Each and every Olympic Games has planted its very own remarkable journey throughout history, but not all remarks have positively influenced the host nation itself and the world’s perception of them. As one of the biggest sports mega-event commonly known for bringing the world together, we expect the Olympics to bring not only the serious competition but rather a way to celebrate global spirit in an exciting and memorable way. In other words, “despite its competitive nature, sport is also seen as a peacemaker” (The Monitor’s Editorial, 2016, para.4). However, this “coming together” action of the Olympics seem to have changed over the last couple years where “each country seems to stage its own Olympics now, cheering on its own performers, mediated by its own one-eyed TV commentators and idiot interviewers (“How special was that?”), ignoring foreigners” (Engel, para. 14). In addition, the aftermath of the Summer Rio de Janeiro 2016 Olympics causes us to wonder what the purpose of hosting this event was for them. It seems to me that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and Brazil’s government itself did not consider how the Olympics could negatively affect the economy, politics, and humanitarian in Rio. The experience behind the 2016 Olympics ties into a debatable question: Is it desirable for a developing country to host the Olympic Games for a path to overall prosperity? In fact, I feel that citizens of Rio became aware that the country decided to host the mega-event for the benefit of the upper class instead of solving continuing economic and social issues.
https://telegrafi.com/na-shtohet-deshira-per-te-bere-sport-duke-pare-olimpiaden/
The IOC typically selects a host city, which “thinks the nation/city will advance the various interests and ideals of Olympic culture” (Chang, July 11, para. 10). When the International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced Rio de Janeiro as the host city for the 2016 summer Olympics, the streets of Brazil were covered with boisterous celebration as citizens screamed and shedded tears of joy hoping for a change. An opportunity had arisen to rectify the problems that Brazil has struggled with for many years. However, as the mega-event date came nearby, the emotions we have witnessed in the media back in 2009 is nothing alike to what we have seen in 2016. We often associate the Olympics with richer, more sustainable countries and developing nations like South American countries, who have never been able to host the Olympics due to their poor social and political development. Although Brazil’s economy has grown rapidly over the recent decades, there are still outstanding issues (especially within inequality) that need to be improved. In a common notion that “sport-mega events could lead to new commodities and can increase the acceleration of capitalist production, circulation and consumption” (Compton, 2015, p.59), the preparation for the Rio Olympics was on a roll, downwards. Many of us have witnessed the dreadful situation of scenes behind the idealistic world portrayed through public broadcasting, where numerous demo attacks and riots were happening, agitating many of Rio’s citizens. Although Brazil was the first South American country to ever host the Olympics, I strongly believe that Rio ignored the more important priorities that needed to be addressed in order to host a secure, just, and prosperous Olympics Games that not as many people would be upset about. Major events like the Olympics are used to display political dominance or promotion of conservative minds on the commercial development of the city by upper echelons according to the minds of organizers when Rio won the host city bid in 2009.
Brazil’s attempt to utilize the Olympic Games as a method of economic investment, international branding, urban development, and more, demonstrates a similar approach that took place in the planning of the 2010 FIFA World Cup Games in Cape Town, South Africa. As benefits of these SMEs have presumed to generate actual developmental impacts, “It has become increasingly evident that there is a current disjuncture between what people on the ground are and have been saying and feeling about 2010 (the survey again reveals illuminating insights), and the way this is and has been articulated by their leaders and representatives” (Pillay + Bass, 2008, p. 344).
As Sports Mega-Events (SMEs) are vastly becoming more popular than ever before, it is important to recognize the potential issues and opportunities associated with the organization and process to performance. (Yu, p. 2) It is important to understand how the “economic value of SMEs in terms of ‘urban entrepreneurialism’, promoting cities’ and nations’ tourist image, facilitating urban transformations, [and] attracting financial investments produces economic developments” (Yu, 2009, p.2). Rio’s attempt at succeeding in these areas of infrastructure and city image development, in fact, revealed the dark reality of this host city to the rest of the world.
