What is it about the sounds of baseball that make them musical, and so easily romanticized? In Ken Burns’ documentary Baseball, George Plimpton says that “Baseball has these absolutely unique sounds. The sounds of spring and summer….The sound of the ball against the bat is absolutely extraordinary. I don’t know any American male that doesn’t hear that in the springtime and get called back to some moment in the past.” These sounds are especially vivid in a game that’s often so quiet.

It’s been made the subject of numerous songs, many of which are collected and fully digitized in the Library of Congress Performing Arts Encyclopedia. Each song is freely available to the public to peruse and parody, including one of the most iconic American songs ever written, “Take me out to the ballgame,” written by Albert Von Tilzer, with lyrics by Jack Norworth. (I’ve been wondering lately if all of Norworth’s lyrics make him sound like a freeloader. He doesn’t pay for the game; he doesn’t pay for the concessions. Maybe the fact that he’d never been out to a ballgame when he wrote the song can be explained by the fact that no one wanted to take him.)

Baseball even gave us the first documented use of the word “jazz.” According to the OED, in 1912 a professional pitcher describing his curve ball was quoted in the Los Angeles Times as saying, “I call it the Jazz ball because it wobbles and you simply can’t do anything with it.”

Despite its connections with the musical world, I have to admit now to a long-standing personal indifference towards the sport. My first-hand experience is limited to a third grade T-ball championship and some horrifying moments in co-ed little league. Baseball was never on TV at home when I grew up, and I’d become immediately bored if I even glanced at a game.

I’ve slowly come around to it (thanks in part to my boyfriend, who wrote the article on baseball songs linked above) to the point where I was comforting myself the day after the Boston Marathon bombing by watching the New York Yankees’ home game against the Arizona Diamondbacks on TV. As Plimpton said, the sounds of the game do bring me back to old memories of summer days (though I’m actually an American female, I think it still counts), and watching the game was having a calming effect on me.

After two and a half innings, the commentators told the audience at home that the song “Sweet Caroline” was going to be played in the stadium, and that they’d broadcast it for those watching at home.

I was moved: “Sweet Caroline” is a Boston song. I know next to nothing about baseball culture, but I learned that much from my two years living in Massachusetts. It’s been played at Red Sox games for years, despite the lyrics having no obvious connections to either sports or Boston.

A 2005 story in the Boston Globe traced the origins of the song’s  use there to Amy Tobey, who was in charge of picking the music that would play at Fenway Park from 1998–2004. She’d heard the song at other sporting events and decided to play it in Boston. It was very well-received. The song has been played in the eighth inning of every home game there since 2002; that’s more than 800 eighth-inning sing-alongs over the last decade.

Experience has taught me that, prior to the game on the 16th of April, singing “Sweet Caroline” in Yankee Stadium would probably earn you a few dirty looks, which must be difficult for all those Yankees fans who also happen to be Neil Diamond enthusiasts. So, taking advantage both of an opportunity to show that they were thinking of Boston’s residents and of the only chance they might ever have to yell “So good! So good!” in the stands at Yankee Stadium, the crowd looked like this.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I found the gesture incredibly touching. When I described it to other people the next day, I remembered it being exclusively full of joyful, smiling singers-along. When I watch that video now, almost a month later, it feels a little more staid. Maybe a lot of people felt too sad about the attack to express support that way; maybe a lot of people just didn’t like singing. Maybe in my excitement at recognizing this sports-culture event as it was happening, I remembered it being a little more dramatic.

The crowd looked smaller than the reported attendance of 34,107, but there were still thousands of people for the camera operators to focus on. I wonder why they chose the ones they did, the fans who were in turn waving at the camera, leaning on each other, talking, slowly eating an ice cream bar without getting any on their beards, swaying, belting out the refrain, and then, quickly, getting back to the game. They didn’t even play the whole song. In short, it looked like any other baseball sing-along. But the good will coming out of my TV that night was palpable.

The soundtrack of baseball includes an outside score as well as the rhythms created by the game itself, and musical touchstones like “Sweet Caroline” are fascinating. The opening lyrics (“Where it began/I can’t begin to knowing/But then I know it’s growing strong”) might as well be pulled from quotes from the fans in the Boston Globe article about why they sing the song—as far as they knew, Boston fans sing it because they’ve always sung it, despite the fact that the tradition was only a few years old when that article was written.

But the message from the Yankees as they blared their rival’s anthem at home that night was clear to anyone tuned in to the game. And in a situation like the one that week, where it was easy to feel useless and helpless, that simple musical gesture was very deeply felt. The music of baseball is a part of it that even I can appreciate.

Jessica Barbour is the Associate Editor for Grove Music/Oxford Music Online. You can read her previous blog posts, including “Glissandos and glissandon’ts” and “Wedding Music”. You can read more about Albert Von Tilzer, Jack Norworth, and popular music in Grove Music Online.

Oxford Music Online is the gateway offering users the ability to access and cross-search multiple music reference resources in one location. With Grove Music Online as its cornerstone, Oxford Music Online also contains The Oxford Companion to Music, The Oxford Dictionary of Music, and The Encyclopedia of Popular Music.

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Image credit: young baseball player hitting the ball. © Tomwang112 via iStockphoto.

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15 April 2013 marked the fifth Jackie Robinson Day, commemorating the 66th anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers, an event which broke baseball’s racial barrier. In each game that is now played on 15 April, all players wear Jackie Robinson’s iconic #42 (also the title of a new film on Robinson). Thirty years ago, historian and ardent baseball fan Jules Tygiel proposed the first scholarly study of integration in baseball, shepherded by esteemed Oxford editor, Sheldon Meyer. Baseball’s Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy was first published in 1983, and its 25th Anniversary was celebrated with a new edition in 2008. Though Dr. Tygiel passed away in 2008, this extract from his Afterword demonstrates our ongoing captivation with the Jackie Robinson story.

One of the more surprising elements of the recent lionization of Jackie Robinson has been the relative diminution of Branch Rickey in the saga. In the early retellings of the story, Rickey, not Robinson, played the dominant role. The flamboyant and publicity-savvy Dodger president, after all, had set the project in motion, bucking not just history but a hostile group of fellow owners. Rickey had scouted the Negro Leagues and Caribbean baseball, discovered and selected Robinson, and meticulously planned the strategies necessary to make his “great experiment” a success. Rickey had also, in many respects, shaped the prevailing master narrative of the path to integration: his dramatic 1945 meeting with Robinson; the restrictions placed on Robinson’s behavior; the suppression of the 1947 player revolt; and the 1949 liberation of Robinson allowing him to strike back at his tormentors. Although commentators constantly debated and questioned Rickey’s true motivations, in many accounts Robinson appeared as a puppet, with Rickey pulling the strings.

The image of a white, paternalistic Rickey masterminding the integration process and in Lincolnesque fashion emancipating black ballplayers fit well with the postwar liberal ethos. The rise of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements in the 1950s and 1960s, however, called for a Robinson who was less a martyr to a cause and more an active agent of change. I attempted to present the two more as partners in the endeavor, but as the story unfolded, it was Robinson, the dynamic, compelling man on the field who seized center stage, while Rickey, who left the Dodgers after the 1950 season, faded into the background.

Jackie Robinson swinging a bat in Dodgers uniform, 1954. Photo by Bob Sandberg. Published in LOOK, v. 19, no. 4, 1955 Feb. 22, p. 78.United States Library of Congress’s Prints and Photographs division.

Current literature reveals a similar trend. While studies of Robinson proliferate, volumes on Rickey, who even without the Robinson story would still be the most significant baseball executive of the twentieth century, have been rare. Murray Polner’s Branch Rickey: A Biography appeared at about the same time as Baseball’s Great Experiment. Not until 2007, when Lee Lowenfish’s authoritative Branch Rickey: Baseball’s Ferocious Gentleman was published, did another Rickey biography appear. Lowenfish reminds us of the strong religious underpinnings for Rickey’s actions. He criticizes those who question Rickey’s motives as guilty of “erroneous simplification,” arguing that “by ridiculing Rickey’s pontificating style, the impatient ideologues have ignored his moral substance and the genuine paternal relationship he built with Robinson the athlete and family man.” But Lowenfish does not substantially revise the standard long-accepted storyline presented in Baseball’s Great Experiment and other works.

Several historians, however, have contributed a handful of additional insights into Rickey’s thinking that alter my original portrayal. John Thorn discovered a cache of photographs of Robinson taken by a Look photographer in 1945. This led John and me to revisit several documents in the Arthur Mann Papers and to conclude that Rickey’s original idea was not to announce the signing of just Robinson in October 1945 but several Negro League players at once. Political pressures forced Rickey to abandon this strategy and focused attention on Robinson alone as the standard-bearer of the campaign. Neil Lanctot has also shattered the longstanding myth that the United States League (USL), a new Negro League that took the field in 1945, was created largely as a smokescreen for Rickey’s integration initiative. Rickey, he shows, played a minimal role in the conception or operations of the USL. In a review of Baseball’s Great Experiment, Ron Story suggested that my analysis of Rickey’s actions had underplayed his lifelong pursuit of cheap labor, as embodied in his creation of the farm system, in analyzing his decision to sign black players. Following this lead, I addressed this aspect of Rickey’s career in a chapter in Past Time: Baseball As History, published in 2000.

If Rickey, however, has inspired relatively little new research, Robinson remains a popular subject. Thanks to several biographical studies, most notably, Arnold Rampersad’s magisterial Jackie Robinson: A Life, we have a more fully developed portrait of Robinson’s upbringing and his often controversial postbaseball experiences as businessman, civil rights leader, and political activist. Family memoirs by his wife, Rachel, and daughter, Sharon, have, along with Rampersad’s book, also offered a deeper perspective into Robinson’s personal life. In the quest for fresh things to say about Robinson’s baseball career, historians and journalists have begun to deconstruct it in minute detail. Thus we now have books focusing on Robinson’s first spring training in Florida in 1946 and his 1947 rookie season. Can studies of his 1949 Most Valuable Player year or his personal role in the 1951 heartbreak (both of which could actually be wonderful reads) be far behind?

Jules Tygiel, a native of Brooklyn, was Professor of History at San Francisco State University and founder of the Pacific Ghost League. He is the author of Baseball’s Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy and The Great Los Angeles Swindle: Oil, Stocks, and Scandal During the Roaring Twenties. In this gripping account of one of the most important steps in the history of American desegregation, Jules Tygiel tells the story of Jackie Robinson’s crossing of baseball’s color line. Examining the social and historical context of Robinson’s introduction into white organized baseball, both on and off the field, Tygiel also tells the often neglected stories of other African-American players–such as Satchel Paige, Roy Campanella, Willie Mays, and Hank Aaron–who helped transform our national pastime into an integrated game.

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Pull on your lycra, tie up your shoelaces, pin your number on your vest, and join us as we run the Virgin London Marathon in blog form. While police and security have been stepping up after Boston, we have been trawling Oxford University Press’s online resources in order to bring you 26 miles and 375 yards of marathon goodness. Get ready to take your place on the starting line.

The reason that you’re about to run a heart-bursting 26 miles is the Greek legend of Phidippides, a soldier and messenger who ran from the Battle of Marathon to relay news of the Athenian triumph over the more numerous and powerful Persians. After he had passed on the message, Phidippides collapsed and died of exhaustion. In order to avoid the same sticky demise as Phidippides, it’s best that you do some running in preparation for your big day.

It’s not just about physical preparation though. You may have done exercises that grouped together would rival Sylvester Stallone in Rocky, but you need to be mentally strong too. Segmenting is a technique athletes use in order to make a long event less overwhelming. They might break a marathon up into mile-long segments, or set a goal for a certain part of the course, rather than think of the marathon in its entirety. This might have been useful for Jo Brand who said in 2005: “I’ve set myself a target. I’m going for less than eleven-and-a-half days.”

Eat healthy

Are carbs your best friend? No? Well it’s best to get acquainted and fast! Carbohydrate loading is a procedure followed by some athletes to raise the glycogen content of skeletal muscle artificially by following a special diet, usually combined with a special exercise regime. For a marathon runner, the procedure starts seven days before a race when the athlete depletes the muscle of glycogen by running a long distance, usually about 32 km (20 miles). For the next three days, the athlete eats a high protein, low carbohydrate diet, and continues exercising to ensure glycogen depletion and sensitization of the physiological processes that manufacture and store glycogen. For the final three days before the race, the athlete eats a high carbohydrate diet, and takes little or no exercise.

On the starting line

It is thanks to Christopher Brasher and John Disley that there is a starting line at all, as the pair organised the first London marathon in 1981 after running the New York marathon together in 1979. As Chris Brasher’s entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography explains:

“He was impressed with the scale of the race, and with the fact that it welcomed runners of all abilities, ages, and backgrounds, thus diluting the marathon’s élite sporting reputation and making it a civic, multicultural occasion. Returning to London, he wondered in his column in The Observer ‘whether London could stage such a festival.’”

London certainly could stage such a festival, and in 1981 thousands of people lined London’s streets to watch 6,255 runners finish the race. Since then the marathon has grown dramatically, with hundreds of thousands of people expected to watch over 35,000 runners take part in the race this year.

Now it’s your turn. You’re on the line and your knees are shaking. It’s time to channel the past greats of Marathon running to gain some much needed inspiration. Violet Piercy was a symbol of strength between 1926 and 1938 as the first British female long-distance runner. She ran long distances “to prove that a woman’s stamina can be just as remarkable as a man’s,” (South London Press, 2 April 1935), and is often credited as the inspirational figure behind modern female long-distance runners.

Or maybe it’s the modern greats of running that you need to draw inspiration from to stop your shaking legs? Almost as if they are acting on their own accord, your hands rise above your head and form a tea-pot-esque symbol. People are giving you strange looks but you don’t care, you’re doing the “Mo-bot” as you try to draw strength from British Olympic hero Mo Farah.

Running the marathon

London is a beautiful place to run and the many historical landmarks around the city punctuate your brave endeavour, providing some respite to that painful burning sensation in your legs. It’s akin to a touristy bus tour of London — without the bus — and you pass buildings such as Sir Christopher Wren’s St Paul’s Cathedral, as well as 10 Downing Street — home of Prime Minister David Cameron — and 30 St Mary’s Axe (also commonly referred to as the ‘Gherkin’), designed by the architect Norman Foster.

It’s not just the buildings that you should be paying attention to as you run. If you’re really fast, then you’ll be jostling for position with Paula Radcliffe, winner of the Women’s London Marathon in 2002, or Baroness Grey-Thompson, winner of the Women’s Paralympic London Marathon in 1992, 1994, 1996, 1998, 2001, and 2002. However, it’s more likely you’ll be rubbing shoulders with a number of the ‘Mass Start’ celebrities who frequently run the London Marathon such as the former Lord Mayor of London Nicholas Anstee, the cricket legend Sir Ian Botham, and the explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes.

Nearing the end

But you’re not finished yet! You’ve heard rumours but didn’t believe it could be true; the mythical beast known only as ‘the wall’. It normally affects runners around the 20 mile mark but when Jade Goody ran the Virgin London Marathon in 2006, it hit her around the 10 mile mark, and she subsequently dropped out. But it’s not just ‘the wall’ that affects marathon runners. You need to take on water as you go around the course but did you know you can actually drink too much water? A condition known as hyponatremia affects runners who lose salt through sweat but drink too much water to counteract this. Assuming you’ve drunk the right amount of water, you turn the corner past Buckingham palace, you lift a weary hand to wave at the Queen, and take the last few steps to the finish line…

After the race

You’ve done it! You’ve completed the London Marathon and finished in first place. Now you can kick off those running shoes and relax. But wait! A man in a white coat and a clipboard is approaching you. You don’t have the option of running away as muscles that you didn’t even know existed are cramping up. He takes you into a separate room and conducts a doping test. Apparently, setting a world record when you’re a ‘Mass Starter’ is a little bit odd. Don’t worry, you weren’t to know. After serious interrogation, you’re found not-guilty of doping and are free to pick up your medal. Looks like you won’t be appearing in Chris Cooper’s Run, Swim, Throw, Cheat after all.

You can find more about the online resources mentioned in this article with these links: Oxford Reference, Oxford Index, ODNB, Who’s Who, Oxford Dictionaries Online, and Oxford Medicine Online.

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Image credits: (1) The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner. Photo by Martin Addison. Creative Commons license via Wikimedia Commons (2) Mo Farah – Victory Parade. Photo by Bill. Creative Commons license via Wikimedia Commons (3) Wilson Kipsang 2012 London Marathon. Photo by Tom Page. Creative Commons license via Wikimedia Commons

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At the turn of the 20^th century, the baseball team in Brooklyn was known as the Superbas and they played ball at Washington Park, between First and Third streets along Third Avenue near the Gowanus Canal. While the park was convenient for its patrons, located in a densely developed part of the borough and connected to trolley lines on 3^rd and 5^th avenues, fans and players frequently complained about the awful odors emanating from the canal and nearby industrial works.

By the end of the aughts, Charles Ebbets, team owner and president, had grown unsatisfied with these rented grounds, even after spending significant money to upgrade and enlarge the seating area in 1907. In addition to the odors and the limited capacity of its wooden grandstand (undoubtedly a fire trap), the owner was unhappy with those who watched the games for free from the roofs of nearby tenements and the adjacent American Can Factory. At the same time, the advent of reinforced concrete was ushering in a building boom in baseball; several of Brooklyn’s rivals had already built or were in the process of erecting larger, “fireproof” ballparks.

After touring some of these newly built parks, including Shibe Park in Philadelphia and Forbes Field in Pittsburgh, Ebbets hired the architect Clarence Randall Van Buskirk to design the franchise a modern ballpark with more seats and fan comforts commensurate with these facilities. Van Buskirk worked on plans in secrecy for over a year, while Ebbets, through a dummy company began buying up properties on a large block bound by Bedford Avenue and Montgomery just east of Prospect Park. The subterfuge was intended to prevent landowners to squeeze him on the lots that would comprise the ballpark assemblage.

