Last Friday saw the opening ceremonies of the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. I absolutely love the Olympics. Twenty-four hours a day, for two weeks, random sports are being broadcast at nearly all times of the day. There are sports we’re used to like basketball, volleyball, soccer and swimming. There are sports we only hear about every Olympic cycle like handball, ping pong, badminton, white water kayaking and fencing. Regardless of the sport, the Olympics represent one of the few times when it is acceptable to be obnoxiously nationalist. However, the Olympics provide the greatest opportunity for political posturing that goes well beyond the results of any given sporting event. On Friday night, we saw many examples of how countries can use the Olympic platform to make a statement, or to cast a façade about what their country stands for.
The major instance of façade casting was Zahra Nemati. The 31-year-old Iranian archer was the flag bearer for her country, in what I can only imagine was an enormous honor for her. The most interesting part of Zahra’s story is her disability. She was paralyzed in a car accident and competed as an archer in the 2012 Summer Paralympics, winning an individual Gold and a team Bronze. This summer, she’s getting the opportunity to compete as an archer for the Iranian Olympic team. A disabled woman, getting to compete with her able bodied teammates. That’s fantastic. And to be given the opportunity to be her nation’s flag bearer? Even better.
But we need to remember what she’s actually representing. Color me shocked that Iran selected a disabled woman to be their flag bearer. That’s mighty progressive for a country with a poor record in human rights. It’s almost like they’re turning a corner…or is that what they want us to think? I’m more inclined to believe the latter. The Olympics provide a perfect platform for Iran to attempt weaving a narrative for the world that is different than the real story, and using a disabled female Olympian was the perfect way to do so.
The real story of the Opening Ceremonies was the ceremony itself and the tone Brazil set for the entire two weeks. Brazil was not hesitant about using its opportunity to illustrate its feelings of exploitation at the hands of the rest of the world. They also used the ceremony to lecture us all about carbon emissions and global warming. Slightly hypocritical of them, since their national oil company Petrobras has many representatives in their government, but they would much rather we forget about that.
Iran, Brazil, and quite likely many more countries used the Olympic Opening Ceremony as a platform for pushing their world agenda. So while we watch copious amounts of sports over the next two weeks, be sure to pay attention to the background for what else is really going on.
