Fingertips’ Seb Stafford-Bloor has a brief moan about the about the newly unveiled Olympic mascots…
Many adjectives have been banded about in reaction to yesterday’s unveiling of the Olympic mascots for 2012, most of them unflattering, a considerable number explicit, but probably the most appropriate is ‘British’. So afraid has the country become of offending or alienating any member of its eclectic cast, that any mainstream output has to be so unobjectionable and bland that it loses all meaning. The Olympic mascots are the graphical equivalent of a BBC One comedy.
It is well documented of course, albeit in a retrospective defensive way, that ‘Wenlock’ and ‘Mandeville’ have been created with children and families in mind, as essentially all mascots are. However, should cuddly versions of the two start appearing in little Timmy or Tommy’s bed, the results could potentially be therapy inducing. They’re flatly terrifying. ‘Wenlock’ in particular, the gold pointy one with one eye, looks like something Odysseus might have encountered on his return from Troy.
Naturally, a good mascot does not a successful Olympics make, but add together the hastily produced vignette during the Beijing closing ceremony and the mystifyingly poor London 2012 logo, and this country’s Olympic effort already has a perfect strike rate for failure. The former was particularly heinous, the product surely of a production brainstorm that ran dry of ideas – ‘’Oh, to hell with it – let’s just use Beckham again and put him on a London bus’. It is said that if you were listening carefully after that particular moment, you could hear the groan of the global audience – “Well, that’s going to be **** isn’t it.”
The key ingredients of any spectacle tend to involve elements that are different to the norm, bold decisions and invention. Sadly for Britain, such things are our greatest enemy. Beyond the predictable and mundane, anything else is liable to offend. With no gender, no specific personality, and no obvious racial or religious affiliation, Wenlock and Mandeville are ironically perfect. That the bright light atop of both of their heads ‘sort of looks like a taxi light, which is obviously synonymous with London’ must surely be an oversight – otherwise definitely offensive to those unable to frequently use taxis, and a cruel reminder of their misfortune. A big, bold outraged Daily Mail headline in waiting – ‘MASCOT IN SICK POOR JIBE’.
In time, there will almost certainly be a failure of far greater magnitude that eclipses these early shortcomings – possibly Bob Crow organising an RMT strike at some point – but for now we can look forward to explanations of obscure Olympic events with our new utterly meaningless friends. Close your eyes, and you can already picture an over-tanned Gary Lineker introducing ‘a quick explanation of the Discus, with a little help from Wenlock and Mandeville.’
Can’t wait.
