A Different Olympics

by Ben Howard

I’ve been watching a different Olympics than you.

Sure, we’ve been watching the same sports being contested by the same participants. We’re all watching the same medals being awarded for the same acts of athletic prowess performed on the same mountain, or in the same arena, but I’m experiencing an entirely different narrative than the one you’re seeing.

In the past, I’ve always watched the Olympics on NBC. This was part convenience, since I had cable, and part necessity, since they weren’t available anywhere else. But this year I’ve been watching all of the events online. I don’t get to watch them live (the twin necessities of work and sleep make that an impossibility), but I’m avoiding spoilers and watching them on replay when I get home.

It didn’t take long to realize that these Olympics were different from the ones I’d experienced before in my life. You see, the online feed that NBC has made available is not the same thing that you see them broadcast in prime time, or for that matter, any time. No, the online feed is from the Olympic Broadcasting Service, and it’s the raw footage that NBC then cuts into exciting, TV-friendly segments before adding the spice of it’s own commentators and pre-produced human interest stories. They then bake it at 425 for an hour before serving it to a ready public in prime-time.

With the exception of an hour or two on Monday night, I have seen none of this finished product.

While you’ve been treated to Scott Hamilton and Mary Carrillo and Bob Costas’s losing fight with pink-eye, I’ve been listening to a series of announcers with vaguely-European accents give a dry account of how each competitor is doing on the World Cup scene this season. While you’re watching the runs of the top Americans and a handful of medal contenders, I’m watching all 40 luge contestants even though only five have a chance of winning. And while you’re learning the heart-warming tale of how a mother helped her daughter to Olympic glory, I’m watching silently as a Zamboni smooths out the speed skating rink while ambient LMFAO plays through the stadium speakers. 

You have the drama. I have the raw totality.

And of course, this difference in context means we’ve gleaned totally different narratives from the games thus far. As far as I can tell, from NBC’s point of view the big stories over the first three days were the debut of 15-year old figure skater Yulia Lipnitskaya and her amazing ability to make all the joints in my body shriek in terror simultaneously. Beyond that, the top stories are probably the gold medals of Sage Kotsenburg and Jamie Anderson in snowboarding, or perhaps the disappointment of skier Bode Miller.

In contrast to that, I’ve watched four biathlon races and can spell Norwegian legend Ole Einar Bjorndalen’s name without looking it up. I’ve seen a Venezuelan skier wipeout on a very treacherous downhill course and witnessed how loud the fans get when they’re cheering for a luger from India. I’ve also witnessed an event called the skiathlon which I can only describe as organized race marching, and it’s exactly as weird as it sounds.

Both narratives are obviously real, neither is in any way a work of fiction. When we look back at the history books in twenty years to see who won and who lost, we will both recognize the names and the order in which they’re found. But you will have memories of American announcers and tear-jerking voice overs about overcoming adversity; I’ll be remembering that Americans aren’t very good at most of the sports I watched and the weird way the downhill announcer said “Russian Trampoline” like a hundred times.

It’s no secret that context shapes our narrative, but it’s jarring when it’s made so starkly clear, when you can really see the seams in how the stories are made. The raw data is the same. Same races, same footage, same contestants, but then everything changes and shifts. We choose our ingredients and throw them into a blender so that we each get something unique.

So which one is the right narrative? How does one determine the accurate context? Who wins when we talk about what really happened in Sochi? Which perspective is really true?

And this is the crux of the issue that so many of us have with the world, and with life, and with faith; this need to totalize and absolutize the experience. Somewhere within us is this desire, my desire, to make you replace your reality with mine, my desire to tell you that the real Winter Olympics don’t involve the gold, the silver, and the bronze, but the deafening cheers for an Indian luger who finished 37th out of 39, and the heartbreak of a Canadian biathlete who crashed while leading his race. It’s my desire to force you to believe that this is the real story, and that your experience was a fantasy, that gets us into so much trouble. This is what destroys communities, breaks relationships, and ultimately consumes our good intentions from within.

But this doesn’t have to be. The real truth, when you dig down underneath all the commentary and all the context, is that neither of our stories are the real story, because the real story is far more complex and intricate and complete than we can grasp or tell. I have my Olympics and you have yours, but both of them are drawn from the same river of reality. And while, in twenty years, you may remember a Russian figure skater and I a Norwegian skier, we’ll still be sharing the same event. 

