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Fleming Rutledge is a preacher and teacher known throughout the mainline Protestant denominations of the US, Canada and parts of the UK. She is the author of seven books and has received a grant from the Louisville Foundation to complete a book about the meaning of the Crucifixion.
One of the first women to be ordained to the priesthood of the Episcopal Church, she served for fourteen years on the clergy staff at Grace Church on Lower Broadway at Tenth Street, New York City. Fleming and her husband celebrate their 50th anniversary in 2009 and have two daughters and two grandchildren. She is a native of Franklin, Virginia.
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Ruminations: Beware of Olympic pageantryTuesday, July 01, 2008Beware of Olympic pageantryWe recently had the rare privilege of attending a private screening of Leni Riefenstahl’s famous but seldom-seen film Olympia, made to celebrate the 1936 “Nazi Olympics” in Berlin. The powerful artistry and technical mastery of “Hitler’s moviemaker” left everyone stunned.Naturally, the number one question asked afterward was about the relation of art to morality. There has been no clear answer to this question, but here are two sets of reactions that some of us shared: Overall, the movie is apolitical. The overwhelming effect at the end of the very long movie is of the beauty of the human body in action. Riefenstahl’s amazing camera angles, often catching the athletes from below in motion against a sky filled with fair-weather clouds, are indeed “Olympian” in more ways than one. The astonishment of the second half, which covers the athletic events themselves, tends to cancel out the creepiness of the first half. The first half of the film is deeply disturbing. It depicts the carrying of the Olympic torch by fleet, proud runners (looking for all the world like the old Modern Library logo) and then the opening procession with numerous shots of a beaming Adolf Hitler taking the salutes of the various teams as they pass. It is impossible to resist the powerful emotional effect of this pageantry. As the team members from the various countries (including the USA) pass in review, many give the Nazi salute with Rockette-like precision, all others turn their heads toward the Führer with perfect symmetry as they march by. What did they know? (By 1936, they should have known plenty.) Did it matter to them? I found myself choking on tears and fury. Here were the principalities and powers on review. Human nature is irresistibly drawn to spectacle, and can be manipulated in almost any direction through pageantry when it is harnessed to nationalism and the will to power. We should beware of our own proclivities when we watch the Olympics this summer.
Permanent Link for this Post: http://www.generousorthodoxy.org/ruminations/2008/07/beware-of-olympic-pageantry.htm |
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3 Comments:
I saw this film a long time ago, but still recall that the United States was the only nation that didn't lower it's flag before the Nazi host's reviewing stand!
Apolitical? The Nazis hoped to showcase their new Germany by hosting the Olympics, but when one of their Valkyries dropped the baton in the women's relay race -- much to Hitler's chagrin -- and Jesse Owens won in track, the "master race" wasn't as masterful as they had hoped.
"As the team members from the various countries (including the USA) pass in review, many give the Nazi salute with Rockette-like precision, all others turn their heads toward the Führer with perfect symmetry as they march by ..."
Apparently a little known secret about the Olympics is that the games have an official salute; it is a straight-arm salute similar to that of the National Socialist German Workers' Party.
From the McGill Track and Field/Cross Country web site
"When the athletes arrived in Berlin, they found a city filled with excitement and tension. The drumbeat of war was still distant, but the dark Nazi ideology was well known. It forced many countries, including Canada, into a difficult choice: how to acknowledge Adolph Hitler during the opening ceremonies.
The track and field team, Phil Edwards, and the rest of Canada's Olympic team decided to give Hitler the Olympic salute.
"Were (we) going to salute in the sort of army method, or we were going to give the Olympic salute? Not the Nazi salute, the Olympic salute. But the Nazis had taken it over. We decided that we were not going to let them do it, that the Olympic salute was the Olympic salute and we were going to give the Olympic salute," explains Conway.
Worrall carried the flag as the Canadian team entered the stadium. As they raised their arms, the crowd erupted into cheers, thinking the Canadians were giving the Nazi salute.
"We took a lot of backlash criticism for that. But it was done, I think, well you might say, the kindest thing you might say is it was done in naivety," says Worral.
The salutes gave Hitler a propaganda victory, but he wanted more. He planned to use the entire Games to promote the Nazi credo of a white master race. The plan fell apart, largely because of American track star Jesse Owens, who won four gold medals ..."
More info on the '36 Olympics from the May ’36 Atlantic Monthly:
“… The U. S. A. was criticized for not saluting 'Mr. Smith' as it filed past. The explanation is this. The Olympic salute and the Nazi salute are almost identical. The other nations, with the exception of the United States and Poland, gave the Olympic salute; I think Austria really gave a Nazi salute and Italy the Fascist.
The American Committee was afraid of giving anything that looked like a Nazi salute; so we were told to 'eyes right' on command and hold it while passing the stands. As it turned out, we were not given enough practice in this gesture, and I believe we were all pretty sloppy in our untutored military bearing. The 'result was that the stands thought we were doing nothing.”
So neither the US or Polish teams saluted at all!
Finally, a history of the salute from Wikipedia:
“These early images of the gesture are not strictly speaking salutes, since most actually depict the swearing of oaths. It was with this function that the so-called Bellamy salute was adopted in the United States in 1892 as part of the Pledge of Allegiance. This required that participants should initially bend their right arm with the hand held against the forehead, as in a conventional military salute. The arm should then be "extended gracefully, palm upward, toward the flag." Similar gestures were adopted elsewhere in the late-19th century among both nationalist and socialist movements ...
Because of the similarity between the Bellamy salute and the Nazi salute, President Franklin D. Roosevelt instituted the hand-over-the-heart gesture as the salute to be rendered by civilians during the Pledge of Allegiance and the national anthem in the United States, instead of the Bellamy salute. This was done when Congress officially adopted the Flag Code on 22 June 1942”
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