The reason I tell you this is to establish in your mind the view of an outsider, one whose introduction to Greece was the introduction of a tourist. The image of Greece carried in the mind of your average visitor (I suppose I can speak for the British) is the Greece of Byron: “The isles of Greece, The isles of Greece, Where burning Sappho loved and sung, Where grew the arts of war and peace, Where Delos rose and Phoebus sprung.” The tourist seems to place such emphasis on the remains of what happened in Greece, that to find any kind of modern civilization or culture comes at first as something of a surprise.

In researching for this article I decided to see what other British visitors thought about Greece and I found a quote in the collected letters of T.E. Lawrence, who visited Athens in 1910. Lawrence describes Athens as “…the quietest of towns, without trams almost, no motors, no train whistles, no dogs even: So that there is never a sound from outside to disturb the peace of the rock.” His attitude towards the presence of a city so close to the Acropolis is an attitude that dismisses any sort of present civilization as a nuisance. But the Acropolis without Athens would be nothing; it is an Athenian accomplishment after all.

This attitude is chiefly fostered by ignorance, the Greece many people visit exists in their minds and was created by five hundred years of academic fetishism. It is not modern Greece or Ancient Greece that the tourist comes to visit but the Greece of the history book and cinema.

The London Olympics of 1948, due to wartime privations the first since the Berlin Olympics of 1936, were also exploited by political motivations. The games were seen as a good opportunity for war-weary nations to re-establish a new dialogue with one-another. It was an opportunity for victors and vanquished to compete on equal terms. Sadly the London Olympics became one of the many battlefields upon which the cold war was fought. Soviet journalists took the opportunity to compare all they saw about them with the Soviet regime. For the soviets sporting prowess, like all things was connected to political ideology, the best ideology of course winning the most medals. A sporting gesture of international amicability became a chink in the Iron curtain.

My last example is the Munich Olympics of 1972. On the fifth of September a terrorist group murdered eleven members of the Israeli Olympic team. This was a cynical and predatorial exploitation of the Olympic festival to gain the attention of the Global media.

At this point I cannot emphasise enough the view that the sportsmanship and spirit of the Olympics is not under attack. It is more an analysis of the manor in which sport is exploited that I feel is open to question.

The Olympic games is often viewed as a great moment for international relations, a chance for people of all creeds and colours to compete as equals. This may be true for the event organisers and participators, but what of the ordinary “man in the street.”

The Olympic website claims that the ceremonial aspect of the games is inspired by two of the Ancient Greek Gods; Apollo and Dionysus. The Slogan for Athens 2004 is “its coming home.” How much relevance does Apollo or Dionysus have for the average person? Exploiting the ancient Greek gods is more than ever going to reinforce the stereotype of Greece as somewhere were “something happened.” The promotional slogan for the Games “It’s coming home”, once again has connotations of a classical nature that have little to do with the Modern Olympic games and the Modern Greek state. The origins of the modern Olympics lie on two places, (1) The Archaeological gold rush that occurred during the nineteenth century, and (2) the death throes of the enlightenment, a movement that looked upon classical times as a utopia to be aspired too, which in a world following industrialisation became more and more unattainable and therefore developed more and more appeal.

The obvious problem associated with the Olympic promotions taking such a cheap, touristy neo-classical standpoint is that it does little to promote the concept of Greece as a modern nation. It is merely reinforcing the cultural stereotype of the tourist that Greece is a country that existed long ago, and leaves the tourist with the vague notion that they can treat the country they are visiting as, to Quote George Orwell, “a half way house between a brothel and a museum.” 

Wandering around the Plaka district of Athens during my last two visits to Greece I was made aware that the Olympic event in many forms was well entrenched already. The shops that sell statuettes (I have one on my desk in front of me; Alexander the Great), pornographic playing cards and assorted novelty crockery were already well stocked in towels, sweaters, tee-shirts, mugs, ash trays, commemorative plates and key rings with the five Olympic rings printed, stitched, embossed or otherwise scarred upon them. The souvenir seems to be an ancient human institution; indeed I have heard that the practice of collecting souvenirs can account for the large proportion of ancient statues that are complete except for the phallus.

This advance preparation for the expected throng of visitors for the Olympics has also been extended to the infrastructure of the city. A new tram has been designed we are told, the airport has been renovated, new roads have been built and new hotels. An Olympic complex has been constructed to house the employees and athletes and the Metro has been extended. All of these changes have been made to enable the infrastructure to cope with the millions of expected visitors.

Such operations of course need funding; much of the work and the funding has been supplied by the sponsors of the games. To expect such a large organisation as the Olympics to somehow exist without some form of major corporate sponsorship is to push naïve cynicism to breaking point. The sponsors of the Athens Olympics are the sorts of international corporations that are likely to benefit from the kind of international notoriety that such sponsorship provides. However the kind of corporations that sponsor the Olympics, being international corporations cannot represent the culture of one country, they are the kind of major brand names that people from the Americas to Japan are familiar with.

The opening and closing ceremonies of the Olympics are based upon the ancient Greek Gods Apollo and Dionysus. How much do the Gods Apollo and Dionysus represent facets of modern culture in Greece? It appears the promotion of the festival on this count is reinforcing the stereotype of Greece as a country with a past but no present.

The visitors to the Olympic games will probably go to see the Acropolis. They will probably wander through central Athens and notice the shops that they have at home. They may in all probability buy a memento of their visit to Greece, an Olympic towel or key ring perhaps. Maybe some pornographic playing cards to amuse their friends, or a statue of a Greek figure they have known about sine their youth and always felt some affinity with.

At the games themselves there will be the advertising that inevitably arises from sponsorship. But the advertising will be advertising for international corporations, the McDonalds and Coca-Cola’s, Visa and American Express.

The manner in which the Olympics has been promoted, and the manner in which Greece is being presented by the Olympic festival says little to me about the Greece that I have come to know in this English mind of mine. The opportunity for international communication is huge, however the from that the communication appears to have taken is one that reinforces stereotypes. The visitor to Athens is going to see the ruins and here that they embody the Olympic spirit is connected to them. They are going to wander around the shops in Plaka and perhaps eat a McDonalds in Syntagma Square. On their return home they will have been to Greece, but they won’t really have. It appears that the only methods of communication associated with the Olympics are fundamentally superficialities that are not going to increase communication between peoples but enforce stereotypes and ultimately increase isolation and misunderstanding between people because the only perception of Greece they have is associated to ancient mythology, merchandise and McDonalds and Coca cola. 

Kείμενο: Thomas Sherston