Dressing up to join the games: Vancouver 2010

Abstract

The 2010 Winter Olympics initially encountered not only scepticism on the part of local critics concerning the levels of public expenditure on the Games and protests by anti-globalisation activists but also the death of a Georgian luger during a training-run crash on the first day. This tragic event and a number of other logistical difficulties fuelled international criticism of the Games that sparked consternation within the host community and across Canada. This paper examines how nationalistically charged responses to these criticisms were evoked and enacted through the creation of officially encouraged street activities on the streets of downtown Vancouver. Attention is given here to the ways in which those who garbed themselves in various forms of Olympic paraphernalia and took to the streets became active participants and featured performers in an informally choreographed undertaking to transform the Games into an experiential and mediated ‘success’.

Notes

[1] This was a label subsequently proposed and vouched for by undergraduate students enrolled in a course that I taught that semester on the ethnography of the Olympics.