The weight of expectation: Cathy Freeman, Legacy, Reconciliation and the Sydney Olympics – A Canadian Perspective

Abstract

This paper compares French- and English-language Canadian television coverage of Australian Aboriginal athlete Cathy Freeman during the 2000 Olympics using a narrative framework. The specific focus of the analysis is the representation of Freeman's political identity as an agent and symbol of Aboriginal reconciliation – the struggle for apology, reparatio, and social justice in the light of the history and legacy of colonial oppression and exclusion. Freeman has used her sporting success to signify visibly and with some controversy her identification with political Aboriginality and reconciliation, and she went into the 2000 games bearing an unusual weight of expectation, intensified by being chosen to light the Olympic cauldron, that a victory in the 400 metres would mark symbolically reconciliation between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians. The analysis generally conforms the hypothesis that the normative dimension of these expectations would be accentuated more in the French- than English-language coverage, and this resulted in a more consistently affirmative portrayal of Freeman and her performance. The English-language coverage emphasized the ambivalent nature of her role. The corollary of this was that the English-language coverage paid greater attention to the substance of Aboriginal grievances and struggle. Nonetheless, neither network saw Freeman's identity in openly critical terms: in Freeman's Olympic narrative sport and politics were allowed to mix in a relatively unproblematic way.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for financial support for the research from which this paper stems, and thank Marie-Claude Beaumont for her research assistance. Graham Knight would also like to thank the Department of Management Communication at the University of Waikato.

Notes

[1] Bruce and Hallinan, ‘Cathy Freeman’.

[2] Hartmann, Race, Culture and the Revolt of the Black Athlete.

[3] Tatz, Obstacle Race.

[4] Whannel, ‘Sport and the Media’.

[5] Hartley and McKee, The Indigenous Public Sphere, 6.

[6] Bruce and Hallinan, ‘Cathy Freeman’; Tatz, Aborigines in Sport; Obstacle Race.

[7] Bruce and Hallinan, ‘Cathy Freeman’; Hartley and McKee, The Indigenous Public Sphere; Wensing and Bruce, ‘Bending the Rules’.

[8] de Costa, New Relationships, Old Certainties.

[9] Downing and Husband, Representing ‘Race’, 129.

[10] Tatz, Obstacle Race, 293.

[11] Wensing and Bruce, ‘Bending the Rules’.

[12] Bruce and Hallinan, ‘Cathy Freeman’.

[13] Tatz, Obstacle Race, 293.

[14] Whannel, Media Sport Stars, 46.

[15] Dayan and Katz, Media Events.

[16] Larson and Park, Global Television and the Politics of the Seoul Olympics; de Moragas Spa et al., Television in the Olympics.

[17] Meekison, ‘Whose Ceremony is it Anyway?’; Schaffer and Smith, ‘The Olympics of the Everyday’; Godwell, ‘The Olympic Branding of Aborigines’.

[18] Luhmann, Social Systems.

[19] Ibid.; Knight et al., ‘The Disappointment Games’.

[20] Godwell, ‘The Olympic Branding of Aborigines’.