When Everything Is Not As It Seems
Today, China got caught - twice - faking portions of the Olympic opening ceremonies. First it was the little girl who wasn't there, now it's faked fireworks. First the little girl who sang the Chinese anthem - but wasn't allowed to be there in person because her teeth were crooked:
A member of China's ruling Politburo asked for the last-minute change to match one girl's face with another's voice, the ceremony's chief music director, Chen Qigang, said in an interview with Beijing Radio.
"The audience will understand that it's in the national interest," Chen said in a video of the interview posted online Sunday night.
The second falsehood was the phony fireworks.
Beijing organizers confirmed Tuesday that some of the fireworks display featured prerecorded footage.
Fireworks that burst into the shape of 29 gigantic footprints were shown trudging above the Beijing skyline to the National Stadium near the start of the ceremony.
Though the footprint-shaped fireworks were real, some of the footage shown to television viewers around the world and on giant screens inside the "Bird's Nest" stadium featured a computer-generated three-dimensional image.
Prerecorded is being a bit too kind. Completely fake would be a better descriptor. The images were made up on a computer.
Beijing, the first CGI, lip-synced Olympics. (Actually, I'm quite sure that lip-syncing has been done before - though not for the same, lame reason. The CGI appears to be new, however.)
Don't you love the line: "The audience will understand that it's in the national interest." Remind you of any other statist rhetoric?
UPDATE: Once again, no sooner did I hit the publish key. Over at Memeorandum, a paean to the marvelous Beijing opening ceremonies pops up from HuffnPuffco. Prattling on about "the purpose of the greater". As I said, where have you heard that before?
Uncategorized | Gaius Tuesday, 12 August , 2008
By syn, Wednesday, 13 August , 2008 @ 5:07 am
heard that before?
David Brooks.
By Lars Walker, Wednesday, 13 August , 2008 @ 7:06 am
I’m not at all surprised by the Chinese actions, especially the substitution of little girls. These are Communists. In their moral world, one little girl is equivalent to any other little girl. Give her a pony or shoot her–it’s only good or bad depending on whether it advances the Cause.
By Andy T, Thursday, 14 August , 2008 @ 8:33 am
Now we know what Dan Rather has been up to. The Olympic opening ceremonies : fake, but accurate.
By martian, Thursday, 14 August , 2008 @ 12:13 pm
"The audience will understand that it’s in the national interest."
It’s in the national interest to make your country and, of course, your people look like a bunch of superficial morons who would rather tell a little girl she’s too ugly to be on TV than tell her that her beautiful voice and talent have earned her a place in history? Sounds like they’ve been paying too much attention to the world fashion industry!
By john, Thursday, 14 August , 2008 @ 12:36 pm
They also faked the age of their gymnasts - the "fudge" was caught through checking Google cache for old news reports