Fine Art is no longer just about drawing, painting or sculpture but other diverse forms of self-expression including photography, video, installations and live performances categorised as ‘happenings’, are all accepted as such. In this context, the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games, could well be counted as a mega happening, an expression of a nation’s ideas and aesthetics, exhibited on a grand scale and witnessed by billions of people around the world.

It is in this context that one is tempted to offer a critique of the recently enacted opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympic Games, hosted by the United Kingdom in their capital city, London. Directed by Danny Boyle, famous for his movie, Slumdog millionaire and with a budget of around 9.3 million pounds sterling, it has invoked mixed responses by viewers around the world.

In fact, it has even brought forth extreme reactions, some labelling it as “the worst Olympic opening in the past 50 years,” while others claiming just the exact opposite. Even controversial theories have been doing the rounds, especially in cyber space, with assorted individuals trying to prove that it carried symbols of ‘Zion’ and was masterminded by Freemasons and ‘followers of Lucifer’. Much less malevolent, but political nonetheless, were opinions of people who thought the show expressed ‘leftist’ ideologies, because it promoted ‘ordinary people’.

Whatever opinion or theory one may subscribe to, the fact is that it was an unusual, rather offbeat, even ‘wacky’ affair, combining lessons in history, social welfare, dark musings, as well as remarkable humour, that was quintessentially British in its appeal. However, all of this was definitely “self-indulgent” as one blogger commented, focusing on everything British, both the good and the bad.

The history lesson kicked off with an enactment of an idyllic British landscape, replete with green hills, animals and an assortment of working class people and moved on to the depiction of the onset of the Industrial Revolution. The dramatic visuals of people tearing out the green earth and the emergence of formidable steel grey chimneys and smouldering furnaces with hundreds of individuals hammering on what looked like molten metal, was a sight to send a shiver up ones spine.

The symbol of the Olympic Games, the five circles, emerged like hot golden halos from this scenario and lighting up the sky, presented an awe inspiring sight. Indeed, it were the light effects, as well as the music, especially the passionate drumming, that gave a sense of glory to various scenarios replete with commonality and even casualness, as well as a limited colour palette.

The lauding of Britain’s National Healthcare Service (NHS) was an offbeat idea bordering on the ridiculous. The thousands of white hospital beds, the dancing, twirling doctors and nurses and the night suit-clad children jumping on their beds was an aesthetically unappealing adventure. Also, the assortment of ugly creatures, such as Voldermort of Harry Potter fame, a giant Franken baby, as well as other strange creatures in the eccentric drama were rather unpalatable.

Video art played a significant part in the show, what from James Bond and Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, shown in an amusing film, to other concoctions portraying aspects of British lifestyles and focusing especially on their multi-cultured youth of today. All of this had a dash of quirky humour and was very typically British in portraying the ability to laugh at one’s self. The appearance of comic hero Mr Bean in the show and that too while the ethereal music of ‘Chariots of fire’ was being played, epitomised the sense of the ridiculous that was deliberately included in this rather bizarre expression of British creativity.