Ben Howard is an accidental iconoclast and generally curious individual living in Nashville, Tennessee. He is also the editor-in-chief of On Pop Theology and an avid fan of waving at strangers for no reason. You can follow him on Twitter @BenHoward87. 

You can follow On Pop Theology on Twitter @OnPopTheology or like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/OnPopTheology. If you'd like to support what we do, you can donate via the button on the right of the screen.

Image Credits:
Image #1 via Wikipedia
Image #2 via Christian Jansky
Image #3 via Tor Atle Kleven
  

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Who We Are Instead: Revolution and Redemption

by Ben Howard

A few weeks ago NBC premiered a new show called Revolution. You may have seen the previews during the Olympics. If you're trying to jog your memory, it's the one with the sword-fight scene, not the one with Matthew Perry or a monkey doctor. It's one of those shows that trying to catch the zeitgeist with elements reminiscent of The Hunger Games and Lost.

The show is set fifteen years into the future in the aftermath of a cataclysmic event that renders electronic devices unusable and electricity itself unattainable. No cars, no lights, no communication other than letters and word of mouth.

In the fifteen years since this blackout, the national government has fallen and bands of militias have taken over different sections of the country. Revolution is set in the post-event Midwest, near Chicago, an area under the jurisdiction of General Sebastian Monroe. Monroe has outlawed guns and the United States flag, now considered a sign of the underground rebellion.

Like any serialized show, the problems confronting the characters change on a week to week basis, but the central questions stay the same. The tension at the center of the show concerns the difference between who these characters were in the pre-event world and who they are now in an entirely different environment for which they were not trained.

Essentially, the characters are forced to deal with a disjointed narrative concerning who they were and who they are. If, like one character, you worked for Google, who are you now when the internet no longer exists? How does your past shape you when it no longer feels like its relevant to the essential qualities that make you who you are?

This problem of identity finds itself deeply embedded in both the American and the Christian narrative. Both communities are forced to struggle with a past, full of both highs and lows, that read more like myth than actual history. It is a past that exists, but for many in the community no longer bears a relation to present-day reality. How does this past affect us and how does it shape who we are?

The American narrative finds itself with two conflicting meta-narratives. The first is that of America as upstart, innovator and champion. This is the story we like to tell ourselves. The story of the United States winning independence over the British and establishing herself as the “Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.” In this story, the United States grows and evolves emerging as the hero of World War I and World War II and the world's only superpower. This is the story of greatness, but it is not the only story.

There is also the story of oppression. A story that includes the genocide and repression of an indigenous people as well as the oppression, importation and slavery of a race different from that of the nations founders. It includes institutional racism and sexism that have existed long after the legal abolition of such things. It includes the blood of numerous wars and “military actions”.

Both are stories. Both are true. Both define part of what our nation is today and how we have been shaped as citizens of that nation.

It is unlikely that anyone reading this participated in either the good or the bad parts of this story. We did not write this story, but is still the story of us. In the same way that the characters from Revolution must deal with both who they were before the blackout because it has essentially shaped who they are now, so we must deal with the story that shaped us even if we are no longer active participants in that story.

A more acute example of this comes from one of the main characters in the show, Miles Matheson. Miles is the uncle of the ostensible protagonist, a teenage girl named Charlie Matheson, who seeks him out when her father is murdered and her brother is kidnapped. Since the show has only aired four episodes as of this writing, Miles back story is understandably vague, however we do know that he is a former Marine and was one of the founders of the now dominant and dangerous militia headed by Sebastian Monroe, his former friend and colleague.

Much like the American story, Miles' story is one of good and bad. He is a good Marine and tries to restore some semblance of order after the blackout, but in trying to assert his power his good intentions become warped and he creates a violent machine of destruction and oppression. This is often the story of power.

Now Miles, without the authority of his previous life, but with the knowledge and wisdom of what that power can do, can begin a journey to redeem his identity and find salvation for his past acts by helping his young niece.

This is the place where I feel the American story diverges from the Christian story.

The Christian story has a lot of commonalities with the American story. An underground, revolutionary movement with new ideas about how to organize society breaks free of its oppressive chains and rises to power and prominence. In this new position of prominence it has been able to wield nearly unmatched political authority, but this authority has also led to darker moments which taint the narrative.

