The high-profile cancellation of the third and final day (September 1, 2013) of Made Event’s Electric Zoo festival on Randall’s Island, New York, following the drug overdoses of two festivalgoers, shined another spotlight on one aspect of electronic dance music (EDM) cultures that is either an intimate or inherent part (depending on where you’re standing); namely, the presence of MDMA.

After it was revealed that Olivia Rotondo, 20, died after ingesting pure MDMA (the drug sold in pill form as ecstasy and in powdered form as molly), and that Jeffrey Russ, 23, died after taking a mix of MDMA and methylone (another stimulant often mixed with MDMA and also sold in powdered form as molly), both an expected heartfelt apology from Made Event and a torrent of soul-searching from those within the scene followed. If nothing else, the commentary that emerged, whether contributed to by Pasquale Rotella (the promoter who is himself no stranger to drug-related deaths at EDM events) or EDM performers Kaskade or Diplo (who was attempting to break the twerking “world record” at Electric Zoo) suggests that there isn’t a consistency of opinions about how best to tackle the problem of drugs within EDM cultures.

It seems that until the solution is abstinence (unlikely), harm reduction (as preached and practiced by DanceSafe, the education-focused nonprofit), or something revolutionary, the fact remains that a cycle of drug-related death, followed by media framing of said drug-related death, and internal commentary on how best to prevent another drug-related death so as to avoid the cold glare of the media and the subsequent fatal stare of lawmakers, seems inevitable. (This is all not to bring up the elephant on the dancefloor, which is the fact that “molly” can mean both “pure MDMA in powder form” as well as “who knows what is in this amphetamine cocktail I just snorted.” Semantics can be harmless when writing about the drug but potentially deadly when ingesting it.)

While a comparison with the ecstasy-related death of English teenager Leah Betts in 1995 might be instructive in thinking about how the media frames the relationship between dance music cultures and drugs (Betts literally became the face of drug abuse for the British tabloid press and the face of an anti-drug campaign spearheaded by her parents within the space of a few months), a more useful comparison might be to take a wider view, in order to sketch the similarities between the mainstreaming of rave music cultures in the mid- to late- 1990s and the mirrored mainstreaming of EDM cultures in the early 2010s.

Indeed, the superstar DJs like Paul Oakenfold and Danny Rampling who earned 1990s-ridiculous sums of money find their doppelgangers in the megastar DJ Afrojack, who earns 2010s-ridiculous sums of money; the Ministry of Sound superclub, which eventually joined up with sponsors like Sony and Pepsi in the rave boom of the mid-1990s has a contemporary twin in the megafestivals like Electric Daisy Carnival, which is sponsored by Sony and Red Bull; and advertising campaigns for sneakers and candy that used rave imagery are rebooted in TV commercials for Doritos or Kia that wub to an EDM soundtrack.

Journalist Stephen Kingston bemoaned the neutering of rave in 1995, and his words sound especially eerie today: “The house movement has been herded into a capitalist kraal. Club culture used to talk a lot about ‘freedom.’ It’s turning out to be the freedom to be farmed.” One wonders what he would have to say about a festival whose moniker is a sort-of-synonym for kraal, or, more significantly, the mooted IPO of the Live Nation-affiliated concert promoter SFX, which looks, after the success of the TomorrowWorld EDM festival on the weekend of September 27-29, 2013, to be a sure thing.

Given the mainstreaming of rave in 1995, it was a sad truth that drugs would similarly go mainstream. As Matthew Collin suggests in his history of dance music culture Altered State: The Story of Ecstasy Culture and Acid House (Serpent’s Tail, 1997), at the same time that rave culture boomed, the unsavory aspects of that same culture also boomed. As he comments, “Recreational drug use in Britain underwent a process of democratisation that mirrored the evolution of dance culture.” And while he is careful to not foist causality onto dance culture, it is nonetheless a fact that drug use exploded in Britain at that time.

I do not want to claim that the mainstreaming of EDM cultures has caused a contemporary mainstreaming of drugs, drug use, or drug-related deaths. But I do ultimately wonder what happens when the forces of unchecked capitalism associated with the mainstreaming of music cultures prevent those cultures from protecting or regulating their own.

This is by no means to suggest that Kim Gavin, the director of the closing ceremony, is a tale-telling idiot, considering his impressive c.v. as director and choreographer, including massive events staged at Wembley Stadium (such as the 2007 Concert for Diana and Take That’s Circus tour appearance in 2009). But when seen through the lens of Danny Boyle’s triumphant opening ceremony that conjured a childlike view of Britain where healthy fun is made (“Chariots of Fire” with flatulent coda); where juxtapositions thrive, whether goofy (James Bond with the Queen), fascinating (Dizzee Rascal with Elgar), or weirdly profound (Kes with Four Weddings and a Funeral); and where an acute sense of right and wrong endures; when seen through this lens, one cannot help feel let down.

