Don’t Think Twice 08.23.08: The Olympics as Sports Entertainment

Posted by Scott Slimmer on 08.23.2008

The Olympics are meant to be a unifying celebration of sport. So why are they presented so much like sports entertainment?

Before I dive into the topic at hand, I want to take a moment to discuss a slight change in the posting schedule of Don't Think Twice. You may have noticed that I didn't post a new column last week, and I'm not planning on posting a new column next week, either. I'll be graduating from graduate school in May, just nine short months away, and as I've begun to assess all that has to be done before then, I've realized that time is no longer my ally. For a moment I considered abandoning Don't Think Twice all together, considered that maybe I really should have walked away after the last episode of Heat. But I realized almost immediately that I still had too much to say and that I still wanted to be a regular contributor to 411. And so, with Larry's permission, I've decided to start posting Don't Think Twice on a biweekly basis. That should give me the chance to devote a bit more time each week to working on my thesis while still allowing the column to maintain some semblance of momentum. So like I said, there will be a new column up two weeks from now, and another new column up four weeks from now, yadda, yadda, yadda, rinse and repeat. And now, with all of that out of the way, let's talk about the Olympics.

I've often wondered what professional wrestling would look like in its purest form. Admittedly, purity is a relative concept at best in an industry such as this. But the question that has intrigued me for so long is whether or not you could run a successful professional wrestling promotion by focusing solely on the matches. Could professional wrestling really ever just be about wrestling? For instance, imagine a hypothetical promotion with four championships, maybe a world championship, a secondary championship, a cruiserweight championship, and a tag team championship. What would happen if the only feuds and storylines presented in that promotion focused exclusively on winning and defending championships? Could such a promotion book successful, profitable monthly pay-per-views with four championship matches and four number-one-contender matches? Could such a promotion produce a weekly television show in which the champions and their current number-one-contenders showcased their skills against enhancement talent while the mid-card talent wrestled each other in order to qualify for the number-one-contender matches at the next pay-per-view? Alternatively, if each monthly pay-per-view contained four championship matches and four number-one-contender matches, would a weekly television show even be necessary?

As I began to ask those questions about that hypothetical promotion, I returned to the broader questions that had sparked my interest in the beginning. Could professional wrestling really ever just be about wrestling? Would consistently high-quality in-ring action and well booked matches be enough to make professional wrestling entertaining, interesting, compelling, and profitable? Could professional wrestling ever be a success in the absence of feuds and storylines? Or are those feuds and storylines necessary? On some level or another, do we as fans need to be compelled to root for one competitor in favor of another? Is our ability to be entertained tied to, or maybe even based upon, our level of emotional investment? For quite some time I've been intending to write a column and try to find the answers to some of those questions, and maybe some day I will. But I've delayed such an endeavor to this point in part because I'm not sure that I have any real inkling as to what those answers might be. But over the course of the last two weeks, I've begun to find the answers in what would, at least on the surface, seem to be the most unlikely of places – the Olympic Games.

The Olympics are meant to be a unifying celebration of sport, a time for the nations of the world to put aside their differences and come together in the spirit of athletic competition. It is, of course, only natural to root for the athletes from your own country. There will always be the hope, the desire, the yearning to see your country come out on top, a passion birthed in the best of cases by patriotism, in the worst of cases by jingoism. And in that sense there will always be emotion attached to sport as showcased at the Olympics. But as I've watched the Olympics over the course of the last two weeks, I've come to realize that NBC, the television network that owns the broadcast rights for the Olympics here in the United States, has made a concerted effort to take the emotions of the fans far beyond simple national pride. They've spent an incredible amount of time on back-story vignettes and behind-the-scenes interviews. They've been quick to focus on any breach of the rules and highlight any judging controversy. And as I've watched NBC do all it can to make me emotionally invested in the individual athletes competing at the Olympics, I began to realize that this all felt very familiar. Because what NBC was doing was essentially turning Olympians into faces and heels. In an effort to make sports as entertaining as possible, NBC has turned the Olympics into sports entertainment.

Now before I go any farther, I should admit that this fascinating twist in the presentation of the Olympics may or may not be exclusive to NBC and the way that NBC needs to cater to the U.S. audience. I've only seen these Olympics through the lens of NBC coverage. Maybe the coverage in other countries is more neutral. Maybe the coverage in other places around the world really is focused on the celebration of sport. And in those places where the coverage is more similar to that on NBC, I have no doubt that the face and heel roles are often reversed. I know that 411 has a strong international readership, and I'd love for those of you reading around the world to leave a few comments and let me know how the Olympics are covered in your country. But as I've said, I've only experienced these Olympics in the way that NBC has wanted me to experience them. And what a ride it's been.

The faces are the most easily identified. Michael Phelps is NBC's golden boy, essentially being thrust into the John Cena role as NBC tests how far they can push him without the fans becoming tired and resentful. Kerri Walsh and Misty May-Treanor are Phelps' counterparts in bikinis, and NBC has been sure to showcase their tight, glistening bodies at every possibility. Like Trish Stratus, their world-class talent is unfortunately often overshadowed by their incredible beauty. Two of my favorite athletes at these games have been swimmer Jason Lezak and sprinter Walter Dix, men on whom NBC may not have originally intended to focus, but men who forced NBC's hand by continually exceeding expectations in race after race after race. And trust me, NBC reminded us of it at every possible opportunity.

