oplaAt a function a couple nights ago, I met a friend of a friend of a friend, who was British, so of course I asked him about the opening ceremonies of the Olympics.
He felt it was great in that you could talk about it for hours - which and his (American) wife and (American) neighbors did - but it was just too loaded with self-referential stuff that not even all Britons got, but just maybe most Britons of Danny Boyle's generation.
He also said that they didn't scale a lot of the stuff right, so it probably worked on TV, but not for people in the stadium.
"But Beijing," he was like, "That was impressive, it was a spectacle of scale and synchrony."
"Yeah," I was like, "The hive-mind."
"Well, maybe," he was like, "But I don't think you have to be a communist country to do that."
At that, I laughed loudly, and I was like, "I think you do! Let's respectfully disagree on that."
He laughed too, and I went on to say that fascism subsumes the individual into unthinking emotions, whereas Britain had the exact opposite, and had a "cerebral" opening games ceremony, to use the word that he used, since reflective thought is the opposite of fascism.
"I suppose so," he was like, "But I still think Beijing was impressive. Every country has to play to its strengths, I suppose."
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