XXX Olympiad Symbols

Who turned out to be the Olympics' Opening Ceremony's Joker?

I am watching the Olympics Opening Ceremonies, all recorded replays, and thus merely another Danny Boyle production. Actually rather terrible, but here are some things I saw, on a deeper level.

NBC began the evening program with a starting and startling image of a red dawn. You can't make these things up.

Several other symbols jump out.

The 2012 Olympics ceremony's theme is "Isles of Wonder," inspired by William Shakespeare's play about shipwrecked castaways, The Tempest. The reading from The Tempest was about fear and the coming storm.

Amsterdam correspondent Theo Paijmans wrote me: "It is commonly held that William Shakespeare may have modeled the character of Prospero in The Tempest on John Dee." (John Dee signed his letters 007, the first Bond.) Is there a storm coming?

The Bell. The Culture Secretary had an accident with a hand-held bell that almost hurt people in a crowd.

The sound of a 27-ton bell — the largest harmonically tuned bell in the world — forged at London's 442-year-old Whitechapel (Jack the Ripper's neighborhood?) Bell Foundry, which made London's Big Ben and Philadelphia's Liberty Bell, opened the ceremony.  The bell is inscribed with a line from The Tempest: “Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises.”

Yes, as a tie-in to the new 007 movie, Skyfall, a James Bond double "fell" into the Olympics stadium, but the double for Queen Elizabeth jumping from a little plane was what had NBC hosts talking.

The opening had a "green and pleasant land" described in William Blake's poem Jerusalem, which was set to loud, booming music, regarded as England's unofficial national anthem. The underlying symbolism of "Jerusalem" would fill volumes. The rising smoke towers reminded me of those that were said to have inspired The Two Towers of The Lord of the Rings.

Now this is creepy and not lost on even the NBC folks: the Queen of Hearts (Alice in Wonderland), Captain Hook (Peter Pan), Lord Voldemort (Harry Potter), the Child Catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and Cruella de Vil (101 Dalmatians) - all highly symbolic pedophile figures - were shown vs only Mary Poppins (well, 30 or so cloned Mary Poppins).

Vangelis' theme from Chariots of Fire played. Of late here, we've mentioned the soundtrack composed by Vangelis for Ridley Scott's 1982 film Blade Runner.

The entire Chariots of Fire segment was turned into a comedy by Mr. Bean as the Joker at the Olympics. The actor's name is Rowan Atkinson, a double red name.

Rowan \ro-wan\ as a boy's or girl's name is of Gaelic origin, and the meaning of Rowan is "little red-head." Also the name of a flowering tree with red berries.

Atkinson is son of Atkin, which is as a patronymic form of the medieval male given name Atkin or Adkin, itself a double diminutive of the Hebrew name "Adam," meaning "red earth."

For another view of the Opening Ceremony by a person who is more generous in his appreciation of the music, please see Red Dirt Report editor Andrew W. Griffin's "Olympic spectacle on the Isles on Wonder."

Meanwhile, the other clown appearing in London right before the Opening turned out to be Willard Mitt Romney. London's newspapers were not kind to him, and one called him, "Mitt the Twit."  I am not making this observation to be political, but to note that an underlying theme here is that Romney turned himself, by making several gaffs, into a clown, a court jester, and, yes, a joker.