Olympics Contact Zone

Contact zones of the Olympics As Mary Louise Pratt defined in “Arts of the Contact Zone”, contact zones are social spaces where cultural interactions happen; including cultural exchange, conflicts, understanding, and sometimes unbalance of power in contact zones. Relating closely to cultural diversity, contact zones definitely exist in global events around the world, when people from different places gather together and communicate with one another. The Olympics, as one of the most influential global sports event people can ever experience, produce especially unique contact zones through the clash of culture, competition and conflicts, also along with unavoidable power unbalances. Contact zones cannot exist without cultural contrast and difference
since it is a zone about how people from different places with different experiences and cultural background begin to form contact with one another with cultural clashes. It is probably the only contact zone in the world where such a massive diversity exists in such a short period of time. Since time is so limited and the event is so huge, every nation or country that joins gives its very best to present its culture to the world and to each other. Particularly during the opening ceremony, when all the entrees nations walk their teams in the parade, wearing the costumes originally design from where they came from, usually include the bright colors of their flags, showing as much of their vibrancy and culture from their homelands as possible. For the audience, the parade might also be one of the most memorable moments of the Olympics. Every shine of the neon lights, every nation’s color, and every cheer of the people at live, comes through the media to every other audiences around the world, bringing everyone from different nations at different time zones together at that exciting moment of seeing cultures blend and clash right in front of our eyes. At this point With such a vibrant opening ceremony and sport competition in the Rio Olympics, the Olympics are such great examples of contact zones also because of how much attraction they bring to the host countries.
Places like airports that consists of huge amount of international transportations every single day get even more crowded during the existence of the contact zone of Olympics. Rio Airports in Brazil prepared for long to welcome the sudden boost of tourism attracted to the summer Rio Olympics (Abelardo), the amount of tourist that crowded the airport even caused police protest during time of the games. Aside for the minor problems the sport event caused, this sign proves the amount of interest all around the world being attracted to this contact zone, and more importantly, the bursting amount of cultural interaction as people are actually visiting the host countries. Some past host cities of Olympics are London, Barcelona, Sarajevo, Paris, Tokyo, Los Angeles, and Beijing (Sablich); all these cities had welcomed large amount of tourist during the time of Olympics. This event further created an even larger contact zone, that so many different people from different countries visiting one place at the same time, leading to a more complex and closely interacted time of global
contact. Even with so much excitement and globalization the Olympics brings, it unfortunately also fits in one of the most common characteristics of contact zones defined in Pratt’s “Arts of the Contact Zone”, which is the highly asymmetrical relations of power. When looked closely at the information of the Olympics, most of the cities and countries that ever had the chance to host the Olympics in the past few decades are developed or developing countries with enough wealth, technology, and man power to have such a huge attraction on their land, since the Olympics is incredibly huge cost for the host country. However, the popularity and tourism it brings to the host during the game and further into the future has balanced out its economic cost. It spark a chance for the host country to show the world its economic, athletic, artistic, and technological power, opening to more opportunities and influences from the rest of the globe. However, it is much more difficult for smaller countries to retrieve this fantastic opportunity, and the top winners on the medal chart is usually conquered by more developed countries such as the United States, Japan, Britain, and China. This unbalance of power is unavoidable in the contact zones. The larger and more diverse the contact zone gets, the wider the power gap becomes; At least all participants gets to shout out for their nation in the Olympics and join same competitions, bringing status equality among all athletes, which is one of the most essential spirit of the Olympic games. Stretching out to all the characteristic fields of contact zones, the Olympics is definitely a massive contact zone with the massive cultural interactions not only within the athletes and audiences, but also triggers people around the globe to travel and connect.
As the cultures clash, meet, and grapple, this contact zone of the Olympics not only shows the diversely differences between different nations, but also brings us together as one through these universal sport competition, letting the world knows that we are all different but unified at this moment of
contact.