So now it’s confirmed: the spectacular Beijing Olympics opening ceremony – watched live on television by over a billion people worldwide – had been a little more than what it seemed.
What we saw was not what we actually heard. It turns out that the little girl in a red dress, who sang “Ode to the Motherland” as China’s flag was paraded into Beijing’s National Stadium, wasn’t really singing. Clever stage management and sound mixing just made us believe she was.
Beijing games organisers have confirmed that Lin Miaoke, aged 9, whom we saw on TV, was lip-syncing to the sound of another girl, 7-year-old Yang Peiyi, who was only heard but not seen — all because she was deemed not “cute enough”. And they just forgot to tell us there were two…
To refresh memories, here’s that moment from 8 August 2008, as captured by China’s national broadcaster CCTV:
Since the story broke a couple of days later, it has been covered very widely in print, broadcast and online media. There has been particularly good coverage in the New York Times.
An extract from that story:
“The Chinese government has taken great pains to present the best possible image to the outside world during the Olympics, and perfection was the goal for the dazzling opening ceremonies. The filmmaker Zhang Yimou, who oversaw the production, has earned international praise for staging a performance that many considered one of the most spectacular in Olympic history.
“But to achieve the spectacular, not only did organizers fake the song, but they also have acknowledged that one early sequence of the stunning fireworks shown to television viewers actually included digitally enhanced computer graphics used for ‘theatrical effect.'”
And here’s how CNN covered the news of the fake incident on 12 August 2008:
The blogosphere is teeming with discussions on this — and not just in English. It sure raises a number of concerns.
The Olympic motto is made up of three Latin words: “Citius, Altius, Fortius”, which mean “Faster, Higher, Stronger”. At the rate things are moving — with media images taking precedence over accomplishment — we might soon find ‘cuter’ being annexed to it. (Somebody please find the right Latin word.)
But let’s face it: this is not the first time that the world’s greatest festival has been carefully stage-crafted for the benefit of broadcast television, nor will it be the last. The pressure on host nations is immense to show their best face to the world. Perhaps our Chinese friends took that literally, and opted to showcase the supposedly cuter Lin Miaoke to the billion plus audience. (Apparently, a party official deemed that the face of little Miss Yang Peiyi wasn’t good enough – both look perfectly adorable to me…)
Not for a moment do I condone the trickery that Beijing tried to get away with. At the same time, let this be seen as part of a growing, disturbing trend: the broadcast television ‘tail’ has been wagging the Olympics dog for quite some time.
Since the summer Olympics were first commercially broadcast in Rome in 1960, both television’s technology and industry have advanced leaps and bounds. Today, broadcast rights are a very significant source of income for the International Olympic Committee (IOC), and the host countries/cities.
As the IOC official website says: “Increases in broadcast revenue over the past two decades have provided the Olympic Movement and sport with an unprecedented financial base.” And according to the most recent data available, theat revenue accounts for a little over half of all the income that Olympic marketing generates.
That’s all well and good — much of competitive sport today relies so heavily on corporate sponsorships, and television rights are a key part of sports financing.
However, we must worry when so much time, effort, creativity and money is being invested in staging ever more spectacular opening (and to a lesser extent, closing) ceremonies. Yes, it’s a time for the world to celebrate the best and the brightest of the Global Family. And there’s absolutely no harm in having a gala party. But should that extend to rolling out all the tricks of showbiz and make belief? With such a massive global audience following the games not just on television but now also online, where do the IOC and hosts draw the line?
As the world becomes more and more media saturated, these pressures are only set to increase. This year, for the first time, the IOC also allowed online video platform YouTube (owned by Google) to carry about three hours a day of exclusive content — summaries and highlights — from Olympic Broadcasting Services on a dedicated channel.
Let’s not kid ourselves: the world of broadcast television distorts reality on a daily basis. This is an industry that prefers and promotes those whom it considers more cute, pretty, good-looking and sexy. It makes no secret of choosing style over substance. And not just in pure entertainment, but in ALL areas of coverage, including news and current affairs. I have been pointing out how this also affects the coverage of issues like poverty, disasters and development. Even in such serious, factual coverage, many television producers would go with faces that they think are tele-genic, cute or at least particularly pathetic-looking…
Television audiences, by and large, have come to terms with all these ‘adjustments and improvements’ to the murky, messy and unruly real world (yes, some pockets of resistance are fighting a brave vanguard battle, but their numbers are no match for the uncritical couch potatoes).
