The Olympics as a global affair

The 2012 Olympic Games sees London become the first country in the event’s rich history to host the games for a record breaking third time. To some of you this news may be just as interesting as Channel 9’s broadcast of the games, albeit a little more clearer and without all the repeats.

Another interesting fact lies within an ideological icon of the games themselves – the rings. Each of the five colours represented within the Olympic rings symbolise the five original continents including Africa, America, Asia, Australia and Europe. Furthermore, each color of the five rings is included to encompass one color of every national flag in the world. This in a sense is globalisation.

However with this in mind I think it is appropriate to trace the history of the games, particularly its economic infrastructure. This year’s Olympics are the 30^th event since first commencing in Greece in 1896, some 116 years ago.

It’s not surprising to see that the United States have hosted the game on eight separate occasions cementing their reputation as an economic powerhouse. Amongst the remaining four original contents Europe has hosted the games 28 times, Asia five times and Australia twice (Top End Sports 2012). Even if you weren’t of Australian background I’m sure you could make an educated guess as to which two capitals hosted those games based on the themes relevant to this discussion.

The point here is that Africa, a nation home to 1 billion people and 14% of the entire human population has never hosted what is labelled as a ‘global’ and ‘international’ event. They are even set to be overtaken by South America as Brazil is set to host its first Olympic games in 2016. Now do you think the Olympics are global games?

References

Image sourced from ‘Google > Images’ search engine, retrieved August 10, 2012, http://www.google.com.au/imgres?start=104&num=10&hl=en&biw=1366&bih=622&tbm=isch&tbnid=gMUaeUSQROebyM:&imgrefurl=http://memegenerator.net/instance/24319856&docid=KHmqImHkM5vRJM&imgurl=http://cdn.memegenerator.net/instances/250x250/24319867.jpg&w=250&h=250&ei=ocMkUMXkIqeviQf68IDIBA&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=318&vpy=16&dur=7776&hovh=200&hovw=200&tx=87&ty=100&sig=111687787434019018409&page=5&tbnh=142&tbnw=137&ndsp=25&ved=1t:429,r:1,s:104,i:100

 ‘Olympic Games’, Top End Sports, retrieved August 10^th, 2012 http://www.topendsports.com/events/summer/hosts/list.htm

“He’s got the whole world within his hands”

             I’m sure it’s not hard for people to picture Mr Rupert Murdoch as the little monopolised man clapping and cheering as he passes go to collect his hard earned $200 cash. If you can’t, it would look a little something like this:

            While the term monopoly means ‘single seller’, the term ’oligopoly’ is more applicable to someone of Mr. Murdoch’s stature (Steven, P 2003, pp. 41). ‘Oligopoly’ refers to a group of large entities that control an industry practically without opposition. (Steven, P 2003, pp. 41) Such is the case here that I hope to emulate the man’s success. '

As media becomes used and abused to serve the best interest of corporate individuals I thought it would be fitting to put myself in the shoes of such bigotry. If I were entitled to my own media organisation it would have to be within the world of music.

In my own attempts to challenge the conventional phenomena of auto tuned music and the pornographic nature of popular music I would first invest in my own record store as my opening bid to change the music landscape forever. Following months of thriving success of selling vinyls and promoting the talents of local community hardcore, punk and heavy metal bands my company would become vertically, horizontally, and diagonally integrated to dominate all mediums of music output promoting one uniform message. (Steve, P 2003, pp. 44)

Vertical integration would see me gain ownership of all levels of production and distribution from controlling recording studios to opening a chain of music retail outlets. Horizontal and diagonal expansion would see the empire disperse over several other sectors to cater for hosting my own music festivals and even featuring apocalyptic songs embedded within the new Twilight soundtrack.

As my empire establishes new avenues of revenue my assets continue to flourish and my rivals perish. The real money maker however would see me tap into cultural industries to extrapolate to a global audience and thus impose cultural hegemony mwahahahaha (Steve, P 2003, pp. 55).

References

Images sourced from ‘Google > Images’ search engine, retrieved and then edited in Photoshop by Justin Geaney, August 10, 2012.

Steven, P 2003, ‘Political economy: the howling, brawling, global market place’, The no-nonsense guide to the global media, New Internationalist, Oxford, pp. 37–59.