Ebbets Field, New York City, on opening day, 1913. Via WikiCommons

In 1913, the team moved to Ebbets Field at 55 Sullivan Place, in what is now considered the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn. Like the new ballparks of its rivals, Ebbets Field was a two-tier concrete pavilion concentrating seating around home plate, which was strategically placed near the block’s narrower southwest corner. With its gracefully arched brick window bays, pilasters, Corinthian columns and roof ornament, Ebbets Field was one of the more elegant of the ballparks constructed during this era. Its entry rotunda at the corner of Sullivan Place and Cedar Place (now McKeever Place), featured marble wall treatments, gilded ticket cages, and a marble mosaic floor inlaid with a stitched baseball pattern at its center, while a 12-arm “bat-and-ball” chandelier hung from the stuccoed ceiling above. But like its counterparts in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Chicago and Detroit, Ebbets Field was less an architectural gem and more of a utilitarian structure that could be incrementally expanded as the team’s market grew (unlike CitiField or the new Yankee Stadium, which were designed and built in its more or less final form). Starting with an initial capacity of 18,000, additions to the stadium over the years — enlarging bleachers and extending the upper deck around the lower seating bowl — brought the park’s capacity to 34,000 by 1937 and filled out its footprint with all but its left field bleachers, covered in two decks.

When Ebbets Field was completed in 1913, its market was relatively local, with most fans traveling to the park by trolley, subway or elevated train, or on foot. Indeed when unveiling the plans for the park, Dodger management boasted that the field was in proximity to 15 points of transit that connected to 38 different transit lines. Aside from cementing the franchise’s nickname as the “Trolley Dodgers,” or later, just Dodgers (officially becoming the teams name in 1932 after 18 years as the Robins), its location was also well connected to growth markets in southern and eastern Brooklyn, areas that were still developing during the 1910s. But by the 1950s, the park’s location had become a liability, ill-suited to the growing metropolitan scale of its fan base, who were now spreading out across Long Island and throughout the region. The stadium offered only 750 parking spaces and no nearby highway access. Even if Robert Moses had accommodated then Dodger owner Walter O’Malley’s 1955 request to move the Dodgers to the more centrally located site at the corner of Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues, where the Brooklyn Nets now play basketball, Ebbets Field would have still met the same fate, demolished in the 1960 to facilitate the construction of an apartment complex.

The demise of Ebbets Field was not terribly different than other beloved parks of its day. Beginning in the 1950s, major league teams demanded new, larger stadiums on sites accessible to suburban fan bases within their own or new cities. In 1957, when the Dodgers left Brooklyn along with the Giants who left Manhattan for San Francisco, other teams were doing the same (the Boston Braves, St. Louis Browns and Philadelphia Athletics and Washington Senators all relocated during the 1950s). During the following decade, most of the teams that did not relocate, received new, taxpayer-financed stadiums on spacious sites well connected to regional highways, much like what the Dodgers replacement, the New York Mets received when Shea Stadium was completed in Queens in 1964.

These trends resulted in the eventual demolition of all but two ballparks from the early 20^th century era, Wrigley Field in Chicago and Fenway Park in Boston (the last to be taken down was Tiger Stadium in 2009 on Detroit’s Westside, a loss still mourned by many Tiger fans). Yet a generation and a half later, most of the mid-century parks have been demolished as well (Dodger Stadium in L.A. is one of the few survivors). Again threatening relocation, teams have demanded and received (mostly) downtown sites for the construction of nostalgically inspired, amenity-laden palaces mostly paid for with public money, and an ever larger share of the profits they generate. We preserve ballparks in memory more than in actual conservation of bricks and masonry.

Few current Brooklynites ever saw the Brooklyn Dodgers play, and likewise, there are only a few Dodger fans who possess memories of the team’s 1940s-50s golden era and its stellar roster of players, including future hall of famers Jackie Robinson, Pee Wee Reese, Duke Snider, and Roy Campenella. As the Dodgers begin their 51^st season at Dodger Stadium (and their 55^th in L.A.), they have played there for six more seasons (and counting) than their 45-year run at Ebbets Field. While memories of the Dodgers grow more distant from the collective consciousness of Brooklyn’s 2.6 million residents, the team’s legacy is still very much with us. The design of the Met’s new home, CitiField in Queens, was inspired by Ebbets Field and includes an updated version of the park’s famed rotunda. And bringing the New Jersey Nets to Brooklyn has been justified in part as returning a major league team to the borough which lost the Dodgers.

As part of the Atlantic Yards project, city and state leaders gave the Nets a home at Flatbush and Atlantic avenues, the location denied the Dodgers, and conflated bygone allegiances, rivalries, and civic identities. Playing now in an arena named for a global bank amid a constellation of well gentrified Brooklyn neighborhoods, the Nets betray the “old school” image they attempt cultivate through their branding strategy and marketing campaigns. Tying the Nets identity specifically to Brooklyn rather than “New York” — a regional catch all that encompasses over 20 million people — captures both the nostalgia for the Dodgers and Brooklyn’s relatively recent ascension as hippest place in the universe. Time will tell if it was a wise long term strategy. Surely public money spent to lure the Nets in and subsidize Atlantic Yards could have been better spent.

Looking southwest across Bedford Avenue at Ebbets Field Apartments on a mostly sunny afternoon. Photo by Jim Henderson, public domain via WikiCommons

By contrast, the 1,300-unit housing complex, the Ebbets Field Apartments, which replaced the beloved home of the Dodgers, was a more modest and far better public investment. The immense rental complex, whose 26-story towers dwarf the more modestly scaled development east of Prospect Park, is architecturally uninspiring and a mere footnote in the history of the borough. Yet it serves a vital function, being built as part of New York State’s Mitchell Lama program, which sought to increase the supply of affordable housing for New York’s rapidly diminishing middle class of the 1960s and 1970s (the complex’s owner opted out of Mitchell Lama in 1987). Similarly, the site of the Polo Grounds, the Giants home until they left for San Francisco was rebuilt in the mid-1960s as public housing. While these developments do little to excite our collective memory or sense of community, they continue to serve as the homes of thousands of New Yorkers and perhaps will continue to do so long after the Mets, Nets, and the region’s other sports franchises again demand new facilities.

Daniel Campo is assistant professor at the School of Architecture & Planning at Morgan State University. He is the author of the forthcoming The Accidental Playground: Brooklyn Waterfront Narratives of the Undesigned and Unplanned (Fordham University Press, August 2013).

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As the baseball season opens and fans wonder how their favorite teams and players will do this year, a certain sort of fan will also wonder about a perennial question. Why is baseball the only sport exempt from antitrust law?

The answer cannot be found in the text of the antitrust statutes, which do not distinguish between baseball and other forms of enterprise. Nor can it be found in the economic structure of the baseball business, which is identical to that of the other major professional team sports. Applying antitrust law to sports can raise some difficult questions, but they are the same questions in baseball as in other sports. There is no reason to treat an agreement to restrict the location of baseball teams, for example, differently from an agreement to restrict the location of football teams. The antitrust concerns implicated by a draft of baseball players are the same as those implicated by a draft of basketball players. So how did baseball become the only sport exempt from the antitrust laws?

Denver Grigsby, a Yankee spring prospect and future Chicago Cubs outfielder, in 1922, the year of Federal Baseball Club of Baltimore v. National League. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

The exemption’s origin is a 1922 Supreme Court case called Federal Baseball Club of Baltimore v. National League, in which the Court held that the federal antitrust laws did not apply to baseball, because these laws only governed interstate commerce, and baseball was not a form of interstate commerce. The issue returned to the Supreme Court in 1953 and 1972, and both times the Court declined to overrule Federal Baseball Club, even though the conventional professional understanding of interstate commerce had expanded dramatically in the interim. Meanwhile, in two cases from the 1950s, one involving boxing and the other football, the Court made clear that the exemption is only for baseball, not for sports generally. Congress has had the power, all the while, to amend the antitrust laws to treat sports equally, but it has done so only to a very limited extent. The outcome of this combination of activity and inactivity is an exemption just for baseball, one that is now nearly a century old.

How can we explain the persistence of such a weird state of affairs? The most common explanation emphasizes the unique position of baseball in American culture. Judges and legislators have bent over backwards, the argument goes, to protect the national pastime.

But while baseball no doubt has a meaning in American culture unlike that of other sports, and while one can certainly find examples of judges and politicians proclaiming their love for baseball, there is much more to baseball’s exemption than the desire of government officials to express their passion for the game by insulating it from lawsuits. It is a story in which a sophisticated business organization has been able to work the levers of the legal system to achieve a result favored by almost no one else. For all the well-known foibles of the owners of major league baseball teams, baseball has consistently received and followed smart antitrust advice from sharp lawyers, all the way back to the 1910s, when the sport faced its first antitrust crisis.

At the same time, it is a story that serves as an arresting reminder of the path-dependent nature of the legal system. At each step, judges and legislators made decisions that were perfectly sensible when considered one at a time, but this series of decisions yielded an outcome that makes no sense at all.

Stuart Banner is the Norman Abrams Professor of Law at UCLA. His latest book, The Baseball Trust: A History of Baseball’s Antitrust Exemption (2013), has just been published by Oxford University Press.

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“My captain, my leader, my right-hand man. He was the spirit and the heartbeat of the team. A cool, calculating footballer I could trust with my life. He was the supreme professional, the best I ever worked with. Without him England would never have won the World Cup.” –Sir Alf Ramsey

Bobby Moore is an icon. He earned his place in football’s pantheon by captaining England to their only World Cup triumph in 1966 and his rightful place amongst the football greats is immortalised in bronze outside Wembley Stadium. He represented West Ham United over 500 times and was described by Pele as ‘the most accomplished defender [he has] ever played against’.

From the iconic image of Bobby Moore holding the World Cup trophy aloft to the famous embrace between him and Pele during the 1970 World Cup, from his loyalty to West Ham United Football Club to his brave struggle against bowel cancer in his later years, Bobby Moore represents a significant chapter in the history of world football. But what about the man behind the bronze? To mark the twentieth anniversary of his death (February 24), here are five things you might not have known about the man known as Mooro:

(1)      Bobby Moore was a good footballer as a schoolboy but he wasn’t exceptional. In fact, he was a better cricketer than he was a footballer and for a while it seemed he was more likely to make it as a professional cricketer. He represented Tom Hood Grammar School in Leyton at both cricket and football, and played county cricket for the Essex Youth team. It was only after a few years did his football ability begin to shine.

(2)      The England team that arrived in Mexico to defend the World Cup in 1970 were high in confidence. However, Bobby Moore was nowhere to be seen. He wasn’t with the squad as they arrived in Mexico. Instead he was being held in Bogota, Columbia, arrested and facing charges of stealing an emerald-studded gold bracelet valued at over £600. The ordeal Moore went through before joining up with his England team-mates is common knowledge. What is less widely known, however, is that he still faced those charges when he went to Mexico to captain his country at the World Cup. He arguably even played the greatest game he had ever played for England against Brazil in the quarter-finals, despite not knowing whether he would be found innocent or guilty by the Columbian police. He was later found innocent.

(3)      Despite his fabled heroics with England, Moore’s club form never reached the same heights as his performances for the national team. West Ham had three England regulars in their side throughout the 1960s but they never finished higher than eighth in the league. It was suggested by his manager at the time, Ron Greenwood, that Moore concentrated harder on his performances for England than he did for West Ham. Although West Ham did win the FA Cup in 1964 and the European cup winners’ trophy in 1965, their star players, including Bobby Moore, were criticised for being ‘as erratic as dock work’.

(4)      After his playing career Bobby Moore part-owned pubs and clubs across east London. Many of these were successful business ventures, notably Mooro’s, and his status in London’s east end helped these businesses flourish. However, he also was part of the failed sports marketing and promotion company Challenge. After only a few years, in the early 1990s, Challenge went into liquidation, an illustration that leading a nation on the football pitch perhaps came more naturally to Moore than  leading a business.

(5)      Bobby Moore’s last appearance in an FA Cup final wasn’t for his beloved West Ham United but against them. The season after Moore transferred from West Ham to Fulham, he guided Fulham to an FA Cup Final in 1975. Having led West Ham to FA Cup glory in 1964, it is ironic that Moore’s last club game in England in 1975 came against the side that he represented 544 times. West Ham ended up winning in a game that provoked mixed emotions for Moore. Also, not only did Moore play for Fulham, one of Moore’s middle names is Chelsea. It’s unlikely that many Hammers would hold this against him though.

To read more about the life of Bobby Frederick Chelsea Moore, please visit his biography page on the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Moore’s life story is also available as an episode in the ODNB’s free biography podcast.

Daniel Parker is Publicity Assistant for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography  is the national record of men and women who have shaped British history and culture, worldwide, from the Romans to the 21st century. In addition to 58,500 life stories, the ODNB offers a free, twice monthly biography podcastwith over 175 life stories now available. You can also sign up for Life of the Day, a topical biography delivered to your inbox, or follow @odnb on Twitter for people in the news. The Oxford DNB is freely available via public libraries across the UK. Libraries offer ‘remote access’ allowing members to log-on to the complete dictionary, for free, from home (or any other computer) twenty-four hours a day.

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Image credit: Bobby Moore statue by John Dobson [Creative Commons License via Wikimedia Commons]. 

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“Just look at the gladiators… and consider the blows they endure! Consider how they who have been well-disciplined prefer to accept a blow than ignominiously avoid it! How often it is made clear that they consider nothing other than the satisfaction of their [coach] or the [fans]! Even when they are covered with wounds they send a messenger to their [coach] to inquire his will. If they have given satisfaction to their [coach], they are pleased to fall. What even mediocre gladiator ever groans; ever alters the expression on his face? Which one of them acts shamefully, either standing or falling? And which of them, even when he does succumb, ever contracts his neck when ordered to receive the blow?”

The above passage, with the exception of two minor word substitutions on my part, was written by Cicero 2,000 years ago. My point is that his description of the sacrificial gladiator of the ancient amphitheater can be applied all too easily to the players who currently do battle on the modern gridiron.

I am convinced that football, in its present form, cannot last. I will put aside the physical carnage that piles up every weekend, the torn cartilage, broken bones, blackened, bruised and ripped skin, the shredded muscle fibers; I am not a physician. However, I am a psychologist. From my perspective, I believe that the greatest health crisis precipitated by football involves the brain and the mind, especially for those at the professional level, and particularly for those who are retired, and have suffered one too many concussions. For these former gladiators, there is a great risk of succumbing to severe, life-threatening forms of hopelessness.

The hopelessness that descends upon the retired professional football player should not be a surprise. It is understandable if you begin with some knowledge of what changes occur in a soft and mushy brain that has been repeatedly concussed, or more bluntly, tossed and smashed from side to side within a bony skull-box. Repetitive brain trauma can result in Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE)

CTE has been detected in the brains of ex-football players well as former boxers. In CTE, there are signs of a spreading tau protein that normally serves a stabilizing function but becomes dislodged, primarily from the axons which transmit nerve impulses. The floating Tau form a spreading tangle of tissue that disrupts brain function. Rare diseases can precipitate this pathological cascade but so can repetitive head trauma. CTE has also been found in the aged, and those stricken with Alzheimer’s disease. The most commonly affected areas include the frontal lobes (decision-making, planning, willpower), the temporal lobes (memory and speech), and the parietal area (sensory integration, reading and writing). The most common emotional symptoms in those suffering from CTE include depression, anger, hyper-aggressiveness, irritability, diminished insight and poor judgment.

On 2 May 2012 former football star Junior Seau shot himself in the chest with a .357 magnum. Eighteen months earlier, Seau had driven his SUV off a cliff following an arrest on charges of domestic violence. He claimed that he had fallen asleep. Back then, many in his circle of friends and family hoped and prayed it was the truth. His brain was sent to a team of researchers at the Boston University School of Medicine. Their tests revealed a brain besieged by CTE.

A little more than a year earlier, in February, 2011, Dave Duerson, also a former professional football player, similarly committed suicide by shooting himself in the chest. He had texted a message to his family indicating that he was “saving” his brain for research. Three months later BU School of Medicine confirmed “neurodegenerative disease linked to concussions.” In high school, Duerson had been a member of the National Honor Society and played the sousaphone, traveling Europe with the Musical Ambassadors All-American Band. He attended the University of Notre Dame on both football and baseball scholarships. He graduated with honors, receiving a BA in Economics. Duerson played eleven seasons in the NFL.

Whenever interviewed, the researchers at the Boston University School of Medicine are reluctant to affirm a cause and effect link between CTE and suicide. They provide the typical (and not unreasonable) response that multiple causes often underlie human behavior, including suicide. While generally true, a case such as that of Duerson seems to beg the question, what else besides CTE could have led a formerly intelligent, well-organized, responsible, and successful individual to morph into a desperate failure that ends his own life at the age of fifty?

Anthony Scioli is Professor of Clinical Psychology at Keene State College. He is the co-author of Hope in the Age of Anxiety with Henry Biller. Dr. Scioli completed Harvard fellowships in human motivation and behavioral medicine. He co-authored the chapter on emotion for the Encyclopedia of Mental Health and currently serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Positive Psychology and the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality. Read his previous blog articles.

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New Year is – or so I am told – a time to reflect upon the past and to consider the future. Put slightly differently, it is a time to think. Is it possible, however, that we may have lost – both individually and collectively – our capacity to think in a manner that reaches beyond those day-to-day tasks that command our attention?

The sheer pace and speed of life; the challenge of somehow stepping outside the storm in order to gain some sense of where you are going (and why); a capacity to pause and think, has arguably become an increasingly precious commodity in an ever-busier world. This is reflected in the changing nature of higher education and the imposition of pressures and expectations that have arguably combined to squeeze-out the space for scholarly thought and reflection. Fifty years ago the founding professor of the Department of Politics at the University of Sheffield, Sir Bernard Crick, used to insist that all students and all members of staff would ‘walk out’ together in the Peak District every Wednesday afternoon in order to nourish both physical and intellectual health. The realities of scholarship in the twenty-first century leave little room for such endeavours (i.e. some space to think).

In ‘taking strength from the hills’ Bernard Crick’s attitude had much in common with those expressed in 1782 by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his Reveries of the Solitary Walker. As a fell runner I appreciate ‘the pleasures of going one knows not where’ and as a writer I understand the manner in which physical activity and a sense of remoteness ‘animates and activates my ideas’. ‘I can hardly think at all when I am still; my body must move if my mind is to do the same’, Rousseau wrote; ‘The pleasant sights of the countryside, the unfolding scene, the good air, a good appetite, the sense of well-being that returns as I walk…all of this releases my soul, encourages more daring flights of thought, impels me, as it were, into the immensity of being, which I can choose from, appropriate, and combine exactly as I wish’. These words capture almost perfectly exactly why I run.

