16 Days 16 Days of Olympic History with
Simone Biles and Friedrich Nietzsche
NBC Olympics portrays Olympic athletes as virtual heroes in their highly stylized video segments. In vignettes and ongoing commentary, they are portrayed in fantastical terms: courageous, truthful, reliable and honorable. What is less known is that these idealistic modern mythologies in combination with film and broadcast visuals were created and formed during the 1936 Third Reich Olympics in Berlin. Infused with these stories is Nietzsche Übermensch representation in Thus Spake Zarathustra along with the traditional enchanted fairytale.
Historians believe the ancient Olympics started in 776 BCE, as a religious and athletic spectacle, based at the shrine to Zeus in Olympia, Greece. The father of the modern Olympics Pierre De Coubertin desired to keep the Olympic myth alive by unifying the Olympic sport with culture and education, without any form of discrimination about country, race, gender or religion.
Coubertin imagined turning average nations, cities and the underperforming populace who occupy the many corners of the planet surface into a race of nimble and agile competitors thru participation in the Olympics games. Each nation contestant would compete against other countries, to be “faster, higher and stronger.”(What Does the Olympic Motto Stand For?) Coubertin Olympic ideal would pit nation against nation and create a superior populace above all other countries, that would rise above conventional morality and enhance the integrity and spiritually of its inhabitants. Coubertin indeed did have much in common with the Berlin Olympic Committee members and his idealist view of the purity of the Olympics Games. But the 1936 Berlin Summer Olympics would take Coubertin's athletic ideal and put it on steroids.
The new Minister of Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda Joseph Goebbels saw the Olympics as a way to showcase Germans as superior athletes, pure and selfless, resembling the dedicated athletics and warriors of ancient Sparta. Goebbels envisioned Germany as the inheritors of Greek culture, especially notions of physical prowess and beauty.
These portrayals symbolized the Nazi racial myth that superior German civilization was the rightful heir of an "Aryan" culture of classical antiquity. Indeed, this was a brilliant propaganda tool for the triumphant Nazi Germany. (Nazi Olympics Berlin)
Hitler certainly evoked this glorified image at a 1934 Youth Day rally in Nuremberg: "In our eyes, the ideal German boy should be slim and trim, quick as a greyhound, tough as leather, and as hard as Krupp steel." (Berkes)
Granted the 1936 Nazi Olympics was immersed in notoriety and dishonor, with its anti-Semitism and white supremacist ideology concealed during the Olympics. The Nazi's tried to quell the controversy by having Olympic organizers, businessmen, politicians, and tourists witness a utopian, sanitized city with no visible strife, happy Germans with the promised that the games would be open to all. (NPR)
The 1936 Olympics in Berlin were the first to be televised with twenty-five television viewing rooms set up in the Greater Berlin area, allowing the locals to follow the Games free of charge. (Berlin 1936) Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels understood the power of television and broadcasting by spreading the Aryan narrative through this new propaganda media. Goebbels' powerful marketing syndicate orchestrated an "open door policy" for news gathering and commentary for the participating nations by pioneering state-of-the-art sports news gathering to help send updates to their respective countries. This system enabled radio broadcasters to file daily reports to their respected nations. (WGBH American Experience)
The Berlin Olympics were first to use telex transmissions to send results of the Olympic competition to neighboring countries. Additionally, with the use of zeppelins, newsreel footage was transported to other European cities for current Olympic results. (The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica)
The 1936 summer games were also broadcast live over the radio throughout the United States. The opening ceremonies were heard in Los Angeles, California at 8 a.m. Pacific Time via NBC on two radio stations, KFI and KECA. Also, regular radio broadcasts of the 1936 summer Olympics were heard mainly on KFI via NBC on Saturday and Sunday. (Hilliker) This elaborate broadcast technical model is still used today. For example, the host Olympic broadcaster maintains a state of the art International Broadcast Center that shares Olympic television events to licensed broadcast stakeholders.
