The long-awaited opening ceremony for the Beijing Olympics was meant to be an extravaganza that would herald to the world China’s rise as a great nation on the world stage.
Directed by the movie director Zhang Yimou, the ceremony was certainly long, involved, and giant in scope, featuring a cast of 15,000 performers. While some early reports admired the ceremony, it has also found critics inside and outside China.
Fascist Aesthetics
The Chinese political critic Cao Changqing called the opening ceremony “a work of fascist aesthetics.”
According to Cao, Zhang Yimou imitated in many ways the style of the opening ceremony of the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games directed by the infamous director Leni Riefenstahl. At the Beijing opening ceremony, a human sea of formations marched in uniform, recalling the masses gathered in Riefentsahl’s propaganda films.
On Chinese internet forums, many anonymous Chinese criticized Zhang Yimou’s consistently extravagant style and propaganda.
One post said, “Let’s pretend we were watching a propaganda film! Old Zhang tried to make a modern film, but apparently he is at his wit’s end!”
