With a great investment of human and material dynamic/ potential the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games of Beijing where 2008 people in every phase of the artistic part, different people every time, tried to present a programme which heralds the “technological force and the human element”.
Unfortunately, despite the enormous squander both of humans and money for the facilities, the fireworks, the costumes for 2008 people every time, the sets and the special technological items which do not seem to have the potential for their reuse in another, more constructive way in the future, the human element and the technological element went by unnoticed, canceling each other out.
The myriads of people taking part in the show did not take part as humans but as tools or moving mechanisms for sets. The directing did not revolve around them but used them as a means (in great tiles of a printing press, in the shadow while moving separations or odd oars, as brushes and other pieces of stationary or as a transportation medium for leader symbols) and not as an end as should be if we wanted to showcase the creator of technology: the one who is being heralded in any occasion is the one who is the center of attention and is not so multitudinous so that he creates the impression of a sea the waves of which nobody notices.
The occasionally able to impress technological elements (projection screens and hologram screens and other such things) did not manage to do so either because they lay hidden behind the sea of the 2008 people or because they were presenting something that was too abstract and not supported by the choreography of the volunteers although they were excellent in what they were told to do.
In essence, if we make a content analysis of the ceremony, the only people/ symbols that somehow stood apart were not the human or technological element but the sovereign element: from the representatives of the Chinese Dynasties to the assortment of leaders of countries waving to their athletes, the soverign element and the concept of oligarchy on different levels was dominant. Beyond the elements that there existed and which support this analysis, let’s also consider the elements that did not exist, and which at least for China were important factors, both in its human dynamic as well as its technology: the power of the people which could repeatedly stop the oppression of at least the few (emperors and aristocracy) and advance (education available to all and and ensuring of a certain base level of tolerable quality of life) was absent, as if in the People’s Republic of China there are still emperors, mandarins and courts.