Politics and the Olympic film documentary: the legacies of Berlin Olympia and Tokyo Olympiad

Abstract

Hosting the olympics has become a way for a modern nation state to represent itself to the international community. If we accept this truism, it then follows that the Olympic film functions as a representation of that representation. What does this mean? Any discussion of the legacy of Olympic films brings to mind only two films that we might consider: the very first of the genre, Leni Riefenstahl's Olympia (1938), and Kon Ichikawa's Tokyo Olympiad (1965). The frequent question asked in relation to the first of these films is: ‘Can the politics of the nation-state be separated from the filmed representation of it in Riefensthal's documentary film?’ My response to this question is not whether we as social scientists can ever separate the nation-state's politics from the filming of its Olympics, but that in the two documentary films I am about to consider here, this has been the question that has plagued viewers and critics alike only in relation to Riefenstahl's film, yet it also should concern us in relation to Ichikawa's documentary. The question then is about representations that seem able to transcend national politics, when, how and why. This chapter seeks to explore the reasons for the more benigin reading of the Ichikawa film and to consider the issue of ‘evasive myths’ in relation to both the Olympic Games and their documentary films.

Notes

¹ Toohey and Veal, The Olympic Games, 165–6.

² Martinez, ‘NHK comes to Kuzaki’.

³ Downing, Olympia, 89–90.

⁴ Abu-Lughod, ‘Writing Against Culture’.

⁵ Downing, Olympia, 13–14.

⁶ Sontag, ‘Fascinating Fascism’, 82.

⁷ Sontag, ‘Fascinating Fascism’, 78.

⁸ See, for example, Keys, ‘Between Nazism and Olympism, 134–57 and Large, Nazi Games.

⁹ Hinton, The Films of Leni Riefenstahl, 27–62.

¹⁰ For a discussion of her relationship with Goebbels, see Graham, Leni Riefenstahl and Olympia, 1–26, and Downing, Olympia, 27–32.

¹¹ Downing, Olympia, 36.

¹² Belam, ‘A Brief History of Olympic Dissent.

¹³ For a discussion of Ichikawa's career, see Quandt, ‘Introduction’, 1–12.

¹⁴ Quandt, ‘Tokyo Olympiad, a symposium’, 327.

¹⁵ Tessier, Kon Ichikawa, 82.

¹⁶ Sato, ‘Kon Ichikawa’, 130.

¹⁷ Cazdyn, ‘Tokyo Olympiad’, 331.

¹⁸ Igarashi, Bodies of Memory, 132.

¹⁹ Large, Nazi Games.

²⁰ Igarashi, Bodies of Memory, 143.

²¹ Russell, ‘Being Two isn't easy’, 255–66.

²² Quandt, ed., Kon Ichikawa, 332.

²³ Igarashi, Bodies of Memory, 145.

²⁴ Armstrong and Tennenhouse, eds, The Violence of Representation make this argument in relation to literature; I think it applies equally to film.

²⁵ Debord, The Society of the Spectacle. MacAloon, ‘The Theory of Spectacle’, makes use of Debord to discuss Olympic ceremonies.