Olympic Oddities for the Yanks
Today's pic is a blurry shot from last summer (And, I will strongly note, pre-diet) of me down near Pen-Bé looking quite like I've accidentally wandered into the cinematography from "Local Hero".We've had a day of watching BBC's Olympic coverage now, and various differences already emerge from the US coverage we both grew up with. The absence of the US Olympic musical theme is really bizarre - I had not realized that A) What I knew of as the Olympic Theme was actually US-Network-specific, and B) how much that familiar music had to do with revving us up into the Olympic mindset. I want trumpets!
BBC's coverage is much more low-key than the US coverage... to our delight, really. We occasionally swap back to a lady or chap sitting in a cozy room by a large crackling television-fireplace, but the bulk of the programming so far has been the events themselves. Out of a 90 minute show about the Men's Downhill, I'd guess that fully 3/4 or more of that time was spent actually showing each skiier's run. To Americans accustomed to 60% of the programming being commercials, another 30% being talking heads ("Here is Scott McScott, winner of Gold in the 1988 Olympics. What do you think of the new contenders, Scott?" Etc. Etc.), and perhaps 10% of the show featuring the actual sport... Well, it's a much more pleasant experience. Also notable is the great lack of carefully choreographed, heart-wrenching personal stories and mini-movies detailing the tragedies and inspirations behind each athlete, where we'd always find out that so-and-so was racing because his sister's adopted daughter was born with three heads, or whatever. For the skiiers, we got a two minute mention of the fact that one fellow had shattered the bones in his shin and had them replaced with titanium rod, and that was that, on with the show!
Also of interest - So far, BBC has not shown any of the awards ceremonies. The event will end, they announce who won, and it's off to the next event, totally skipping over the rousing flag-raising and medal-giving that were always broadcast on US TV. This is a bit of a downer, as it feels like the winners have been robbed of their moment of glory in the rush to move on to the next event. I'm curious to see if this will continue or if we will get to see the ceremonies at some later point. Congratulations to our French friends, BTW, on today's gold medal in Men's Downhill Skiing!
Americans may laugh or gasp that BBC posts betting odds on the athletes before the events. Oh, the sinfulness of it all! :)
Finally, I have learned from one commentator's true love of the word "scrappy" that it seems to have a different meaning for Brits than for Yanks.
British English:
Scrappy - Adjective, meaning, crude, rough, ragged, ex. "He made a really scrappy jump there."
US English:
Scrappy - Noun, meaning, annoying smaller version of Scooby Doo, ex. "I stopped watching the show the day that that damned Scrappy Doo showed up."
2 Comments:
One thing that irritates me about the US coverage is, typically, the commentators. As you mention there is all manner of yakitty yak coming out of the mouths of these people that contributes nothing to the program other than give the television speaker something to do so that people know the volume setting has not mysteriously become unadjusted.
Yet there is another thing that bothers me, and that is the stereotypical American idea that the rest of the world is wrong if they don't do it our way. For instance, NBC Nightly News was showing a pre olympic news segment on the games (having NOTHING better to do for half an hour) about the pronunciation of the Italian city Torino and why "Turin" was not being used. Evidently someone "screwed up" and printed all of the NBC promotional stuff, signs, shirts etc. with Torino in stead of Turin, so the network had to go with that. The commentators went on for half an hour or better trying to explain to the American public why this incorrect word was being used and by the end had satisfied themselves that they had properly made the point that they knew how to really spell the cities name (Turin) and that everyone should relax knowing they knew what they were doing. They never once mentioned that Italy is actually an Italian speaking country, and that "Turin" is an Anglecized word. Instead they promoted the word Torino as a quaint local version. Bob Costas used great sarcasm in speaking about this subject and confessed that he was using "Torino" because of the network screw up, and to make his point he said that he would be sure to use his time in TORINO to go see the "Shroud of TURIN", saying this as if by using this well known name it would validate the use of the word Turin. I believe the Italians use "Protezione di Torino" though, which was never mentioned. I know when I visited the city people either looked at me blankly or corrected me if I used the word Turin. I quickly made the adjustment.
Paul Tatum
They're going by Torino over here, from all I've seen so far. The British may be island-isolated, but at least they do realize there are other languages in the world ;) We are freaking buried in Olympics, though. Lacking the constant commercial breaks has its down side, as we're recording around six solid hours of Olympics every day! It's kind of weird and cool that we're in the same time zone, so we're able to watch a lot of the events live if we want.
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