So, where can we rediscover that time to think? The hills and valleys therefore provide exactly that escape, that sense of isolation, that passing moment of release from the instrumentality of grinding social conformity, from the pressures of daily life that many crave but so few appear to be able to achieve. A deeper account of the reveries of the lonely fell runner or walker might engage with Sigmund Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents (1930) with its focus on the idea that a fundamental tension exists between the conformity and control demanded by civilization and the instinctual freedom demanded by individuals. Freud therefore leaves us with a core paradox that takes us not just back to Rousseau but forward to more recent works such as Alan de Botton’s Status Anxiety (2004), Barry Schwartz’s The Paradox of Choice (2005) and Oliver James Affluenza (2006) in the sense that the social and economic structures that we have created to protect ourselves from various risks (squalor, want, disease, etc.) seem unable to make us happy. The growth of research and writing on the ‘science of happiness’ in recent years therefore reveals (or more accurately recognises) a longstanding fault line in modern life.

Although Alfred Wainwright (the British fell walker, guidebook author, and illustrator) would have given short thrift to such ‘scientific’ pretensions he was undoubtedly a man who understood the need to draw inspiration and energy from the hills. The paradox that Rousseau reflected on and that caused Wainwright such angst was the realisation that by drawing attention to the reveries of the solitary walker – to the raw and simple beauty of the fells and peaks and moors – they risked destroying the very peace and tranquillity that the countryside provided. And yet in their writing both Rousseau and Wainwright could not conceal the pleasures of escaping – albeit temporarily – the trials and tribulations of modern life. Indeed, at the beginning of his poem ‘Sylvie’s Walk’ (L’Allée de Silvie, 1747), written nearly thirty years before he began the Les Rêveries du promeneur solitaire, Jean Jacques Rousseau wrote,

As I wander freely in these groves,

My heart the highest pleasure knows!

How happy I am under the shady trees!

How I love the silvery streams!

Sweet and charming reverie,

Dear and beloved solitude,

May you always be my true delight!

With these words in mind let a lonely (but happy) fell runner offer you a Happy New Year in which you find the space to think.

Matthew Flinders is Professor of Parliamentary Government & Governance at the University of Sheffield. He was awarded the Political Communicator of the Year Award in 2012. Author of Defending Politics (2012), he is also co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of British Politics and author of Multi-Level Governance and Democratic Drift.
Matthew Flinders is now writing a monthly OUPblog column on current affairs and politics; watch out for it on the first Wednesday of every month! Read more of Matthew Flinders’s blog posts and find him on Twitter @PoliticalSpike. And, in case you were wondering, Matthew is a member of Dark Peak Fell Runners!

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Sports fans eagerly anticipate television broadcasts of their favorite sports, whether it is baseball, basketball, soccer, hockey, boxing, golf, auto racing, or any of the other events aired on the tube. In the USA, the biggest television sports event is undoubtedly (American) professional football: the National Football League. In 2011, NBC’s “Sunday Night Football” was the highest-rated program on American TV; nine of the ten most-watched shows that year were NFL games or pregame shows (the other was the Academy Awards), and each of the 21 biggest audiences in TV history are Super Bowls. Football’s popularity may be attributed to the coincidence of the NFL season with the American holiday season (i.e., Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanza, New Year’s Day, etc.). For many sports fans, football on TV is synonymous with the holidays, and vice versa.  One might say that football is part of American holiday festivities.

Professional football was broadcast on television as far back as 1939, when the Philadelphia Eagles played the Brooklyn Dodgers on October 22nd. Games were not telecast with any regularity until the 1950s, but after the 1958 NFL Championship Game between the Baltimore Colts and the New York Giants — the so-called “Greatest Game Ever Played” — football on television gained an enthusiastic following. The DuMont Network and ABC broadcast games in these early years, but NBC and CBS soon bought the rights to broadcast all professional football, with CBS broadcasting the NFL games, and NBC broadcasting AFL games.

By the early 1970s, NFL football became so popular that telecasts featured “pregame shows” that had high quality sets, analytical commentators (many of whom were former players or coaches) and, of course, catchy musical themes — all done to add an air of festivity to the broadcasts of the games. CBS offered one of the first pregame shows dating back to 1961, eventually becoming “The NFL Today,” in the 1970’s. The program was introduced by an upbeat, “light rock” musical theme, with a sort of light rock motif.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The theme was updated in 1982, adding a disco-style “wah-wah” guitar, and omitting the trombone glissando.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The arrangement was tweaked again in 1983, with the alteration of computer-generated visual images.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Not to be outdone, NBC had their own pregame show, “The NFL on NBC.” NBC became the sole broadcaster for AFL football games in 1964, and when the league merged with the NFL in 1970, NBC retained rights to the AFC games, with CBS taking the NFC. (ABC began airing “Monday Night Football” in 1977.)

The musical theme of “The NFL on NBC” in 1973 featured a driving brass section with “wah-wah” guitar, and a jazz-like sax solo:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Unlike CBS, NBC changed its musical themes frequently. Here’s composer by John Colby’s 1992 theme to the show:

Click here to view the embedded video.

And the 1995-97 version by Randy Edelman:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Like the CBS theme, the latter two NBC themes are festive, almost joyful, reflecting the playful nature of sports telecasts.

The Fox Network entered the NFL TV market in 1994 when the network outbid CBS for NFC games. The theme for its show, “Fox NFL Sunday,” was composed by Scott Schreer, Reed Hays, and Phil Garrod, who pitched three separate songs to Fox, who then spliced them together into one.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The use of the minor key and heavy percussion of the Fox theme creates a more serious tone than the more laid-back light jazz/rock themes of its predecessor. The theme leads to a perception that the broadcast is less about a festive game of skilled athletes, and more about a life-or-death combat by gladiators.

Fox’s gladiatorial theme was soon imitated by both NBC and CBS, who in turn used minor key, martial music for their own broadcasts. In my September blog post, I wrote about John Williams’ theme to NBC’s “Sunday Night Football,” called by at least one fan as “Football’s Imperial March.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

What caused the shift from festive athletes to combative gladiators in American pro football TV broadcasts? It may have much to do with America’s militaristic posture during the past decade (two wars fought), or television networks’ desire to align the game with the combative, hyper-masculine ethos that emerged from the post 9/11 era.

However, I would contend that we haven’t lost the festive spirit completely in pro football on TV. While the “Fox NFL Sunday” theme has become nearly synonymous with the NFL with its serious, militaristic tone, if we listen to the opening motif of the theme, we might detect a resemblance to a portion of a famous winter holiday song:

Click here to view the embedded video.

The song is Leroy Anderson’s famous “Sleigh Ride,” sung here in a classic recording by Johnny Mathis. The melody at the beginning of the “B” section (“Giddy up! Giddy up! Giddy up! Let’s go!”) has a melodic profile identical to the beginning of the Fox football theme. Here is a melodic comparison:

So, did Schreer, Hays, and Garrod get their inspiration from a festive holiday song? Maybe televised football hasn’t lost its festive spirit after all!

Happy Holidays, everyone!

Ron Rodman is Dye Family Professor of Music at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. He is the author of Tuning In: American Television Music, published by Oxford University Press in 2010. Read his previous blog posts on music and television.

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Monday Night Football has been a staple of American television for over forty years. The first Monday night broadcast aired on the ABC network on 21 September 1970, with a game between the New York Jets and the Cleveland Browns. Ever since, Monday Night Football (MNF) broadcasts have rarely been topped in the Nielsen ratings. After a storied run on ABC, MNF moved to the popular sports cable network, ESPN, in 2006. That same year, NBC instituted Sunday Night Football, which became the marquis game of the week for the National Football League.

Nighttime TV broadcasts of professional football in the USA have been about much more than just the game. From its beginnings in 1970, ABC sports producer Roone Arledge hired controversial New York broadcaster Howard Cosell, former Dallas quarterback (“Dandy”) Don Meredith, and (a year later) ex-NY Giant player Frank Gifford as the broadcast team. Still later, ex-Detroit Lions player Alex Karras joined the crew. The team jelled behind Cosell’s bluster, Meredith’s southern “down home” style, Gifford’s boyish good looks, and Karras’ comedy. Besides the chemistry of the broadcast team, MNF also regularly featured celebrity guests such as Vice President Spiro Agnew, singers Plácido Domingo and John Lennon, President Bill Clinton, actor and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, and even Muppet Kermit the Frog. The 9 December 1974 broadcast was especially notable as it featured interviews of both John Lennon and California Governor Ronald Reagan during the game. As the game progressed, the broadcast featured Reagan explaining the rules of American football to Lennon off-camera.

MNF Theme Music throughout its History

To reflect the carnivalesque nature of the show, MNF has been introduced by musical themes that have been light, bouncy, pop-oriented pieces. The first introduction to MNF in the 1970s featured images of broadcasters Cosell, Meredith, and Gifford getting ready to go on the air, giving way to animated scenes of football players in action. This opening was accompanied by Charles Fox’s tune called “Score,” recorded under the alias, ‘Bob’s Band.’ “Score” is a bit of light 1970s soul-jazz, with the quintessential Hammond electric organ playing lead, along with a Hollywood-style brass section layering the top.

Click here to view the embedded video.

By 1976, the theme to MNF was replaced by “ABC’s Monday Night Football Theme,” by composer Joe Sicurella.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The piece retains the light, swingy entertainment aspect of the show, reminiscent of 1970s Philly Soul in the style of The Temptations or MFSB. The theme underwent another transformation in 1982. Apparently, Sicurella’s theme was re-scored by Robert Israel of Score Productions for ABC, for which Sicurella unsuccessfully sued for copyright infringement.

In 1989, MNF switched to a new theme song, entitled “Heavy Action” by British composer and pianist, Johnny Pearson. ABC actually acquired the song in 1978, but did not use it for the show until the late 1980s.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The theme opens with a descending four-note motive, which some bloggers say is “the most recognizable four notes in all of television.” This motive is followed by a chromatically rising line in the strings, punctuated by brass “stabs,” reminiscent of 1970s disco or even “Blaxploitation” film music.

“Heavy Action” continues as the current theme for MNF, but has been remixed with a slightly harder “edge,” featuring a “heavy metal” guitar mixed in with the strings and brass:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Music, Football, and Ethnicity

All the musical themes used for MNF are upbeat, light pieces, signifying a fun, light entertainment for its audience. All the themes also tap into the pop idioms of the time, and thus represent a departure from the “college march” pieces of football broadcasts of earlier eras, like this 1957 footage:

Click here to view the embedded video.

In addition, each of the MNF themes carries with it a mixture of stylistic elements that seeks a wide, diverse audience. The themes all demonstrate a virtuosic blend of pop/rock, some Hollywood style “TV music” (usually expressed in the brass writing), along with aspects of funk, soul, and even disco; musical genres that are frequently historically associated with urban black artists and audiences. No one musical style dominates within any of the themes, but elements of several genres reach across lines of race and ethnicity and combine into the harmonious whole of each piece.

In short, the theme music played on MNF throughout the years does what TV theme music should do, that is, to reach out to as many audience demographics as it can and summon them to the small screen. But in doing so, the MNF themes have also reflected back the racial and sociographic diversity of the football players on the show, as well as its fan base.

The Shape of Things to Come: Sunday Night Football

NBC has taken a decidedly different tact with its Sunday Night Football theme. The theme is by the famous (and ubiquitous) film composer, John Williams (who also composed theme music for NBC’s broadcast of the Olympics), and departs from the light entertainment model of the ABC/ESPN theme.

As one blogger puts it, the theme is “Football’s Imperial March.” Williams’ theme implies a militant march rather than a light, harmonious entertainment piece of MNF. This is a new trend in the perception of football and its athletes, who were once considered entertainers, but are now perceived as gladiators.

In memoriam, Alex Karras, 1935-2012. Rest in Peace.

Next month: More NFL football music!

Ron Rodman is Dye Family Professor of Music at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. He is the author of Tuning In: American Television Music, published by Oxford University Press in 2010. Read his previous blog posts on music and television.

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Overheard somewhere near London’s Green Park tube station, amid a throng of spectators for the 2012 Olympic triathlon: “What would those ancient Greeks make of this?”

I had no opportunity there and then to attempt a response, but it still seems worth considering. What indeed? Triathlon, for a start, they should comprehend; an ancient Greek word (meaning ‘triple challenge’), it would seem like some fraction of the ‘Twelve Labours’ (dodekathlon) undertaken by Herakles, and the winner duly heroized. Archaic ‘kudos’ and contemporary ‘celebrity’ elide across thousands of years. Crowds with painted faces, flags and accolades, the winner’s podium – the core gestures and sentiments here are essentially unchanged (though ancient victors, to judge from their commemorative statues, affected a fetching demeanour of downcast modesty). And for ancient athletes, as for today’s, winning was not just about fame and entering the record lists. Substantial material rewards awaited the best performers.

Of course Pierre de Coubertin didn’t recreate the Olympics in a spirit of historical accuracy. His own vision of gentlemen amateurs, tussling in a spirit of muscular Christianity and international bonhomie, seems now a Victorian-Edwardian period piece, much of it outdated. (If Nietzsche had been a founding father, the story would be different.) Ancient Greeks wouldn’t recognize our respect for failure, however plucky (can anyone put the phrase well done for trying into Homeric verse?); at Olympia, there was scant honour in second place.

Many competitors at London — surprisingly many, I thought — made the sign of the Cross prior to their effort. One can’t rule out the possibility that some athletes at the ancient Olympics during the centuries of Roman administration, before closure circa AD 400, did likewise. But even if the specific symbolism of the gesture were obscure to a pagan observer, its intention would be clear. Divine favour plays some part in mortal triumph; piety will have its reward. And how often was the adjective ‘incredible’ deployed by pundits at London 2012? The tally must run into thousands. If it denoted a physical feat beyond the scope of human reason and experience, this too seems attuned to an ancient acceptance of supernatural forces at work in the stadium. Mythical figures — Pelops, Odysseus, Achilles — were athletes; historical Olympic victors, such as Milo of Croton, became the stuff of mythology.

They were idealized as such. The canonization of the hero-athlete by sculptors such as Myron and Polykleitos has left an aesthetic legacy to what constitutes physical beauty; it also amounts to a sort of ‘body fascism’. With regard to the Paralympics, accordingly, our classical mentors are uninspiring. Physical misfortune was widely derided in the ancient world, with effigies of such unfortunates used to avert the evil eye. As losers in a race were subject to public scorn, so the disabled won no sympathy.

Under the Romans, access to the Games widened; one of the last recorded victors came from Persia. But the Greeks rigorously excluded contestants of non-Greek ethnicity and made no secret of their general disdain for ‘barbarians’.

What of women boxing, and women throwing hammers? Baron de Coubertin would certainly not approve; by contrast, Plato — admittedly, not your typical ancient Greek — might be more open-minded. Whether demonized as Amazons, or heroized as Atalanta, females in action were at least conceptually acceptable to the Greeks. (As a character in Athenian drama observes — not quite in these words — if you can give birth to a child, anything else, including fighting in the front line, is a piece of cake.)

A final question is hard to resist. How far would the prizewinning heroes of ancient Olympia be able to compete against the likes of Usain Bolt? Skeletal analysis tells us that people in antiquity were generally shorter in stature, and their life expectancy tended to be much shorter too. From Taranto, once a Greek colony in southern Italy, we have the excavated grave of a fifth-century BC individual who appears — from the possessions buried with him — to have been a successful competitor, perhaps in the pentathlon. He was just 1.70 metres tall and died in his mid-thirties, but appears to have been robustly built, as he would need to have been for the various disciplines of running, jumping, discus, javelin, and wrestling. We don’t have absolute records from the ancient games, though certain extraordinarily long jumps are alleged, and also some remarkable feats of strength. From Olympia comes a large sandstone boulder, weighing 143 kilos, with an inscription stating that one Bybon threw it over his head with one hand. Gazing at a gallery of athlete-victors, including the formidable ‘Terme Boxer’, my guess is that these ancient athletes would have pulverized us in any of the combat sports, and held their own in many other events. But such is idle speculation. As athletes, perhaps, we have not come a long way from Olympia. From a humanitarian perspective, by contrast, the distance is immense.

Nigel Spivey is Senior Lecturer in Classical Art and Archaeology at the University of Cambridge, where he also is a Fellow of Emmanuel College. He is the author of The Ancient Olympics. As an undergraduate he won honours at the Oxford-Cambridge athletics match, and set the university record for throwing the hammer. He went on to study at the British School at Rome and the University of Pisa. He has written widely on Classical culture and beyond: among his previous publications are the prize-winning Understanding Greek Sculpture (1996) and the widely acclaimed Enduring Creation (2001). He presented the major BBC/PBS television series How Art Made the World in 2005.

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The world famous Edinburgh International Festival has kicked off, beginning three weeks of the best the arts world has to offer. The Fringe Festival has countless alternative, weird, and wacky events happening all over the city, and the Edinburgh International Book Festival is underway. Throughout the Book Festival we’ll be bringing you sneak peeks of our authors’ talks and backstage debriefs so that, even if you can’t make it to Edinburgh this year, you won’t miss out on all the action.

By Chris Cooper

Largely because of the furore about the Chinese swimmer, Ye Shewin, I have spent a lot of time in TV and radio studios recently. My book, Run, Swim, Throw, Cheat is really about the science of doping now and what could happen in the future. But of course I get asked a lot of more general questions as well:

1. What drugs do athletes use and do they work?

I usually answer this with the unholy trinity: anabolic steroids for power events like sprinting, blood doping for endurance events, and amphetamines (or similar) to prevent fatigue. If pressed I say that the strongest evidence for benefit is using blood doping (whether transfusions or EPO injections) and anabolic steroids, especially in female athletes.

2. How many athletes dope?

Always a tricky one: the number that test positive is around 0.5 – 1%. Although this could be an overestimation, as testers target the more suspicious athletes, I think it is more likely to be an underestimation. It would be safe to say that somewhere between 1 and 10% have tried doping in their career at any time. Of course, this number varies dramatically between sport and country. But I don’t think it is a majority and we need to recognize that.

