Poster of the Week

Gay Olympic Games

Artist Unknown

Silkscreen, 1982

San Francisco, CA

34013

Of the many ongoing controversies surrounding the 22^nd Winter Olympic Games taking place in Sochi, Russia’s anti-gay laws criminalizing and marginalizing the LGBTQ communities continue to be one of the most widely protested.  While it’s easy to point the finger at homophobic Russians, the U.S. has a long history of discrimination against people in the LGBTQ communities. The Gay Olympics was launched in San Francisco in 1982.  Less than three weeks before the start of the Gay Olympics, event organizers were sued by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the U.S. Olympic Committee (USOC) which claimed that the USOC had exclusive rights to the word Olympic in the United States. Defendants in the lawsuit contended that the law was capriciously applied and that if the Nebraska Rat Olympics and the Police Olympics did not face similar lawsuits, neither should the Gay Olympics. Many believed that homophobia was a motivation behind the lawsuit. After the ruling blocked the use of the name "Gay Olympic Games," they became known—and continue to be known—as the Gay Games.  This poster was made before the ruling.

Despite the popular myth that the Olympics celebrate the skill, talent and dedication of the athletes, the Olympics have always been primarily about political and financial wheeling and dealing.  For those who have doubts, please consider the following:

1936 – Hitler intended that the Berlin Olympics would demonstrate the supremacy of Nazi ideology. After African American Jesse Owens won four gold medals and set two world records, Hitler’s propaganda mission suffered a serious blow.  Marty Glickman and Sam Stoller were the only two Jews on the American track and field team who went to the Berlin Olympics. They were scheduled to run in the 4 x 100 meter relay event but their coach, Dean Cromwell, pulled them at the last minute partly because of anti-Semitism and partly because Cromwell and Avery Brundage, president of the U.S. Olympic Committee, didn't want to offend or embarrass their Nazi hosts by having two American Jews on the winning podium.  Earlier, Brundage had opposed a boycott of the Berlin Olympics, arguing that politics had no place in sport. 

1956 – The Soviet Union sent more than 200,000 soldiers to put down a nationalist uprising in Hungary. The Hungarian water polo team fled the country during the uprising, and made their way to the Melbourne Olympics. When they faced off against the Soviet water polo team, the match was violent, with both teams trading blows in the pool.

1968 – The Olympic Games were held in Mexico City. Ten days before the opening, the Mexican military fired on student protesters, killing hundreds.  This became known as the Tlatelolco massacre.  After winning the gold and bronze medals in the 200 meters, African Americans Tommie Smith and John Carlos received their medals on the podium shoeless but wearing black socks to symbolize black poverty, black scarves to symbolize black pride, and a single black glove on a hand raised in salute.  They had their metals taken away, received death threats and were ostracized by the U.S. sporting establishment.

Pugno Chiuso Contra il Razzismo USA

Translation: Fist Closed Against Racism in the USA 

Partito Comunista Italiano (PCI)

Offset, 1968

Rome, Italy

5818

Translation:

Fist Closed Against Racism in the USA

Smith and Carlos at the Olympic Games

Bare Feet: the poverty of the black people

Black Glove: the mourning of the black people

Closed Fist: the willingness to fight

The Italian Communists are with them against imperialism and racism

1972 – The Munich Olympics were the first Games held in Germany since Hitler’s 1936 Berlin Games.  The West German government hoped to present to the world the democratic and optimistic West Germany.  Instead, 11 Israeli athletes were killed by the Palestinian terrorist group Black September who had originally intended to exchange the Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners.  After a one-day suspension, the Games continued.  Following the Games, the Israeli government launched Operation Wrath of God and Operation Spring of Youth to track down and kill those responsible for the massacre.

1980 – When the U.S. and Soviets were fighting a proxy war in Afghanistan, President Jimmy Carter led a 62 nation boycott of the Soviet Olympics.

1984 – The Soviets retaliated to the 1980 boycott by leading a 14 nation boycott of the Olympics in Los Angeles.

Official Olympics Police State

Fireworks Graphics

Silkscreen, 1984

Los Angeles, California

3130

This poster decries the militarization of Los Angeles during the 1984 Olympics, when officials invoked heightened security measures in response to later discredited reports that the city faced a threat of terrorist action that would be comparable to the attack on Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.   

