There’s certainly a lot of flapdoodle around the games of the XXXI
Olympiad officially starting today in Rio.
Between vast swaths of the Russian team being banned for doping,
outdoor water sports venues awash in raw sewage and other health and safety hazards,
worries that visitors could be victims of fatal crimes before they can pay
their bar bills, and, of course, wondering how long it will take for NBC’s
coverage to top their last outing in fatuousness and jingoism—well, you know,
it’s two weeks of crass melodrama occasionally interrupted by some actual
athletic achievement.
And that’s before we start considering the Zika virus.
(The upside is that at least it takes our minds off the elections
for a bit.)
But I was reminded recently how much of this quadrennial exercise
in nationalism, politics and vainglorious waste of billions of dollars owes to
the Berlin Olympics that took place 80 years ago. It’s only really since the
1936 games that every host city has gone absolutely insane trying to showcase a
Potemkin Village—building obscenely expensive stadia and other venues for which
there is no long-term use, transporting undesirables beyond municipal limits so
visitors won’t be annoyed by the non-voting poor, and repeated rounds of
self-congratulatory galas attended by politicians and corporate sponsors, while
(as The Washington Post reported on
Sunday) many of the athletes live in poverty).
Most of this infrastructure capital expense is off the backs of
local taxpayers; the froofy stuff like the hospitality suites comes from
tax-deductible corporate sponsorship.
All that display of rah-rah pretense started with the Nazis—from
the torch relay through the grandiose purpose-built venues to the ceremonial
panoply at the opening and closing: all cooked up to showcase German supremacy,
both individual and national.
If you’d like to refresh your memory on that one, I recommend
watching Olympia, the iconic Leni Riefenstahl film of the Berlin Games.
It’s interesting to compare the business, the style and the technology of
international athletics then with now. (Plus, it has better production values
than anything NBC-Comcast is going to shove down viewers’ throats.)
You know all about Jesse Owens poking holes in Nazi super-race
theories, but there are several other interesting things about the events that
Riefenstahl presented.
Diving standards have changed in the intervening 80 years: many of
the divers went into the water feet first, and they hardly did more than
one somersault or twist before hitting the water. They seemed almost
leisurely. Plus—way more splash when they struck than is allowed now.
Today, you’d better barely make a ripple, or you’re outta the pool.
Athletic clothes were considerably lower tech than what you find
these days. Runners, vaulters, jumpers, shot-putters and throwers
frequently wore what we’d call warm-up gear (sweatshirts and pants)
to compete. And the shoes—my dear, the shoes!
Everything these men and women accomplished seemed to be in spite of their
apparel.
Forty-nine nations competed in that Olympiad—so the parade of
athletes went a lot faster than the one in Rio will be. And the athletes
marched sharpish, all of them; they didn’t swarm about like weirdly-dressed
paramecia equipped with photographic devices. Most of them gave the Nazi salute
as they marched past Hitler and Olympic officials. (Or possibly the Olympic
salute, which was remarkably similar to the Nazi one; it went out of fashion
shortly after the beginning of the Second World War.) The Bulgarians got extra
style points for goose-stepping and
throwing the salute.
The only nations from the entire continent of Africa were South
Africa, part of the British Empire, and Egypt, also under British rule.
Asia was represented by India (likewise British), Afghanistan, the Philippines,
Japan and China.
The marathon is a story all in itself. Riefenstahl devoted more
than ten minutes to that ultimate Olympic event, and the first thing that strikes
you is the lack of Africans. We’re so used to seeing Kenyans and Ethiopians
dominating distance running—that’s when you learn that the only blacks
appearing in 1936 mostly came from the US. And they seem to have concentrated
on the sprint events.
But when I watched the film I thought it very odd that a couple of
runners from the Japanese team were out front from the beginning. The
Argentinian winner from the 1932 Olympics took the lead and held it; but
he was trailed pretty closely by the two from Japan and a Brit.
Well, it was an incredibly exciting race. I mean, there is
something about the punishment of the long-distance runner that you have to
admire. These days, you wouldn’t see Olympic marathoners stopping for water, or
walking for stretches, but you can still see these athletes from 80 years ago
focused on what their bodies have to give in order to take the next
stride, and the next.
The Argentine dropped out at mile 19, and the race belonged to
“Son Kitei”, Ernest Harper and “Nan Shoryu”. And that’s how they finished.
In 1936 the winning athletes got laurel crowns, and Son was also
given a small oak tree in a pot, which he held in front of his uniform,
while the national anthem of Japan was played.
I looked at the names on the board and thought to myself,
“Self—‘Son’ just does not sound Japanese to me. What’s up with that?”
And that’s where I discovered the real drama of that race.
Son Kitei and Nan Shoryu were Koreans; real names Sohn Kee-chung and Nam Sung-yong, respectively. Korea had
been under Japanese occupation since 1910, and the marathoners were
forced to represent their imperial overlords under the required Japanese names.
Son was able to obscure the Japanese flag on the front of his
uniform with that little oak tree; Nam had no such protection. But both had to
endure listening to the Japanese national anthem, and you can see their
shame in the way they hold their heads in the photo. Their extraordinary
achievement was subverted to the glorification of their oppressors.
And no one knew, because the Koreans’ translators were Japanese
and they refused to translate any of their disclaimers.
(If you want to destroy a culture, first go after the language.
Outlaw the indigenous speech, require that your language only be used. Make
people take names in your language; destroy native news media; substitute your
place names for theirs. The Japanese did that in Korea; the English did it in
Ireland.)
The record books now show Sohn and Nam with asterisks next to
their names, recognizing their nationality, but I had no clue about it
until I watched Riefenstahl’s remarkable film—which covered all sorts of
events, including ones the Germans tanked at.
Like Rio’s (and Sochi’s and a lot of others), the
Berlin Olympics were awash in shady doings. The Games had been awarded before
Hitler became Chancellor, but by 1936 the Nazis had already codified
anti-Semitism in their legal structure for a year. There were rumblings in
participating countries of boycotts if Jews were kept from competing, but the
International Olympics Committee and the head of the US Olympic Committee,
Avery Brundage, made deals with the Germans that papered over the policies. (Brundage’s
anti-Semitism made him an ideal partner for Hitler et al.) The Nazis took down
the anti-Jewish signs in Berlin, said that no Jew had had the athletic ability
to compete and everyone pretended that honor was salved.
Brundage did very well out of the games; in fact, you could say
that he was one of its successes. He was elected to the IOC shortly afterward
and became its president in 1952. No one on the IOC has ever struggled
financially.
The Germans didn’t have multimedia, so they couldn’t put on the
kind of opening ceremony that so far has culminated in the hours-long extravaganza
four years ago in London. You can expect the Brazilians to up the stakes
tonight, with no expense spared, just a few kilometers from favelas where
thousands live without clean water. That, too, is an Olympic tradition dating
back to Berlin.
No doubt the Rio games will have their entertainment value.
Records will be broken, triumphs and agonies will be reported, and perhaps even
some athletic contests will be decided. It will all be very colorful, the best
spectacle that money can buy. Pretty much like the Games of 80 years ago.