3. Who is winning the war on doping?

I always say this is impossible to answer; how would we know if the dopers were using an undetectable compound? But it is likely the dopers and testers are on top at different times. Given the identity of all elite athletes is known — and their number is relatively small compared to all criminals in the world — if enough money and police intelligence was thrown at the problem it would make it very hard for the dopers to succeed routinely. But maybe this money is better spent on building a new hospital or improving our schools instead?

4. Are athletes gene doping?

Although theoretically possible, like most scientists I think it very unlikely this is successfully being used at present. There are likely more effective, and cheaper, ways to cheat anyway.

5. Why not stop spending all this money in an unwinnable anti-doping war and let athletes do whatever they want to succeed?

I answer this, by saying, that we should be careful what we wish for. The best example is anabolic steroid use in female athletes. Unrestricted use led to the health problems we saw in East German athletes. We may not like the look of the competition we create. If we allow steroid use under controlled medical supervision we may have healthier competition for those obeying the rules. But there will still be a few who want to go further. How can we check this without an effective anti-doping regime? The same system needs to be in place, just working with a different set of goalposts.

6. Why not have an Olympics competition for “normal” athletes and another for those using whatever they can to be the best that they can be?

This is an easy answer. Some of the methods tried in the “doping” games would involve illegal drugs. Many of the athletes would live shortened lives in the pursuit of victory. Which competition do you think Coca-Cola or McDonalds would sponsor? Which would the BBC or US networks cover? This kind of question is philosophically valid to ask, but practically a waste of time to think about. It ain’t going to happen.

I will be talking about this, and more, including my demonstration of blood doping using red wine, at the Edinburgh International Book Festival on August 27.

Chris Cooper is Head of Research, Sports and Exercise Science at the University of Essex and the author of Run, Swim, Throw, Cheat: The Science Behind Drugs in Sport. He is a distinguished biochemist with over 20 years research and teaching experience. He was awarded a PhD in 1989, a Medical Research Council Fellowship in 1992, and a Wellcome Trust University Award in 1995. In 1997 he was awarded the Melvin H. Knisely Award for ‘Outstanding international achievements in research related to oxygen transport to tissue’ and in 1999 he was promoted to a Professorship in the Centre for Sports and Exercise Science at the University of Essex. His research interests explore the interface of scientific disciplines. His current biochemical interests include developing artificial blood to replace red cell transfusions. His biophysics and engineering skills are being used in designing and testing new portable oxygen monitoring devices to aid UK athletes in their training for the London 2012 Olympics. In 1997 he edited a book entitled Drugs and Ergogenic Aids to Improve Sport Performance.

Chris Cooper on: The Science Behind Drugs in Sport. See also this quiz: Test Your Smarts on Dope.

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Image credit: ‘Pills’ by Ayena [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

The post Short answers to snappy questions about sports doping appeared first on OUPblog.

It’s been a long, hard road to London 2012 and while the closing ceremony brings an end to the sporting events and spectacle, we all know it’s not truly the end. The Paralympics begin in a few weeks. There will continue to be reports, analysis, and even a few more blog posts from us. Let’s take a look back on Olympic news, analysis, context, and history from the past few months.

And we’ll see you in Rio de Janeiro in 2016!

Exactly how modern is the Olympics?
First modern Olympic Games held in Athens | This Day in World History (6 April 1896)

Why did the Olympic cafe change its name to the Lympic cafe?
Why is there a ban on advertising activity in and around the Olympic Games? by Phillip Johnson

Money is corrupting true athletics… an age old problem?
The Money Games by David Potter

Will you take away my baby’s knitted Olympic Rings jumper?
How not to infringe Olympic intellectual property rights by Rachel Montagnon

What do we have in common with the athletes, coaches, and spectators of the past?
The Ties That Bind Ancient and Modern Sports, a video interview with David Potter

What is the lasting effect of the Olympics in the local London area?
What is the health impact of the 2012 London Olympic transport plans? An interview with Mark McCarthy

Did you know that music and poetry were once part of Olympic competitions?
The Olympics and Music: then and now by Lucy Allen

Why did Mayor of London Boris Johnson recite a poem in Greek at the Royal Opera House?
The Victory Odes of Pindar, an excerpt from the introduction by Stephen Instone to The Complete Odes by Pindar, translated by Anthony Verity

Who were the great sportsmen and women of Britain’s Olympic past?
British Olympic lives By Mark Curthoys

When did North and South Korea begin competing as separate countries?
Olympic confusion in North and South Korea flag mix-up by Jasper Becker

Amazing, beautiful, frightening, and a little confusing… Who was that supposed to be exactly, Danny Boyle?
An ODNB guide to the people of the London 2012 opening ceremony By Philip Carter

You, me, three corgis, a helicopter, and the greatest theme song ever made.
James Bond at the London 2012 Opening Ceremony by Jon Burlingame

From 17th century masque to Dizzee Rascal…
Music and the Olympic Opening Ceremony: Pageantry and Pastiche by Ron Rodman

What do you know about performance-enhancing drug testing?
Test Your Smarts on Dope by Leslie Taylor

How do Americans versus Brits approach the Games with music
Music and the Olympics: A Tale of Two Networks by Ron Rodman

The corrupting influential of private funding… in Ancient Rome.
Funding and Favors at the Olympics by David Potter

What is the relationship between athletics and music?
Excelling Under Pressure by Gerald Klickstein

You hate the Olympics! Do you love Harry Potter?
Anyone for Quidditch? by Adam Pulford

Casey’s English teacher is at the bat.
Baseball: America’s national language? by Allison Wright

Football or soccer. (Ha! I mentioned it.)
The language of the beautiful game (just don’t mention the S-word) by Owen Goodyear

Can you count the wickets?
Of chanceless innings and textbook shots: the language of cricket and what it says about the game by Jean Pierre de Rosnay

Golf is the best way to ruin a good walk.
Brassies, bunkers, and bogeys: celebrating The Open by Fiona McPherson

ANDY MURRAY IS A GOLD MEDALLIST!
Anyone for tennis? by Fiona McPherson

From Jesse Owens to Gabby Douglas…
African Americans at the Olympic Games by Robert Repino

Do you know your Mandeville from Mandeville? Medieval and early modern England in London 2012.
Where are the ‘Isles of Wonder?’ by Anthony Bale

What does ‘great’ mean in sports, ancient and modern?
Olympic Greatness by David Potter

What is cheating?
The Science Behind Drugs in Sport, an audio interview with Chris Cooper

How to ensure your blog editor loses sleep…
The Oxford Companion to the London 2012 Opening Ceremony by Alice Northover

Still to come…

Understanding Olympic design

An analysis of the closing ceremony

An analysis of Olympic knock-offs

Alice Northover joined Oxford University Press as Social Media Manager in January 2012. She is editor of the OUPblog, constant tweeter @OUPAcademic, daily Facebooker at Oxford Academic, and Google Plus updater of Oxford Academic, amongst other things. You can learn more about her bizarre habits on the blog.

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Image credit: Pictured London2012 mascots Wenlock and Mandeville. Athletes and local children first on completed track Picture taken 03.10.11 by David Poultney for LOCOG.

The post An Olympic roundup of blog posts appeared first on OUPblog.

Many questioned how the London 2012 Summer Olympic Games Opening Ceremony was going to make a mark after the spectacular Beijing Olympics only four years earlier. While Beijing presented the Chinese people moving as one body — dancing, marching, and presenting a united front to the world — the British answer was a chaotic and spirited ceremony, shifting from cricket matches to coordinated dance routines, Mr Bean’s comedic dream to a 100-foot Lord Voldemort.

Danny Boyle’s production referenced many aspects of British history, culture, life, and contributions to the world. Even some of the British audience didn’t understand every reference in the ceremony, so I’ve pulled together Oxford University Press (OUP) resources to help scholars and enthusiasts learn more about it.

For information on the opening ceremony itself, I’m relying on the London 2012 Opening Ceremony Media Kit (which was embargoed until 27 July at 21:00 GMT and an excellent resource in it of itself), the fabulous live blogs of the BBC (you had me at Pandemonium (21:17)) and the Guardian (with a touching concern for the sheep), and the heavily-edited footage from NBC Universal’s Olympics broadcast in the United States (where I was watching). I hope that the complete ceremony and footage becomes public soon for appropriate analysis and commentary from scholars and spectators alike. Please excuse the lack of citations for each individual piece of information.

I’m presenting the information in a list format and pairing it with OUP resources (gathered from memory, the Oxford Index (Beta), and speaking to people at OUP), leaving the analysis to future scholars. I’ve focused on the cultural and historical references of the show, rather than the technicalities of the show itself (number of dancers, lights, etc.), but let me know if you’d like to see those included. If there is an element of the show missing or needs to be corrected, please let me know in a comment and I’ll amend the post accordingly. Please note that the OUP resources are a mix of free and subscription, so if you hit a paywall, trying logging in via your local or university library.

I hope you find this a useful resource.

A Quick Overview of the People Who Made It Happen

1. Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II (The Kings and Queen of Britain). Here are a number of resources we put together for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee in June: Composing for the Diamond Jubilee, How to Write Music Fit for a Queen, Diamonds, Royal quotations past and present
2. Jacques Rogge, President of the International Olympic Committee
3. Sebastian Coe, Chair of London 2012 Organising Committee (UK Who’s Who)
4. Rt Hon David Cameron MP, Prime Minister 2010-present (UK Who’s Who)
5. Gordon Brown, Prime Minister 2007-2010 (ODO)
6. Tony Blair, Prime Minister 1997-2007 and heavily involved in the Olympic bid (ODO)
7. David Beckham, professional footballer, East London native, and heavily involved in the Olympic bid (UK Who’s Who)
8. Kelly Holmes, British athlete and heavily involved in the Olympic bid (UK Who’s Who)
9. Boris Johnson, Mayor of London 2008-present (UK Who’s Who)
10. Ken Livingstone, Mayor of London 2000-2008 (“Elections and Public Opinion: Plus Ça Change…” in Parliamentary Affairs)
11. Rt Hon Jeremy Hunt MP, Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport (UK Who’s Who)
12. Rt Hon Tessa Jowell MP, Shadow Minister for London and the Olympics (UK Who’s Who)
13. Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP, Liberal Democrat spokesman for London 2012 and former Olympian (UK Who’s Who)
14. Rt Hon Don Foster MP, Liberal Democrat spokesman for London 2012
15. Danny Boyle, Artistic Director of London 2012 Olympic Games Opening Ceremony (UK Who’s Who)
16. Suttirat Anne Larlarb and Mark Tildesley, Designers of London 2012 Olympic Games Opening Ceremony
17. Rick Smith for Underworld, Music Director of London 2012 Olympic Games Opening Ceremony
18. Frank Cottrell Boyce, Writer of London 2012 Olympic Games Opening Ceremony (UK Who’s Who)
19. Paulette Randall, Associate Director of London 2012 Olympic Games Opening Ceremony
20. Toby Sedgwick, Movement Director of London 2012 Olympic Games Opening Ceremony
21. Temujin Gill, Kenrick H2O Sandy and Akram Khan (UK Who’s Who), Choreographers of London 2012 Olympic Games Opening Ceremony
22. Sunanda Biswas, Co-choreographer of London 2012 Olympic Games Opening Ceremony
23. The London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) recorded the core orchestral soundtrack (Grove)

Torchbearer 018 Amber Charles with Olympic Chairman Sebastian Coe, London Mayor Boris Johnson and David Beckham at City Hall during Day 70 of the London 2012 Olympic Torch Relay. Courtesy of London 2012.

The Theme : Isles of Wonder / ‘This is for everyone’

Artistic director Danny Boyle wanted to showcase the UK’s achivements and contributions to the rest of the world.

Remember that the British Isles consist of two major islands (Great Britain and Ireland) and numerous smaller islands (the Isle of Sky, Isle of Man, and Jersey to name a few). The United Kingdom, the host nation, consists of four nations — England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland — brought together through conquest, monarchy, tourism, and international banking disasters. The Republic of Ireland is not part of the United Kingdom (see long, bloody history). C.G.P. Grey has a helpful video which goes into all this and more for those who are confused.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Where are the ‘Isles of Wonder’? by Anthony Bale provides further explanation on some of the fantastic elements.
See the latest Atlas of the World for more (also a helpful guide for the parade of nations).

Countdown

A film sequence, mixing fiction and reality, that takes the viewer from the mystical origin of the river Thames to the Olympic stadium in Stratford.

Origin of the river Thames (ODO; “The Thames Valley in the late fifth and early fourth millennium cal bc: the appearance of domestication and the evidence for change” in Going Over: The Mesolithic-Neolithic Transition in North-West Europe)

Ratty and Mole, from the classic children’s book The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame (ODNB;
Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows and William Morris’s Old Norse Translations in Notes & Queries; Tending the Heart of Virtue by Vigen Guroian). And to give you an idea of its impact, John Rutter has set music to some of The Wind in the Willows.

A child in a field of poppies (an early reference to World War I) and then a family on a train (is that HP sauce?).

Who were those people waving? Great British Olympians of the past: June Carol, Margaret Wilding, Michael Howard, John Russell, David Hemery, Richard Meade, Ian Hallam, John Knoych, and David Wilkie

Who were those people rowing? The Oxford and Cambridge boat race (“University and College Sport” in The History of the University of Oxford). The song was the Eton Boating Song.

We couldn't watch the boat race so we put some Cambridge dictionaries and Oxford University Press books in a sink and shouted 'hoorah' a lot

April 7, 2012 10:37 am via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@WstonesOxfordSt

Waterstones

A quick preview of the cricket match.

Battersea Power Station with Pink Floyd’s flying pig (Grove; Rocking the Classics by Edward Macan)

The Houses of Parliament. The current version is the result of a fire in 1834.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The London Eye : Millenium project, ghastly visual blight, wonderful tourist attraction, massive public overspend, and possible alien transmitter

Tower Bridge, the Docklands, Canary Wharf, and the Thames Barrier (Charles Draper in Who’s Who; “Managing Financial Risks in Urban Environments” in Managing Financial Risks)

The London Underground and a ghostly appearance of the Victorian Underground. (Charles Dickens’s Networks: Public Transport and the Novel by Jonathan H. Grossman)

Rotherhithe Tunnel : road tunnel crossing beneath the River Thames (Charles Graham Grant in Who’s Who)

As we approach the Olympic Stadium, we see poster designs for previous Olympic Games (see analysis in an upcoming special issue of the Journal of Design History next week)

The Olympic Stadium: 10 groups of children holding balloons, which (mostly) popped (I remember a couple of 6s sticking around) for the countdown

The ringing of the Olympic Bell by Tour-de-France winner Bradley Wiggins. The Olympic Bell was forged in the Whitechapel Bell Foundry (Grove; Alan Hughes, Managing Director in Who’s Who), which forged the Liberty Bell in 1752 (“The Liberty Bell” in Journal of American History; “Liberty Bell Center” in Journal of American History) and Big Ben in 1858 (Benjamin Hall, eponymist of Big Ben, in ODNB). It is inscribed with the words: ‘Be not afeard: the isle is full of noises.’ (A reference to Shakespeare’s The Tempest, more later.) Remember that bells play an important role in this area as a cockney is defined as someone born within hearing of Bow Bells (ODO; OUPblog) in East London and they have a distinctive rhyming slang (OxfordWords). Campanology (ODO) also plays an important role in the ceremony and the Cultural Olympiad. An OUP composer Howard Skempton wrote a piece for a 2012 project for Church Bells (OUPblog).

Is that a mosh pit (ODO)? Yes, two, with members of the communities of the six east London Host Boroughs: Barking & Dagenham, Greenwich, Hackney, Newham, Tower Hamlets, and Waltham Forest.

Music in this segment:

• F Buttons’s ‘Surf Solar’
• ‘Eton Boating Song’
• Pink Floyd’s ‘Time’ [see above]
• Paganini’s Theme to The South Bank Show (Melvyn Bragg in Who’s Who)
• Sex Pistols’ ‘God Save the Queen’ (Grove; Sid Vicious in ODNB)
• The theme to “EastEnders” (“East Enders: Family and Community in East London” in The British Journal of Social Work; “The Birth of the East Ender” in Journal of Social History)
• PIL’s ‘Under the House’
• The Clash’s ‘London Calling’
• Edward Elgar‘s ‘Pomp and Circumstance’ (ODNB; OBO)
• Lily Allen’s ‘Smile’
• Muse’s ‘Map of the Problematique’

Green and Pleasant Land

The British Meadow set presents a vision Britain’s past so idealized it could be a Hobbit set. The sequence includes numerous clips from Britain’s sporting past.

The British Meadow set includes:

1. The village green/common, a common feature of a medieval village (“Medieval Villages in an English Landscape” in The English Historical Review; Beyond the Medieval Village)
2. A water wheel. Water wheels played an important role in London history. (See “Beginnings 1600–1619″ in The New River)
3. Sheep, geese, a cart horse, and other animals (The Encyclopedia of Mammals; A Dictionary of Animal Behaviour; other Biological Sciences resources under Oxford Reference)
4. Games such as cricket (ODO; OxfordWords; “Cricket and Politics in Colonial India” in Past & Present gives you some idea of its historical signficance), children maypole dancing, and the apron apple toss
5. A focal point is Glastonbury Tor

Choirs from each nation perform a song of their nation:

1. ‘Jerusalem’ sung in the Stadium, by Dockhead Choir. Jerusalem (Grove) was composed by Hubert Parry (ODNB) and the words to the song come from William Blake’s poem of 1804, Milton. (William Blake ODNB). The poem is also the source of the phrase ‘chariots of fire’, a reference to Elijah (Oxford Handbook of English Literature and Theology; Encyclopedia of Dead Sea Scrolls). OUP publishes an accompaniment.
2. ‘Londonderry Air’ from the Giant’s Causeway, Northern Ireland, sung by the Belfast Philharmonic and Phil Kids Choir. The song is more commonly known as ‘Danny Boy’ when lyrics are paired with it (musical airs).
3. ‘Flower of Scotland’ from Edinburgh Castle, Scotland, sung by The Big Project Choir
4. ‘Cwm Rhondda’ or ‘Bread of Heaven’ from Rhossili Beach, Wales, sung by Only Kids Allowed, Only Vale Kids Allowed, and the Welsh National Orchestra Singing Club. “Bread of Heaven” is a reference to the Lord’s Prayer (Oxford Companion to the Bible)

Towards the end of this sequence, the ‘March of the Brunels’ (Isambard Kingdom Brunel (ODNB; Grove)) begins towards Glastonbury Tor, complete with a couple ‘General Omnibus Co’ buses advertising biscuits. Kenneth Brannagh (Who’s Who), a Shakespearean actor and director, reads Caliban’s words from William Shakespeare‘s The Tempest (OWC; Grove; incidental music), although in the triumphal style of Henry V than Caliban’s usual mischievous portrayal. (See “Emending Caliban’s ‘scamels’” in Notes and Queries; “Caliban, Columbus, and canines in The Tempest” in Notes and Queries; “Revels’ End: The Tempest and After” in Stage, Stake, and Scaffold.) Edward Elgar’s ‘Nimrod’ underscores the speech, a piece often heard during the laying of wreaths at the Cenotaph on Remembrance Sunday. [See Elgar above; 'Nimrod' dedicated to August Jaeger (ODNB)]

Pandemonium

How did Britain get from this green and pleasant land to ironic postmodern society? Via the Industrial Revolution, mass wars, social movements, an influx of immigration, and cultural movements as reflected in this sequence.