Sources:

http://worldpoliticsblog.wordpress.com/2008/08/05/politics-in-olympic-history/

http://www.thenation.com/article/178053/lgbt-movement-takes-aim-sochi#

http://www.democracynow.org/2014/2/5/celebration_capitalism_the_olympics_global_protests

http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2014/2/6/the_sochi_olympics_from_putin_and

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/olympics.html

Poster of the Week

Wir Rufen die Jugend der Welt

Klaus Staeck

Offset, 1988

Heidelberg, Germany

We Call to the Youth of the World

11632

CSPG’s Poster of the Week demonstrates the long tradition of corporate sponsorship and the culture of consumerism that submerges and envelops the Olympic Games. The commercialization of the Games has caused the event, meant for the celebration of sport amateurism and conflict-free competition, into an advertisement orgy. Created in 1988, the renowned German graphic designer Klaus Staeck continued his politically charged satirical work and designed a poster that remains relevant as four of the five corporation logos replacing the rings seen in his poster are still official sponsors of the Games.

Sponsors have been a part of the Games since the inaugural 1896 event. Slowly evolving, the infusion of money into the 1984 Games in Los Angeles was the turning point for the Olympic movement. Led by the aggressive Peter Ueberroth, the Games’ financial success garnered the attention of the IOC and how they could benefit from the marketing revenue. By 1985 they established The Olympic Partner Program (TOP) to create a revenue vacuum where a select, and exclusive, club of highly invested corporations was formed. By doing so, it concentrated control over who was and will be making money from the Games. At the 2004 Games in Athens, the Greek government had already banned competitor ads on billboards throughout the city prior to the event and spectators at the venues were being vetted by security checking if they had any visible non-official logos not associated with the Games prior to broadcasting.

Today British locals are being bombarded by the official sponsors’ advertisements and clouding the event for television viewers as well. In London the British government, after the IOC’s insistence prior to awarding them the Games, is implementing the London Olympic Act 2006. It is an Orwellian measure to protect the TOP sponsors at all costs. Leading up to the Games, Olympic spooks have corralled such marketing threats to their corporate sponsors such as a local butcher, a baker, a florist and an 81 year-old woman selling hand knitted Olympic memorabilia for a fundraiser. There are currently hundreds of uniformed Olympic officials travelling the country to protect the brand of the Olympics and its sponsors. One of their main objectives is to quell guerilla/ambush marketing. In 2010 Seb Coe, the Chair of the London 2012 Organising Committee, wrote in the Official Brand Protection manual that these activities “undermine our ability to generate revenue for the Games.” This is in line with the IOC’s modern Olympics: the spirit of competition is limited to the sports field and suppressed in the business arena.

According to CNN’s Juliet Mann, “The Olympics (are) the second most valuable brand in the world, after Apple. They calculate the Olympic brand is worth more than all of its other major sponsors -- including Samsung, GE and Coca-Cola -- put together. They have valued the Olympics brand at $47.6 billion, an 87% increase since the Beijing Olympics in 2008.” And the International Olympic Committee (IOC) received $ 3.8 billion in television revenue for the 2010 and 2012 Olympic Games, an increase of 40% over the total for 2006 and 2008.

Pierre de Coubertin, the French aristocrat that reintroduced the Olympics for the modern era, would probably not recognize the Olympics as they are played today. It does not follow the ideal of laying down arms by all nations for a moment of peace to compete. The Olympic Games from 1940-1948 were cancelled due to World War II. The world is still rife with war and today’s IOC continues to make profits from controversial corporations also indifferent to the peace the Olympic rings symbolize. Five rings representing the five inhabited continents interlocked in peace. Staeck’s poignant criticism on the rings’ symbols still resonates today. Peace is being replaced by greed and the “call to the youth of the world” is leading them further away from the original ideals of the Olympic Games.

Sources:

http://www.klaus-staeck.de/index.php

http://edition.cnn.com/2012/07/26/business/business-olympics-brand/index.html

J. Gordon Hylton, “The Over-Protection of Intellectual Property Rights in Sport in the United States and Elsewhere,” Journal of Legal Aspects of Sports Winter 2011, vol. 21, no. 43. http://www.forbes.com/sites/jacquelynsmith/2012/07/18/london-2012-olympic-sponsorship-round-up/

Chrysostomo Giannoulakis, “Olympic sponsorship: evolution, challenges and impact on the Olympic Movement,” International Journal of Sports Marketing & Sponsorship July 2008, vol. 9, no. 4 (256-70).

