The Opening Ceremony on the 2024 Paris Olympic Video games featured quite a few performances, however there was one particularly that drew blended reactions, together with outrage from conservative leaders.
In the course of the four-hour ceremony on Friday, drag queens and dancers at one level struck poses alongside an extended desk as an individual painted sparkly blue, singing in French, was resting on a dinner platter in entrance. Some individuals rapidly took to social media to say that the picture resembled Leonardo da Vinci’s The Final Supper portrait of Jesus Christ and his 12 apostles earlier than he was crucified.
The desk later reworked right into a catwalk for fashions and drag queens to showcase Paris’ style scene.
Home Speaker Mike Johnson wrote on X (previously Twitter) following the efficiency, “Final night time’s mockery of the Final Supper was stunning and insulting to Christian individuals around the globe who watched the opening ceremony of the Olympic Video games. The warfare on our religion and conventional values is aware of no bounds at the moment. However we all know that reality and advantage will at all times prevail. ‘The sunshine shines within the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.’ (John 1:5)”
French far-right politician, Marion Maréchal, denounced the efficiency on social media, writing, “To all of the Christians of the world who’re watching the Paris 2024 ceremony and felt insulted by this drag queen parody of the Final Supper, know that it’s not France that’s talking however a left-wing minority prepared for any provocation.”
Harrison Butker, the Kansas Metropolis Chiefs kicker who confronted backlash earlier this 12 months after giving a controversial graduation speech, additionally quoted the Bible on X after the ceremony: “‘Be not deceived, God is just not mocked. For what issues a person shall sow, these additionally shall he reap. For he that soweth in his flesh, of the flesh additionally shall reap corruption. However he that soweth within the spirit, of the spirit shall reap life eternal.’ Galatians 6:7-8.”
Nevertheless, the official X account for the Olympic Video games shared photographs of the efficiency, noting that it was meant to reference the Greek god Dionysus, not The Final Supper.
“The interpretation of the Greek God Dionysus makes us conscious of the absurdity of violence between human beings,” the photograph’s caption learn.
Thomas Jolly, the inventive director of the Olympics Opening Ceremony, additionally defended the efficiency throughout a information convention Saturday when requested concerning the criticism, saying he needed to show “inclusion.”
“After we wish to embrace everybody and never exclude anybody, questions are raised,” Jolly mentioned. “Our topic was to not be subversive. We by no means needed to be subversive. We needed to speak about variety. Variety means being collectively. We needed to incorporate everybody, so simple as that.”
He continued, “In France, we now have freedom of creation, inventive freedom. We’re fortunate in France to stay in a free nation. I didn’t have any particular messages that I needed to ship. In France, we’re republic, we now have the fitting to like whom we would like, we now have the fitting to not be worshippers, we now have quite a lot of rights in France, and that is what I needed to convey.”
Not everybody was offended by the efficiency, with some, equivalent to Le Filip, the winner of Drag Race France season three, praising the inventive imaginative and prescient.
“I assumed it will be a five-minute drag occasion with queer illustration. I used to be amazed,” Le Filip informed the Related Press. “It began with Girl Gaga, then we had drag queens, an enormous rave, and a fireplace within the sky. It felt like a crowning once more. I’m proud to see my mates and queer individuals on the world stage.”
The 2024 Paris Olympics kicked off with an Opening Ceremony that featured athletes from every nation driving down the River Seine. A number of artists additionally carried out all through the occasion, together with Girl Gaga, who sang the French-language “Mon Truc en Plume,” and later Celine Dion, in her first public efficiency amid her Stiff-Particular person Syndrome analysis. Dion sang a rendition of the French ballad “Hymne a l’Amour.”