Everyone clearly got out their OED to learn that John Milton coined the term ‘pandemonium’. (ODO)

The drastic change in music marks the beginning of this sequence. The drumming is led by Dame Evelyn Glennie (Grove; Who’s Who; “Performing Music and Performing Disability” in Extraordinary Measures), with Glennie under the Olympic Bell and many drummers in the stadium crowd. The music for the slower sequences (the World War I memorial and rings unification) is Underworld’s ‘And I Will Kiss’.

The Industrial Revolution begins: The tree atop Glastonbury Tor rises and industrial age workers enter the stadium from underneath as well as other stadium entrances. They begin taking apart the British meadow set, a strong reference to the impact of the Enclosure Acts and the Highland Clearances. LOCOG has chosen Abraham Darby’s (Grove) 1708 experiment to smelt metal with coke, rather than wood, as the starting point of the Industrial Revolution. (See “The Industrial Revolution: Britain and Europe” in The Lever of Riches; “Understanding the Industrial Revolution” in The English Historical Review)

Smoke stacks rise from underneath the stadium floor. I.M. Brunel (Brannagh) has his picture taken surrounded by Victorian cameras.

The British Suffragettes enter the stadium. Emmeline Pankhurst (ODNB) and Emily Wilding Davison (ODNB) are represented.

The World War I dedication, not just to British soldiers, but to all the world’s lost in the 20th century. Poppies have become a symbol of the war because of Canadian John McCrae’s poem ‘In Flanders Fields.’ The ‘Accrington Pals’ and other pal battalions are portrayed (men signed up in groups from the same town). (See World War I Origins in OBO; World War I: The Western Front on OBO; numerous books).

More people begin entering the stadium.

1. Jarrow hunger marchers (ODO; Ellen Wilkinson (ODNB; Who’s Who; “Feminism and Sexuality in Ellen Wilkinson’s Fiction” in Parliamentary Affairs)
2. The Pearly Kings and Queens (OUPblog; Henry Croft ODNB)
3. Chelsea Pensioners (ODO; “Alexander Tulloch and the Chelsea Out-Pensioners, 1838–43″ in The English Historical Review)
4. The ‘Windrush generation’ : a version of the ship, passengers, and Notting Hill Carnival performers (See Black British History)
5. Music: The Sgt Pepper cover version of The Beatles, people on a 1970s DJ float (anyone actually see this?), Grimethorpe Colliery Band, Nostalgia Steel Band (See “Sgt. Pepper and the Beatles: It Was Forty Years Ago Today” in Music and Letters; “All You Need is Theory? The Beatles’ ‘Sgt. Pepper’” in Music and Letters; Gordon Thompson frequently blogs about The Beatles; brass band; steel band.)
6. There is a note that newspaper boys also took part, but I couldn’t see any. Could someone send in more information?

The industrialization has stripped the rustic water wheel and turned it into a textile mill wheel with looms alongside.

A giant ring is being forged in the center of the stadium. Four other rings move from the ridge of the stadium towards the center as the central one begins to rise. As the five rings connect to form the Olympic Rings, a shower of sparks falls.

Happy & Glorious

A filmed sequence begins with a close-up of stitching on a distinctive ‘red coat’ uniform of the Palace Guards. A London taxi drives towards Buckingham Place. A group of tourist children in Brazil caps take interest in the man arriving at the Palace. James Bond (a character that Ian Fleming (ODNB) based on his friend Sir Fitzroy Hew Royle Maclean (ODNB)) has come to escort the Queen via helicopter to the opening ceremony. Her footman Paul and three corgis escort them to the helicopter. The helicopter travels down the Mall, over Picadilly, over to Trafalgar Square, to Parliament Square (where the statue of Winston Churchill waves), past the London Eye, over St. Pauls, over the City where a group of bankers wave and drink champagne, through Tower Bridge, and over to the stadium.

It then becomes a live sequence where two stand-ins (Gary Connery and Mark Sutton) leap from the helicopter with Union flag parachutes. The James Bond Theme plays (OUPblog).

Her Majesty the Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh, and Jacques Rogge enter the stadium.

The Union Flag is carried into the Stadium and raised by representatives of the Royal Navy, Army and Royal Air Force. (OUPblog) Remember that it is the Union Flag on land and the Union Jack at sea.

British National Anthem is sung here by The Kaos Signing Choir for Deaf & Hearing Children. (sheet music 1; sheet music 2).

Music in this section includes: Handel‘s ‘Arrival of the Queen of Sheba’ (Grove), Handel’s ‘Music for the Royal Fireworks IV: La Rejouissance’ (sheet music), and Blanck Mass’s ‘Sundowner’.

The audience pixel screens which play an important part in the entire event red, white and blue. (See The Story of Semiconductors; Information Technology Policy; and Oxford Handbook of Business History)

Second to the right, and straight on till morning

A reference to Peter Pan’s directions to Neverland. This sequence combines children’s literature and the National Health Service. While the connection is not immediately obvious, J.M. Barrie (ODNB) donated the rights to Peter Pan (OUPblog) to the Great Ormond Street Hospital. GOSH’s acronym and logo are created with children’s hospital beds, which later form “N.H.S.”

Amazing to see some of our patients and staff at the Greatest Show on Earth! @London2012 #OlympicCeremony

July 27, 2012 4:37 pm via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@GreatOrmondSt

GOSH Charity

The National Health Service is a subject of intensive study and we have a fantastic blog post about popular opinion during its formation coming up Friday. Aneurin Bevan played a key role in its formation. (Also see 24 hours to save the NHS: The Chief Executive’s account of reform 2000 to 2006)

Swing music and dancing illustrates the doctors and nurses struggle to get the children to sleep. Eventually, the children settle. As a child begins reading Peter Pan under the covers, J.K. Rowling (Who’s Who) begins reading the story aloud. Monsters begin to enter the stadium and the villians of British literature come to life.

Children’s Literature References

• Captain Hook of Peter Pan [see above]
• Cruella de Vil of The Hundred and One Dalmatians by Dodie Smith (ODNB; Who’s Who)
• The Queen of Hearts of Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson) (OWC 1; OWC 2; Alice in Wonderland in Psychiatry and Medicine; Simon Winchester on Charles Dodgson; Carroll’s first Alice)
• The Childcatcher of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang by Ian Fleming [see above], adapted for a film by Roald Dahl (Who’s Who; ODNB)
• Lord Voldermort of Harry Potter
• Was there a Winnie-the-Pooh (A A Milne) reference? I have conflicting information.

Mary Poppins, the creation of P.L. Travers (ODNB), comes in to save the day.

British literature gets an essential place in the #openingceremony of #London2012. Yay! Plus Voldemort v. Poppins theoretical fight solved

July 27, 2012 4:50 pm via HootSuiteReplyRetweetFavorite

@OUPAcademic

Oxford Academic

More information on children’s literature:

• An introduction to classic children’s literature
• 1940s children’s books: peeps into the past
• Children’s Literature: A Very Short Introduction
• Oxford Encyclopedia of Children’s Literature
• Oxford Guide to Literary Britain and Ireland

I believe the puzzling giant baby is supposed to be a reference to ultrasound (guessing from Media Kit notes), which was a technology developed by two Scottish doctors and team.

Mike Oldfield (Grove) performs two tracks: ‘In Dulci Jubilo’ and ‘Tubular Bells’ throughout the sequence.

Interlude

The London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sir Simon Rattle (Grove; Who’s Who), performs “Chariots of Fire” by Vangelis, composed for the movie of the same name. The film’s title was inspired by the line, “Bring me my chariot of fire,” from the William Blake poem “Milton” (the same as for the hymn “Jerusalem”). [see above] The piece is notable for combining classical orchestral elements with new music technology, specifically the synthesizer (Grove).

Rowan Atkinson (Who’s Who), performs the role of Mr Bean as the synthesizer player. He appears bored with his repetitive playing, takes a picture with his phone (as athletes parading will do in a few minutes), manages to retrieve a a tissue from his backpack with an umbrella, disposes of the tissue in the nearby grand piano, and quickly drifts off into a comedic dream. In the dream he is running in the famous beach scene of Chariots of Fire, quickly falls behind, cheats through the use of an automobile and tripping a competitor, and awakes to realize he has missed the finale of the song.

The comedic dream is a notable tradition in British literature, including Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. And we need more scholarship on British comedy.

frankie & june say… Thanks Tim

Modern Britain takes center stage with a Mini, a multicultural family, and ceaseless technology. The format is supposed to mimic a soap opera to some extent. I had tremendous difficulty getting all the movie/cinema, TV, and music references, so if you can spot anything, please let me know. (Special credit to vh1 and the Telegraph for their music lists.)

A mother (with child in the backseat) drive towards home in a Mini Cooper. The theme song for The Archers, a long-running radio drama, is playing. Just after entering the home, a clip from Michael Fish’s infamous weather report plays (“Don’t worry about the hurricane” which turned out to be the worst storm since 1703).

Two sisters prepare for a night out on the town as Sugababes’ “Push The Button” plays. The family watches “Harry Hill’s TV Burp.” The teenagers plan a night out clubbing (clubs = sixties, seventies, eighties, and nineties). Giant glowsticks are used to depict the London Underground. And then it becomes a love story between June and Frankie.

Music:
Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark (OMD)’s “Enola Gay”
“Food, Glorious Food” (Oliver! Soundtrack)
Rizzle Kicks’ “When I was a Youngster”
The Jam’s “Goin’ Underground”

Fawlty Towers, Oliver!, and Blackadder all pop up on screen.

As the children leave, there are numerous British tv clips. Was Coronation Street in there? [If anyone can send in info, please do.]

Eric Clapton’s “Wonderful Tonight” (Grove; Who’s Who) plays as Frankie and June spot each other on the Underground. A clip from Gregory’s Girl plays, and then a clip from Charlie Chaplin’s City Lights. June leaves her phone and the plot is set in motion.

The Sixties Club:
The Who’s “My Generation”
Rolling Stones “I can’t get no satisfaction” (Grove; Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice)
Millie Small’s “My Boy Lollipop”
The Kinks’ “All Day and All of the Night”
The Beatles’ “She Loves You” [see above]

The sixties club forms a CND symbol (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament), now more commonly used as a peace sign.

Clips from Ken Loach’s Kes, then A Matter of Life and Death (“Rediagnosing A Matter of Life and Death” in Screen; “‘The true business of the British movie’? A Matter of Life and Death and British film culture” in Screen) play.

Music in the Seventies Club:
Mud’s “Tiger Feet”
Led Zeppelin’s “Trampled Under Foot” (Grove)
The Specials’ “A Message to You Rudy” (Grove)
David Bowie’s “Starman” (Grove; Who’s Who)
Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” (Grove)
Sex Pistols’ “Pretty Vacant” [see above]

During Bowie’s song, a star symbol is formed and various men go up in rocket packs. Giant Bowie and Queen masques are also used. During Queen, a clip from Wayne’s World and the family wearing 3D glasses are shown.

Music in the Eighties Club:
New Order’s “Blue Monday”
Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s “Relax”
Soul II Soul’s “Back To Life” (Grove)
Happy Mondays’ “Step On” (Grove)
Eurythmics’ “Sweet Dreams” (Grove)

The Eighties club forms a happy face. A clip from Billy Eliot plays over “Back To Life.”

Music in the Nineties Club:
Prodigy’s “Firestarter” (Grove)
Underworld’s “Born Slippy NUXX”

There are some pogo-sticking mohawk (or mohican as they say in the UK) things for “Firestarter.” I’m guessing a Trainspotting clip played over “Born Slippy NUXX” but I didn’t catch it.

Frankie & June kiss music:
‘I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles’ (originally a Broadway song and now West Ham’s anthem) sung as Frankie and June walk towards each other.
Blur’s “Song 2″ (Grove) plays as they kiss.

The film clip playing as Frankie and June approach is from Four Weddings and a Funeral (with a brief snippet of City Lights in there). The kiss montage contains: William & Kate Royal Wedding Kiss, Planet of the Apes, Casablanca, Shrek, an unidentified 1960s movie [help!], Lady & the Tramp, William & Kate again, Beth Jordache and Margaret Clemence on “Brookside” in 1994, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Lady & the Tramp again, William & Kate again, Singing in the Rain, Planet of the Apes again, Wall-E, Romeo + Juliet.

Officially a couple (‘status update’), June decides a house party is in order. She and Frankie are dancing in the attic as people dance in the house and on the stadium floor. Dizzie Rascal performs live on stage and appears in filmed sequences.

House Party Music:
Dizzee Rascal’s “Bonkers”
Mark Ronson feat. Amy Winehouse, “Valerie”
Muse, “Uprising”
Tinie Tempah’s “Pass Out”

Who’s that guy typing underneath the house at the end? Why it’s Tim Berners-Lee. And we know who he is.

This is for everyone #london2012 #oneweb #openingceremony @webfoundation @w3c

July 27, 2012 5:08 pm via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@timberners_lee

Tim Berners-Lee

Fireworks at Tower Bridge

David Beckham is driving a speedboat down the Thames. Jade Bailey, a young footballer, is carrying the Olympic flame. What would Cornelis Drebbel (ODNB) say?

Abide With Me

This choreographed dance sequence, including the Akram Khan [see above], was cut from the NBC broadcast. Emeli Sandé sings a hymn by Henry Francis Lyte in 1847. Images are projected on to a Memorial Wall for the people who could not come to the ceremony. The 7/7 bombings are a heavy reference throughout.

Welcome

The parade of nations. I’m afraid I can’t cover every country but I thought it was important to highlight a few.

The basic format is teams enter the stadium with three people in front (local child holding a copper petal incribed with each country’s name, the flag bearer, and a placard bearer). The placard bearer wears a dress with the faces of Londoners who auditioned for the ceremony. Teams circle around the stadium, then enter the center of the arena. The country’s flag is planted on the tor and the golden petals are attached to long tubes in the center of the stadium. Drummers keep the teams moving quickly with a rapid beat.

Notable moments:

1. Greece, birthplace of the Olympics, is the first the enter the stadium. Should we remind the world of the debt we owe to Greece? (Olympic Greatness)
2. The Czech Republic had a lovely nod to UK weather with their rubber wellies and umbrellas. Glad to see some designers with a sense of humor.
3. France waved Union flags along with tricolores. Cette entente cordiale est très cordiale, n’est-ce pas?
4. Israel’s team is marking the 40th anniversary of the Munich massacre when Israeli athletes were taken hostage and murdered at the 1972 Olympics. The IOC rejected requests for a moment of silence during the opening ceremony, but a memorial in Guildhall was held on Monday 6 August 2012 and Rogge held an informal moment of silence at the Olympic Village.
5. Jamaica’s flag-bearer was Usain Bolt – fastest man in the world – and Jamaica got a huge cheer. Remember the number of immigrants from Commonwealth nations that now live on the British Isles (see entire opening ceremony up to this point).
6. Malayasia was my personal favorite for beatiful Olympic uniforms. I’m hoping to strong-arm our friends at Berg Fashion Library for further commentary on the outfits.
7. Russia’s flagbearer is Maria Sharpova whose tennis career is resurging after winning the French Open and some fantastic performances over the last year. (Picturing Putin’s Russia)
8. Saudi Arabia sent three women to the Olympics. This is the first Olympics where every country has sent male and female athletes.
9. South Africa’s flag-bearer was Caster Semenya who underwent gender investigation. (We’re hoping to have a book on this very topic soon.)
10. Uganda has an interesting and complex history that cannot be easily dismissed with an Idi Amin reference.
11. United States has the largest delegation of athletes and they certainly look happy to be in London.
12. A huge cheer as David Bowie’s ‘Heroes’ came on and Team GB entered the stadium decked in sporty white and gold by Stella McCartney. Seven billion pieces of confetti are dropped. Also happy to see many of the athletes in the stadium cheer Team GB on.


Music in this sequence:

• Chemical Brothers’ “Galvanize”
• Adele’s “Rolling In The Deep”
• Bee Gees’ “Stayin’ Alive”
• Pet Shop Boys’ “West End Girls” (Grove)
• U2′s “Where the Streets Have No Name” (Grove)
• David Bowie’s “Heroes” [see above]


It is at this point that both the Guardian and BBC live blogs report arrests and kettling of cyclists outside the Olympic stadium. Both also noted the not every member of the teams could attend because of events starting the next morning, and one team held their own ceremony.

Bike a.m.


As the British athletes take their place in the center of the stadium, the Arctic Monkey’s “I bet you look good on the dancefloor” starts up. They follow this with a cover of “Come Together” (The Beatles).

Several cyclists dressed as doves (large wing and tail costumes on their back) enter the stadium and ride in circles around it until the finale when one dove cyclist ascends through the sky.

It is traditional to release doves to symbolize peace at the beginning of the Olympic games. Doves are a near universal symbol for peace (See OBSO; Oxford International Encyclopedia of Peace)

This is also an opportunity to celebrate the bicycle (the modern version of the bicycle is a Scottish invention). Many of Britain’s medal hopes rest on its cycling teams (which is funny because I think of cycling as the sporting passion of the French). It’s also interesting to note the role the bicycle played in the women’s rights movement (bicycle-riding women were burned in effigy).

Let the Games Begin


The official opening begins with speeches by Sebastian Coe and Jacques Rogge. The Queen states: “I declare open the Games of London, celebrating the 30th Olympiad of the modern era.”