And, for the most part, let down horribly we were. Since the ceremony aired on 12 August, other critics have discussed its dullness and laziness, as well as its lack of narrative thrust. This latter fact is to be expected, considering that, unlike with the opening ceremony, there were no clear narrative markers. So, for instance, Blur’s “Parklife,” as performed by the Massed Band of the Household Division, following Madness performing “Our House” (complete with flying harness saxophone solo) was arguably done for the sake of spectacle, one fabulous element of “the best aftershow party there has ever been” (as Gavin himself claimed before the ceremony aired), rather than to explore variations on a theme.

But it is the two former qualities mentioned above that I found especially egregious in the closing ceremony’s view of Britain. Called “A Symphony of British Music” (a title arguably loaded with class connotations), the (mostly English) music chosen for the ceremony reminded me of Theodor Adorno’s formulation in “On Popular Music,” that “the composition hears for the listener.” Mechanized and standardized pop is an easy target, to be fair, considering the Simons (Cowell and Fuller) made their svengali presence known with the appearance of One Direction and the Spice Girls, boy- and girl-bands whose bots were chosen for such ill-defined marketable reasons as “demographic appeal.” But on an aesthetic level, the musical choices and performances were so bland as to be unmemorable. True, George Michael’s initial offering (“Freedom ’90”) teased tantalizingly electric proceedings, but this symphony sounded off-key.

Perhaps this was because of the unpreprocessed emotion of the 17 days’ worth of athletics which came before the closing ceremony: the best efforts of NBC, the BBC, and Tumblr aside, it’s impossible to recreate the glorious spontaneity of Mo Farah’s wide-eyed beaming, McKayla Maroney’s devilish moue, or Jessica Ennis’ tears in a massive pyrotechnic-sprayed choreography explosion. In stark contrast, the “spontaneous” moments of “cheeky” juxtaposition in the closing ceremonies (Fatboy Slim on a giant octopus! Annie Lennox on a ghost ship! Russell Brand on a bus!) seemed less childlike than familiar, focus-grouped to within a note of its life, with the intention of pleasing everybody and ending up pleasing very few people at all.

As a result, what could have been a chance to celebrate the achievements of the multicultural parade of athletes that entered the stadium (for me, the only moment in the closing ceremony that gestured towards Boyle’s humanistic vision in the opening ceremony) ended up being an empty charade of tired (at best) and xenophobic (at worst) performances, of which Eric Idle’s attempt at bhangra, where the object of the unhealthy fun was the unnatural and exotic movements of the dancers and not the white person attempting them, was the most glaring.

What is more, if the opening ceremony used the past to remind us that a nation’s evolution depends often on the marginalized (not for nothing did Boyle include suffragettes, Afro-Caribbean immigrants, and trade unionists in its opening sequence), the closing ceremony used the past only as an old newspaper from which reassuring headlines and articles could be clipped. From the tie-dyed Union Jack painted on the floor of Olympic Stadium, to the Michael Caine quotation from The Italian Job (Peter Collinson, 1969) that began the night, to the tributes to John Lennon and Freddie Mercury, to the appearances of the Who and Pet Shop Boys, to the inclusion of songs by David Bowie and Electric Light Orchestra and Kate Bush and the Bee Gees, to the recreation of the cover of Pink Floyd’s 1975 album Wish You Were Here: ultimately, these backward-looking and regressive beats seemed like the expressions of a nation of Little Englanders, wanting nothing more than a return to the insular “good old days,” before the Eurozone crisis and the riots.

A more progressive ceremony, one closer to the vision of London 2012 proposed by Boyle on 27 July, might have highlighted more contemporary performers like Emeli Sandé, Taio Cruz, and Tinie Tempeh (all of whom, to be fair, sang more than one number during the evening), a musical Team GB whose multicultural background and thrilling sounds would undoubtedly make Conservative MP Aidan Burley and Daily Mail scribblers collapse in race- gender- and class-based heaps of fury. And that would signify everything.

That is, if all news reports as of this posting are to be believed. And therein lies a problem with coverage of a massive media event in which tens of thousands of performers, staffers, security, and volunteers are taking part, and at which rehearsals are open to select members of the public: there’s a fine line between reportage and speculation, between anchoring a story with hard facts and sketchy details, between making audiences aware of a story’s own shortcomings and unashamedly trolling for pageviews. It’s a wonder that Sebastian Coe, head of LOCOG (London Organizing Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games) even bothered to sign off a Tweet with #savethesurprise. Coe should recognize that, in an information landscape driven by the engine of social media and fueled by unnamed sources and cameraphone artifacts uploaded to YouTube, keeping everything under wraps is (nearly) impossible.

