The isles of wonder—a new Jerusalem? British newspaper narratives about the opening ceremony of the XXXth Olympiad

Abstract

The Isles of Wonder, the 2012 London Olympic Games Opening Ceremony, was viewed by a record global audience either live or through a range of electronic, social, and print media. British newspaper discourses provided reflection of the mega-sporting event as a ‘second-order’ construction, which gave readers an opportunity to reflexively decide what Britishness had come to represent. Theoretical insights about British identity were drawn from Anderson’s (1983) concept of the nation as an ‘imagined community’, Tajfel and Turner’s (1986) social identity theory, and Edmunds and Turner’s (2001) juxtaposition of benign and malign nationalism. Our qualitative textual analysis revealed that although at times complex, contested, and contradictory, the narratives generally linked the internationalism of the Olympics with a progressive, benign version of Britishness that was still ‘great’. Underpinned by the aspirational New Jerusalem theme, the narratives generally acclaimed the Isles of Wonder as Britain’s first gold medal of the Games.

Keywords:

• British newspapers
• London 2012
• national identity
• textual analysis

Notes

Notes

1 A ‘little England’ mentality is used to describe an English person who believes in English exceptionalism and has a desire to return to a perceived bygone, halcyon era, which predated Britain’s entry into the European Union and before globalization integrated economies. Maguire (2011) noted how a ‘Little Englander’ ideology re-asserted itself in the 1990s in response to a perceived crisis of English identity.

2 On the morning of July 7, 2005, the day after London won its bid to host the 2012 Olympic Games, London suffered a series of coordinated terrorist attacks perpetrated by Islamist terrorists. Homemade bombs were detonated aboard London Underground trains and on a double-decker bus in Tavistock Square, killing fifty-two people and injuring 700 civilians. These terrorist attacks are commonly referred to as 7/7.

3 William Blake’s Jerusalem poem was written in 1804 and suggests that although England’s ‘green and pleasant land’ was giving way to the ‘dark Satanic Mills’ of industrialization, Christ had once visited Glastonbury and England can build a New Jerusalem. Blake’s famous poem was put to music by Hubert Parry in 1916. Parry’s Jerusalem is sung widely in churches, schools, sporting events, particularly before rugby matches, and enthusiastically by promenaders each year at The Last Night of the Proms. The popularity and ubiquity of Jerusalem has positioned it in recent years as England’s de facto national anthem and it is used as the English national anthem at the Commonwealth Games.

4 The London 2012 Olympic Games included a number of firsts for female competitors, including the first time every nation had female athletes and the introduction of women’s boxing.