Michael Cook
Michael Cook is editor of Mercator
The Olympics is all about setting records. Well, the first night was a bit of a fizzer, as no world records were set in the swimming – possibly because les génies gastronomiques dishing it out to the athletes went vegan. More about that later.
But the Olympic Opening Ceremony probably did set records for the number of complaints about its parody of the Last Supper and the mountain of self-serving, obfuscatory, double-tongued, oleaginous, smirking, mendacious BS to explain it away.
If you’ve been living under a rock and don’t know what it’s all about, here’s what you need to know.
First of all, Celine Dion was a knock-out. After coming back from a life-threatening illness to belt out the Edith Piaf classic “Hymne à l’amour” before hundreds of millions, she was sensational.
Second, the light show from the Eiffel Tower was absolutely brilliant. Unbeatable.
Third, despite the pouring rain, the flotilla of boats filled with athletes cruising up the Seine through the heart of Paris was terrific. Clockwork stuff.
Fourth, the tableau featuring drag queens dressed to look like Leonardo da Vinci’s painting “The Last Supper” was a salacious display of aggressively anti-Christian blasphemy. In front of the tableau was a nearly naked man painted blue evoking Dionysius. It was like dining at a three-star Michelin restaurant and finding a cockroach in the bouillabaisse.
(Oh yeah, s'il-vous-plait, what was the little kid doing in there with the drag queens? In the USA someone would certainly have called the gendarmes about that. Perhaps in gay Paris they don’t sweat that sort of thing any more.)
Catholics around the world took umbrage. The French bishops said that the Games were magnificent but that they had been horrified at “scenes of derision and mockery of Christianity.”
Soooooooooo sorry about that, darlings, really truly we are, said a representative of the Olympic Committee. We weren’t aware that we were offending anyone.
Four years to prepare this €120 million (US$130 million) gig, which must have been studied by committee after committee after committee – and you weren’t aware? Don’t tell me that pencil-pushers from the École nationale d'administration are that clueless.
Actually, it’s exactly what you would expect from Thomas Jolly, the 41-year-old director who designed and coordinated the evening’s entertainment. He is openly gay, married to a man, and has a reputation for outré theatre. No doubt he’s brilliant – I’d love to experience his production of H6R3, a production of Shakespeare’s Henry VI trilogy followed by Richard III which runs for 24 straight (no pun intended) hours.
But the putrid convention-busting Last Supper tableau must have been exactly what the organisers wanted: a public service announcement for a post-Christian France.
So what did Tom have to say for himself?
“The idea was to do a big pagan party linked to the gods of Olympus. You’ll never find in my work any desire to mock or denigrate anyone,” he told the media. “I wanted a ceremony that brings people together, that reconciles, but also a ceremony that affirms our Republican values of liberty, equality and fraternity.”
And here’s the official explanation, i.e., lie:
“The absurdity of violence between human beings” – that naked Dionysius is a powerful war-stopping statement, isn’t it? I bet that guys in Ukraine threw down their rifles and leapt over mine fields to embrace their Russian comrades after watching drag queens preening themselves as Apostles.
Actually, The Wrap, an entertainment site, caught Tom out in a massive fib. Their journalist obtained a statement from the Olympic organisers which explained:
For the ‘Festivities’ segment, Thomas Jolly took inspiration from Leonardo da Vinci’s famous painting to create the setting … Clearly, there was never an intention to show disrespect towards any religious group or belief … [Jolly] is not the first artist to make a reference to what is a world-famous work of art. From Andy Warhol to ‘The Simpsons,’ many have done it before him.
In fact, showing disrespect might be not a bug but a feature of the 2024 Olympic ethos. For politically correct bureaucrats it is an opportunity to educate not only the bog-stupid billion who will watch but also the athletes themselves.
Former Australian swimmer and Olympic medallist James Magnussen reported that nutrition-obsessed athletes were being shamed into going vegan.
They had a charter that said 60 per cent of food in the village had to be vegan friendly and the day before the opening ceremony they ran out of meat and dairy options in the village because they hadn’t anticipated so many athletes would be choosing the meat and dairy options over the vegan friendly ones.
The caterer had to rejig their numbers and bring in more of those products because surprise, surprise – world class athletes don’t have vegan diets.
“Paris Olympics: Vegan is the way to go as Games Village reduces meat, cheese, dairy products on menu to reduce carbon footprint” was the headline in the Indian Express. The Indian media was ecstatic. The athletes not so much.
An Aussie heavyweight boxer – 6 foot 6, 250-pounds – was told that chops were being rationed: he could only have two of them. “He’s come here as a heavyweight, he’ll go home as a middleweight,” joked a Sky News journalist.
To be fair to Tom & Co, Christianity was not the only tradition to be demeaned. La belle France, which gave birth to Joan of Arc, le Roi Soleil, Robespierre, Napoleon, Victor Hugo, Marie Curie, and Coco Chanel, copped a hiding as well.
“We drew on the past of each site and monuments: almost each stone tells something about our history of France, of the history of Paris, a history which is connected to the world,” Jolly said, according to the Financial Times.
Could have fooled me. The proud heritage of France was boiled down like old chicken bones to a decapitated Marie Antoinette and can-can dancers. Maybe, just maybe, the mysterious silver-clad horsewoman looking like a cross between a Nazgul and the Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse evoked Joan of Arc. The Da Vinci Code was a better advertisement for France.
M. Jolly is all about egalité – even in the people he insults. Christians shouldn’t feel singled out. The Opening Ceremony was thoroughly post-modernist and PoMo is all about deconstructing traditional values. In that, at least, it was successful.
And now, on with the Games!
This article was originally published by Mercator.