As other Antenna writers have noted, the media texts surrounding the 2012 London games serve to brand Britain. And the opening ceremony seems to be no different. But what sort of “Britishness” might be on display? I raise this question with the caveat that, come Friday, July 27, some of what I’m about to explore might not be entirely accurate.

Based on aerial paparazzi photos of the Olympic Stadium during the construction of the ceremony, and on its reveal in June 2012 , artistic director Danny Boyle’s vision for the opening ceremony seems like it has come straight from the mouth of one of the unnamed children babbling at @PreschoolGems. There will be geese, goats, horses, cows, people playing cricket on a village green, farmers tilling the soil, maypole dancers, factories, an oak tree, and clouds that produce rain. Not to mention recreations of Glastonbury Tor, the River Thames, and the Houses of Parliament. Boyle seems like Caden Cotard in Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York (2008), the obsessive director who recreates the minutiae of his New York life in an abandoned warehouse in Manhattan. (An apt comparison, for, according to reports, Boyle’s crew is arguing with the crew that will be filming the sporting events over the placement of their cameras. And besides, what is London’s Olympic stadium when it’s not being used but an empty warehouse in London’s East End?) Another promotional text, the BBC’s London 2012 trailer, similarly riffs on the idea Boyle is deploying, that of “Stadium UK,” wherein the nation (literally) comes together in a giant stadium.

Stephen Daldry, Boyle’s executive producer, has said the ceremony will be “a journey that will celebrate who we are, who we were and indeed who we wish to be.” It’s fascinating to map that formulation on the reported tripartite structure of the ceremony, called “Isles of Wonder” (more on that below), which will celebrate Britain’s “green and pleasant land,” demonstrate the “dark satanic mills” of the Industrial revolution, and segue into Mod(ern), contemporary, and future British life.

Except the lyrics to “Jerusalem” (the song developed around William Blake’s poem “And Did Those Feet In Ancient Time,” which is probably its better-known iteration), from where the titles of the ceremony come, celebrate England, not Britain. The music and musicians attached to the opening ceremony are overwhelmingly English. The cultural events promised to be highlighted, from the high-culture Proms and the cricket match to the low-culture Glastonbury Festival, are quintessentially English. Maypoles topped with daffodil, flax, and thistle and short films of choirs singing “Cwm Rhondda,” “Danny Boy,” and “Flower of Scotland” seem like insufficient tribute to the three other British countries that aren’t England. Indeed, in spite of Boyle’s stress on the inclusivity of the opening ceremony, what ultimately is elided is Britishness.

Yet, for all intents, the Britishness that gets replaced with Englishness in the ceremony promises to be a specific kind of Englishness. In spite of the slow gentrification of the East End that the Olympic stadium promises, most of the performers hail from the East End, known in the (inter)national imagination as a working-class, poverty-stricken, and crime-ridden area. Of course, Boyle giving work to the un- or under-employed could be read through the same lens as his work with “real” slum children in Slumdog Millionaire (2008); that is to say that he’s ultimately exploiting them with this patronizing gesture. There is a strange disconnect between the fact that rehearsals for a ceremony costing the British public 27 million pounds ($42 million) are taking place in the Ford Dagenham plant, site of the strike that led to the Equal Pay Act 1970, the first British legislation aimed at ending pay discrimination based on gender. But  that’s part and parcel of Boyle’s interest. While he’s certainly no longer the same tyro that wowed critics with Trainspotting (1996), his work has been largely consistent, in that he’s invested in giving the marginalized a voice.

This same interest in the marginalized is inherent in the title of the ceremony, “Isles of Wonder,” Boyle’s squinted-eye interpretation of a line spoken by the monster Caliban from The Tempest. Here, Boyle, perhaps unwittingly, sees the ceremony to be an expression of his radical politics. Yes, the monologue in which Caliban speaks the line, “Be not afeard. The isle is full of noises, / Sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not” celebrates the beauty of the island, but he delivers the monologue immediately before he plots to destroy his master Prospero. And yes, in the narrative of the play, Caliban’s revolution may ultimately be ineffective, but it’s revolution nonetheless.

It’s important to note that the first line from the quote above will be engraved on the largest harmonically-tuned bell in the world, which will feature prominently in the ceremony. It’s not idle fancy to hope that the ringing of this bell can mean both a celebration of Britishness and a collective yell by a great British son seething with populist anger.