Arts Style and National Identity Reflected in the Olympics Opening Ceremonies: A Comparison of the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the 2012 London Olympics

The study compared and analyzed the opening ceremonies of the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the 2012 London Olympics, representing Asia and Europe, respectively. In the aspect of the national identity, the opening ceremony of the 2008 Olympics was a cluster of the "Imperial China" which proposed the image of China as a powerhouse in the future world. The 2012 London Olympics showed the concept of value-oriented populism with the analog methods to express the British society. From the viewpoint of artistic expression, both opening ceremonies are characterized by post-modernism. China pursued eclecticism with the proposal of new science and technologies and high modernistic elements for elegant art with new, serious, and future-oriented concepts. The United Kingdom followed the traditional features of post-modernism including value-orientation, polymorphism, generality, populism, happening, eclecticism, and carefree.