Also, in 1936 the controversial Berlin Olympics film, Olympia, celebrates the Olympic visual spectacle by German filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl. This masterful pictorial stands as the foreshadowing cinematic standard for Olympic photographic treatment. Visually, throughout Riefenstahl’s film, new cinematic technology was introduced to increase the visual aesthetics of the idealized German Athletes. Riefenstahl came up with new techniques to shoot the games, using hot-air-balloons, airplanes, and motorboats to cover events that would be difficult to cover with static camera positions. Underwater cameras shot footage for swimming events, and she used motorized dollies for track and field events. For the opening ceremonies, Riefenstahl employed a sum of sixty photographers to capture the parade of the nations, the arrival of the torchbearer, the lighting of the Olympic fire, and Hitler's opening remarks. (Berg-Pan, Renata. Hinton, David B. Infield, Glenn B. Riefenstahl, Leni )
As the overall Olympic broadcast applications grew in technical capability a complex funding mechanism was needed to sustain the Olympic broadcast industrial complex. The overall massive size of building the technical infrastructure is a colossal undertaking, which is planned at least four years in advance and at least two years to build. To fund this exposition bids would be requested from broadcast companies and corporate entities that would pay for the privilege to be associated with such a grand event.
Assets received would be distributed to international and local committees to pay for the elaborate infrastructure needed for such a great happening. A United underlying Olympic image must be maintained to communicate a wholesome portrayal of the world's best athletes. This idealistic representation of athletes would hopefully ensure continual financial support from broadcasters and its advertising partners. This image is also used to persuade cities to undertake huge infrastructure projects to fulfill the promise of spectacle and continue the mythology of the Olympics in their cities.
Host cities certainly try to uphold the Olympic ideals. However, with million of dollars at stake, the horde of local and international media attention is historically intense. Olympic preparation is always subject to extreme scrutiny with preparations-planned years in advance. This great exercise and questionable economic advantages usually reveal cost overruns, financial corruption, environmental devastation and human rights violation. These professed failures may indeed impact the overall value of the Olympic spectacle by casting a negative prejudice on the Olympic and athletes.
Until 2032, Comcast, the parent company of NBC Olympics, has an obligation to its shareholders and media consumers to provide honorable sports entertainment that engages a diverse audience. NBC has a tradition of producing Olympic sports narratives that indeed reinforce these satisfying storylines of honor, family and winning. Also, NBC has successfully created hundreds of video profile segments that emphasize strong emotional support from family, demonstrating an enduring will of athletes not to be undetermined by any emotional or physical obstacles.
Each of NBC's subsequent Olympic narratives traces an athlete's rise to dominance. Achieving greatness that can contain a sublime or devastating circumstance which shapes the individual competitor to hero status or as Nietzsche's describes as the Übermensch. (Nietzsche's Idea of "the Overman”)
This Ubermensch or Superman myth plays a significant role in ultimately portraying the valuable Olympic narrative thru representation of conscientious athletes who projects a wholesome portrayal thru real or artificially created scenarios.
During the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio, dozens of video segments, profiling athletes were produced. Richly edited video synopses, plush with 4K colors and 5.1 surround sound, which reinforces the emotional density of each polished profile. Respectively each frame is thoughtfully assembled and edited which creates an atmosphere of challenging expectations, significant accomplishments and years of dedication. As an example, storylines can feature athletes from countries with significant political unrest or heart- warming stories of athletes wanting to train staying close to the comfort of home.
Five-time Olympic medalist Simone Biles has been represented in a number of archetypal narratives, Nietzsche, Übermensch and the fairytale storyline. The fairytale may feature folkloric characters and enchantments, which often involves a far-fetched sequence of events. NBC has reinforced Biles fairytale melodrama by directing the story structure to include symbols of a precious, precocious teenager who loves girly stuff, patriotic fingernails, Italian food, and high drama. The fairytale narrative is part of the European folktale tradition that addressed such themes as sex, death, murder, incest, cannibalism, violence, class, fate and chance. (Frazier)
The term is also used to describe something blessed with unusual happiness, as in "fairytale ending”(Gokturk)
But in Biles circumstance, class, fate and chance seem to illustrate her fairytale story. If not for an intervention from Biles maternal grandfather Ron Biles, the destiny of this outstanding Olympian would have been in jeopardy.
