(Re)Presenting, Embodying & Consuming Rio De Janeiro: Narratives of Nation and the 2016 Olympic Games

As one of the most visited cities in the Southern Hemisphere, sandwiched between world-renowned beaches and mountainous terrain, Rio has forever been in the midst of urban renewal—the literal city of the future. More recently, the entrepreneurial mode of governance pioneered in Barcelona, prior to the 1992 Summer Olympic event, influenced a wave of urban (re)development strategies enacted across 2016 Olympic host communities. The Strategic Plan of the City of Rio de Janeiro (Plano Estratégico da Cidade de Rio de Janeiro) named the (sport) mega-event as a desirable chance to restore tourism and attract foreign, as well as domestic investment (Torres Ribeiro, 2006). In this way, the mega-event offered an alternative avenue to “civilizing” the public sphere—e.g., whereas health and sanitation policies in the late 19^th century were intended to “civilize” (those included in) the populace, the current planning approach has allowed foreign capital to dictate the terms of renewal (Caulfield, 2000; Meade, 2010). More than a mere catalyst, the hosting of an internationally-recognized mega-event—in this case Rio 2106—served as a crucial vehicle in urban image (re)construction (see also Broudehoux, 2017; Silk, 2002). Within this paper, we examine the manner in which Rio de Janeiro was (re)presented within national media and “official” Olympic documentation, and discuss how preferred, selected, local narratives were embodied, appropriated and mobilized in, and through, Olympic spectacle.