A Short Olympic Survey




Each day do you sit down to watch the Olympics? Do you sit on a fake leather recliner or on the floor or on an old sweaty couch? Where were you when you watched the Olympics four years ago? Where you in a similar place or one completely different? How do you watch the Olympics? Are you inspired to achieve? Are you driven to succeed? Do you believe that the nation that wins the most medals is the best? Or the most authoritarian? Do you care that people want to protest outside the Olympics and they can't? Did you watch the 2004 Olympics from another country and if so how did that affect your viewing? Is it odd to be forced to watch the Olympics through the lens of another country which is not your own and therefore should not have the same emotional effect on your psyche? In 2008 are you in another country again or are you back watching the Games through the appropriate national lens? Do you not watch because you don't watch sports and you don't buy into nationalist discourse? Do you envy their bodies? Are you in awe of their bodies? Does watching their bodies give you an increasingly weighty sense of your own body's feebleness? Are you motivated to improve? Are you motivated to sit motionless for hours eating their movement with your eyes? Do you feel more connected to the Chinese people now? Does your country's Olympic programming have heartfelt stories about the families of the athletes? Does your country's Olympic programming make you sick with its repetitive dragons and golden colors and "traditional" Chinese music? Are you a happier person with the Olympics? Do you wake up at 3am with Olympic withdrawal? Do you wonder what Olympians competitions you miss at night when you are sleeping? Do you wish your could memorize the names of the Fuwa and buy loads of Fuwa gear like keychains and Halloween costumes? Do you believe the Olympics make you a better person? Do you watch the Olympics with pangs of regret and yearning? Do the Olympics leave you feeling drained and empty or recharged and full? Will there be world peace when the Olympics are gone? What do the Olympics mean to you? To us?



4 comentarios:

Manuel dijo...

I don’t trust people that laugh at everything (I miss the icy faces of communist athletes back in the 80’s, they were so beautiful muscle machines). Watching the Olympics is like watching beauty contest just with the cheesy peace speech implicit in the whole crap.

Echo dijo...

i actually love the fuwa. this is my susceptability to cuteness speaking.

John Pluecker dijo...

manuel - orale. dont trust smiling faces. there's something psychotic about that, but also something very true.

eunice - but are you going to buy the products? i also think they are ridiculously sweet. search fuwa on google images. they're adorable.

Echo dijo...

nope, i'm not going to go out and buy fuwa products (though i will be in oaktown chinatown later today, hmmm....) although if i received them as a gift i wouldn't refuse.