The challenge is when the real world of Olympic sports tries to mix with the make-belief world of broadcast television to reach out to all those billions of eyeballs. Whose values, standards and rules would then apply?
While the IOC jealously guards time-cherished Olympic principles, it has been slow to modernise and keep up with the times. It must find ways to balance the Olympics integrity with media’s obsession for manufactured reality and feel-good, look-great extravaganzas. And if IOC thinks manging broadcast rights is tricky, just wait till they have to deal with the more bewildering and multitudinous online and mobile media platforms…
What happened in Beijing once again rekindles a long simmering debate. It goes much deeper than an overzealous host nation trying to picture-perfect its proud moment. It takes us right to the heart of the Olympics, and tests if the founding ideals can survive the corporate media realities of the twenty first century.
Open Minds! 
Don’t forget the Blue Screen of Death that was caught by some :)
Am I being a luddite for suggesting that we roll back the olympics to being purely sport? Is allowing the IOC to sell off broadcast rights to make a bigger olympics (and line their pockets) like ICANN making & selling new top-level-domains? Would we have a more focussed, back to basics olympics with a lighter, more efficient IOC if it weren’t fed with TV money? Would this be a bad thing?
I’m tired of watching countries bankrupt themselves to make bigger and more spectacular olympics (and ceremonies), reading the stories of IOC bribes & corruption and seeing corporate sponsorship destroy freedom of expression for those attending events. To me, this latest olympics is a giant “Who cares?” – I’ve not watched the opening and I’m not watching events. I’ll see results and stories on the web and think happy thoughts for the people competing, but the rest of it is a giant waste.
Good luck to the athletes who are competing – they deserve their chance to shine after all the years of commitment and effort. It seems a shame that, like many other institutions, the structure that is supposed to support them has become bigger and more important than their shining moments :(
Someone please make something very clear to me:
1) Is the Olympics about staging a sporting event or an opening ceremony?
2) What is more important the politics behind the sport or the sport behind the politics?
3) Is bigger necessarily better?
This situation is like telling me that every magician in this world must perform a true magic and can’t fake it.
Tell that to David Copperfield.
Then why don’t start a debate forcing those Magicians to perform a true magic.
Get real people…
People who bought the ticket and paid thousand of $ expect to see a flawless and great performance. And China did it! This is A BIG EVENT and there is absolutely zero tolerance for error! They spend $ 40 billion , you better be damn sure to make it work and flawless.
I give full credit for the Chinese Government for all the effort to produced probable the best ever Olympic ceremony.
So what is they use both girls? fake fireworks? etc etc… so? The girls don’t have problem with it, they agreed to do their part for the ceremony. The government did not force the girls to do it or to make it happen. So? As long as those girls were willing to do it in the best of the country, I don’t see a problem with that. This would have been a different matter if they were forced to do it.
Speaking of the girls at GYM… USA lost against China in Gym. And people started to blaming that the chinese team are all underage. LOL… I found this very funny. I don’t even think the USA performed that well during the game.
They should concentrate on the game and not worrying about how old each of those girl int he Chinese team. if you LOST then accept it.
This is also like telling me hmm maybe Michael Phelps is using drug, illegal swimsuit, etc etc in order for him to win. Bull shit… I think he is done a very superb performance and no one complained about him. / Questioned his legality.
I think people are just jealous with the way how China was able to pull off the best opening ceremony for Olympic ever. And started making research on every little tiny mistakes that they can find to make the China bad.
This opening ceremony is a work of art. A TEAM work from every department and personnel. Therefore, a full 100% credit should be given to all of them, whether, you are singing or not singing, even to cleaning crew and security guard!
Good job China…. By the way I am not Anti US and I live in US. But I just find these whole faking situation is really funny.
I am truly torn by what is happening. The term Tele-genic says it all. I think it is our own faut for the distortions of reality we see on TV and movies…we do not want the true reality…it must be better…and pleasing to the eye. It is sad that substance will lose to style…but it is the reality of the media and our times…it is what we want and we get it.
David Damario
Canada
Cuter Olympics? Give me a break! The cult of the cute has done enough damage through history, especially during the 20th century when the advent of television changed our perceptions and standards of beauty.
