ATHENS (Reuters) - A clutch of complaints by U.S. viewers that the Athens Olympics opening ceremony featured lewd nudity has incensed the Games chief, who warned American regulators to back off from policing ancient Greek culture.Male nudity, a woman's breast and simulated sex were the subjects of shrill complaints about the opening ceremony on Aug. 13 which were posted by the FCC on its Web site.
"Far from being indecent, the opening ceremonies were beautiful, enlightening, uplifting and enjoyable," Angelopoulos, President ATHENS 2004 Organising Committee for the Olympic Games, wrote in a weekend letter to the Los Angeles Times.
"Greece does not wish to be drawn into an American culture war. Yet that is exactly what is happening," she said.
Complaints focused on a parade of actors portraying naked statues. Among them were the Satyr and the nude Kouros male statues, both emblems of ancient Greece's golden age.
Angelopoulos, who said the handful of U.S. complaints were dwarfed by the 3.9 billion people who watched the ceremony, had a blunt message.
"As Americans surely are aware, there is great hostility in the world today to cultural domination in which a single value system created elsewhere diminishes and degrades local cultures," she said in her letter.
"In this context, it is astonishingly unwise for an agency of the U.S. government to engage in an investigation that could label a presentation of the Greek origins of civilization as unfit for television viewing."
