:O

[quinara]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-19037588

brutti_ma_buoni, you were right. I can't actually believe NBC did this...

My heart just breaks.

ETA: IF YOU'D LIKE TO SEE IT: memorialdance.mp4 [~38MB; ~6:30mins]
And you can read Akram Khan talking about the piece here.

Comments

[evilawyer]

If NBC really was told that "[t]he ceremony's programme described the performance as dramatising "the struggle between life and death using such powerful images of mortality as dust and the setting sun"," I have to be honest about my countrypeople ---- NBC wouldn't have shown it because we would have turned the channel. Collectively, we can't stand the thought of death in any way, shape or form, even if portrayed as locked in a perpetual struggle with life, at least not the way Europeans seem to be able to. Maybe it's that we're too young, maybe it's that we're too shallow, but we don't seem to be able to do it. Not yet at least.

I think if NBC had had it spelled out to them that "This is a tribute to terrorist victims," they would have shown it it. Probably.

[quinara]

Would people really have changed channel? I find that a bit disappointing. Our commentators didn't share that much of the programme - they just mentioned that it was meant as a reflective pause after all the stuff that had been going on, and made the connection between our winning of the bid in 2005 and 7/7 the very next day. Frankly it seems quite arrogant to me that they would try and edit the Olympics into something they'd have wanted to produce, rather than just showing what they'd paid for, presumably because of audience interest in seeing it.

[evilawyer]

Yes, I think people would have changed channel. NBC is here to cater to the U.S. audience. U.S. people here are more focused on the sports themselves than on the pageantry surrounding the Games, and focus on the competitiveness (and the "message" of health and youth inherent in athletic competition) of the sports practically to the exclusion of the more sublime message about brotherhood and togetherness that the Games are supposed to be about; I think that's true for rabid sports fans and more casual sports fans alike in this country. We don't do reflection well.

And, as much as it grieves me to say, I'm not sure that many Americans would have understood anything as oblique a connection between Great Britain's winning the 2005 bid and the terrorist attack the next day. Along with our inability to deal with death and our lack of depth is our lack of sympathy for anyone but ourselves. What I didn't mention before was that, while NBC would have probably aired the segment if it had been explicitly told that it was a tribute to terrorist attack victims, average Americans would have assumed it was a tribute to 9-11 victims here in the U.S. and then been either irritated or baffled when it wasn't, although some would have run to Google it.

The longer I live, the more I realize that "average" here in America is pretty abysmal. We deserve to be hated by the entire planet.