From: Michael Moynihan <mmoynihan-AT-wi.rr.com>
To: puptcrit-AT-puptcrit.org
Date: Tue, 12 Aug 2008 13:11:14 -0500
Subject: Re: [Puptcrit] Olympic opening ceremony


forwarded:
Fakery at the Olympic Games

Opening Ceremony singer lip-synched song because actual singer wasn't  
pretty enough while CGI fireworks added to telecast

Cam Cole
Vancouver Sun
Tuesday, August 12, 2008

The skies may be clearing up over Beijing, but the face China tried to  
paint on the 2008 Olympic Games is breaking out in blemishes.

Main Street of Happyville turns out to be a collection of expensively- 
built facades, with nothing behind them. Or worse, something awful  
behind them: a series of very large lies - and the worst of it is that  
the Chinese hosts don't even appear to realize how bad they may end up  
looking to the rest of the world.

The Opening Ceremony we all gushed over was not what it seemed. Those  
blazing footprints of fireworks that "walked" in the sky from  
Tiananmen Square to the Bird's Nest stadium? Pre-recorded and  
digitally inserted into the telecast.

The "sold-out" Olympic events, every ticket gone? An illusion, exposed  
only when reporters began to notice the squads of identically-dressed  
and thunderstick-equipped cheer squads filling whole sections of  
seats. Even if some of those were seats designated for Olympic Family  
members - dignitaries and IOC members who leave seats unused at the  
lesser sessions is a chronic problem at all Games - using fake fans to  
fill them is, at best, a comical notion and at worst an attempt to  
create a false picture of attendance.

Any minute now, we'll find out we're really in Japan.

But the piece de resistance, the most cynical of all of the pieces of  
fakery at the Beijing Olympics: Agence France-Presse revealed Tuesday  
that the darling little girl in a red dress who charmed the audience  
by singing "Ode to the Motherland" - a hymn of the revolution - during  
the ceremony wasn't singing at all.

Lin Miaoke was lip-synching to the voice of seven-year-old Yang Peiyi,  
who was rejected by a senior member of the Communist Party's politburo  
at a rehearsal because she had a chubby face and crooked teeth.

"He told us there was a problem, that we needed to fix it, so we did,"  
said the ceremony's musical director, well-known contemporary composer  
Chen Qigang, in an interview with a state broadcaster that aired  
Tuesday.

AFP reported that the interview with Chen appeared briefly on the news  
website Sina.com before it was apparently wiped from the Internet in  
China.

"Little Yang Peiyi's failure to be selected was mainly because of her  
appearance," were among the Chen comments that were made to disappear.  
"The reason was for the national interest. The child on camera should  
be flawless in image, internal feelings, and expression. Lin Miaoke is  
excellent in those aspects. But in terms of voice, Yang Peiyi is  
perfect, each member of our team agreed."

The French news agency interviewed the director of the China Internet  
project at the University of California-Berkeley, former dissident  
Xiao Qiang, who said the substitution of the pretty girl for the  
unsuitable one "illustrates an important aspect of these Olympic  
Games. It is all about projecting the right image of China with no  
respect for honesty or for the audience.

"I do not think the Chinese state realizes how unethical this is, they  
don't understand what kind of values they are reflecting."

Defenders of these "minor misdirections" say they are hardly unique to  
China, and the media is just picking on the hosts.

Didn't the late Pavarotti lip-synch his signature "Nessun Dorma" aria  
from Turandot at the opening ceremony in Turin? Yes. But at least it  
was his own voice. Nobody said, "Listen, Luciano, you've kind of let  
yourself go, and there's not enough time for you to go on the South  
Beach diet. Julio Iglesias over here is still a good-looking man.  
We're going to have him lip-synch your song."

All kinds of artists lip-synch their performances. Okay, we understand  
that.

And we got over the Internet censorship. We've accepted that there's  
certain things on the Net that the Chinese populace is not allowed to  
see. We accept that a 21-point censorship plan allegedly distributed  
to all state media probably exists, even if the spokesperson for Games  
organizing committee (BOCOG) claims to know nothing about it - as he  
also knows nothing about plain-clothes officials reportedly shadowing  
some reporters, taking pictures of them, and notebooks being  
confiscated, or why two armoured personnel carriers suddenly appeared,  
parked outside the Media Centre, front and back, on Tuesday.

Fine. We're not supposed to know these things.

And maybe, in the larger sense, it's good that however bad the news is  
about the fakery surrounding the Games to date, at least the news is  
getting out. There was some question as to whether that would happen,  
before the Games began, and so far it has not been an issue.

So, China's defenders say, this is really no big deal.

And that's probably true, as long as you're not Yang Peiyi, who at  
seven years old has already discovered a hard truth about physical  
appearance - and had it drilled into her brain unequivocally, by her  
government no less, that she may be able to sing, but she's too ugly  
to represent her nation in public.

ccole-AT-vancouversun.com
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