There is not one sports fan, even among the most avid ones, who vividly remembers the opening ceremonies of major sporting events—unless something goes very wrong. For example, many can recall the time when the giant goal collapsed during the performance of R&B singer Diana Ross at the opening ceremony of the 1994 FIFA World Cup in the United States.
The opening of the 2024 Paris Olympics is a similarly memorable failure—however, this was an intentional one.
The oddities of the event continue to generate talk on social media and in traditional media alike. The segment that stuck out for most was the scene where drag performers gathered to form a composition similar to the world-famous painting The Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci.
Evidently, the peculiar performance received international backlash from Christians all around the world, including bishops in the Olympic host nations of France.
Since then, the director of the ceremony, French actor Thomas Jolly, has denied that the scene was supposed to be a portrayal of the last supper of Jesus and his disciples. Interestingly, however, he did not do so in his initial response, then saying: ‘In France, we are a republic, we have the right to love whom we want, we have the right not to be worshipers, we have lots of rights in France, and this is what I wanted to convey’.
There were no obvious allusions to the Da Vinci painting in the scene, so plausible deniability is there. However, one thing is certain:
the organizers were so hell-bent on promoting their gender ideology through the opening ceremony that they were blind to anything else.
And that is the more generous interpretation of the events, taking their word for it that it was not intentional mockery. Bizarrely, millions of people around the world recognized the resemblance to the famous Da Vinci painting immediately, but apparently, none who were involved in creating the choreography for such a highly publicized event. 28.6 million people watched the opening ceremony for the Paris Olympics in the United States alone.
The same people who demand great efforts from ordinary people not to offend anyone by accidentally misgendering them, even forcing compelled speech by mandating the use of certain preferred pronouns,
can be very careless when playing around with the sensibilities of Christian people. After all, in their view, white Christian people, especially men, are the dominant culture, the ‘oppressive overclass,’ so offending them is ‘punching up’ anyway.
To add fuel to a controversy, Brazilian surfer Joao Chianca was forced to remove an image of Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil from his board. Chianca, who is one of the favourites to win the gold in the event, claimed he was threatened with disqualification if he did not get rid of the religious symbol.
Looks like the Olympic organizers can be quite vigilant when it comes to preventing Christian imagery from being displayed at their event,
but not so much when it comes to preventing its mockery.
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