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Why Are the Olympians Laughing at Us?

Gerasimos Karavitis

A few days after the commencement of the 2004 Olympic Games, the Greek police received a call from anonymous parties who claimed to have planted a bomb in the office building of SEGAS (The Greek National Track and Field Federation). Immediately, the city’s authorities evacuated the SEGAS office building, and sent in the bomb squad, with the usual drama that such an initiative entails. By the end of the day, however, and much to the delight of most Greeks, the threat had proved empty, if by the word “bomb” one means an explosive device with the capacity to destroy material objects. Instead, the bomb squad’s investigation lead only to the discovery of a piece of raw meat with a number of medical syringes planted in it, and a note beside the uncanny symbol which read: “the way that sport has become today, it is unreasonable to expect a clean [dope-free] Olympic games.”

Regardless of how one feels about the moral stature and political efficacy of such a farce, one must give at least some credit to the anarchist group that claimed responsibility for it. The written statement that accompanied the symbolic piece of meat bore the mark of truth, for, as they stand today, the Olympic Games are first and foremost an institution in a global capitalist regime that unscrupulously sacrifices the bodily and spiritual integrity of athletes on the altar of financial profit.

How and why does this sacrifice occur? Consider the prime social effect of the Olympic Games: the production of heroes through the strategic manipulation of the multitude’s emotions. Despite the innumerable components involved in this highly profitable production process, its operational logic is actually quite simple. The corporate sponsors of the games, in collaboration with the global and local media and the national governments of each country (I will henceforth refer to this tripartite set of actors as “the arms of the system”) are assiduous in producing or activating wishes of a certain type in the part of the global citizenry that watches, listens to, reads about, or, more generally, attends the Olympic Games (I will henceforth refer to this part of the global citizenry as “the citizenry-audience”). Ultimately, this large-scale process of wish production and activation is followed by a large-scale process of wish fulfillment, from which the arms of the system ultimately make their profits.

In order for the production and activation of wishes to be successful, at least two conditions must be satisfied. The first is that the individual member of the citizenry-audience (i.e. the individual person) is made to identify with a certain set of athletes, usually the ones representing his or her nation: for, if the individual member of the citizenry-audience cannot be made to identify with a set of athletes, then he or she cannot be induced to feel like a part of their successes, and, consequently, is less open to emotional manipulation. The second condition is satisfied when the arms of the system succeed in convincing the citizenry-audience of each nation that its wish for victory can be attained—to various degrees, depending on what potential the athletes of a given nation have for winning medals—by the athletes representing it in competition; in other words, the second condition is satisfied when the arms of the systems succeed in convincing the citizenry-audience of Greece, or Iraq, or the United States, for example, that their wishes for victory can indeed be satisfied by the athletes that Greece, Iraq, and the United States respectively have fielded.

Given the fact of nationalism, the first condition is satisfied without much ado. The satisfaction of the second, however, is more complex. For what happens if the arms of the system succeed in convincing the citizenry-audience of each affected nation state that its athletes can bring it some honor, and, when all is said and done, the relevant athletes have failed to satisfy their citizenry-audience’s wish? Given the fact that victory in athletic competition is precarious (since in sport—no matter what political machinations might be employed to guarantee certain outcomes—the favorites don’t always win and the underdogs don’t always lose), the arms of the system must also promise (in a subtle and powerful way) that they will punish (via exclusion, demonization, or—worst of all—demystification) those athletes who fail to satisfy the wish for national victory. (We see this, for instance, in the US media’s representation of the 4x100 men’s relay team as a losing team, even though the team won a silver metal and lost the gold by only a fraction of a second; or in its representation of the US men’s basketball team as an ensemble of overpaid and quasi-anti-patriotic superstars, even though this ensemble of men won a very respectable bronze metal; or in the reaction that we might expect the media to have had in the event that Michael Phelps came back to the US with only one gold metal.) This way, even if the citizenry-audience is not satisfied by its athletes, it can be satisfied by witnessing the punishment of those who did not satisfy it, and the arms of the system can still profit.

Without the production of heroes, the modern Olympic Games would be useless or, at least, of considerably less utility to the global capitalist regime. The production of heroes helps the mechanism of global capitalism deepen (by increasing the intensity of the wishes felt by the individual consumer) and broaden (by expanding markets worldwide through the deification of strategically chosen bodies) their political influence.

And it is the production of heroes that promotes the contradictory ends of anabolic steroid use and the effort to rid the games of it. On the one hand, the production of heroes has come to require the breaking of records and the achievement of “great” victories. Without these, there is no way to maintain the citizenry-audience’s inculcated need for the sight of spectacular overmen and overwomen. On the other hand, however, the antithetical effort for clean games is also explicable in the context of hero-production, for in the popular consciousness a hero cannot be someone who outdoes his or her opponents because he or she has a political or medical advantage, but must do so because he or she is endowed with the right combination or natural ability, acquired skill, and will-power. Justifiably or not, the citizenry-audience refuses to consume “wicked” heroes; on occasion, it might stand indifferent toward their moral stature, but it seeks, for the most part, to read into their achievements the general triumph of good over evil, the triumph of the good sportspeople over the cheaters.

Now, one may object to the critical tone of the present analysis by pointing to the many social merits and psychological rewards of the Olympic Games. Even while recognizing the steroid problem, one might argue that the Olympic Games bring the world together in a grand celebration, and propagate the vision of a united world; or, that they entail great economic rewards for the host country; or, that they promote the spiritually elevated Cultural Olympiad and Paralympic Games.

While these thoughts are, on some level, appealing, I cannot feel the enthusiasm they purport to generate. The putative merits of the Olympic Games are far from self-evident. In light of the number of armed conflicts happening around the world today, I find it hard to believe that the Olympic Games have had any significant effect in bringing the world’s nation’s together. Moreover, it is by no means necessary that the nation which hosts the Olympic Games benefits from hosting them: Greece now has a seven-billion-euro deficit to pay off, and, given that the aid it will be receiving from the European Union will not surpass the three million mark, most Greeks are expecting a very hot autumn. Finally, the Cultural Olympiad and the Paralympics are shunned to such a degree that it is quite difficult to speak of them as global events. The audiences for the Paralympics, especially, consist of the families and friends of the athletes, and of a few individuals with an exemplary understanding of and love for the athletic spirit. If the Olympic movement was as genuinely interested in serving the athletic spirit as it professes to be, it would integrate the “Paralympics” and the “Olympics” into one schedule, and just call it all “Olympics.”

The modern Olympic Games are first and foremost an institution of capitalism. Today, the spectacle of sport functions like a new religion, like another opium of the people. The arms of the system are industrious in producing illusions and blinding the citizenry-audience with the artificial glow of artificial heroes. The spirit of authentic competition has been prostituted to the lustful dance of anabolic steroids, political intrigues, and nationalistic ejaculations. Any honest operation to “clean” the Olympic Games would require nothing less that a radical reform of global capitalism. As it stands, our celebration is a sham. The Olympians watch our hypocritical attempts to worship them, and laugh.

Gerasimos Karavitis studies Political Theory at the Graduate Center