Le Hump

Having watched much of the Opening Ceremony again, in a far better mood than I was in throughout the original viewing, I have one or two more thoughts to share.

I believe I have experience, both first hand and less so, of examples of when French people appear to be noticeably rather less adept than others of vetting their own ideas, especially the big ones.

They’d come up with some truly great (but...) concepts and would immediately get Le Hump if one were to begin by enumerating some of the things that might not work out as planned.

You know the kind of thing. Maginot Line: what if the Germans come in over there? Le Hump.

My father’s business was large scale theatrical events and I recall him explaining (sometimes com-plaining) how constant the need always was to keep a close eye on the ambitions of the creatives.

The problem in Paris may have begun as an urge to in some way over-compensate for the pompous and pious solemnities of the modern Olympic Movement, its ever so slightly neo-fascist aethetics even, all of which the French probably feel rather responsible for, and rightly so. So from the outset, some sort of shattering of the boundaries of good taste and common sense was always going into the final recipe.

Even the best bits of the ceremony were hindered by little details that might have been addressed rather better in the planning stage.

As for the part they have since felt the need to apologise for, Thomas Jolly did try to allocate himself some plausible deniability by leaving it open to interpretation which, if any, great work of art and thematic mythological material was being referenced, but then his cast members went on the platform formerly known as Twitter and explained what they thought they were up to, and there we have it, one of those (likely) mishaps which were not given due consideration at sign-off.