“Sleight-of-Hand,” One-off Ceremony.

“Sleight-of-Hand,” One-off Ceremony
How an American viewer saw it.

by Myles A. Garcia

On paper, the concept was ultra-ambitious and likely to shatter traditions.

For the Olympics returning to the city where a revival for the Modern era was suggested and put into action, it seemed like a fitting homecoming party after an absence of 100 years.

The plan was to unleash the Ceremony, with all its pomp and panoply, onto the avenues of Paris and the quays of the Seine.  Paris needs no introduction to world travelers but it doesn’t hurt to give it a fresh dusting!  So instead of having the various teams march into the stadium, they would float down the Seine in a flotilla of various bateaux.

The statistics alone are staggering: 85 boats and barges to transport the 206 national teams down a 6.2km stretch of the Seine; 120 TV cameras and the like along with 80 giant screens deployed all over the city; 45,000 security personnel assigned to guard the route.

The organisers forecast that those who wanted to remain through the whole experience  through thick and thin would probably have to set aside around seven hours.They were given the option of returning to the Village after the river portion of the journey was complete.  The  cost of the  whole show was rumoured to have cost between €150 million and €500 million.

The show touched every part of French history and culture, with an aria from “le can-can” to Carmen, The Little Prince to the Lumiere and later, the Montgolfier brothers. Throw in a little Lady Gaga, the return of Celine Dion and the mechanical ‘cheval’ transporting the Olympic flag over the Seine.

The only problem was what the viewer saw on televisions or the giant screens was NOT what was happening on the Seine or its banks.  The cinematic sequence of the “cruise down the river” was all prepackaged beforehand.  Lady Gaga shot her portion a day or two before July 26.  (Celine was live though.)

The sequence of national leaders standing up to cheer as their countries’ teams sailed by was somewhat misleading.  They were watching from Le Trocadero but the boats were some six kilometres away.

The unreal continuum of the show’s narrative arc and what thousands of drenched live spectators along the route saw only existed in the ether.  What unfolded on your home screen (and the giant TV screens across the city), didn’t really happen in the three hours of the Ceremony.

But the fallout from the disconnect between what was actually happening on the river and what the IOC, heads of state and other special guests gathered at the improvised Trocadero arena were watching led to a sense of ennui in the stands. In fact many VIPs and athletes had left the area even before the finale of the show.

So, in a way, it was a false historical record of what actually took place on the Seine Opening Ceremony of the Paris 2024 Games, not to mention the climax of a “flameless” floating cauldron?

This raised the big question, is it still a cauldron if there is no Flame.

In the United States, 28.6 million US homes watched. This was  the highest since London 2012 which had drawn 40.7 million. The audience was  24.5 million for Rio 2016 but only 17 million homes for Tokyo.