NBC was not the only institution to emphasize the fairytale narrative for Biles. Lars Anderson from the Bleacher Report, Liz Clarke from The Washington Post and Reeves Wiedeman from The New Yorker have revealed similar signifiers.
Simone and her sister were placed in foster care when she was two years old. (McAteer) Biles grandparents adopted Simone after her natural mother had problems with drugs and alcohol. Biles does consider her grandparents her birth parents, never mentioning the absence of her birth mother. Therefore, reinforcing, the narrative of a perilous upbringing.
When Biles the future Olympian was in the Women's Elite gymnasts program for ages 11 thru 16, Biles didn't believe she belonged with other elite athletes. She didn't believe in herself. Biles anxiety for not belonging seems to fit rationally into the fairytale narrative. While Simone is training, during her tumbling runs, the only thing she sees is the colors of the ceiling and the floor, whizzing past in revolving blurs. And when she vaults, she sees nothing at all. Some élite gymnasts count to themselves while flying through the air, to keep track of where they are. (Wiedeman)
Indeed, Biles has won the most world gymnast medals in U.S. history (14) and the most world championship gold medals of any female athlete. (Biles) Also, Biles was chosen by Team USA to be the flag-bearer for the closing ceremonies. She was the first American female athlete to be given the honor. The turning point for Biles occurred when she was headed on a field trip to a ranch with her day-care class when the scorching heat of Texas forced a change of plan. The children were taken to a local gymnastics club instead, and Biles was transfixed. (Clarke)
It wasn't long before young Biles caught the attention of Aimee Boorman. Boorman at the time was an artistic gymnastics coach who noticed Biles outstanding gymnastic abilities. Biles was on the floor, carefully eyeing older gymnasts, with her arms extended straight down so that her rear end hovered off the ground, with her legs extended in front of her. Suddenly, without prompting, Boorman inverted her. "That's not normal," recalled Boorman, who was struck by the little girl's masculine structure." (Clarke)
Appropriately the scenario of Biles journey to fame may satisfy the fairytale narrative. Therefore assumptions could be made this was accomplished by gender, family involvement, and Biles outstanding natural athletic abilities.
According to Nietzsche's philosophy of the overman or Übermensch, Biles excellent athleticism, natural grace and natural talent promotes an example of Nietzsche philosophical theory found in Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
When Biles executes her gymnastic prowess in an Olympic sport, Biles routine makes time stand still. It's the cosmos where Biles and other exceptional athletes of excellent caliber and talent succeed in the shadow of the Übermensch philosophy. Biles and other Olympic athletes are willing to risk all for the sake of enhancement of humanity. (Nietzsche's Idea of "the Overman”)
Nietzsche ideal of humankind can be represented by the courageous commitment to years of unselfish training that defines the individual athlete as the Übermensch. Biles like other past and future Olympians sway considerable influence on the lives of others. Either, encouraging future Olympians or patrons of the games. (Nietzsche's Idea of "the Overman”)
As role models, thousands of ordinary lives may have been transformed by the spirit and performance of these elite athletes. In existential terms, Biles and other Olympians appear from generation to generation. In this way, their existence and power live on even after they die (Nietzsche's Idea of "the Overman”). The Übermensch also overcomes the tragedy of life and does not accept human limitations.
The attributes of the Übermensch are easily recognizable in NBC profiles. Heroic enthusiasm, unrelenting focus, absolute dedication and total commitment to the Olympic medal pursuit. The daily ritual of training, exercising and mental toughness of the Übermensch reinforces these characteristics of the future Olympian's. NBC does capitalize on these unique qualities to add spectacle and heroism to each profile. These assets are a necessary component to engage an audience that shares the Übermensch experience. The Übermensch ideal also appears thought-out Olympic history. Biles unique qualities can be interpreted as a re-embodiment of former Olympic greats. Gabby Douglas, Mary Lou Retton, Showing similar philosophy in attitudes, duty, and integrity.
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