladimir Putin is still running Russia and that the world has not stopped turning. This, remember, is the home of the counterfeit DVD, knock-off watch and $5 Gucci handbag. If anyone can fake the Olympics, it's China.
China also appears to be a country obsessed with how it is seen by the rest of the world. It has never shown anything other than a full commitment to making these the most stage-managed Games since Berlin in 1936.
Its torch relay mixed the farcical with the sinister. It spent months painstakingly creating CGI fireworks. It pretended that 56 children represented its ethnic groups, when they were mainly from the Han Chinese majority. It has bussed volunteers in to fill empty seats. These cheerleaders wear yellow T-shirts, and sing government-approved chants. Meanwhile, it has been accused of loading its team with gymnasts who may be younger than the Olympic mascots. And the sudden brilliance of some of its athletes has led to speculation that they may be back on the turtle blood.
Despite their promises, the authorities have begun harassing Western journalists again, with pictures on Wednesday showing a photographer being manhandled by people in the same yellow T-shirts as those cheerleaders.
So, of course China faked the opening ceremony. From this distance it appears to be faking the whole Olympics. The question at the end will be this: does anyone care that this is the knock-off Gucci bag of Olympic Games, or will they look forward to getting an authentic experience from London? The authentic experience will involve, on the one hand, a bankrupt city, rows about facilities and journalists whining about not being able to get a bus to the stadium. On the other, it won't include local sporting heroes who look like they were kidnapped by the state at birth, or drummers whose rictus smiles suggest their families will be executed should they miss a beat.
Obviously, when it comes to last week's opening ceremony you had to feel sorry for the seven-year-old kid who was dropped because she wasn't considered pretty enough to represent her country. "It was for the national interest," the ceremony's music director told Beijing Radio. "The child on camera should be flawless in image, internal feelings and expression." Flawless in internal feelings. That's a level of authoritarian creepiness worthy of North Korea. In fact, if the IOC is comfortable with such an attitude, then why not give Kim Jong-Il's regime a crack at hosting the Olympics? If it likes what China has given the world, it'll love the only country in the world with a dead president.
Anyway, when this week's story has died down, the unfortunate seven-year-old will be filed alongside the arrow that missed the Olympic flame's cauldron at Barcelona in 1992, or the ball that Diana Ross stroked past an open goal to launch the 1994 World Cup. In Barcelona, the flame still "ignited"; in Chicago, the goal still cracked in half. And we remember both in a way that we do not remember most of the ceremonies that went perfectly. Only Los Angeles and the jetpack man remains a truly amazing moment 24 years on, although you wonder how much more fondly it might be recalled if he had pressed the wrong button and fired himself into the jumbo scoreboard.
Opening ceremonies are known for many things, but naturalism is not among them. As an example, here's John Motson's commentating at the ceremony that kicked off this summer's European Championships. "The markings on the cows show the values of Euro 2008: passion, friendship, action, training, and goals." Every sports commentator must endure the professional duty that is wittering over a couple of hours of interpretive dance, explaining to snoozing viewers how these stilt-walking sprites entering the stadium represent the values of the tournament, "fortitude, grace and shamelessness".
Beijing's opening ceremony briefly seemed destined to be memorable for the right reasons. The western media has greeted the fakery with glee, not only because of its newsworthiness but because it punctured the supposed perfection. But if Beijing has set a precedent for turning it into a special effects extravaganza, then we can hardly complain that it has diminished an artistic event.
Every opening ceremony relies on cultural fakery at the very least. When we hosted the Ryder Cup in 2006, we put on an opening ceremony that we promised would "set the benchmark" for future ceremonies. That it did.
It had the sense of being a wee show put on by a parish hosting rich Americans. And although television did not airbrush Sharon Ní Bheoláin's teeth or put fireworks where fireworks ought not to have been, it was full of the kind of jiggery-pokery that represents how we like to be seen, and not how we are. If it was an accurate representation of Ireland, a typical bit of choreography might have involved stilt-walking drunks flailing across the stage followed by a 15-minute interpretive dance piece in which lycra-clad grannies talk about the weather. The world would never have forgotten it. And they would never, ever have doubted its authenticity.