You can hardly blame NBC for doing what they can to turn Olympians into heroes. But what has been far more intriguing is how they've manipulated the other side of the equation, subtly turning other Olympians into villains. Of course, NBC could never promote a heel as vigorously as is possible in WWE. You just can't turn an Olympian into a Legend Killer or an Ultimate Opportunist. But they have, with hints and allegations, with a sly comment here and an off-hand remark there, subtly given us heels nonetheless. This is also one of the more interesting facets of Olympic coverage, for the athletes portrayed as heels in one country may very well be faces in another. Here in the U. S., the first heel offered to us was in fact a team, the French Men's 4X100m Freestyle Relay Team, whose anchorman and world record holder, Alain Bernard, was bold enough to predict that his team would smash the U.S. team and thus end Michael Phelps' hopes of winning eight gold medals. Granted, it doesn't take much for U.S. fans to root against the French, but in most cases the animosity between the U.S. and France is more of a punch line than a reality. But this dastardly quartet had dared to speak out against the Anointed One, and thus they incurred the wrath of a nation. That wrath, as it turns out, would be delivered unto them not by the Anointed One himself, but rather by Jason Lezak, the Mikey Whipwreck to Phelps' Cactus Jack, which I suppose in this analogy would make the French team the Public Enemy. How appropriate.

Next up on our palate of heels was Jamaica's Usain "Lightning" Bolt, the fastest man not only in the world, but in history. He won both the 100m Dash and the 200m Dash in World Record fashion, but it was his self-congratulatory antics in the final 20m of the 100m Dash that will sully his accomplishments in the eyes of U.S. fans. I think we all understand that he deserved to win those races. You can't argue with his speed. But what you can question is his competitive spirit, his desire to be better than not just his competitors, but also better than himself. Because if he had run a proper 100m Dash in the finals, then he wouldn't have just broken the World Record. He would have destroyed it and left it in shambles, quivering in the fetal position somewhere behind him. And as we were so frequently reminded by the analysts at NBC, in a country where Jordan and Woods and now Phelps are so admired and revered, we have a very low tolerance for those athletes who fail to give 100% until they cross the finish line.

But of all of NBC's attempts to create faces and heels throughout their coverage of the Olympics, I was most impressed by their efforts in Women's Gymnastics. This was, in fact, a multi-faceted strategy, and it worked brilliantly. First, during the team competition, we were offered the U.S. team as the valiant underdog faces, bravely challenging the obviously underage Chinese team. The Chinese were cheaters and the judging was flawed, and as a result the U.S. team became the darlings of their nation, though in the end even faces sometimes fall on their asses. But then came the individual all-around competition in which Shawn Johnson and Nastia Liukin, both Americans, were favored to win gold and silver. And the presentation of this event was nothing short of a masterstroke by NBC. With two Americans favored to win, it would have been easy enough to let the U.S. fans bask in these athletes's collective glory. But the Olympics as presented by NBC are about heroes and villains, faces and heels, and so NBC had to undertake the task of turning an American athlete into a heel. This was a tricky proposition to be sure, but one that was accomplished with surgical precision. They mentioned here and there that Johnson was born in West Des Moines, Iowa, while Liukin was born in Moscow, Russia. They analyzed Johnson's style and noted that it would find favor with the Western judges while concluding the Liukin's style would be preferred by the European judges. They inundated us with clips of Johnson's infectious smile, making her into the girl next door, and placing her in stark contrast to the cool, calm, almost icy countenance of Liukin. Twenty years after the end of the Cold War, NBC had recreated it within the U.S. Women's Gymnastics team in an effort to once again make the U.S. fans emotionally invested in the outcome of the individual all-around competition. And when Nastia Liukin won that competition, we American fans could take solace in the fact that her gold medal would be added to our medal count, though we still wished that medal could have been attributed to Shawn Johnson. Of course, a few days later, in the Balance Beam event final, Johnson finally bested Liukin to win her sole gold medal of the games. And all was right with the universe. Oh, and as you may or may not have noticed, each gymnast wore a number on her back while competing. Shawn Johnson's number? 411. Now that, my friends, is a Real American Hero.

My point in all of this is that while the Olympics are meant to be a unifying celebration of sport, they are often presented in such a way as to make the audience as emotionally invested as possible. In a gathering of nations meant to be the ultimate showcase of athletic ability, it is often feuds and storylines that drive the passions of the fans. And so if the Olympics seem to be unable to exist without feuds and storylines, then what chance could professional wrestling ever hope to have? If the purest form of athletic competition we have is still dependent on feuds and storylines, then is it only natural that an art form that grew out of a sport should share that same dependence? And if so, then was Vince McMahon right all along? Is professional wrestling, in its most evolved form, truly sports entertainment?

Those are questions for another day, and now I need to get back to watching the Olympics. Because as I've mentioned from time to time, in many ways my life seems to be a search for heroes, and there are heroes aplenty at the Olympic Games. Some run, some jump, some swim, some dive, and some rain hell fire and spiked volleyballs down upon their opponents while wearing teeney weeney bikinis and stealing our hearts.