The writer of the Olympic Opening Ceremony, Frank Cotterill Boyce, appeared on Newsnight yesterday, interviewed by Emily Maitlis:
When asked whether there was a political message encoded in the ceremony he smirked and waved his hands and talked about the volunteers. Unusually Emily Maitlis did not make him reply to the question. I have tried to capture his smirking in the above screen print, but this has proved impossible - although he smirked frequently, he did it so quickly that by the time my finger had been depressed on the SysRq button he had closed his eyes.
The idea that the production was just a chaotic unstructured mish-mash thrown together in a few brain-storming sessions and that in any case the "volunteers" made all the running on deciding content is, to my view, highly expert dissembling.
Perhaps I am being over-suspicious in all this?
Perhaps I am, in the sweeping words of the Prime Minister, being "idiotic" in identifying a covert subliminal layer of messages when everyone (almost everyone) is saying how wonderful the ceremony was, how there was no political agenda, and that we should all just chill out and enjoy the rest of the show.
And there is, of course, a risk of appearing obsessed in revisiting an event most people have already begun to forget with their conscious minds. Of becoming just another on-line nutter chuntering on about things that are completely unimportant. Of not being able to let things go.
But the reason I am fascinated (as well as appalled) by what happened on Friday night is because it was, on a technical level, so good (and I realise now my first shocked reaction of "it's bad" seems ridiculous in retrospect - it was not bad at all, but in its own terms very very good, although in my judgement also profoundly disturbing, perhaps even evil).
For a few hours on Friday evening Danny Boyle and Frank Cotterill Boyce convinced almost the entire population of the United Kingdom of several key concepts:
- That multi-culturalism is an established and accepted national policy.
- That mass immigration is a popular, uncontroversial and on-going national benefit.
- That society means socialism.
Of course many people sincerely hold these views, and to them Friday night was an ecstatic triumphalist moment.
True socialists believe that capitalist society cannot be reformed, it has to be destroyed and rebuilt again (destroyed by bloody revolution or destroyed by gentle imperceptible degrees, but ultimately destroyed).
In the United Kingdom in the post-war period one of the main agencies of this destruction is multi-culturalism.
Multi-culturalism has become a policy that is impossible to oppose without being pilloried as a "racist" (as Aidan Burley can no doubt assure you).
So you see the genius of what was done on Friday evening.
A great advance for socialism has been made.
And even the two main leaders of the Conservative Party are on message.
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