A series of fireworks is followed by the Olympic anthem and the flag bearing. Members of the Royal Armed Forces raise the flag. Then the Oath is taken.

Flagbearers:
Daniel Barenboim (Grove; Who’s Who)
Sally Becker
Shami Chakrabati CBE
Leymah Gbowee
Haile Gebrselassie
Doreen Lawrence OBE
Ban Ki-moon
Marina Silva
Muhammad Ali

Oath Takers:
Sarah Stevenson Athlete
Mik Basi Official
Eric Farrell Coach

There is a Light That Never Goes Out


I’m not putting together an Oxford Companion to the Olympic Torch Relay, so I’ll try to keep this brief.

Remember this all goes back to Greece, which means Prometheus must get a mention (even Ridley Scott’s version).

At Limehouse Cut, David Beckham’s boat turns off the Thames, heading through the Olympic Park. Jade Bailey passes the Torch to Sir Steve Redgrave (Who’s Who), who carries the Flame into the Stadium. He is flanked by an honor guard of 500 Olympic Park construction workers.

The Torch passed to young athletes who jog around the stadium taking alternate places in the front of a pyramid formation. The athletes: Callum Airlie (17), Jordan Duckitt (18), Desirée Henry (16), Katie Kirk (18), Cameron MacRitchie (19), Aidan Reynolds (18), Adelle Tracey (19). Their sponsors: Lynn Davies (Who’s Who), Duncan Goodhew MBE (Who’s Who), Dame Kelly Holmes DBE MBE (Mil) (Who’s Who), Dame Mary Peters DBE (Who’s Who), Sir Steve Redgrave CBE [above], Shirley Robertson (Who’s Who), and Daley Thompson.

The bell rings. The sponsors give each young athlete a torch, which they light from the main one. Once all the torches are lit, they jog to the center of the stadium. A circular contraption with inscribed petals attached to stems is in the center. They ignite flames in seven petals and these quickly ignite the rest. The stems rise and form one large flame.

Music: ‘Caliban’s Dream’ by Underworld, performed by the Dockhead Choir, Dame Evelyn
Glennie, Only Men Aloud male voice choir, soprano Elizabeth Roberts, Esme Smith (who co-wrote the soprano and choral score), and Alex Trimble (lead singer and guitarist of Two Door Cinema Club).

And in the end…


Fireworks are set off around the Olympic Park. The Arcelor Mittal Orbit, created by Anish Kapoor (Grove; Who’s Who) and Cecil Balmond is prominent. As the fireworks finish, the Olympic rings forged earlier are shown in the stratosphere.

Sir Paul McCartney sings “The End” and then transitions to “Hey Jude.” There is a momentary lapse with the backing tracks, but the crowd gets involved singing along. Volunteers and athletes can be seen holding hands and swaying to the music.

Alice Northover joined Oxford University Press as Social Media Manager in January 2012. She is editor of the OUPblog, constant tweeter @OUPAcademic, daily Facebooker at Oxford Academic, and Google Plus updater of Oxford Academic, amongst other things. You can learn more about her bizarre habits on the blog.

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Image: London 2012 Olympic Torch prototype. Courtesy of London 2012.

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]]> http://blog.oup.com/2012/08/oxford-companion-london-2012-opening-ceremony/feed/ 8 http://blog.oup.com/2012/08/african-americans-at-the-olympic-games/ http://blog.oup.com/2012/08/african-americans-at-the-olympic-games/#comments Sat, 11 Aug 2012 12:30:57 +0000 Alice http://blog.oup.com/?p=27484 By Robert Repino Though they were conceived for idealistic reasons and designed to celebrate universal human aspirations, the modern Olympic Games have served as a stage for the world’s political and social struggles. Virtually every political controversy — from wars to ideological conflicts to human rights struggles — have managed to find expression every four years in the athletic events and in the media campaigns that go with them. Perhaps no group has influenced the Games more — both as athletes and as human rights pioneers — than African Americans, whose very participation in the modern games has been one of many tiny steps forward in the progress toward a more just world.

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]]> By Robert Repino


Though they were conceived for idealistic reasons and designed to celebrate universal human aspirations, the modern Olympic Games have served as a stage for the world’s political and social struggles. Virtually every political controversy — from wars to ideological conflicts to human rights struggles — have managed to find expression every four years in the athletic events and in the media campaigns that go with them. Perhaps no group has influenced the Games more — both as athletes and as human rights pioneers — than African Americans, whose very participation in the modern games has been one of many tiny steps forward in the progress toward a more just world.

Of course, if all they did was participate, then this story would not be nearly as interesting. Instead, African-American athletes helped to remake the Games: breaking records, standing up to stereotypes of their abilities, refuting suspicions about their patriotism, and bringing the American struggle for equality to a global audience. This month, the Oxford African American Studies Center (Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Editor in Chief) features a new Focus On photo essay highlighting some of the major accomplishments of black Olympians. Such an essay could not be comprehensive — there are simply too many events to list. However, it is useful to look back on the Games and see the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement — as well as the women’s rights movement — manifested in the accomplishments of athletes such as track star Jesse Owens, high-jumper Alice Coachman, and boxer Cassius Clay.

The well-known example of Owens — whose record-setting day at the 1936 Berlin Olympics challenged the Nazi ideal of Aryan supremacy — was one in a series of African-American achievements in track and field dating back to hurdler George Poage’s performance in the 1904 St. Louis Games. Like Owens, Poage also had to confront racism head on; civil rights leaders urged him to boycott the Games when it was revealed that the athletic facilities would be segregated. Poage decided that competing would send a stronger message than refusing to participate, thereby beginning a string of dominating track performances by African Americans that continues into the present day.

The storied 1936 Olympics are famous also because they were the first to feature an African-American woman, Tidye Pickett. (Louise Stokes had expected to compete, but was pulled from the relay team at the last minute.) Stokes and Pickett had been scheduled to participate in Los Angeles in 1932, but were left out of the competition in yet another example of segregation. Unfortunately, Pickett broke her foot while racing in Berlin, and because the Second World War cancelled the Games in 1940 and 1944, it would not be until the 1948 London Games that a black woman brought home a medal. That year, Alice Coachman, a product of the prestigious track and field program at the Tuskegee Institute, won the gold in the high jump, while Aubrey Patterson won the bronze in the 200 meters. But like Owens’ victory twelve years earlier, the accomplishment was more symbolic than revolutionary. Coachman returned to the American South of the Jim Crow era, where her hometown of Albany, Georgia sponsored a segregated parade in her honor. Awareness of African-American athletes was increasing, but there was still little progress to show for it outside of the field of competition.

Few Olympic events increased awareness of the Civil Rights Movement more than the symbolic protest carried out by track stars Tommie Smith and John Carlos at the 1968 Games in Mexico City. Like Poage over 60 years earlier, Smith and Carlos had once considered boycotting the Olympics altogether. But their iconic gesture while standing on the winners’ podium — pointing gloved fists into the air during a rendition of the national anthem — had a far greater impact. Today, the moment is revered as an inspiring act of defiance at the height of the civil rights struggle. But, at the time, many in the sports broadcasting world criticized the move as overly political and provocative.

Smith and Carlos’s protest was the high-water mark of African-American political statements in the context of the Olympic Games. Over the next few years, more barriers to participation and equality quietly fell. By the 1976 Montreal Games, Dr. Leroy T. Walker had become the first African American to coach an Olympic team. In the 1990s, Walker served as the head of the entire US Olympic Committee. Meanwhile, African Americans branched out into more sports, including events held in the Winter Olympics. At the 1992 Barcelona Games, the predominantly African American “Dream Team” became an international phenomenon, easily becoming one of the most famous Olympic teams ever assembled. And though it has often been overlooked as an important moment in African American history, the 1996 Atlanta Games represented a major step forward for the most progressive city in the American South. Leading the effort to bring the Olympics to the city was civil rights leader, diplomat, and former mayor of Atlanta Andrew Young. Fittingly, those Games began with an inspirational torch lighting ceremony that featured 1960 gold medalist and cultural icon Muhammad Ali. Later, after a terrorist detonated a bomb in the Olympic village, Young evoked the words of Dr. Martin Luther King during the reopening of the park. The city, he said, had overcome its segregationist history, and would serve as a venue for the people of the world to learn from the past and to build a better future.

It is easy to look at the diversity of the 2012 U.S. team and take for granted the strides made by pioneering Olympians over the years. While the issue of racial bias remains — perhaps especially in media depictions of athletes — the ever-increasing participation, visibility, and popularity of African-American Olympians continues to push us toward the noble ideals of the Games.

To learn more, view the photo essay on African American Olympians currently featured on AASC and their list of curated articles.

Robert Repino is the Editor of the Oxford African American Studies Center. After serving in the Peace Corps in Grenada, he earned an MFA in Creative Writing at Emerson College. His work has appeared in several publications, including The African American National Biography (2nd Edition), The Literary Review, The Coachella Review, Hobart, and JMWW.

The Oxford African American Studies Center combines the authority of carefully edited reference works with sophisticated technology to create the most comprehensive collection of scholarship available online to focus on the lives and events which have shaped African American and African history and culture. The Oxford African American Studies Center provides students, scholars and librarians with more than 10,000 articles by top scholars in the field. Over 2,500 images, more than 450 primary sources with specially written commentaries, and nearly 200 maps have been collected to enhance this reference content. More than 150 charts and tables offer information on everything from demographics to government and politics to business and labor to education and the arts.

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]]> http://blog.oup.com/2012/08/african-americans-at-the-olympic-games/feed/ 2 http://blog.oup.com/2012/08/olympic-greatness-ancient-greek-london-2012/ http://blog.oup.com/2012/08/olympic-greatness-ancient-greek-london-2012/#comments Sat, 11 Aug 2012 10:30:32 +0000 Alice milo milo’s pancration phelps greatness theagenes euthymus olympic http://blog.oup.com/?p=27602 By David Potter In a year when Michael Phelps became the most decorated Olympian of all time with 22 medals, and Usain Bolt became the first man to win the 200 meters twice, it’s worth asking: What does “great” mean in sports? We might gain perspective by considering how the Ancient Greeks determined greatness in athletes. Then and now, true greatness is as defined not by a single moment, but by the ability to build a record of extraordinary achievement.

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]]> By David Potter


In a year when Michael Phelps became the most decorated Olympian of all time with 22 medals, and Usain Bolt became the first man to win the 200 meters twice, it’s worth asking: What does ‘great’ mean in sports? We might gain perspective by considering how the Ancient Greeks determined greatness in athletes. Then and now, true greatness is as defined not by a single moment, but by the ability to build a record of extraordinary achievement.

Milo of Croton was the greatest ancient Greek Olympian. He was a wrestler who won six consecutive Olympic crowns beginning in 540 BC, and lost in the finals of his seventh consecutive competition. He won even more titles at the other important athletic festivals of his time — the Python games, also held every four years, the Nemea and Isthmian games that were held at two year intervals — becoming a five time winner of the grand slam (winning the title at all major festivals). That’s twenty-eight years at the top; he was in his early forties when he lost his first Olympic match. That match was a classic confrontation between an aging champion and a rising star, a man who had trained in Milo’s home town. Timesitheus, the man who beat Milo, wore him down while avoiding the body slams that were Milo’s specialty. The loss did nothing to diminish Milo’s near legendary status in the Greek world and may have even helped people understand how astonishing his achievement actually was. It proved that he was human. In same way seeing Michael Phelps’ loss in the 400 individual medley (IM) made his later performance — the four gold and two silver medals — all the more impressive. They remind us that Olympic victories don’t just depend on ability, they depend on desire.



Two wrestlers is a scene from palaestra. The Base for Funerary Kouros in pentelic marble. Kerameikos, built into Themistoclean walls. c.510 BC. Photo by Fingalo, 2007. Creative Commons License.

In the post-Milo era of the Olympic desire, willingness to take on extraordinary feats of endurance or compete in radically different events came to define true greatness. The theoretical founder of the games was Hercules, who being the greatest hero (albeit mythological) came to set the theoretical standard for above average excellence by winning two of the three combat sports: boxing, wrestling, and pancration (a combination of boxing and wrestling). The first person who tried to do this was Theagenes of Thasos, a boxer whose townsmen would later celebrate him as a semi-divine figure (the shrine in his honor survives to this day). He failed because was exhausted after beating another great boxing champion, Euthymus, just before the pancration began. Euthymus was so impressive that people believed that he had actually defeated a divine spirit himself — the story was still told more than five hundred years after his death!

Two hundred years after Theagenes failed, Caprus of Elis finally won two events (wrestling and pancration) and was remembered as a man who won because he was willing to take on great challenges. There would be six more men who would do the same in the next 150 years before competition in the two events was banned. All seven victors were well remembered. So too was Polites, described as “a great wonder” by an ancient writer because he won all three Olympic foot races on one day. While two of these events were sprints, the third was a distance race, and it appears that he placed first in the qualifying heats for each final — meaning that he won six Olympic races on a single day! Our source for his achievements said he was the second greatest runner of all time; the greatest, in his view, was Leonidas of Rhodes who won the two sprint events in four straight Olympics.

Greatness in the ancient Olympics required longevity and the willingness to take on exceptional challenges. That is what Phelps and Bolt have done, and that’s why they’ll be remembered amongst the greatest of all times (ancient and modern).

David Potter is Francis W. Kelsey Collegiate Professor of Greek and Roman History and Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Greek and Latin in the Department of Classical Studies at the University of Michigan. He is the author of The Victor’s Crown: A History of Ancient Sport from Homer to Byzantium, Ancient Rome: A New History and Emperors of Rome, and two forthcoming OUP titles, Constantine the Emperor and Theodora. Read his previous blog posts: “Funding and Favors at the Olympics,” “The Ties That Bind Ancient and Modern Sports,” “The Money Games,” and “Sports fanaticism: Present and past.”

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]]> http://blog.oup.com/2012/08/olympic-greatness-ancient-greek-london-2012/feed/ 2 http://blog.oup.com/2012/08/isles-of-wonder-bermuda-avalon-london-2012/ http://blog.oup.com/2012/08/isles-of-wonder-bermuda-avalon-london-2012/#comments Fri, 10 Aug 2012 12:30:48 +0000 Alice avalon caliban mandeville isles ‘isles boyle’s avalon caliban mandeville isles ‘isles boyle’s http://blog.oup.com/?p=27348 By Anthony Bale Danny Boyle’s spectacular opening ceremony at the London Olympics on 27 July 2012 was entitled Isles of Wonder. As many will have noticed, it was shot through with references to the medieval and early-modern past. Mike Oldfield’s performance of In Dulce Jubilo, a 1970s reworking of a late-medieval German-Latin carol, provided one of the most exuberant moments. In Stratford, dancing nurses accompanied it. There were many references to and quotations from Shakespeare as well.

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]]> By Anthony Bale


Danny Boyle’s spectacular opening ceremony at the London Olympics on 27 July 2012 was entitled Isles of Wonder. As many will have noticed, it was shot through with references to the medieval and early-modern past. Mike Oldfield’s performance of In Dulce Jubilo, a 1970s reworking of a late-medieval German-Latin carol, provided one of the most exuberant moments. In Stratford, dancing nurses accompanied it. There were many references to and quotations from Shakespeare as well. The focal point of the ceremony was a copy of Glastonbury Tor, the Somerset hill identified with the Arthurian Isle of Avalon, home of the magical sword Excalibur and King Arthur’s final resting-place. Boyle’s ceremony may have looked very contemporary, and certainly had a redeeming dose of postmodern irony, but the medieval and early-modern past is never far away in England. Even an Olympic mascot has a medieval name: Mandeville, named after Stoke Mandeville Hospital where the Paralympics originated. Mandeville is also an Anglo-Norman place-name (magna ville, large town) and the surname of one of the main writers of medieval wonders, Sir John Mandeville whose Book of Marvels and Travels I have just edited and translated.



Mandeville and Mandeville. London 2012 mascot and medieval traveller.

The idea of ‘isles of wonder’ has a long history indeed and we can trace some of the allusions used in the Olympic Opening Ceremony.

BERMUDA


It is perhaps the very title of Danny Boyle’s extravaganza, Isles of Wonder, which evokes a vanished olde worlde of prodigies, monsters, marvels, and miracles. This allusion was made clear in Kenneth Branagh’s turn; the actor took his words from the monster Caliban from Shakespeare’s romantic play of discovery, The Tempest (1611). Branagh started the ceremony by quoting Caliban, “Be not afeard, be not afeard.” These are the words Caliban, a ‘savage’ inhabitant of an island settled by Europeans after a shipwreck, says to explain the “noises, sounds, and sweet airs” that appear marvellously on his foreign island. It has been reported that Boyle wanted to frighten the audience at the opening ceremony. When the Olympic flame entered the stadium, the accompanying music by Underworld was called “Caliban’s Dream,” as fright turned to wonder.

Shakespeare’s isles of wonder were not British isles. Instead, most scholars agree that The Tempest seems to combine the Mediterranean with elements of Bermuda or the Caribbean. Shakespeare was writing in the era of Atlantic discovery, Bermuda having been settled by the Virginia Company in 1609. The play contains a reference to the “still-vexed Bermoothes,” calling this frightening novelty of an island to mind. The Tempest can be seen as staging the encounter between the Europeans and the native inhabitants, not least in the way the Europeans (shipwrecked in exile from Milan) try at once to flee, to tame, and to understand the various wonders on the island.

Shakespeare’s play variously describes Caliban as “legged like a man” with “fins like arms,” a “monster of the isle with four legs,” “no fish but an islander” with “a very ancient and fish-like smell,” a “moon-calf,” “a most perfidious and drunken monster,” and “a savage and deformed Slave.” Caliban, a misspelled Caníbal who can be read sympathetically as a fantasy of the Europeans, is a wonder, a marvel, a thing that fascinates the Europeans but one they struggle to identify. Gonzalo, one of the Europeans, says, “All torment, trouble, wonder and amazement inhabits here: some heavenly power guide us out of this fearful country!” Caliban, on the other hand, utters the lines repeated at the Olympics by Branagh: “be not afeard.”

