Saturday, July 28, 2012

Outside views

What the US papers thought... .

With its hilariously quirky Olympic opening ceremony, a wild jumble of the celebratory and the fanciful; the conventional and the eccentric; and the frankly off-the-wall, Britain presented itself to the world Friday night as something it has often struggled to express even to itself: a nation secure in its own post-empire identity, whatever that actually is. Sarah Lyall, New York Times

They rolled out dancing nurses and smokestacks, poked fun at their weather and gave us Mr. Bean. Amid green and pleasant pastures, they read from the storybook that is Britain, not just Shakespeare but Peter Pan and Harry Potter. And if the Opening Ceremonies of the London Games sometimes seemed like the world’s biggest inside joke, the message from Britain resonated loud and clear: We may not always be your cup of tea, but you know — and so often love — our culture nonetheless. Antony Faiola, Washington Post

If there is a through-line to be untangled from its $42-million, cast-of-thousands, higgledy-piggledy progress through modern Britain, with industrial revolutionary Isambard Brunel (played by Kenneth Branagh, quoting Shakespeare) and World Wide Web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee (as himself) at the other, it might be something like, “Sorry for the unintended consequences, but we did give you steam engines, great pop music and comedy and the roots of social networking. It was ugly there for a while, but we’re all right -- and everybody dance now.” Robert Lloyd, Los Angeles Times

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