French Crossroads: Bad Olympic Signs
Let the boycotts begin!
The Paris Olympic Games are set to begin in 17 months, and by all appearances, it seems the city is determined to plow ahead with this insanity.
Last year, our village posted signs asking for volunteers to serve on the local Olympic committee. I briefly contemplated joining to see if I could undermine efforts within, or perhaps at least be the lone voice arguing against the immensely wasteful spending that will no doubt far outstrip whatever organizers are claiming. Alas, there was just too much to watch on Netflix, and I couldn’t spare the time for all that subterfuge.
And so, the Paris Olympic games continue to inch closer, running from the 26th of July to the 11th of August 2024, followed by the Paralympic Games from the 28th of August to the 8th of September. Indeed, ticket sales have already started with 3 million people entering a lottery for the first chunk of tickets, according to The Local.
Speaking of running, the Olympic torch will arrive in Marseille from Athens before beginning its journey across the country to Paris.
Meanwhile, Paris organizers continue to find ways to take simple tasks like making a mascot that doesn’t like look like a sexual organ or designing the symbols for each Olympic sport and turning them into parodies. To wit, organizers unveiled the Olympic sports pictograms but decided they would reinvent them as “coats of arms,” something which literally no one was hoping they would do.
"The pictograms belong to the past. We are launching the principle of the coat of arms," announced the OCOG at a press conference.
(Please, don’t…just stop, I…)
“Until now, the pictograms were essentially informative, universal symbols that represented each discipline and its practitioners,” reports Le Monde’s Olympic Pictogram Critic. “This time, the Paris 2024 design teams, in collaboration with the W creative agency, have erased the sportsmen and women from their new ‘coats of arms, in favor of a graphic construction based on a central element of the practice (surfboard, armchair, bicycle, racket...), all around an axis of symmetry.”
(No, I’m begging you…)
Le Monde continues: “These coats of arms, which will take some time to adapt to (!!!!!), will be used on digital tickets and on all signage around the stadiums. Each of them will also have an animated version for television broadcasts and, above all, for communication on social media. The aim is to make the symbols part of the lives of ‘fans and everyday athletes.’ Young people too, if possible. Reaching young people is one of the challenges that Paris 2024 has set itself, embodied in particular by the inclusion of breakdance among the Olympic disciplines.”
In conclusion, Le Monde notes: “The new visuals are intriguing. Their clarity and comprehensibility, the first requirements of design, may be called into question (!!!!). The OCOG was quick to address critics, saying ‘we tested it with the athletes' commission. Yes, some of them were a little disturbed. (!!!!) But they had a sense of pride in belonging to this country that takes things a little differently, as with the mascots."
None of that prevented them from moving ahead. The problem, from both a practical and visual perspective, it’s not clear what many of the symbols represent. Which, in theory, ought to be the point, but oh well!
IE, without cheating, what sport is this:
From there, we can only assume that things will continue to get worse in terms of hype and publicity. Apparently unable to secure the help of Emily In Paris, US broadcaster NBC (aka, the people who basically fund the Olympics) turned to influencer-has-been Paris Hilton to cut an ad that immediately induces a full-body cringe.
The ‘other Paris.’ Get it? Because her name is Paris and the city is named Paris and that’s hilarious! Of course, you might think that could have been worse. And it turns out, you would be right.
But all of this is just a prelude to the main event. Because there is a growing dispute over who will and will not participate in these Olympic Games. The fight turns around Russian Athletes as the Ukraine War rages on.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has called for Russian and Belarusian athletes to be barred from the Games. He was not pleased to learn that the International Olympic Committee is considering letting athletes from those 2 countries participate under a neutral flag.
According to Forbes, Polish sports minister Kamil Bortniczuk claimed that more than 30 or 40 other countries were considering boycotts if the Russians were allowed to compete. As such, Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo, after previously saying she was totally fine if the Ruskies come, changed her mind and is now calling for them to be banned, no doubt worried that no one comes to the money sinkhole known as the Paris Olympics.
The IOC has responded by saying that while no decision has officially been made, governments should not be deciding who gets to participate because corrupt committee members will lose out on bribes and other perks that keep them fat and happy while pillaging the treasury of host nations.
Ha ha, just kidding. What he actually said was that it would violate the spirit of the Olympics and bla bla bla…
Chris O’Brien
Le Pecq