Jay Scherer, “Olympic Villages and Large-scale Urban Development: Crises of Capitalism, Deficits of Democracy?” Sociology October 2011, vol. 45 no. 5 (782-79). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympic_Games 

http://www.la84foundation.org/6oic/primer_text2.htm

http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/dont-take-the-clean-venue-policy-at-the-olympic-games-too-far-ioc/2011347.article

 http://iwishihadthoughtofthat.wordpress.com/2012/07/14/the-adidas-olympic-campaign-and-a-bit-of-a-rant-about-consumerism/

http://www.londonolympicsmarketing.com/p/london-olympic-act-2006.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-18182541

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/britain-flooded-with-brand-police-to-protect-sponsors-7945436.html

http://www.london2012.com/mm/Document/Publications/General/01/25/29/25/guidelines-for-business-use_Neutral.pdf

 http://newsjunkiepost.com/2012/08/01/olympics-from-celebration-of-the-human-spirit-to-circus-of-consumerism/

Poster of the Week

Pugno Chiuso Contra il Razzismo USA

Partito Comunista Italiano (PCI)

Offset, circa 1968

Rome, Italy

Fist Closed Against Racism in the USA

5818

Translated Text:

“Smith and Carlos at the Olympic Games

Bare feet: the poverty of the black people

Black glove: the mourning of the black people

Closed fist: the willingness to fight

The Italian Communists are with them against imperialism and racism”

CSPG’s Poster of the Week commemorates the moment from the Mexico City 1968 Summer Olympics when Tommie Smith and John Carlos— winners of the gold and bronze medals of the 200-meter race that year—decided to use their position atop the Olympic stand to make a powerful statement about racism, inequality, and human rights. Both stood on the podium shoeless to represent black poverty. Smith wore a black scarf around his neck to represent black pride. Carlos wore a string of beads to commemorate black people who had been lynched. While the U.S. National Anthem played, both raised black gloved fists and bowed their heads in solidarity with the Civil Rights Movement. Silver medal winner, Australian Peter Norman, supported their protest, and all three athletes wore Olympic Project for Human Rights (OPHR) badges.

As stated by John Carlos in a 2011 interview with Democracy Now, “I wasn’t there for the race. I was there to actually make a statement. I was ashamed of America for America’s deeds, what they were doing in history, as well as what they were doing at that particular time.” Because of their decision to make such an overt political statement, they were ostracized when they returned home and suspended by the United States Olympic Committee. The story was also allowed to circulate by the media and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) that they were stripped of their medals as a way of squelching future dissent by other athletes.

Forty-four years later, not much has changed.

The London 2012 Summer Olympics began this weekend amidst protests questioning not only the justification for spending $17 billion in preparations for the games in taxpayer money at a time when the economy is falling deeper into recession, but also questioning laws like the London Olympic Games and Paralympics Games Act of 2006 which suppress speech, even that deemed as a threat to corporate sponsors and Olympic symbols, by empowering not only the army and police but also private security forces to deal with broadly defined “security issues” through the use of physical force.

Some Olympians have begun to stand against this suppression of speech by the IOC by protesting Rule 40 of the Olympic Charter, which places a ban on publicizing individual athlete’s sponsors during the Games if these have not been approved as official Olympic sponsors. These athletes, like 400-meter gold metal hopeful Sanya Richards-Ross, say they want a voice in the distribution of sponsorship money that currently goes directly to the IOC. "Six billion dollars is being traded hands behind the scenes," Richards-Ross said. "I’ve been very fortunate to do very well around the Olympics, but so many of my peers struggle in the sport, and I just think it’s unjust that they’re not being considered.”

Although protesting via Tweets is a far cry from protesting on a winner’s podium, and protesting about athletic sponsorship rights a far cry from protesting about human rights, standing against Rule 40 is still a stand against an out of touch institution which many have begun to deem the 1% of the 1%, as well as a stand against the hyper-corporatization of the Olympic Games.