Rio’s attempt at making the city look glamorous backfired because the lack of authenticity and representativeness of the city was clearly visible. A fence painted with colorful designs were aligned throughout common tourist routes to welcome guests without the worry of an attack or an uncomfortable experience. However, this fence is more or less viewed as a disguise of inequality, and locals referred to it as the “Wall of Shame” as the other side of the fence was a “drug den guarded by armed traffickers” (Bowater, 2016, para. 1). As international attention was focused on Rio, the city started scrambling to build infrastructure for visitors to see the most amazing parts of the city, which pretty much had to be heavily transformed. With the government’s interests in reducing the visibility of the community in dystopia, the city itself was in a state of exception.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/03/forced-evictions-vila-autodromo-rio-olympics-protests
Citizens were forced to be evicted from their homes with minimal compensation to build infrastructure worth millions of dollars. This issue demonstrates how Rio’s Olympic committee and government as being incapable of setting their priorities straight. Residents of Rio spoke up on a devastating story of how, “50 or 60 of them tried to form a human chain around the homes that were due for demolition and that the police used violence, such as pepper spray, to try to break them up” (Watts, 2015, para.6). The media pressed evidential content of this process that was somehow necessary to happen so violently as they streamed resident’s upsetting faces and voices, and it seemed to be as if this mega-event was a priority for Rio over protecting the rights of Rio’s own citizens. A Brazilian woman commented on her experiences and thoughts on the investment on this mega-event, “It’s strange that we are being forced out of our homes in the name of public works, yet this is a private investment,” (Watts, 2015, para. 13). I think this is the first and hopefully the last Olympics where most of the effort was applied on abusing human and property rights among citizens for the benefit of the corporate and changing the scenery of the city just for a three-week event.
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/gallery/2017/feb/10/rios-olympic-venues-six-months-on-in-pictures
The depth of Brazilian optimism in the Olympics, Carlos Roberto Osorio, the secretary general of the Brazilian Olympics Committee mentioned, “First, in terms of the city of Rio itself, [it is] the amount of investment in infrastructure that the Games will bring to the city.” (Spaulding, 2017, p. 192) This statement lies in ruins, where the media has revealed photos of crumbled stadiums and arenas in despair just after a couple months (Mailonline, para. 3). I strongly agree with Martin Muller’s point in his journal, The Mega-Event Syndrome, that it was a better alternative for Rio’s Olympic Committee to build temporary facilities like sports venues instead of permanent facilities where after use is uncertain (p.14). Especially in a nation that is still slowly developing, it is important to recognize that people will not be interested in paying and using these areas if social issues that affect individuals remain present.
I feel that the biggest mistakes the organizations and Brazil’s government partook in was committing so much time, money and efforts to visitors who come and go, while Rio citizens simply just wanted to stay in a healthy, safe, and affordable lifestyle in this city. This situation brought a lot of frustration towards many locals as they were being neglected by their own government, and they didn’t appreciate how their income was being taken away by something that shouldn’t be a country’s priority during a time of struggle. Brazil is often portrayed in the media as a nation in poverty, but this seems to me as misrepresentation because the media doesn’t seem to consider how people are coping with poorness due to unfair distribution of income to its own citizens. As a highly populated nation, we should take a perspective into thinking about how the money is being distributed among citizens and the government. To support this thought, income inequality scholars have discussed that “extreme income inequality leads to spatial segregation, political power concentrated in the high-income (elite) class, and thus, uneven public resource access” (Rasch, 2017, p.299). Everything seemed as if taxpayers money were taken away to fuel the corporate, and the whole process of building the perfect Olympic scene by having such a violent influence on innocent citizens justifies the supremacy of the elite. The enormous spendings of stadiums that are no longer in use show that things were built in Brazil just for a one-time use when they could’ve provided affordable wages for doctors and teachers with that money. (Watts, para.3) Critics have also provided further evidence on how the mega-event caused more harm than good when they determined the financial gap, the inequality where Brazil’s government provided the IOC executives with 700 pounds a day payments while on the other hand, cleaners in the Olympic Village only earned 10 pounds (approximately 17 USD dollars) a day (Watts, para.3). When politics largely interfere with sports, especially the Olympics, negative ramifications are clearly visible through the behaviors of citizens who are struggling to live a stable life and the ignorance of these issues by the elites. In summary, with other challenges that were followed during this time frame (e.g. zika virus spread, economic recession, political scandals, government corruption, pollution), utilizing this mega-event costing $14 billion dollars in total has in fact resulted in causing more harm than good to Rio, Brazil (Lazar, para. 3).