In the Christian story we must deal with a past that includes the violence of the Crusades, the violent oppression of dissent during the Reformation, and the bloody conflicts between Catholics and Protestants all over Europe, but especially the British Isles. In addition, the church has stood idly by while numerous other atrocities occurred including the genocide of indigenous people on multiple continents, the oppression of minorities around the globe, and corruption within its own community.

With this in mind, the Christian story must sound alarmingly like the American story. However, the Christian story promises the hope that Miles searches for in Revolution, it promises the hope of redemption. A redeemed story embraces both the positive and the negative, the story we want to tell and the story we want to hide. In order to be redeemed, Miles must embrace both the person he was and the person he is in order to become the person he will be.

This is the Christian hope. It is not a story of abandonment and starting over, it is a story about recovering and embracing the old story and all its flaws in order to help write a new, redeemed story. This is the revolutionary message of the Gospel, not that the old will be rejected in favor of the new, but that the old will be redeemed as part of the new creation.

It is a hope that looks forward instead of back because much like the characters in the show, we will never be able to re-create the world that was. Like them, we must work alongside God and his Spirit to create something new out of something old and we must embrace the freedom and redemption that this brings.

Peace,
Ben

You can follow Ben on Twitter @BenHoward87 or email him at benjamin.howard87 [at] gmail.com.

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Twitter Angst and the 2012 Olympics

by Ben Howard

Everybody has been on a bad vacation.  That one family trip where everything felt tense all the time and you were waiting for something to spill over.  That one road trip where your dad yells that he’s going to pull over to the side of the road, and then actually does it.  That one trip where you or your brother or your sister just decide that everything unequivocally sucks because you feel like being an angst-ridden hormonal teenager.

I’m pretty sure Twitter is the angst-ridden hormonal teenager of the 2012 London Olympics.

Now, lest this post devolve into a kids-get-off-my-lawn curmudgeonly rant, I’ve definitely added my voice to the misanthropic murmur of social media over the last few days and weeks, but I’m starting to feel uncomfortable with it.  I’m starting to feel uncomfortable and tense about the aggressive snark and cynicism which has started to ensnare my generation’s observations of the surrounding world.

On Friday, I watched the opening ceremonies with some friends.  To be fair it was gorgeous and epic, but at the same time it was weird and at points incomprehensible.  There was a salute to the National Health Service, which was weird, and a scene where 200 flying Mary Poppins (Poppi?) battled a 100 foot inflatable Voldemort, which was weird, but awesome. 

However, when I got home I checked Twitter and Facebook before I went to sleep and was barraged by a series of tweets and status updates about how much the ceremonies sucked and how stupid it was and it was all so…predictable.

The last few days have been filled with bitter tweets about Olympic spoilers, and rants about why NBC won’t show events live, but instead saves the best events for prime time (the best response is Will Leitch’s column here.)

To be honest, I don’t care.  It isn’t important.  I just want to enjoy a worldwide spectacle.  I just want to be a part of the fun.

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about how difficult I find it sometimes to be authentically happy and how rare and beautiful it can be to just enjoy something without deconstructing it to find deeper meaning.  However, in the world I live in, and likely the one you live in too if you’re reading this, it’s hard to escape the cynicism.  It’s hard not to breathe pithy statements that border on bitterness and arrogance.

I’ve often felt the same way about the church.  A few years ago I got to the point where I could never leave a church feeling anything but bitterness and spite.  Some of it was arrogance, and some of it was pain.  There’s a thin line between making fun of something because you love it, which gives us a healthy perspective and a dash of humility, and making fun of something because you hate it.

I wonder when we know that we’ve crossed the line and I wonder how we get back.  Thankfully through the love and support of friends and a healthy church community, I can get more out of a service than anger and frustration.  They blessed me with that gift of grace.  But how do we move a society that way?  How do you we help a society embrace beauty even when its flawed?  Or is cynicism justified and I’m just being naïve?  I’d love to know your thoughts because I’m still working this one out.

Peace,

Ben

When he isn't channeling Andy Rooney for a post about the Olympics, Ben spends his time in a field with Snoopy waiting for the arrival of the Great Pumpkin.  Any day now.  You can follow him on Twitter @BenHoward87.