Rio’s Olympic Festival in the Streets
Rio’s Olympic Festival in the Streets
![Olympic festival -- The torch relay is the most unscripted part of the Olympic program. Here, the torch travels through the Flamengo neighborhood on the day of the opening ceremony.](https://www.sapiens.org/app/uploads/2016/08/01_Rio-Torch-Relay-Flamengo-05-NB-05-08-16-1024x684.jpg)
![Olympic festival -- A van from Coca-Cola, one of the torch relay's corporate sponsors, leads the way and offers spectators free bottles of Coke. The torch relay is the only event that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) does not control and, unlike in the sport venues where advertising is not allowed, the torch relay is hyper-commercialized.](https://www.sapiens.org/app/uploads/2016/08/02_Rio-torch-relay_sb12_08_05_2016-1024x624.jpg)
![Olympic festival -- This public art installation, a 20-meter-high fabric artwork by French artist JR on top of the Hilton Santos building in Flamengo, depicts Sudanese high jumper Mohamed Younes Idris.](https://www.sapiens.org/app/uploads/2016/08/03_Rio-Mural-High-Jump-NB-05-08-16-1024x684.jpg)
![Olympic festival -- These spectators in Praça Mauá saw Niko with camera in hand, struck a party pose, and asked him to take their picture.](https://www.sapiens.org/app/uploads/2016/08/04_Rio-opening-ceremony_nb15_05_08_2016-1024x836.jpg)
![Olympic festival -- The attention of the crowd at the Praça Mauá live site was riveted by the bright lights of the big screens broadcasting the opening ceremony. The focus of the crowd on the screens instead of on each other somewhat diluted the festival atmosphere.](https://www.sapiens.org/app/uploads/2016/08/05_Rio-opening-ceremony_sb12_08_05_2016-1024x768.jpg)
![Olympic festival -- Spectators are silhouetted against the light of the big-screen television on Praça Mauá](https://www.sapiens.org/app/uploads/2016/08/06_Rio-opening-ceremony_sb03_08_05_2016-e1470861981758-555x750b.jpg)
![Olympic festival -- Many spectators were sandwiched between two virtual realities—the giant screens and their smartphones.](https://www.sapiens.org/app/uploads/2016/08/07_Rio-opening-ceremony_sb01_08_05_2016-610x750b.jpg)
![Olympic festival -- The opening ceremony began with the artistic program, which emphasized global unity and environmentalism in what IOC President Thomas Bach called “this Olympic world.” The spectators in the square reacted warmly.](https://www.sapiens.org/app/uploads/2016/08/08_Rio-opening-ceremony_nb05_05_08_2016-1024x791.jpg)
![Olympic festival -- The parade of athletes followed the artistic program, shifting the sentiment of the live-site crowd from globalism to nationalism. Many spectators were draped in national flags, which they waved when their countries’ teams appeared on the screen. South American athletes got big cheers, but the longest ovation was for the Refugee Olympic Team, which was created for the first time by the IOC to support athletes affected by international crises.](https://www.sapiens.org/app/uploads/2016/08/09_Rio-opening-ceremony_nb01_05_08_2016-1024x683.jpg)
![Olympic festival -- People at the live site were not wearing carnivalesque costumes, but the broadcast concluded with samba dancing and parts of the crowd in the square undulating in unison. These two women were the only street performers we encountered.](https://www.sapiens.org/app/uploads/2016/08/10_Rio-opening-ceremony_sb13_08_05_2016-488x750b.jpg)
In the 1980s, anthropologist John J. MacAloon argued that the real power of the Olympic Games lies in the unscripted, celebratory street festivals that erupt in public spaces. Inside the Olympic venues, intense security and surveillance control the crowds. The sports themselves are highly regulated by rules of play and rigid ceremonies that mark their start and conclusion. But outside, the celebration is of a wilder, freer kind.
Anthropologists have long argued that such celebrations create a sense of shared humanity, but they’ve had little to say about watching these same celebrations on television. What can we learn from the communal experience of gathering around TVs to partake in the festivities?
Today, television broadcasts of the Olympics can reach 70 percent of the world’s population. People often gather in communal spots to take in such historic broadcasts, a tradition that communications scholars Daniel Dayan and Elihu Katz have called the “festive viewing of television.” Thanks to large-screen TVs, crowds of spectators can gather to watch live broadcasts of the ceremonies and the sports at “live sites” that Olympic host cities set up around town. And these sites themselves are in turn sparking more lively street festivals. In the 2006 book National Identity and Global Sports Events, MacAloon stated that live sites had changed his mind about television’s capacity to contribute to a festival mood.
On the evening of August 5, while the opening ceremony of the Rio Olympics was taking place inside Maracanã Stadium, we went to Praça Mauá, a square in the city’s port area that was redeveloped for the games. The square, one of the games’ three official live sites, features a stage framed by two giant screens broadcasting the events, and a third screen on the side running nonstop advertisements for Coca-Cola. It drew a youthful crowd, largely Brazilian, along with small, diverse groups of people from many other countries.
Niko Besnier’s research for this article was funded by the European Research Council. Susan Brownell’s research was funded by the College of Arts & Sciences and the Office of International Studies and Programs at the University of Missouri, St. Louis.