Jameson (1991, p. xviii), following Adorno, Horkheimer, and the Frankfurt School, places us in a period called “late capitalism, ” a period which Jameson also refers to as ‘”multinational capitalism,’ ‘spectacle or image society/ ‘media capitalism/ ‘the world system/ even ‘postmodernism’ itself.”
Jameson emphasizes that this conception of postmodernism “is a historical rather than a merely stylistic one cannot stress too greatly the radical distinction between a view for which the postmodern is one (optional) style among many others available and one which seeks to grasp it as the cultural dominant of the logic of late capitalism” (pp. 45-6).
Jameson argues that “culture is today no longer endowed with the relative autonomy it once enjoyed” (p. 48). In this sense, the (postmodern Olympic Games in all their commercialism are not aberrations but logical expressions of the age in which they exist.
For those suspicious of the postmodern as jargon, Jameson concedes: “I occasionally get just as tired of the slogan ‘postmodern’ as anyone else, but wonder whether any other concept can dramatize the issues in quite so effective and economical a fashion”.
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Postmodern Media’s ports pay off. In fact, the capital produced by the postmodern era’s media has carried the Olympic movement through two major financial crises since World War II. First, having been near bankruptcy in the decade before, the IOC officially declared in 1970 that all television revenues belonged to the IOC rather than, as previously, to the host city.
Second, when Tehran’s was the only other bid to host the 1984 Games, the IOC was forced to accept the commercially sponsored 1984 Los Angeles plan without the usual guarantee of public monies. Both commercial turns proved so lucrative to the IOC that Olympic leadership is now as attuned to economic progress and success as it is to athletic achievement.
These commercial changes, combined with Olympic hostage-taking and boycotts made attractive because of the Olympics’ media prominence, led Jeffrey Segrave and Donald Chu in 1981 (p. 363^1 to conclude: “The politicization and commercialization of the modern Olympics has reached such a crescendo that few could deny that the idealistic intentions of the Games have become increasingly immersed in a sea of propaganda.”
As technologies of communication have made possible the incredible media outreach of media sports such as the Olympics, they have also brought about an increasing co modification of everything associated with sports. “Co modification” reduces the value of any act or object to only its monetary exchange value, ignoring historical, artistic, or relational added values.
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In addition, co modification has a fetishistic quality in which the commodities, because they represent commercial advantage, take on a bloated psychological importance to the individual or group. In recent decades the postmodern Olympics have become a virtual circus of commodity values and fetishes.
Corporate logos and sponsorship abound, Olympic memorabilia multiply, merchandising and marketing preoccupy officials, shoe sponsors become powerful decision makers, promotions begin months before the Games and suffuse their media presentation, and Olympic leaders and the public learn to accept this co modification as if it were part of the (post)modern Olympic creed.