Considering Brazil’s background in continuing crime, violence, and “poverty”, it becomes questionable what stance the government and Rio’s Olympic committee had been taking in regards to the Olympic Games. The aftermath of this mega-event seems to answer that Rio built their bid for the Olympic games in the favor of officials and elites with very minimal beneficial impact for the rest of Rio’s population. The idea of allowing a small portion of the group to propose something with the promises to its citizens for a positive impact in their lives when reality was the direct opposite, is clearly unfair. It doesn’t make sense how the government is capable of making decisions and speaking as voices for the whole city/country. There should’ve and should be an opportunity for citizens of cities interested in hosting this mega-event to fill in a survey or participate in a poll. With my reflections on the 2016 Olympic Games, I remember that the media actually included both the good and bad side of this event’s journey. The media’s display on the propensity to hooliganism (riot and demo attacks) during this three-week event and torch pass seemed to make it easier for audiences around the world to understand this action was being done as a way for citizens to stand up for themselves. The inequality clearly hasn’t been demonstrated through the media, and it becomes noticeable that mega-events in Rio have been associated with violating human rights among their very own citizens. The elites of Rio seemed to be too favored in using the Olympics to show to the rest of the world that everything in Brazil is going right, and there is nothing else to see here but a big party (Zirin, p.17). As the lives of the poor and indigent of people were not fulfilled in Rio, it’s worrisome to see other countries on the similar economic level as Brazil in full desire to win the bidding for hosting future Olympic Games.
References
Bowater, D. (2016, July 23). Rio’s ‘wall of shame’ between its ghettos and shiny Olympic image. Retrieved from https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/07/23/rios-wall-of-shame-between-its-ghettos-and-shiny-olympic-image/
Chang, A. (July 11). How an Olympic host city Is determined. Retrieved April 08, 2018, from http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=80796&page=1
Compton, J. (2015). Mega-events, media, and the integrated world of global spectacle. Mega-events and globalization: Capital and spectacle in a changing world order, 48-64.
Engel, M. (2016, July 29). The trouble with the Olympic Games. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/jul/29/the-trouble-with-the-olympic-games
Lazar, A. (2016, June 5). Brazil’s Political, Economic Turmoil Haunt Olympics. Retrieved from https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/brazil-s-political-economic-turmoil-haunt-olympics-n585561
Mailonline, D. B. (2017, February 20). Brazil’s $12 billion Olympic legacy lies in ruins: Five months after the Rio Games, stadiums are crumbling as cash-strapped nation is left with crippling debts. Retrieved from http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4241412/Brazil-s-12-billion-Olympic-legacy-lies-ruins.html
Müller, M. (2015). The Mega-Event Syndrome: Why so much goes wrong in mega-event planning and what to do about it. Journal Of The American Planning Association, 81(1), 6-17. doi:10.1080/01944363.2015.1038292
Pillay, U., & Bass, O. (2008, September). Mega-events as a response to poverty reduction: The 2010 FIFA World Cup and its urban development implications. In Urban Forum (Vol. 19, No.3, p. 329). Springer Netherlands.
Rasch, R. (2017). Income Inequality and urban vulnerability to flood hazard in Brazil. Social Science Quarterly (Wiley-Blackwell), 98(1), 299-325. doi:10.1111/ssqu.12274
Spalding, A. B. (2017). Brazil’s Olympic-era anti-corruption reforms. Maryland Journal of International Law, 32(1), 188-220.
The Monitor’s Editorial, B. (2016, July 13). Rio Games as test of Olympics’ purpose. Christian Science Monitor. p. N.PAG.
Watts, J. (2015, June 03). Forced evictions in Rio favela for 2016 Olympics trigger violent clashes. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/03/forced-evictions-vila-autodromo-rio-olympics-protests
Watts, J. (2016, August 21). Have the Olympics been worth it for Rio? Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/aug/21/rio-olympics-residents-impact-future-legacy
Yu, Y., Klauser, F., & Chan, G. (2009). Governing security at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The International Journal of the History of Sport, 26(3), 390-405.
Zirin, D. (2016). RIO ON THE BRINK. Nation, 303(7/8), 12-17.
by Naomi Xavier (J101)
cmns324: Media, Sport, and Popular Culture 