Proxy Bodies Speak Out: Olympics Diplomacy, Nationalism and Constructions of Russia’s Anti-Gay Agenda in the Social Media of Olympians

• In Event: Sex, Sochi, and the Media: Olympic Stakeholder Responses to Russia's Civil Rights Crisis

Abstract

In the wake of Russia’s new anti-gay legislation and in the lead-up to the Sochi Olympic Winter Games, numerous Olympians, including high-profile American figure skater Johhny Weir, tweeted their anger with the International Olympic Committee (IOC), Olympic sponsors, and the 2014 host nation itself. In recent years, the IOC has demonstrated significant ambivalence about the place of social media in the world’s largest media spectacle. For instance, while the IOC encouraged athletes to blog and use Twitter in the London 2012 Olympics, which was billed as the first social media Games, they also required them to follow a strict set of binding guidelines. A number of Olympians, including Hope Solo, Michel Morganella and Voula Papachristou, disobeyed the guidelines and tweeted inflammatory remarks. The IOC responded swiftly and, in some cases, expelled athletes from the Games.

I suggest the rush of the IOC, along with national governments and traditional sports media broadcasters, to censor and condemn outspoken athletes can be read through the lens of Clifford Geertz’s theory of deep play. As spectators, we invest our collective identities in the athletic performances of our international athletes. In effect, athletes become proxies for nation-states and athletic contests become proxy wars. I argue that in order for this transference of identity and emotion to best occur, proxy athletes have traditionally remained one-dimensional media figures. That is, they primarily spoke to the press about their training and their games. If audiences come to understand international athletes as complex, multi-layered individuals with disparate opinions about a range of social, political and cultural issues, they cease to become such easy proxies for deep play.

In this paper, I will elaborate this approach by analyzing the social media activity of Olympians in both the lead-up to and during the Sochi Winter Olympics. I suggest that Russia’s controversial anti-gay legislation is an ideal case study for problematizing key assumptions associated with deep play as social media empowered athletes continue to reveal perspectives and opinions that differ significantly from those of Olympic broadcasters and sponsors, national governments, and home audiences.

Author

• Christopher Jonathan Finlay, Loyola Marymount U