As you say, Nalaka, the world seems to have come to terms with showbiz having its own cute and sexy standards. But here we are talking about the Olympics, for heavens sake: where the ideal is that athletes compete for performance, and not for how they look. I realise our discussion is about the opening ceremony and not the competitive events, but if we now allow trickery and fake in the Olympics ceremonies, what will creep in next? We make such a fuss over athletes using performance enhancing drugs, but isn’t the Miaoke-Peiyi incident also a kind of performance enhancing? I think so!
So the most unexpected photo finish from Beijing last week came from the Olympics Opening Ceremonies. When two pictures of two girls unveiled that the adorable Lin Miaoke was actually lip-syncing to the voice of “less adorable” Yang Peiyi, the world’s reaction went up a whole octave.
I overheard the following responses:
1. WHO DO THE CHINESE THINK THEY ARE!?
2. HOW COULD CHINA DO SUCH A THING TO CHILDREN?
3. THE CHINESE ARE SO DISHONEST!
4. WHO CARES ABOUT LOOKS!?
Personally, I find Yang’s round face and wide eyes much cuter than the Lin’s Mouseketeer-like poses but let’s look past their looks for a broader discussion and answer the above questions.
1. Who do the Chinese think they are……… AMERICA?! Lip-syncing was our idea and we can prove it. Roll back that footage of Ashlee Simpson and Britney Spears. Hit the archives for Milli Vanilli.
2. When the games end, challenge yourself. Go through The Disney Channel, Nickelodeon, etc. and try to find one child that could be deemed flat out ugly (chubby doesn’t qualify). The only face time America invests into an “ugly child” is for a reality TV makeover.
3. Yes, China could fill a sky full of lies – and they did with fake fireworks – but I’m pretty sure the American airbrush was going to touch up each star before it hit our newsstands regardless.
4. After Julia Roberts broke up with Lyle Lovett, did we ever see his face in the mainstream? How long was it before Clay Aiken was transformed by stylists? Other than a few stars who defy beauty for their rebel image (i.e. Amy Winehouse), who doesn’t care about looks?
Remember, the world is round. If we point the finger of blame far enough East, it’ll end up coming right back on us.
http://www.entrequest.com
So what do you think YOU are?? I am Chinese myself and I think that it IS dumb of that director to do that “cuty little change” but you are just jealous that we did the best Oylmpic opening ceremony. How old are you anyway? Ten? But since that dumb director was stupid enough to do that little niffy change it doesn’t mean that China is a bad country. Do you think that it is bad for a girl to stand up for her own country? Are you anti-Chineses? I beg your parden since I am VERY angry about this incedent but I am more angry at YOU!! I am trying hard not to be mean but I want to say that I am Chinese and it hurts the Chineses feelings. I don’t live in China though, I live in Australia. But please, remember that just because of one shit person doesn’t mean his country is bad.
I’m appalled! China is of course in no way solely responsible for this sort of thing and no one is in any way accusing China of being a bad country for it – or if they are they’re very lost!
But really, why can’t the truly talented child be recognised for her beautiful singing voice. I place talents before looks any day!
It’s simply sad that the public want the cuter picture and that the Olympic committee organisers thought that the public would find the cuter picture more important than the talent behind it.
The ceremony was wonderful but these sort of imprinted social perfections are cyclic. We want pretty images because we’re used to the media giving us pretty images and telling us we want them.
All programmes and all countries face these pressures and it’s a shame.
What is with some people who can’t stand any criticism of their countries? In my view, this is misplaced patriotism which blinds judgement of otherwise educated, rational and decent people. I used to think that excessive patriotism was something peculiar to those from small countries, who can well feed sidelined in the global play of giant nations and large economies. But apparently not so….Indians and Chinese (whose countries are large enough to laugh off anything) seem to be as sensitive about criticism as everybody else.
Wake up, people: you don’t have to be blindly defending what your idiotic governments do using your tax payer money and supposedly in your interest.
Hello….The term Tele-genic says it all. I think it is our own faut for the distortions of reality we see on TV and movies…we do not want the true reality…it must be better…and pleasing to the eye. It is sad that substance will lose to style…but it is the reality of the media and our times…it is what we want and we get it.
onlineuniversalwork
Ugly is Ugly get over it
Not like other countries havent done “appalling things”
China performed the best Olympic opening ceremony in history, and will never be out performed. If they had a chance to do it again it would be even better. Lets face it the chinese have been alive for centuries longer than any race and are more cultures and evolved. So go back to your uncultured steak and hamburger eating lives and shut the f up.