Making An Olympian Mountain out of Lip-synching Molehill
You could be forgiven for thinking that the media are competing for gold in China bashing, as if spurred by Michael Phelps‘ epic success. What else can explain they’re abuzz with ‘fake’ footprints of firework and ‘miming’ child singer?
UK’s Telegraph scooped the computer generated fireworks but it pales in comparison to the human interest story, as every newspaper worth its salt has duly reported the “sleight of voice“. Some even go so far as to connect the 9-year-old girl’s lip-syncing (to another girl’s voice) to the fabricated fake dumpling fillings of cardboard, surfaced last summer in the height of another bout of China bashing.
Perhaps they’re too caught up in the Olympic fever, reflexively making a mountain out of a molehill. But what they fail to highlight is the fact that both controversies came to light in the Chinese media. The main reason given by the producers of the opening ceremonies, it seems, was aesthetic in nature. Then there’s such a thing as reading too much into the Chinese psyche – obsessiveness with perfection, control freaks, and worse yet, paranoia.
