The Opening Ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games (directed by Danny Boyle) was a spectacular, if somewhat selective, re-imagining of British history and Britishness, and its opening section, titled 'Green and Pleasant Land', offered a perfect example of how the dominant form of the 'pastoral' operates within contemporary culture. While it was obvious that what was presented was not intended to be historically accurate, the nature of this reenactment was highly revealing both in the way it manufactured a historical narrative by combining activities, people and events that were clearly from different periods, and in reinforcing popular prejudice regarding the role of the Industrial Revolution in the transformation of the British way of life.
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