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benrogerswpg's review
4.0
I wish I read this in February this year
This was a good book. In fact, it was really good, and very interesting.
I just wish I read it during the Olympics this year - as I dedicated all spare time during those two weeks to read political books instead of watching.
Would recommend this book to learn more about the activism and political backings of the Olympics.
4.7/5
This was a good book. In fact, it was really good, and very interesting.
I just wish I read it during the Olympics this year - as I dedicated all spare time during those two weeks to read political books instead of watching.
Would recommend this book to learn more about the activism and political backings of the Olympics.
4.7/5
ausma23's review
3.0
As an avid Olympic fan and total news junkie, this was a very cool study of the intersections and interactions of the media, state, and protestors over the course of the Olympics in Vancouver in 2010 and London in 2012. Boykoff traces the protest movements against these Games from the early bidding days up through the actual event and analyzes how both the state and media responded to and helped shape the public’s perception of the dissenters. There are some truly fascinating observations about how small movements grew to put considerable pressure on the IOC and corporate sponsors, as well as some distressing details about how the Canadian and British governments leveraged the Games to justify ramping up security to authoritarian levels. I particularly enjoyed Boykoff’s analysis of how the media tended to ignore the various protest movements and acted more as a mouthpiece for Olympic propaganda.
I also found Boykoff’s overall perspective especially intriguing. In the opening chapters, he talks about how he has reconciled being both an Olympic fanatic (and almost an actual Olympic soccer player) with being a harsh critic of the way they wreak havoc every two years — something I have definitely felt a bit of cognitive dissonance about myself. As well as being an obviously skilled reporter and researcher, he has a talent for writing in a vivid style with a tinge of humor that captures both his disgust at the excess and spectacle of the Games and his respect for the anti-Olympic protestors advocating for their communities.
While it’s hard not to admire the incredible dedication and on-the-ground reporting Boykoff put into making the work of the unsung, tireless activists in Vancouver and London known, I found myself getting occasionally bored and maybe even overwhelmed by all of the information in this book. The pace is bogged down by long sections saturated with data, repetitive passages (some of which were literally copy and pasted from one chapter to another), and the tendency for Boykoff to delve into issues that felt a little too Media 101 for me. I ended up skipping over chapters in which he expounds on concepts that are pretty self-explanatory for anyone with even a basic understanding of media bias.
I also suspect that my lack of enthusiasm for some aspects of this book is owing to the fact that the two Olympics featured seem much more tame and uneventful in comparison to more recent Games. Whatever dissatisfaction and destruction their occurrence caused in Vancouver and London are greatly overshadowed by that of those in Sochi (which Putin used as a distraction to annex Crimea), Rio (which occurred amidst various major economic, political, and environmental crises), and even the upcoming (or at least not-yet-cancelled) Tokyo Olympics. Nonetheless, I’m glad this book introduced me to a scholar whose opinions of the Games and broader political views align with my own, and I’m looking forward to exploring Boykoff’s impressive bibliography further.
I also found Boykoff’s overall perspective especially intriguing. In the opening chapters, he talks about how he has reconciled being both an Olympic fanatic (and almost an actual Olympic soccer player) with being a harsh critic of the way they wreak havoc every two years — something I have definitely felt a bit of cognitive dissonance about myself. As well as being an obviously skilled reporter and researcher, he has a talent for writing in a vivid style with a tinge of humor that captures both his disgust at the excess and spectacle of the Games and his respect for the anti-Olympic protestors advocating for their communities.
While it’s hard not to admire the incredible dedication and on-the-ground reporting Boykoff put into making the work of the unsung, tireless activists in Vancouver and London known, I found myself getting occasionally bored and maybe even overwhelmed by all of the information in this book. The pace is bogged down by long sections saturated with data, repetitive passages (some of which were literally copy and pasted from one chapter to another), and the tendency for Boykoff to delve into issues that felt a little too Media 101 for me. I ended up skipping over chapters in which he expounds on concepts that are pretty self-explanatory for anyone with even a basic understanding of media bias.
I also suspect that my lack of enthusiasm for some aspects of this book is owing to the fact that the two Olympics featured seem much more tame and uneventful in comparison to more recent Games. Whatever dissatisfaction and destruction their occurrence caused in Vancouver and London are greatly overshadowed by that of those in Sochi (which Putin used as a distraction to annex Crimea), Rio (which occurred amidst various major economic, political, and environmental crises), and even the upcoming (or at least not-yet-cancelled) Tokyo Olympics. Nonetheless, I’m glad this book introduced me to a scholar whose opinions of the Games and broader political views align with my own, and I’m looking forward to exploring Boykoff’s impressive bibliography further.
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