We are replaying Avatar in a remote corner of the Pacific. But this time it’s about #Paris2024.
On the one hand, an almost unreal wave, a pure jewel of nature around which the Polynesian natives, surfers, divers and fishermen, heirs to a relationship with nature that we associate with the first peoples, and which we wish we hadn’t lost altogether.
On the other hand, the Olympic Games. A dream, an institution, but also a multinational, the IOC, which like FIFA is sometimes more powerful than states, moving from continent to continent more for financial and geopolitical reasons than sports.
On one side, a Western vision talks about norms, concrete blocks in the reef, air conditioning. On the other, people peacefully expressing their concerns, saying that their wooden tower has existed for years, it does the job for WSL events and that should be enough.
While we can imagine that reality is more nuanced, that not everything is so Manichean, and that we need to look beyond the parallel with the Hollywood film that forces the issue, the latest video posted by Matahi Drollet on Instagram hits the nail on the head because it perfectly embodies the times. We wonder how the two sides got here, how and especially why the institution persists in this clash of cultures and worldviews. It’s worrying.
First, sorry to hit where it hurts, but it’s hard to understand why the Tahitians didn’t fight years ago to prevent the Olympics from coming to them. How could they have imagined, even though they obviously expected economic benefits and understandable pride, that their little paradise wouldn’t suffer in one way or another from the presence of this huge machine that is the Olympics, that it wouldn’t cause collateral damage?
On the other hand, and this mistake is unforgivable, how could the people responsible for the “technical” aspect have imagined that in today’s world, their big, comfortable aluminum tower, firmly seated on multiple concrete blocks on a millennia-old reef, wouldn’t appear as the epitome of arrogance, complacency, and irresponsibility of a Western world that still doesn’t know how to set limits to its conception of the future? A world that doesn’t see the reef and fauna, but “safety standards,” air conditioning, and servers, and can’t imagine that a place shouldn’t be indelibly marked for a three-day event.
The IOC, however, is not new to controversies over the traces and wastelands it leaves behind, and its cynicism is established. The French candidacy should have been more subtle. It’s a failure. It’s ruined.
