It was paramount for the English-speaking Caribbean to host a successful 2007 Cricket World Cup and field an outstanding West Indian cricket team for the international sporting mega-event. For CARICOM and the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB), there were two principle goals – first, to exhibit regional Caribbean identity, and second, to be triumphant under the leadership of the West Indian cricket team’s captain, Trinidadian Brian Lara. Identities are multifaceted and intricate, negotiated and renegotiated, based on a history of economic, political and cultural forces. This thesis interrogates Caribbean identity through textual analysis of the broadcast of the opening ceremony and regional newspaper coverage of the spectacle as well as ensuing events that were held in eight of the Caribbean countries from 11 March to 28 April 2007. The thesis questions whether this mega-event served as a catalyst toward Caribbean identity construction.

This thesis examines the 2008 Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremony, which was an unprecedented effort by the Chinese Party-state to reinvent Chinese national culture for consumption at home and abroad. Director Zhang Yimou delivered a spectacular event – three-thousand chanting Confucian scholars, two-thousand Ming Dynasty sailors, a grid of giant dancing printing blocks and an endless display of fireworks presented a sensational spectacle of Chinese culture and history. How should we interpret these symbols representing a romantic Chinese past? I argue that the “ancient” history on display in the Opening Ceremony is actually a product of China’s recent past: its interactions with the West, revolution, nationalism and communism, and the turn toward capitalism and authoritarianism. This thesis pulls the Opening Ceremony back into this historical context, closely examining three of its most prominent symbols: Zheng He and his voyages to the Indian Ocean, the Four Great Inventions, and Confucius. My results show that, 1) far from being a product of China’s history alone, these symbols are a co-production of China and the West, in which both identities were mutually constituted; 2) they are created in the context of political power, and take on different meanings in response to political shifts; 3) they suggest a state desire for power and status rather than simply a revival of cultural heritage. This research will contribute to an understanding of the modern political uses of Chinese history. / Graduate

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Made available in DSpace on 2016-12-23T14:02:14Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Guilherme Ferreira Santos.pdf: 1942591 bytes, checksum: ea9529b6ec26447454ef59673448a6f9 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012-02-23 / No bojo do processo da gênese do olimpismo, um elemento chaves que surge na dinâmica do mesmo é a televisão. Um dos momentos quando esse elemento mais se explicita nos Jogos Olímpicos é justamente quando há a maior expressão dos valores do olimpismo e a maior demonstração simbólica da celebração do potencial do esporte: as cerimônias de abertura. Considera-se tal momento como integrante de um contexto social mais amplo, aqui denominado (de acordo com Bauman) de modernidade líquida, onde a forma é difícil de ser mantida e onde predominam a estética do consumo e a instantaneidade. Esta pesquisa também se ancora teoricamente nos estudos dos Jogos Olímpicos como performances culturais . De acordo com essa abordagem, o traço espetacular dos Jogos dá o seu caráter atrativo. Um dos meios de essa atração se concretizar é a imagem que se faz das cerimônias de abertura através das narrações televisivas, as quais são construções cuidadosamente criadas de um evento ao vivo, diferindo-se em sua apresentação e impacto na medida em que viajam pelo globo. Nesse contexto, é válido o estudo de uma narração televisiva brasileira contemporânea. Para tanto, coloca-se como questão principal do trabalho a seguinte pergunta: como uma rede brasileira de televisão (a Rede Globo) constrói, apresenta e traduz sentidos sobre valores no/do esporte e sobre valores olímpicos na transmissão da cerimônia de abertura dos Jogos Olímpicos de Pequim-2008? Desse modo, objetiva-se: identificar os valores do esporte e do olimpismo (e seus possíveis deslocamentos de sentidos) que aparecem no discurso televisivo da Rede Globo durante a cerimônia de abertura dos Jogos Olímpicos de Pequim-2008; compreender como os narradores/comentaristas brasileiros dessa rede de televisão constroem as narrativas sobre os valores do/no esporte e sobre os valores olímpicos no contexto da complexa oscilação social e esportiva em que vivemos hoje ao narrarem através de um elemento cotidiano sintomático da citada complexidade (a televisão) uma performance cultural não cotidiana. Metodologicamente, provem-se, aqui, do chamado método qualitativo . Os dados foram coletados a partir de fontes primárias. Tais fontes se inserem na pesquisa documental, que também é classificadora deste estudo. Compõe os dados um texto oral a narração televisiva da cerimônia de abertura dos Jogos de Pequim-2008, o qual chama-se aqui de corpus de análise, sendo este constituído da fala de narradores, repórteres e comentaristas de uma emissora de televisão brasileira.Utilizam-se como técnicas principais de abordagem a Análise Crítica do Discurso e o paradigma indiciário. Na análise dos dados foi possível identificar que a maioria dos valores olímpicos e esportivos está de algum modo presente na narração televisiva da cerimônia de abertura dos Jogos Olímpicos de Pequim-2008. A maneira como tais valores são referidos não abrange uma exposição textual propositiva, isto é, são poucos os momentos da narração estudada quando os narradores separam uma ocasião discursiva para falarem específica e propositalmente sobre os valores olímpicos e esportivos. Além disso, os termos identificados na narração são mais ligados ao caráter espetacular dos Jogos, especialmente quando as falas advém dos profissionais da comunicação. / In the midst of the genesis process of the Olympic spirit a key element that arises in the dynamics of it is the television. One of the moments when this element is more explicit in the Olympics is just when there is the greatest expression of the Olympic values and the most symbolic demonstration of the celebration potential of the sport: the opening ceremonies. These moment is considered as part of a broader social context, here called (according to Bauman) of liquid modernity, where the shape is difficult to maintain and where predominate the aesthetics of consumption and the instantaneousness. This research also is theoretically anchored in studies that consider the Olympic Games as cultural performances . According to this approach the spectacular feature of the Games gives his attractive character. One way of achieving this attraction is through the image that is made of the opening ceremonies by the television s narrations which are constructions carefully created for a live event, differing in their presentation and impact on the extent to which it travels the globe. In this context, the study of a narration in contemporary Brazilian television is worthy. To this end, stands as the leading question of the work the following interrogative: how a Brazilian television network (Rede Globo) builds, displays and translates meanings of sports and Olympics values in the transmission of the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games-2008? Thus, work s objective is: to identify the Olympics and the sports values (and possible shifts of meaning) that appear in the televised speech of Rede Globo during the opening ceremony of Beijing Olympics-2008; understand how the Brazilian narrators/commentators construct texts about the Olympics and sports values in the context of the complex social and sport oscillation in which we live today when they narrate through television (that is a crucial element of the quoted oscillation) a cultural performance not daily. Methodologically, it is used the so-called qualitative method . Data were collected from primary sources. Such sources are included in documentary research, which also classifies this study. An oral text compose the data the television narration of the opening ceremony of Beijing Olympics-2008, which is called analysis corpus. The analysis corpus is made up of narrators , reporters and commentators speeches of a Brazilian television station. The Critical Discourse Analysis and the evidential paradigm are used as the main approach techniques. For data analysis, we found that the majority of sports and Olympic values are somehow present in the television narration of the opening ceremony of Beijing Olympics-2008. The way these values are listed does not include a textual display purpose, that is, there are few moments when the narration studied is shown as a separate discursive occasion to speak specifically and purposefully about the sports and the Olympic values. In addition, terms identified in the narrative are more connected to the spectacular nature of the Games, especially when the speech comes from communication professionals.

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