AVALON


Boyle’s ceremony made many clever connections, not least between Caliban’s ‘isle of wonder’ and Glastonbury Tor — the original British ‘isle of wonder’ said to be the site of the Isle of Avalon. The legendary Avalon was largely invented by Geoffrey of Monmouth (d. c. 1155), who was also responsible for the stories of Arthur and Merlin as we know them today. Geoffrey described Avalon as “The Fortunate Isle” which “produces all things of itself” : growing it owns food, especially apples, so it’s not dependent on anyone else and so people who live there enjoy long, healthy lives. It is, then, a northern Paradise.

Glastonbury’s cone-shaped ‘tor’ became identified, thanks to the fanciful historian Gerald of Wales (d. c. 1223), with Avalon. Glastonbury Tor was a kind of ‘island’ surrounded by marshes, with a community of monks who sought to put themselves at the centre of an invented tradition of national origins. But, in the best medieval tradition, Geoffrey of Monmouth’s description of Avalon wasn’t original; it was actually taken from the writings of the godfather of marvels, Isidore of Seville (d. 636). Isidore described ‘isles of wonder’ (thought to be the Canary Islands), blessed with good fortune, growing their own food, and this passage was clearly Geoffrey’s source for his description of Avalon.

In Geoffrey of Monmouth’s history and in Shakespeare’s play, as in Danny Boyle’s Olympic ceremony, isles of wonder look marvellous, magical, and sometimes frightening but upon examination, isles of wonder turn out to be fantasies of home and nothing to be afraid of.

Anthony Bale is Professor of Medieval Studies at Birkbeck College, University of London. He has recently edited and translated Sir John Mandeville’s Book of Marvels and Travels for Oxford University Press’s Oxford World’s Classics, a text which deals with many wonders.

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Mandeville (London 2012 mascot) photo by David Poultney for LOCOG (03.10.11 ). Courtesy of London 2012.
John Mandeville from Travels, c. 1459. Source: NYPL Digital Gallery.

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]]> http://blog.oup.com/2012/08/isles-of-wonder-bermuda-avalon-london-2012/feed/ 3 http://blog.oup.com/2012/08/excelling-under-pressure-athlete-music/ http://blog.oup.com/2012/08/excelling-under-pressure-athlete-music/#comments Tue, 07 Aug 2012 07:30:49 +0000 Alice klickstein vollmer klickstein vollmer http://blog.oup.com/?p=27172 By Gerald Klickstein The Olympics are in full swing, and we’re bound to witness some athletes who triumph and others who choke under the stress of performing. What differentiates those two groups? I’ve been probing that question for decades from the perspective of a musician and educator. Through my research and experience, I’ve come to appreciate that, for athletes and musicians alike, the primary distinction between those who excel under pressure and those who crack lies in how they prepare to perform.

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]]> By Gerald Klickstein


The Olympics are in full swing, and we’re bound to witness some athletes who triumph and others who choke under the stress of performing. What differentiates those two groups?

I’ve been probing that question for decades from the perspective of a musician and educator. Through my research and experience, I’ve come to appreciate that, for athletes and musicians alike, the primary distinction between those who excel under pressure and those who crack lies in how they prepare to perform.

As an illustration, before we look at athletes, let’s juxtapose two pianists:

Pianist 1 performs a solo and feels his heart rate accelerate and his hands start to quiver. Unnerved by the odd sensations, he fumbles a couple of passages. Then, in an attempt to reclaim the relaxed groove he prizes, he imagines that he’s playing on a tropical beach, but that only distracts him further, provoking several memory slips. He exits the stage bewildered because he played flawlessly in the practice room.

Pianist 2 plays a comparable piece and experiences similar adrenaline-fueled jitters. In response, she breathes deeply, releases her shoulders, and focuses on expressing each phrase. Her hands remain cool, but her execution is secure and she projects the joy in the music. As the closing chord sounds, her audience erupts in applause.

Pianist 1 underperformed because, in practice, he would play his piece over and over until it “just came out.” Problem is, such automated learning requires automated recall, which readily breaks down under stress. As his hands became unsteady, he groped for control but there weren’t any guideposts for his mind to latch onto because he ingrained his piece mindlessly.

Pianist 2 encountered parallel sensations but directed herself in tactical ways. Furthermore, when she practiced her piece, she absorbed its structure in detail, allowing her to track her place in the musical landscape. Her memory and performance skills were assured, so she could devote herself to making art.

What distinguishes mindful performers, like Pianist 2, is that they operate from a place of awareness and never run on autopilot. That’s not to say that they over-think. Instead, they rely on what psychologist Ellen Langer terms “soft vigilance” (The Power of Mindful Learning, p. 43-44).

In practice, they take in their material from multiple perspectives, and then they do mock performances, applying maneuvers that boost creativity and quell nervousness. On stage, their mindful habits enable them to trust in their preparation, provided that their preparation is truly thorough.

Thorough performance preparation spans three categories codified by Glenn Wilson in Psychology for Performing Artists: person, task, and situation (p. 211). Here are some quick examples:

• Person: Mindful performers learn to regulate their emotions. They monitor their inner states and rally themselves into practice or performance mode.
• Task: They attain the inclusive skills needed to execute securely in high-stakes conditions. On good days, they perform easily but maintain filaments of awareness connecting everything they do. On tougher days, they exert more effort, expanding those filaments into high-bandwidth channels to bring things under control.
• Situation: They rehearse dealing with diverse performance settings so that they can focus regardless of the circumstances.

I don’t mean to oversimplify; deep-seated personal issues can impede performers in insidious ways. But when it comes to high-stakes performance, mindfulness is indispensable. In Langer’s words, “Learning the basics in a rote, unthinking manner almost ensures mediocrity” (p. 14).

Now, let’s hear from an athlete. In a July 27 multimedia post on the New York Times website, US Olympic swimmer Dana Vollmer contrasted her approach to the butterfly stroke with that of less-accomplished swimmers:

“People pull on the water with all their might or they really kick down with their legs and they’re thinking that that is what makes you go fast. It’s much more about feeling the flows off of your body that make you go fast.”

Mindless swimmers pull “with all their might,” but Vollmer, a mindful athlete, feels herself flow through the water. She notices. She responds.

Mindful performers also stay open to discovering new things, which feeds their drive to practice. Here again is Vollmer on swimming the butterfly (on July 29 she won gold in the 100 meter competition, setting a new world record):

“I feel like I learn something new about myself and about swimming and just about life in general every time I do it.”

Vollmer epitomizes the fascination with craft that motivates athletes and musicians to work. And when they work mindfully, regardless of whether they win medals, performers go forward knowing that they’re doing their best.

Gerald Klickstein (@klickstein) is author of The Musician’s Way: A Guide to Practice, Performance, and Wellness (Oxford 2009) and posts regularly on The Musician’s Way Blog. Director of the Music Entrepreneurship and Career Center at the Peabody Conservatory, he previously served for 20 years on the faculty of the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. His prior contribution to the OUP blog is titled “The Peak-Performance Myth.”

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]]> http://blog.oup.com/2012/08/excelling-under-pressure-athlete-music/feed/ 6 http://blog.oup.com/2012/08/funding-and-favors-at-the-olympics/ http://blog.oup.com/2012/08/funding-and-favors-at-the-olympics/#comments Mon, 06 Aug 2012 10:30:37 +0000 Alice elis elis http://blog.oup.com/?p=27188 By David Potter Public funding for sports events was a fact of life for the Greeks and Romans. So was private funding, and both the Greeks and the Romans knew what the benefits and what the pitfalls associated with either might be. Can we be certain that the organizers of the London Olympics are quite so clear about this? The widely advertised donation (amounting to thirty-one million dollars) by pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) of testing facilities for 6,250 blood samples taken from athletes could raise that question.

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]]> By David Potter


Public funding for sports events was a fact of life for the Greeks and Romans. So was private funding, and both the Greeks and the Romans knew what the benefits and what the pitfalls associated with either might be. Can we be certain that the organizers of the London Olympics are quite so clear about this?

The widely advertised donation (amounting to thirty-one million dollars) by pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) of testing facilities for 6,250 blood samples taken from athletes (testing for 62% of contests, up from 45% at Beijing) could raise that question. The Olympic Committee, while a private organization, works hundreds of governments that provide public funds for Olympic sports and must regulate GSK’s products. The fact that GSK has recently offered to pay a three billion dollars settlement to one of three governments that doesn’t provide public funds to its Olympic athletes (that of the United States) for deceptive advertising might make people wonder about the definition of “drug cheat” at these games.

The Ancient Greeks, by and large, tended towards the use of public funds for major athletic events. Even before they developed the western world’s first system of coinage, they were aware of the impact of wealth on public decision-making. The first reference to bribery occurs in one of the earliest Greek poems, and one of the earliest surviving documents from the ancient Olympic games indicates deep concern about shady financial transactions on the part of the bigwigs who were in attendance.

The city of Elis, in whose territory Olympia was located, paid for the administration of the games (a colossal pain in the neck then as now). Elis appointed a board of officials every four years to make sure everything worked. The board advertised the games, appointed the officials, oversaw the training of the athletes before the opening ceremonies to make sure that the competitors were legitimate, and made sure that the facilities were in decent shape. Since venues like stadium were only used every four years, there was always a lot of deferred maintenance. We have a fascinating document, albeit connected with another major festival, detailing payments an organizing committee was making to local contractors to do things like clean trash out of the venues, provide the best surfaces, and so forth.

Big spenders from elsewhere were always welcome. In time, some of them did build splendidly self-commemorative structures at the site of the games, but those buildings were never central to the games themselves. They tended instead to cater to the needs of fans who were by and large drawn from the class of people who could afford to take a few weeks off work to go to the games. Elis never sold naming rights to the stadium and made it clear that the rich and powerful, even if sponsoring athletes (often the case) weren’t connected with the way the games ran.

The Romans took the opposite approach. Quick to recognize the political benefits of a good show, Roman politicians moved away from a publicly-funded model of entertainment, which existed for hundred of years in conjunction with chariot racing, to a private model at about the same time that Rome became the dominant power in the Mediterranean World (the end of the third century BC). From then on the rise in privately funded spectacles tracks very closely the transformation of Rome from democracy to autocracy.

The corrosive effect of private funding model becomes immediately clear when we see a staunch defender of the traditional political system (Marcus Cicero) in the business of hiring out gladiators to other politicians and receiving extensive correspondence from a friend about the importance of providing some panthers for games that he will put on. If only Cicero, then governor of a province where the desired beasts resided, would hurry up and catch a few! Cicero himself noted that the massive spectacle put on by one of Rome’s aspiring autocrats failed because the events were either too familiar, or, in the case of the slaughter of some elephants, too distressing. The man who ultimately brought the Roman democracy crashing down, Cicero’s contemporary Julius Caesar, was a major gladiatorial contractor who made many friends by helping people fund things that they couldn’t afford. There may perhaps be no more powerful statement of the linkage personal funding of sports events and non-democratic government than one of Rome’s most important monuments. The building we know as the Colosseum was actually built as “The Flavian Amphitheater,” named for the family of the emperor who paid for it with the money he took from the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD.

The Olympic movement provides amazing spectacles, drawing the world together just as the ancient games once did. It gives athletes the chance to excel on a unique stage and us a chance to watch astonishing achievements in awe. At the same time we need to be conscious, as the original founders of the games were, of where the money comes from and just what is being bought.

David Potter is Francis W. Kelsey Collegiate Professor of Greek and Roman History and Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Greek and Latin in the Department of Classical Studies at the University of Michigan. He is the author of The Victor’s Crown: A History of Ancient Sport from Homer to Byzantium, Ancient Rome: A New History and Emperors of Rome, and two forthcoming OUP titles, Constantine the Emperor and Theodora. Read his previous blog posts: “The Ties That Bind Ancient and Modern Sports,” “The Money Games,” and “Sports fanaticism: Present and past.”

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]]> http://blog.oup.com/2012/08/funding-and-favors-at-the-olympics/feed/ 1 http://blog.oup.com/2012/08/music-olympic-nbc-bbc-london-2012/ http://blog.oup.com/2012/08/music-olympic-nbc-bbc-london-2012/#comments Sat, 04 Aug 2012 07:30:09 +0000 Alice “olympic theme” fanfare steps” arnaud “first “olympic theme” fanfare steps” arnaud “first http://blog.oup.com/?p=27296 By Ron Rodman Television networks use music to connect audience and program through theme music and short video spots called “promos. Themes and promos carry what media musicologist Philip Tagg calls “appellative functions”, which summon viewers to the television screen. With an event as big as the Olympics, television networks need to attract as large an audience as possible to maximize commercial ad revenue. The Olympics are a big event, and networks want to make them a big media event, so they use “big” music in their themes and promos.

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]]> By Ron Rodman

Music, Television, and Audiences


Television networks use music to connect audience and program through theme music and short video spots called “promos.” Themes and promos carry what media musicologist Philip Tagg calls “appellative functions”, which summon viewers to the television screen. With an event as big as the Olympics, television networks need to attract as large an audience as possible to maximize commercial ad revenue. The Olympics are a big event, and networks want to make them a big media event, so they use “big” music in their themes and promos. Networks also use music to convey ideologies that match the beliefs and attitudes of the audience.

Music on BBC and NBC


For the 2012 Olympiad, both BBC (in the UK) and NBC (in the US) use “big” music for their openings and promotional spots. The BBC commissioned the pop-rock group Elbow to compose Olympic music. Elbow’s account of the creative process can be found on Pinterest. Their piece, “First Steps,” was recorded by the BBC Philharmonic and was subsequently edited to fit the opening of the broadcast as well as the various promotional spots. “First Steps” opens with a five-note horn call, which Elbow musicians Craig Potter and Guy Garvey say represents the five rings of the Olympic flag. The piece then breaks into a repetitious rhythmic pattern, perhaps signifying motion or action. Then, a long legato theme is played by the strings. Potter and Garvey report that this theme was meant as a “sympathetic” melody with a “twinge of sadness” — a sort of “loser’s theme” — to represent the majority of athletes who don’t win a medal at the games. The piece climaxes with this “losers” theme combined with the opening fanfare.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Rather than commissioning a new piece, NBC is relying on old “standby” pieces in its Olympic broadcasts. NBC has stuck with Leo Arnaud’s “Bugler’s Dream,” a piece so associated with the Olympics that now it is called the “Olympic Theme.” Arnaud, a French émigré to the US, was commissioned to compose the piece for an LP by Felix Slatkin in 1958. “Bugler’s Dream” was adopted by the ABC network for its coverage of the 1968 winter games, and then used for its weekly “Wide World of Sports” show. NBC obtained rights to the piece for coverage for the Barcelona games in 1992.

Click here to view the embedded video.

NBC also continues to use the “Olympic Fanfare and Theme” by film composer John Williams, commissioned for the 1984 games in Los Angeles. Williams’ “Olympic Fanfare and Theme” begins with a chattering fanfare played by brass, followed by a militaristic drum cadence that pervades the remainder of the piece. After that, strings, winds, and horns play a smooth, lyrical melody. The piece ends with another flourish in the brass, similar to the opening fanfare.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Williams did not provide a “program” for his piece as Elbow does (at least I couldn’t find one), but it seems to represent the grandeur of the games, as well as a confident ethos, as in a victory parade. The tone is as if Roman legions (or perhaps Greek phalanx) are marching home in victory. NBC often conflates, or “mashes up”, Arnaud’s and Williams’ pieces together into one big Olympic promo.

The Formula for a Great Olympic Theme


A comparison between “First Steps” and “Olympic Fanfare and Theme,” reveals that the two pieces have a similar structure, shown as follows:

“First Steps”:

• Brass Fanfare
• Rhythmic Cadence
• “Love/Loser’s Theme”
• Climax (“Love” theme and fanfare combined)
• Ending chords


“Olympic Fanfare and Theme”:

• Brass Fanfare
• Rhythmic Cadence
• Lyrical Theme and Fanfare combined
• Closing Flourish


Do we see a pattern here? It seems that there may be a formula for composing a great Olympic theme song for television!

Another Similarity


Another spot aired by NBC this summer opens with a dramatic wordless chorus (another feature also used in the full version of Elbow’s “First Steps”), but segues abruptly into a brass flourish similar to Williams’ finale.

Olympic Music and National Ideology


While similar, the Olympic music used by the BBC and NBC subtly reveals differences in national ideology. Williams’ confident and strident music for NBC conveys the American confidence (or even expectations) of striving for perfection and winning. The BBC music seems to convey the joy of participation and competition as the essence of the games. Elbow’s piece caters more to the majority of the athletes and countries who are likely to win few or no medals. Though both pieces are big and effective, the NBC piece caters to an American ethos, while (as in the opening ceremonies) the British seem to want to convey that the UK is hosting these games, but they are really for everybody.

Ron Rodman is Dye Family Professor of Music at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. He is the author of Tuning In: American Television Music, published by Oxford University Press in 2010. Read his previous blog post “Music and the Olympic Opening Ceremony: Pageantry and Pastiche.”

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]]> http://blog.oup.com/2012/08/music-olympic-nbc-bbc-london-2012/feed/ 3 http://blog.oup.com/2012/08/test-your-smarts-on-dope/ http://blog.oup.com/2012/08/test-your-smarts-on-dope/#comments Fri, 03 Aug 2012 10:30:38 +0000 Alice doping doping cooper sports drugs cheat quiz leslie doping doping cooper sports drugs cheat quiz leslie http://blog.oup.com/?p=26989 By Leslie Taylor Why are certain substances used? How are they detected? Do they truly have an effect on the body? Cooper explains how drugs designed to improve physical ability -- from anabolic steroids to human growth hormone and the blood booster EPO -- work and the challenges of testing for them, putting in to context whether the 'doping' methods of choice are worth the risk or the effort. Showing the basic problems of human biochemistry, physiology, and anatomy, he looks at what stops us running faster, throwing longer, or jumping higher. Using these evidence-based arguments he shows what the body can, and cannot, do.

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]]> By Leslie Taylor


Why are certain substances used? How are they detected? Do they truly have an effect on the body? Cooper explains how drugs designed to improve physical ability — from anabolic steroids to human growth hormone and the blood booster EPO — work and the challenges of testing for them, putting in to context whether the ‘doping’ methods of choice are worth the risk or the effort. Showing the basic problems of human biochemistry, physiology, and anatomy, he looks at what stops us running faster, throwing longer, or jumping higher. Using these evidence-based arguments he shows what the body can, and cannot, do.

How much do you know about sports doping? Science Friday spoke with Chris Cooper, author of Run, Swim, Throw, Cheat, about the science of performance-enhancing drugs and the methods used to detect banned substances. Try the quiz and test your knowledge.

