Paving the Olympic Dream: The Politics of the 2007 Pan-American Games in Rio de Janeiro

Abstract

The making of the 2007 Pan-American Games, held in the city of Rio de Janeiro, marked the beginning of the long transformation that this city would undergo in connection to sports mega-events. This paper revisits how the 2007 Pan-American Games were largely produced under the promise that its legacies, particularly the infrastructural ones, could be effectively mobilized in order to strengthen the chances of bringing the Olympics to Brazil for the first time. Whereas this rhetoric has proven somewhat successful in helping the city to secure the right to host the 2016 Olympics, the alleged connection between both events has shown to be much more limited than its proponents had initially advertized. In reality, most of the venues constructed for the Pan-American Games had to be thoroughly renovated for the Olympics, while some of them presented structural problems and/or failed to meet the standards imposed by international sports federations.     

盘点美国 回顾北京 遥望伦敦——媒体政治建构奥运神话的宏观作用机制

以新闻议程设置（时间轴）和整体宣传战略（空间轴）两大基础传播理论体系为研究线索,总结与反思北京奥运会期间中美两国公共舆论战略的经验得失,揭示媒体政治建构奥运神话的宏观作用机制。建议我国提升媒体政治理论指导体育实践的能力,加大体育新媒体建设与营销力度,重视与边缘传播者的交流与合作,加强网络评论代理人的培训与监管。     

The Olympic Creation As a Sacred Story: History and Myth in Jens Lind's Documentary The Sunshine Olympics 1912

The purpose of this article is to analyse Jens Lind's hour-long documentary film The Sunshine Olympics 1912 from a mythical-religious perspective, and show its underlying myth of creation. This perspective is inspired by Mircea Eliade's theory of myth and the sacred, as it can be found in his work on religious phenomenology and the history of religions. The article shows how the related meanings – homologies – occur at different levels of the story. Through Lind's use of voice-over narration, narrative structure, personal focus, visual metaphors and various recurring motifs, existential meanings are generated at different levels from an individual to a cosmological dimension. In accordance with Eliade's theories, the three main athletes depicted in the documentary, Greta Johansson, Jim Thorpe, and Kenneth McArthur, become exemplary models of the Olympic spirit. Three Olympic creators are also presented in the film: Pierre de Coubertin, Viktor Balck, and Torben Grut.     

Twitter,Team GB and the Australian Olympic Team: representations of gender in social media spaces

Twitter is used by athletes, sporting teams and sports media to provide updates on the results of sporting events as they happen. Unlike traditional forms of sports media, online sports media offers the potential for diverse representations of athletes. The current study examined gender in social media coverage of the 2016 Olympic Games using a third wave feminist lens. The analysis focused on the Twitter pages of ‘Team GB’ and the ‘Australian Olympic team’ and the sports stories and images posted during the Rio Olympic Games. Despite a number of traditional differences in the ways that male and females were represented being present, such as the presence of ‘active’ images of male athletes accompanying sports stories and the presence of infantalization in the language used to represent female performers, this analysis demonstrated significant strides forward in terms of the quantity of coverage received by women in online spaces. It further highlights virtual platforms as dynamic spaces for the representation of women athletes.     

A Game for the Global North: The 2018 Winter Olympic Games in Pyeongchang and South Korean Cultural Politics

Abstract

The South Korean region of Pyeongchang will host the 2018 Winter Olympic Games. Using Wallerstein’s world system theory and Collins’s notions of zones of prestige and emulation as a conceptual framework, this paper examines the South Korean Government’s intention to stage the winter sporting spectacle. As the Winter Olympics is arguably considered a game for the relatively affluent global north, South Korea, as a semi-core state, attempts to elevate its position to a global economic and cultural powerhouse through being a host of this winter sports mega-event. However, it should be noted that the Winter Olympic Games is an event through which white supremacy and Western cultural hegemony are continuously reinforced. Therefore, the South Korean ambition to enhance its international standing by staging the Winter Olympic Games paradoxically reflects Western cultural imperialism and Orientalism embedded in South Korean cultural politics associated with the winter sporting contest.