A Glorious Ritual

By Roger Rosenblatt

Pageantry and pomp, tear sand cheers, and, as ever, magic in the moment

Astonishing how the joy and skepticism worked together, that we could be wary of feelings of unabashed celebration and clasp them nonetheless. Why in a world of real troubles should the heart leap up at the spectacle of 125 trumpeters trumpeting, 960 voices choiring, 1,065 high school girls (count 'em) drilling in the sun? A magic show. People turned into flags. A band became a map of the United States, and the map sang America the Beautiful. Why didn't 84 pianists in blue playing Rhapsody in Blue look preposterous? Why didn't Rocket Man look more preposterous? We knew it would happen, yet it happened. The athletes strode in and touched us again. China and Rumania brought down the house. When the President said, "I declare open the Olympic Games of Los Angeles," were we supposed to think politics? When we gulped at the sight of Rafer Johnson's face, were we supposed to feel foolish?

What were people thinking in 1932, the last time clusters of Olympic athletes paraded into Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum? The world looked more perilous then; perhaps it wasn't. That Depression year, 34 million Americans were out of work. One day after the 1932 Olympics began, Hitler's National Socialists won a plurality of seats in the German parliament. In 1932 Mussolini told his countrymen, "I foresee a long series of political, economic and military wars." And Aldous Huxley wrote Brave New World. And the opening ceremonies of the Olympics came off without a hitch.

Last Saturday the ritual was re-enacted, enlarged considerably from the 39 nations in 1932 to 140 this year. The players were new; no Babe Didrikson to marvel at. (When the Babe, who had mastered a dozen sports, was asked if there was anything she did not play, she said, "Yeah. Dolls.") The audience for the Games promises to be up a bit: 510,000 in 1932, more than 2 billion now. Saturday's show was brighter, brassier. Still the basic ceremony held its ground. All the excitement generated by seeing the stairway ascend to the Coliseum torch was merely a gloss on the fact that the torch was lighted. Everything was startling, but the same. Tunes were played. The kids marched in and out. Odd to think that 52 years from now people may look back and remark with deep wisdom: How naive they were. How mindless.

They would be right. A certain mindlessness is required by these events. In a way, the entire Olympics constitute a ceremony. All the action is symbolic, inarticulate. What message was delivered in the Coliseum? At the ceremonies, Chief Organizer Peter Ueberroth answered "world peace and understanding," but that was merely a wishful guess. Our reaction is emotional, thus mysterious. All one really knows is the feeling of familiarity the ceremonies engender, the strange, abiding comfort that comes from recognizing that one has been pleased by these events before, and will most likely be again, in another time, in no particular time at all.

Which may be the reason ceremonies were invented: to hold time still by repeated practices, so that it would be difficult, or beside the point, to identify a particular date or age. Blink your eyes these next two weeks, and step out of history. Are we in London, Athens, Rome? Is that Carl Lewis or Coroebus of Elis? Time has no business in these events, which makes the Olympics a kind of illusion. So be it.

On Saturday, balloons filled the field tike sudden blossoms, and the crowd dived headlong into a recurrent dream.

-- By Roger Rosenblatt