By now, many of you have seen or participated in a controversy about the Paris 2024 Opening Ceremony. If you’re not familiar, and it’s hard to believe some aren’t, there is a claim that the performers in a fashion show during the ceremonies were mocking the Last Supper by the way they staged the setup. It’s the latest saga in the ongoing claim that there is a war on Christianity. The truth is that this is just a bunch of nonsense that organically grows on the Internet because no one does the time to do the research. But, if you’ve known anything about me you’ll know that won’t happen here. So, let’s dig in. This will be a fun ride.
To start with, the segment was late in the broadcast, about a hour and forty-five minutes after the start of the NBC broadcast. Of course, it was covered on several networks, including Eurosport, as a part of the Olympic Broadcast Services feed. That feed is actually a collective of services providing their resources to create a pool feed for networks to tap into for a pretty substantial fee. From there, the networks take what they want to broadcast and air the Opening Ceremonies.
The segment was on the Passerelle Debilly, a pedestrians-only bridge across the Seine and the last bridge before the Pont d’Iéna and the Trocadero where the athletes and dignitaries gathered across from the Eiffel Tower. It was to depict a fashion show and highlight young French designers and their works in a runway show on a platform set up on the bridge. From the Seattle Times, “The ceremony’s artistic director Thomas Jolly had said it was meant to celebrate diversity and pay tribute to feasting and French gastronomy.” The segment highlighted people of all races, sexes, orientations, and nationalities as well as a diversity of the fashion culture of Paris.
It featured a DJ in the center of the runway with a silver and rhinestone crown on her head (a lot of media sources mistakenly called it a golden crown), spinning tunes for the show. At her sides are collection of people, including drag queens, who were enjoying and dancing to the show. Runway models would walk up and down the runway during brief clips in the broadcast. Collectively, during the Peacock broadcast that totaled about 5-6 minutes. The controversial part was at the beginning and lasted around 20 seconds.
I can see where some might try to interpret it as Da Vinci’s Last Supper, an interpretation by the artist of the last supper of Christ before His crucifixion. But it’s important to remember that the painting is an interpretation of the event and does not reflect what actually happened. In fact, Da Vinci loaded the painting with messages and many have tried to decipher those as well as create their own folklore of the painting. But, this was Da Vinci’s own interpretation and not the actual event. Trying to claim this was a mockery of the Last Supper, which it wasn’t, is a stretch by itself.
When you watch the clip, what you actually see is the DJ preparing to start the show and several of the performers gathering around her in various poses, just as people do during a fashion show or in some of the voguing performances seen around Paris and NYC. Some of those people are drag queens which probably is what started the controversy with conservative Christians. From there, the leaps in symbolism began and haven’t stopped. As many have noted, and Jolly confirmed, the segment’s final scene was about a Bacchanal feast featuring the Greek god Dionysus, played by French actor/singer Philippe Katerine, rising from a platter.
With regard to the last scene of the segment, that was never shown on the Peacock broadcast since it came at the end and within the rest of the ceremonies including the torch lighting. This debunks all the claims that the risqué scene by Katerine was shown to families and children in the US. In fact, the scene would have never been seen in the US had many of those conservative Christians not shared it in their attempts to attack the organizers.
Those people decided to turn this innocuous segment during the Opening Ceremonies as “an attack on Christianity,” when the reality shows that this is nothing of the sort. The problem is that in the US we live in such a polarized society that creating a controversy out of nothing is sometimes the only thing they have in their quest to attack others. Remember, the segment included drag queens so misinterpreting the scene as a mockery of the Last Supper is the equivalent of throwing gasoline on the fire that burns within Christian conservatives.
How have the French reacted? Well, religious leaders jumped on the bandwagon, including the leaders of the Catholic church in France. Conservatives in France, the ones who lost miserably in the last election, are also attacking the segment and organizers. To be honest, they would prefer the Olympics not be held in France. From The Guardian, “France’s far right – which, but for the “republican front” and mass tactical voting that pushed it back to third place in the second round of this month’s parliamentary elections, might very well have been in government – was frankly outraged.”
Paris 2024 organizers haven’t reacted other than to say they had no intention to show disrespect. From the Seattle Times article,”“Clearly there was never an intention to show disrespect to any religious group. On the contrary, I think (with) Thomas Jolly, we really did try to celebrate community tolerance,” (2024 spokesperson Anne) Descamps said. “Looking at the result of the polls that we shared, we believe that this ambition was achieved. If people have taken any offense we are, of course, really, really sorry.”
But that’s about all the French will say about this. Quite frankly, they are probably laughing at the outrage sparked by conservatives over this. In their mind, this was such a small part of a small segment of the 3 hour Opening Ceremonies that it’s not worth even paying attention to. After all, they’ve got two full weeks of athletic competition to complete. They are focused on the athletes and not some small segment that seems to want to talk about something else unrelated.
Remember, this is a nation that endured the attacks by Islamic extremists on the offices of Charlie Hebdo after their publishing the “Charia Hebdo” edition, making fun of some of the extremist actions by some Islamists. It has survived many Islamic attacks including the bloodiest being the massacres on Nov. 13-14, 2015, when 89 people were killed in a series of coordinated attacks. But the nation persisted and free thinking still thrives within the country.
I agree. If this is how the environment will be for discourse on topics, then we really are in for a rough period. Personally, I’m focused on the Games which have provided some good competition after just one day. I mean, did you see the Men’s 4×100 relay yesterday won by the US? If all you’re going to focus on is a misinterpretation of this incident, find a good book to read, maybe some Greek mythology for starters, and ignore the Games. For the rest of us, Citius, Altius, Fortius.