Wrestling with Power

Among the many happenings at the Olympics this week, Swedish wrestler Ara Abrahamian was stripped of his bronze medal and disqualified from his event after the event had taken place because, at the medal ceremony, after receiving his medal, Abrahamian took off his medal, placed it in the center of the wrestling competition mat, and walked away. Here, from the story on NBCOlympics.com that reported on the event, is description of why Abrahamian objected to receiving the bronze medal as well as the International Olympic Committee’s reasons for taking actions against Abrahamian:

The IOC executive board ruled Abrahamian's actions amounted to a political demonstration and a mark of disrespect to his fellow athletes.

"It was felt that his behavior on the medal podium and during the medal ceremony was not appropriate," IOC spokeswoman Giselle Davies said. "His behavior was not in the Olympic spirit of respect for his fellow athletes. Whatever grievances you may have, this was not the way to go about it."

The IOC said no athlete will receive Abrahamian's medal because his disqualification was not connected to the competition itself, meaning there will be only one bronze medalist, Nazmi Avluca of Turkey. Normally, there are two at each weight class.

The 28-year-old Abrahamian had to be restrained from going after matside officials following his loss to Minguzzi. He stormed away from the area where interviews are conducted and slammed a door to the dressing rooms so hard it shook an entire wall. He weighed whether to skip the bronze medal match, only to have friends talk him into competing.

The IOC said Abrahamian violated two rules of the Olympic charter, one which bans any sort of demonstrations and another which demands respect for all Olympic athletes.

"The awards ceremony is a highly symbolic ritual, acknowledged as such by all athletes and other participants," the IOC said. "Any disruption by any athlete, in particular a medalist, is in itself an insult to the other athletes and to the Olympic Movement. It is also contrary to the spirit of fair play."

Additionally, the IOC has apparently asked the international weightlifting federation to consider imposing additional sanctions against Abrahamian.

I don’t want to say that the IOC should have no recourse for handling situations in which athletes act in what appear to be egregious manners, especially manners that in some way threaten or insult other competitors. I also, after some thought, think that Abrahamian having his medal taken away is probably not the biggest deal, particularly since it looks like he doesn’t really want it anyway. Rather, the big deals here are the implications of both the IOC’s response and the IOC’s characterization of their justification.

First there is the matter of Abrahamian’s actions constituting “a political demonstration.” Abrahamian’s actions do not seem to be consciously connected to a larger political cause in the way that, for instance, the black power salute of John Carlos and Tommie Smith in 1968 was (and, notably, Carlos and Smith are largely celebrated today for their actions, yet the Olympics continue to maintain and enforce the rule that was used to condemn those actions in 1968, making me, at least, wonder if the folks in charge have really learned anything in the last 40 years). Still, Abrahamian’s actions can be considered political in the same sense that all actions can be considered political, as they are connected to ideology as well as systems of exclusion and marginalization. Abrahamian’s actions could, at the very least, be said to be an objection to the politics of judging and scoring that he believed led to him being awarded the bronze medal and not the gold medal. As such, the actions could be characterized as political. However, the IOC might want to turn their eye on themselves as well. The awarding of medals is also a political statement, as it very explicitly promotes an ideology of celebrating the accomplishments of athletes who meet certain qualifications over the accomplishments of others. Additionally, even if one accepts the premise that the games will record those who were fastest, strongest, etc., the ceremony adds an additional level of politics to the mix. One can say one wants to record who finished first, second, and third in an event and not believe that there is need to take several minutes to celebrate these individuals’ accomplishments in such a very public manner. One might, for instance, argue that this breeds complacency, arrogance, etc. and, on those grounds, find it quite objectionable. That the IOC itself characterizes the event as “a highly symbolic ritual” reinforces that the event is deeply political. As semiotics (the study of signs—and, as part of that symbols) and cultural studies have told us for years, all symbols and rituals fundamentally carry with them the politics of their expression and usage. Even someone who does not want to acknowledge all of this would be extremely obtuse not to acknowledge that the playing of a the gold medal winner’s host country’s national anthem, along with the display of the flags of the nations for which the medal winners have competed, oozes with national and international politics. So, when the IOC suggests that the medal ceremony is not a space for “political demonstration,” the IOC is making the implicit statement that they are allowed to make all the political demonstrations they wish, couching them as apolitical in the process, while the athletes better not make their own political demonstrations, particularly if they are demonstrations with which the IOC disagrees.

Second there is the matter of Abrahamian’s actions constituting “an insult to the other athletes.” It does not appear that Abrahamian took these actions in order to insult or show disrespect toward his fellow competitors. Rather, if insult or disrespect was being expressed, it seems to have been directed at the judges of the competition, whom Abrahamian appears to think insulted and showed disrespect toward him. Personally, I’m not sure whether or not I see Abrahamian’s actions as the best way to go about expressing his feelings. That opinion would be based on thinking similar to the old “two wrongs don’t make a right” adage. However, I can certainly understand why this might seem to be the best course of action to take. How often do we see appeals of the sort he would have to go through to protest the judges’ decisions come to fruition and draw attention to abuses or mistakes within the scoring system? I can think of one: pairs’ figure skating in the 2002 Winter Olympics. And that was a case that was to a large extent willed into fruition by media appeals and the politics of international identifications with and representations of the countries for which the two sets of athletes competed. It’s quite reasonable to see how Abrahamian felt that no actions other than those that he took would give him any sense of satisfaction of feeling like he was legitimately heard. If he appeals the decision (and, in all likelihood loses his appeal), it all occurs quietly and he likely ends up feeling like no one listened to him. If he just accepts the medal—i.e. “like a good sport”—he implicitly agrees to allow the system to determine his fate, even if he disagrees with what occurred, and nothing happens to allow him to be heard. If, though, he makes a very public demonstration of his disapproval, resigning himself to the potential of being disqualified and losing his medal in the process, what happens? Well … it has become a widely reported story receiving prominent treatment within various media forums. For someone who really wanted the gold and not the bronze, this would definitely seem to have its appeal. Perhaps that even played a role in Abrahamian’s decision to compete in the bronze medal match so that he could make the podium and make his statement. Within that context, Abrahamian’s actions don’t seem so much to be an insult of the judges; rather, they seem to be an expression of his own sentiments about the results. And, for that matter, to connect to the politics discussed in my first point, couldn’t the public celebration of the first, second, and third place finishers be seen as a kind of insult to the other athletes who competed against them—a kind of rubbing their faces in the dirt and asking the public to forget their accomplishment of getting to the Olympics and the efforts that they put forth in order to compete?

Ultimately, these first two points also lead to a third “big deal” about these actions. Based on the hypocrisy that appears to belie the actions of the IOC, which suggest a “We can do it, but you can’t” attitude toward the competitions, the case of Abrahamian being disqualified and stripped of his medals potentially serves as one of the many, many examples in the contemporary world in which organizations hold significant power over individuals and often hesitate little to exercise that power over individuals, whether by firing individuals on spurious grounds, not providing due process to individuals, determining the conditions under which products are made available to consumers, using the efforts of individuals for the organization with little concern for the well-being of the individuals, and so on? In this case, the IOC, as an organization, holds significantly more power than Abrahamian, as an individual working within that organization. So, then, when the IOC doles out sanctions in ways that belie fundamental hypocrisies that exist between their characterization of individuals’ actions that draw the sanctions and their characterization of their own actions, including their actions of imposing sanctions, wouldn’t this be a pretty significant abuse of power? Additionally, in the sense that the IOC’s actions squash dissent and prevent voices and perspectives from being heard, isn’t this an insult to the “fair play” of international cooperation that the Olympics purports to uphold?