Sources:

http://www.edgeofsports.com/2012-05-22-730/index.html

http://www.edgeofsports.com/2012-05-14-729/index.html

http://www.democracynow.org/2012/7/26/lockdown_in_london_professor_ex_us

http://www.democracynow.org/2011/10/12/john_carlos_1968_olympic_us_medalist

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/bike-blog/2012/jul/30/critical-mass-arrest-olympic-games?newsfeed=true

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2012/07/london_olympics_protests_what_s_behind_the_shocking_suppression_of_free_speech_at_u_s_political_conventions_and_the_olympic_games_.html

http://www.latimes.com/sports/sportsnow/la-sp-on-track-athletes-protest-20120730,0,2952647.story

Poster of the Week

1982 Gay Olympic Games (original and censored versions)
Rob Anderson
Silkscreen, 1982
San Francisco, California

On Wednesday, August 4, 2010, Federal Judge Vaughn R. Walker ruled that California’s 2008 Proposition 8, banning same-sex marriage, was “unconstitutional.” Many Proposition 8 supporters have criticized the judge’s ruling as biased because he is openly gay. Yet this George H.W. Bush appointee had been criticized by the LGBTQ community for a 1982 case where he represented the U.S. Olympic Committee against the Gay Olympic Games.

Judge Walker’s role in this 1982 lawsuit so angered the LGBTQ community and their supporters that two dozen House Democrats, led by Nancy Pelosi, opposed his nomination by President Ronald Reagan to the Federal Court in 1987. He was nominated again by President George H. W. Bush in 1989, and confirmed.

CSPG’s Poster of the Week graphically shows the impact of the 1982 Gay Olympic Games decision. The Gay Games is the world’s largest sporting and cultural event organized by and specifically for LGBTQ athletes, artists, musicians, and others. It welcomes participants of every sexual orientation and every skill level. Originally called the Gay Olympic Games, it was launched in San Francisco in 1982.

Less than three weeks before the inaugural Gay Olympic Games, event organizers were sued by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the U.S. Olympic Committee (USOC) which claimed that the USOC had exclusive rights to the word Olympic in the United States. Defendants in the lawsuit contended that the law was capriciously applied and that if the Nebraska Rat Olympics and the Police Olympics did not face similar lawsuits, neither should the Gay Olympics. Many believed that homophobia was a motivation behind the lawsuit.

The ruling blocking the use of the name "Olympic" came down about a week after Rob Anderson had delivered the first batch of posters to the Gay Olympic Games Committee headquarters. It was a hand-screened run of 1,000. As they were only done in small batches, not that many had the word “Olympic” blacked out, probably less than 20. Since the Committee could no longer sell them in their original state, the posters went "underground" and the uncensored prints were sold to frame shops in the Castro. Both the original and censored versions are shown here.

The censored “Gay Games” poster is included in “Out of the Closet & Into the Street—Posters of LGBTQ Struggles & Celebrations” currently on display at the One Archives Gallery & Museum through September 26, 2010

626 N. Robertson Blvd.

West Hollywood, CA 90069

(entrance on El Tovar)

Gallery Hours:

Friday: 4:30-8:30

Saturday & Sunday: 1-5

Poster of the Week

"Olympics and Colonialism"

Olympic Resistance Network

The 2010 Winter Olympics takes place in Vancouver & Whistler, on unceded Indigenous land, from February 12-28 2010. Over the past seven years, there has been a groundswell of opposition to the Games. This began in 2002 when members of the St'at'imc and Secwepemc Nations filed a submission with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to oppose the bid.

The Olympic Resistance Network (ORN) is based in Vancouver, Coast Salish Territories and exists as a space to coordinate anti-2010 Olympics efforts. In doing so, we act in solidarity with other communities across the province – particularly Indigenous communities who have been defending their land even before the onslaught of the Olympics.

Stephen Harper, quoted in the poster, is the prime minister of Canada.

Olympic Resistance Network

Poster of the Week

Wir Rufen die Jugend der Welt

[We Call to the Youth Of the World]

Klaus Staeck

Offset, 1988

Heidelberg, Germany

23.3 x 33.1 in.; 59.3 x 84 cm

As the 2010 Winter Olympics kicks off in Vancouver, B.C. we are reminded that sports is more than a game, and that it is indelibly linked with politics and commerce. This poster incorporates (literally and figuratively) the slogan of the 1988 German Olympics, “We Call to the Youth Of the World.” By transforming the Olympic rings into the corporate logos of Mercedes, Coca-Cola, Adidas, McDonald's, and BMW, this poster focuses on the increasing commercialism of the Games through corporate sponsorship. The words ‘We call upon the youth of the world," normally used as an invitation to the next Olympiad, are subverted to become a comment on consumerism.