This quiz originally appeared on Science Friday.

Listen to author Chris Cooper discuss how banned drugs work, don’t work, and how officials attempt to detect them on Science Friday.

Leslie Taylor is Science Friday’s Web editor. She has a background in oceanography and is passionate about getting non-scientists and young people to realize how cool science can be.

Chris Cooper is Head of Research, Sports and Exercise Science at the University of Essex and the author of Run, Swim, Throw, Cheat: The Science Behind Drugs in Sport. He is a distinguished biochemist with over 20 years research and teaching experience. He was awarded a PhD in 1989, a Medical Research Council Fellowship in 1992, and a Wellcome Trust University Award in 1995. In 1997 he was awarded the Melvin H. Knisely Award for ‘Outstanding international achievements in research related to oxygen transport to tissue’ and in 1999 he was promoted to a Professorship in the Centre for Sports and Exercise Science at the University of Essex. His research interests explore the interface of scientific disciplines. His current biochemical interests include developing artificial blood to replace red cell transfusions. His biophysics and engineering skills are being used in designing and testing new portable oxygen monitoring devices to aid UK athletes in their training for the London 2012 Olympics. In 1997 he edited a book entitled Drugs and Ergogenic Aids to Improve Sport Performance.

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]]> http://blog.oup.com/2012/08/test-your-smarts-on-dope/feed/ 0 http://blog.oup.com/2012/08/music-olympic-opening-ceremony-pageantry-pastiche/ http://blog.oup.com/2012/08/music-olympic-opening-ceremony-pageantry-pastiche/#comments Thu, 02 Aug 2012 07:30:11 +0000 Alice masque masque http://blog.oup.com/?p=27166 By Ron Rodman Film director Danny Boyle’s gargantuan presentation at the opening ceremonies of the 30th Olympiad in London had little to do with the actual games, but had everything to do with his vision of Britain. The show was full of pageantry, drawing upon the 17th century English masque, a sort of loosely structured play with dance, music, costumes, songs and speeches, and festive scenery, with allegorical references to royalty, who would sometimes participate in the show. All elements of the masque were present, including the participation of the Queen herself, who stepped into the narrative briefly.

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]]> By Ron Rodman

Pastiche- noun \pas-ˈtēsh,
a : a musical, literary, or artistic composition made up of selections from different works : potpourri
b : hodgepodge

Film director Danny Boyle’s gargantuan presentation at the opening ceremonies of the 30th Olympiad in London had little to do with the actual games, but had everything to do with his vision of Britain. The show was full of pageantry, drawing upon the 17th century English masque, a sort of loosely structured play with dance, music, costumes, songs and speeches, and festive scenery, with allegorical references to royalty, who would sometimes participate in the show. All elements of the masque were present, including the participation of the Queen herself, who stepped into the narrative briefly.

Boyle’s masque was a pastiche of media types and musical genres, combining live theater, cinema, television, and music video, with a vast array of musical styles. While the spectacle catered to the long forms of live theater and the cinema, it was the music that made the ceremony successful television. Music functioned in the diegetic spaces of TV (e.g., the live performances of musicians) in music-video style scenes, with close ups of the Arctic Monkeys, Mike Oldfield, the rapper Dizzee Rascal, and (Sir) Paul McCartney. The show also featured cinematic style “background” music that carried extramusical meanings.

Whether diegetic or background, all of the music of the broadcast conveyed meanings to the audience. Some of the meanings conveyed its nationality. It was all British (aside from one quotation of “In Dulci Jubilo,” a medieval German Christmas hymn!). But, much of the music conveyed through its genre or style. The music featured in the ceremony ran the gamut from classical to rap, and each of these genres communicated something different to the audience. Here is one perspective on the significance of the musical genres.

Classical music


Classical music represented the royalty and British patriotism. Her Majesty the Queen was introduced by Handel’s “Arrival of the Queen of Sheba” from the opera, Solomon, and Music from the Royal Fireworks. Handel, though German by birth, spent most of his career in England, and is considered English. Kenneth Brannah’s Shakespeare soliloquy was accompanied by Edward Elgar’s “Nimrod” from his Enigma Variations, as theatrical/cinematic background music.

The ceremonies began by showcasing the venerable British choral tradition, and children’s choirs from England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Wales were featured singing pieces emblematic of their area: England’s “Jerusalem” by H. Hubert Parry (the “unofficial” hymn of England), Scotland’s (“Flower of Scotland”), Ireland’s “Londonderry Air” (“Danny Boy”:–was there a pun intended here?), and Wales’ “Cwm Rhondda”. Children also sang the National Anthem at the flag raising.

Surprisingly, very little of the classical genre was used for the ceremonial aspects of the pageant.

Film music


Film music, as per usual, represents fantasy. John Barry’s James Bond theme was used in the parody of the popular Bond character with the real-life Queen. The significance of this parody was not lost on NBC television commentators, who commented on this scene as a highlight of the show.

The funniest bit, and most successful as television, was Rowan Atkinson’s appearance with the London Symphony Orchestra, with Simon Rattle conducting. The orchestra performed the Vangelis’ theme to the 1981 film Chariots of Fire, with Atkinson’s characteristic mugging. Vangelis’ theme also represented fantasy in Atkinson’s dream sequence. Atkinson’s bit was ironic in that it used classical music — usually considered “serious” music — as the comedic high point of the evening.

Light Classical music


Music popular in the 1940s and 1950s was featured briefly in the transition from the pastoral to industrial scenes. This so-called “Light” music is characterized by composers such as Leroy Anderson in the USA, and Eric Coates in Britain. More composers can be found on the Robert Farnon Society website. This music represents the nostalgia of the past in Britain.

Ambient/Environmental/New Age music


Ambient music served as the bulk of the ceremonial music, marking a shift of musical functions from classical to a new sort of minimal style. Pieces with “drums and drones” were played during the lighting of the torch, and during much of the ceremonies. Mike Oldfield performed his “Tubular Bells” and other ambient during the National Health sequence.

The theme of drumming, pervasive in “New Age” music of the 1990s was also prevalent throughout the night, with amateur drummers performing throughout the pageant, led by deaf drummer Dame Evelyn Glennie. The drumming may be a response to the over 2000 drummers featured in the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics in 2008.

The remaining musical genres functioned largely as entertainment — as pure musical texts serving merely to be consumed and enjoyed by the audience. As with music in all historical eras, these genres were presented as highly valued, each representing a portion of British history.

Swing music


Though jazz is not a native musical form in Britain, a bit of swing music was performed during the National Health sequence.

Rock music


The bulk of the music of the evening was devoted to a cavalcade of Brit rock in its many forms throughout the decades of the 1950s to the present. In this mini-history of rock music, music by artists such as The Who, the Rolling Stones, the Kinks, the Beatles, David Bowie, Pink Floyd, the Sex Pistols, Arctic Monkeys, Prodigy, ELO, among many others were featured.

Paul McCartney served as the musical finale, with a sing-along rendition of the Beatles’ 1968 hits, “The End” and “Hey Jude”. McCartney, as the survivor of the Lennon/McCartney song-writing duo, is the national musical treasure of Britain, and his performance as finale was the expected culmination.

Rap music


Dizzee Rascal (Dylan Kwabena Mills) served as the representative of rap, and while rap is a native American musical form, it is popular world wide, and Britain has produced its own rap artists.

Boyle’s masque promised “something for everyone,” and delivered through the pastiche of media styles and musical genres. This theatrical/cinematic/televisual presentation threw everything including the British musical kitchen sink at the viewer.

Ron Rodman is Dye Family Professor of Music at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. He is the author of Tuning In: American Television Music, published by Oxford University Press in 2010.

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]]> http://blog.oup.com/2012/08/music-olympic-opening-ceremony-pageantry-pastiche/feed/ 4 http://blog.oup.com/2012/08/james-bond-at-the-london-2012-opening-ceremony/ http://blog.oup.com/2012/08/james-bond-at-the-london-2012-opening-ceremony/#comments Wed, 01 Aug 2012 14:30:15 +0000 Alice skyfall bond bond burlingame parachuted broccoli broccoli monty skyfall bond bond burlingame parachuted broccoli broccoli monty http://blog.oup.com/?p=27234 By Jon Burlingame When James Bond and Queen Elizabeth parachuted out of the helicopter (or appeared to) during Friday night’s opening ceremonies of the London Olympics, director Danny Boyle could think of only one piece of music to play: the “James Bond Theme.” And of all the dozens of recordings of 007′s signature music that have been made over the years, he chose the unmistakable original: John Barry’s recording of Monty Norman’s “James Bond Theme,” from the very first Bond adventure, Dr. No, which opened in British cinemas 50 years ago, in October 1962.

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]]> By Jon Burlingame


When James Bond and Queen Elizabeth II parachuted out of the helicopter (or appeared to) during Friday night’s opening ceremonies of the London Olympics, director Danny Boyle could think of only one piece of music to play: the “James Bond Theme.” (BBC footage; NBC footage; or check your local Olympic broadcaster)

Of all the dozens of recordings of 007′s signature music that have been made over the years, he chose the unmistakable original: John Barry’s recording of Monty Norman’s “James Bond Theme,” from the very first Bond adventure, Dr. No, which opened in British cinemas 50 years ago, in October 1962.

Certainly no Bond fan witnessed Friday’s extraordinary moment — when the Queen actually turned to actor Daniel Craig and said, “Good evening, Mr. Bond” — without a gasp or at least chills down the spine.

While we knew that it was Craig and a stand-in for the Queen in the helicopter (and that neither one of them actually parachuted out), that singular piece of music did precisely what it was intended to do — suggest to a worldwide audience, familiar with half a century of outrageous cinematic exploits, that 007 had performed his latest service for Queen and Country.



Throughout five decades, 22 official films and six different James Bonds, the “Bond Theme” has been a constant in the movies originally produced by Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman, and now carried on by Broccoli’s daughter and stepson, Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson. And while post-production is still underway on Skyfall, the 23rd opus to be released this fall, there is no doubt that composer Thomas Newman will invoke the “Bond Theme” at some point during the proceedings. To do otherwise would be unthinkable.

The backstory of the “James Bond Theme” is a complex saga of Monty Norman’s original conception of a theme for 007; its transformation into the twangy-guitar-meets-big-band-swing recording arranged and conducted by John Barry; and the controversy that has occasionally arisen about the origins of the tune (and its formal resolution in London’s High Court in 2001).

Boyle’s use of the “Bond Theme” on Friday night only serves to confirm its place in the pantheon of great movie themes recognized the world over. Bond’s presence in the ceremonies was a fitting acknowledgment of author Ian Fleming’s contribution to 20th-century popular literature, but that 45 seconds of music is what reminded three billion viewers that this was really the one, the only, the original, James Bond.

Jon Burlingame is the author of the upcoming book, The Music of James Bond, slated for release this fall to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the billion-dollar movie franchise and the release of Skyfall. One of the nation’s leading writers on the subject of music for film and television, he writes regularly for Daily Variety and teaches film-music history at the University of Southern California. His other work has included three previous books on film and TV music; articles for other publications including The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, and Premiere and Emmy magazines; and producing radio specials for Los Angeles classical station KUSC.

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Skyfall movie poster from 007.com used for the purposes of illustration.

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]]> http://blog.oup.com/2012/08/james-bond-at-the-london-2012-opening-ceremony/feed/ 2 http://blog.oup.com/2012/07/london-2012-opening-ceremony-odnb/ http://blog.oup.com/2012/07/london-2012-opening-ceremony-odnb/#comments Mon, 30 Jul 2012 14:30:18 +0000 Alice http://blog.oup.com/?p=27139 By Philip Carter Where do you stand on Friday’s opening ceremony for the 2012 Olympic Games? Delighted, inspired, a little bit baffled? There’s a possibility, we realize, that not all of the show’s 1 billion-strong audience will have caught every reference. So here’s the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography guide to some of those who made it possible.

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]]> By Philip Carter


Where do you stand on Friday’s opening ceremony for the 2012 Olympic Games? Delighted, inspired, a little bit baffled?

There’s a possibility, we realize, that not all of the show’s 1 billion-strong audience will have caught every reference. So here’s the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography guide to some of those who made it possible.

Top hat & Tor

After Isambard Kingdom Brunel (replete with top hat & cigar), you’ll find Hubert Parry, composer of Jerusalem which evoked the ‘green and pleasant land’ from William Blake’s poem “Milton”. Brunel’s speech (on Glastonbury Tor) was accompanied by Edward Elgar’s ‘Nimrod’ suite, dedicated to the music critic August Jaeger.












Golly G.O.S.H.

In the aftermath of ‘Pandemonium’ came the suffragettes, led by Emmeline Pankhurst and with reference to the suffrage ‘martyr’ Emily Wilding Davison. The evening’s celebration of the NHS would no doubt have been appreciated by Nye Bevan — so too J.M. Barrie who gave the rights of Peter Pan to Great Ormond Street Hospital.












Bond & Beckham

Then things got stranger still. A march past of Pearly Kings and Queens, a starring role for Ian Fleming’s James Bond, a shower of Mary Poppinses, and a chance to pogo with “Pretty Vacant”.

Things were very different in the past as the story of the Edwardian pageant master, Frank Lascelles, reminds us. And though we don’t do power boats at the ODNB, we can give you a foretaste of David Beckham glamour: step forward Cornelius Drebbel, the first man to ‘speed’ down the Thames (in a submarine), in 1620.

Philip Carter is Publication Editor of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Read more about the people and personalities of the London 2012 Opening Ceremony on the Oxford DNB website. The Oxford DNB online is freely available via public libraries across the UK. Libraries offer ‘remote access’ allowing members to log-on to the complete dictionary, for free, from home (or any other computer) twenty-four hours a day. In addition to 58,000 life stories, the ODNB offers a free, twice monthly biography podcast with over 130 life stories now available. You can also sign up for Life of the Day, a topical biography delivered to your inbox, or follow @ODNB on Twitter for people in the news.

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All images © National Portrait Gallery, London. Used with permission.

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]]> http://blog.oup.com/2012/07/london-2012-opening-ceremony-odnb/feed/ 1 http://blog.oup.com/2012/07/olympic-confusion-north-south-korea-flag-mix-up/ http://blog.oup.com/2012/07/olympic-confusion-north-south-korea-flag-mix-up/#comments Sat, 28 Jul 2012 16:30:48 +0000 Alice dprk koreans pyongyang korea korea korean jung flag dprk koreans pyongyang korea korea korean jung flag http://blog.oup.com/?p=27132 By Jasper Becker Do North and South Korea belong to the same country? Are they the same race sharing the same history and language? The answers to these questions are far from clear even to the Koreans themselves. It depends on the day really or the Olympics. In the 2000, 2004, and 2006 Olympics the two countries joined together at the games’ opening ceremonies and marched in matching uniforms behind the Korean Unification Flag.

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]]> By Jasper Becker


Do North and South Korea belong to the same country? Are they the same race sharing the same history and language? The answers to these questions are far from clear even to the Koreans themselves. It depends on the day really or the Olympics. In the 2000, 2004, and 2006 Olympics the two countries joined together at the games’ opening ceremonies and marched in matching uniforms behind the Korean Unification Flag.

Not surprisingly it was easy for Scottish officials to put up the South Korean flag when North Korea’s women’s team played a match against Colombia at Hampden Park in Glasgow. The team refused to play until their flag with the red star was replaced on stadium screens. On Thursday, North Korea’s Olympic team accepted repeated apologies, including one from Prime Minister David Cameron.

Even so everyone has continued calling the country North Korea, even though the country should be referred to as the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea (DPRK) while South Korea is the Republic of Korea (ROK). In reality the DPRK does not officially recognize the ROK’s existence as a separate country but regards it as part of the DPRK under American control. The South Korean government is therefore a puppet regime and an enemy of Pyongyang which should be destroyed if necessary by an attack.

The North Koreans don’t in fact believe they are still the same people. The founder of the DPRK, Kim Il Sung, is believed to have created a new nation, loyal to him and his family. Every effort has been made since 1946 to create a separate history and culture which has little in common with either pre-1946 or the culture of the South. The North Koreans don’t even use the vocabulary or write with the same alphabet. If they are ever unified under the rule of the Kim family, the South Koreans would be forced to undergo a complete brainwashing and learn to become obedient subjects of the Kim dynasty.

During the heyday of constructive engagement under two South Koreans left-wing presidents, relations between the two halves were relatively friendly. After Kim Dae-jung introduced his ‘Sunshine Policy’ in 1998, Pyongyang allowed the two teams to march together. Ten years later the South Korean electorate, wearied by a policy which delivered too few gains, elected President Lee Myung-Bak in February 2008. Bilateral relations worsened and the North made a series of military attacks and has continued to threaten to turn Seoul into a sea of fire.

At the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the two countries refused to march together, a move International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge called a “setback for peace.” There were no talks of marching together in 2012 either. But this is where the story gets interesting.

Kim Il Sung’s Swiss-educated grandson, Kim Jong Un, is now in power and has just ousted the military chief Vice Marshal Ri Yong-ho. Many are now hoping that the 28-year old leader, who has been showing himself in public with his new wife, is going to abandon the military first policies of his father. Surely by now, he must realize that Pyongyang will have to change if the Kim dynasty is to survive as more than a tool of Chinese foreign policy.

The fact that it was so easy for the Olympic host nation to put up the wrong flag it will be another reminder of how few friends the North Koreans now have. The country is only being kept afloat with Chinese money. As one commentator in the Daily Telegraph wrote, they team might as well be walking behind the Chinese flag. A series of recent diplomatic blunders such as the attempted missile launch earlier this year, in defiance of the whole international community including China, has only deepened its isolation. Sooner, rather than later, Pyongyang will have to start rebuilding its ties with Seoul, Tokyo and Washington. But many in the Korean Peninsula are hoping that Kim Jung Un will be willing to start a whole new game.

Jasper Becker, an award-winning author, has worked as a foreign correspondent for twenty-five years, including fifteen years based in Beijing. He is author of Rogue Regime: Kim Jong Il and the Looming Threat of North Korea, Hungry Ghosts, The Chinese, and City of Heavenly Tranquility: Beijing in the History of China. An expert on East Asian history and politics, Becker’s work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, New Republic, The London Review of Books, National Geographic, and Time Asia.

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