ABSTRACT
In 1984 one of us wrote ‘the Olympic Games cannot be both a television spectacle and a people’s festival’ (Whannel 1984: 41). It was a polemical point made by a young man, and clearly the Olympic Games as a cultural practice embrace aspects of both festival and spectacle. Yet the challenge does point to the different visions of the Olympic Games, the tensions between them, and the difficulty of holding on to both festival and spectacle in the same globalised mega-event. The London Olympics will be surrounded by unprecedented security – there will be fences, gates, scanners, sensors, comprehensive databases, hazard profiles and radio-controlled drone aircraft. If previous events are a valid precedent, a large proportion of the tickets for the major events will be parcelled out to the ‘Olympic Family’, including their corporate friends, sponsors, media organisations, and VIPs and celebrities. It is not promising terrain for a people’s party. However, the presence of such a major event in a big city will have a galvanising effect – people will want to celebrate and party. The Olympic Games are not confined to stadiums but will be viewed in homes, bars, malls and parks, where an atmosphere of festivity and jollity can develop. The Olympic Park can become a festive cockpit. The torch relay extends the presence of Olympism more broadly in both space and time. There will be spontaneous events, informal celebrations, casual merry-making and carnivalesque costumes. The extent to which these activities are encouraged and fostered, or scrutinised and policed, will help to set the tone for the Games as the London public will experience them.
