Prof Garry Whannel
Emeritus Professor of Media Cultures at the University of Bedfordshire. For over 40 years, he has written on media, culture, leisure and sport. His recent publications include Understanding the Olympics (with John Horne) 2020.
Every Olympic city will have its own distinctive patterns, but there are also some structural regularities. Typically, cities move through some version of hostility-indifference-criticism-anticipation-excitement. This is never universal – some will remain hostile and critical; others have been anticipating with enthusiasm ever since the Games were awarded.
In my experience, however, the anticipation is ramped up significantly, as the searchlight of world attention starts to swing around to, and focus upon, the host city, in the last month before the start. In part this is spontaneous, in part media construction. Indeed, one could argue that the two phenomena feed each other.
The circus is coming
“If this is the Olympic Games, I wish we could have it every week“: one city gent said to another, during the London 2012 Games, on registering how the tube trains were much less crowded, probably due to the success of the Organising Committee in emphasising the potential danger of over-crowded transport, thus “stampeding the cattle” – encouraging London citizens to holiday out of London or stay at home during the Games. It seems likely that similar attempts may have been made in Paris. In fact, the estimates of incoming tourists, mobilised during bidding, and while attempts to build support in the business community are underway, usually turn out to be overly optimistic. Olympic tourists come, but many other tourists elect to avoid the Olympics by booking earlier or later.
Until the last month, with not much to report: “everything going to plan”, “on time and under budget”, are not strong media news stories, so most stories for the two years before the Olympics tend to be around two themes: “things will not be ready in time”; and “everything will be too expensive and over-budget”.
The big searchlight
However, in the last month a new phenomenon, an instance of vortextuality, comes into play, helping shape and co-ordinate the Olympics, its media representation and public sentiment (I coined the term vortextuality, in the 1990s, to denote the growing media tendency for one single story to dominate, temporarily, to the extent that all news coverage is sucked towards the event as if trapped in a vortex). In the case of the Olympics, this media phenomenon is not a simple fabrication or construction, but operates in conjunction with events on the ground, in the host city, during the last month before a Games opens,
I experienced the phenomenon at first hand, in Beijing (2008) London (2012), and, most recently, Paris (2024). Bunting, banners and signs go up; Olympic merch (licensed and non-licensed) begins appearing everywhere; Olympic volunteers and helpers are deployed; barriers and security infrastructure is erected; the prominence of the imminent Olympics in the media grows exponentially. Less tangibly, the citizens of the city become aware of the ways in which world attention is swinging around to highlight their city. It becomes strikingly clear, that for the next 2-3 weeks, the events in their city are going to attract world attention, and dominate the global media. The sense is exhilarating, inebriating, almost jouissant. Normal reality will be put on hold as a whole new daily existence imposes itself. I believe that even those resistant to the appeal of the Games will be affected by this process. It is precisely as if a giant spotlight has suddenly swung round to your own city your own neighbourhood, your ‘burb.
There is clearly a structural regularity about these processes – they are determined partly by the four-year cycle, the changing host cities, and the high profile of the Games in the global media. At the same time though, the particular histories and cultures at play in each individual city bestow a specificity in the way each city experiences the last month before the Games open. The most obvious and prominent variation of Paris grew from the audacious decision to stage the Opening Ceremony, for the first time, not in the main stadium but along a length of the River Seine, enabling the prominent use of major Paris landmarks such as Notre Dame, the Grande Palais and the Eifel Tower.
This had its negative side – zones alongside the river in central palace required that residents within the zones had to obtain permits to access their own homes, bus routes were curtailed, metro stations closed, bars and restaurants within the zones experienced a significant drop in trade as the zones were implemented. The temporary seating erected along the route sold for high prices. It became evident that a front row seat at this spectacle had become a new fashion accessory for the super-rich, although in the event, it did rain (with a vengeance) on Paris’s parade. That the spectacle was, nevertheless delivered with panache and brio, is a credit to the resilience of the performers and improvisational skill of the organisers. Nevertheless, it was clear that the best seats were those indoors and dry, with a big screen, and, ideally a ready source of alcoholic sustenance. The Opening Ceremony is a pivot ending the increasingly frenetic pre-Games speculation, and ushering in fifteen days of extensive sporting actuality, the reporting of which rapidly eclipses the speculative and the critical modes of journalism.
