Were You Expecting Something Else?
As the 2024 Olympics continue on in Paris, so does the controversy surrounding last weeks' opening ceremony. These ceremonies, which have grown more elaborate and ostentatious over the years, are meant to highlight the cultures of the various peoples from the hosting nation. France, which has a long and storied history (for both good and for ill) that spans millennia, instead chose to highlight modern aspects of the urban culture in Paris. It is an urban secular progressive subculture to be precise, one that the glitterati and mainstream medias of those covering the Olympics across the globe find captivating. The word “covering” is deliberate since there are a lot of people who watch the Olympics, which include many of the less-popular sports, and who typically do not watch the opening ceremonies.
What has garnered much world attention recently had to do with how the opening ceremony was seen as “over-the-top” and offensive, particularly to Christians. The ceremony included a portrayal of Leonardo da Vinci’s iconic painting The Last Supper by both men and women dressed in drag (and which included the presence of child) at a table where the assembled participants danced and moved in a provocative manner as a blue scantily clad man sang in the background. It also included videos or scenes of a dancing bearded trans-woman, a depiction of Marie Antoinette holding her severed head, and a heavy metal band playing while fake blood poured down a building. It ended with what some have interpreted as the white horse of the apocalypse, or death, riding on the Seine River.
After a lot of blowback from Christians, and from others who just found the ceremony bizarre, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) released a statement declaring that it was not their intention to insult anyone. This was a standard non-apology apology that is typical of most public relations responses by large and non-personal entities, where they apologize for hurting someone’s feelings, while avoiding acknowledging any degree of remorse. Moreover, the non-apology “apology” needs to be seen in light of the fact that in the age of social media, the best way to generate publicity and internet traffic is to offend (with devout and practicing Christians representing the easiest and the safest group to pick on). However, when one looks passed the whole lurid performance and its predictable responses, there is much more going on here than mere hate-bating.
Once Again You are Being Fooled
In response to the ire and outrage Christians have shown towards the parody, its artistic director Thomas Jolly said that "You’ll never find in my work any desire to mock or denigrate anyone. The idea was to do a big pagan party linked to the gods of Olympus. I wanted a ceremony that brings people together, that reconciles, but also a ceremony that affirms our Republican values of liberty, equality and fraternity.” This explanation, that the event was supposed to be a representation of the Feast of Dionysus and not a mockery of Christian imagery, has been repeatedly served to outraged Christians.
This response might have had some credibility if the corpulent woman at the center of the tableau of the Last Supper, Barbara Butch, an LGBT DJ and influencer, had not previously posted that she was aiming to be “Olympic Jesus” in a “a New Gay Testament.” Not surprisingly, those posts were deleted after the IOC issued their non-apology apology.
So who is to be believed? According to Christian icon carver and host of The Symbolic World, Jonathan Pageau, the ceremony was “super boring, but super obvious.” While the ceremony was boring and obvious, situationally it was both a pagan feast and an allusion to the Last Supper. He noted that while the Olympics committee did not officially use the term, French news outlets had noted weeks in advance of the ceremony was going to be called “La Cène Sur Un Scène Sur La Seine.” According to Pageau, who is a native of Quebec and a French speaker, this translates as, “The Last Supper on a Stage on the Seine” noting that “La Cène” is a French term for the Last Supper.
The ceremony was in the Western tradition of Carnival, where everything is turned upside down for a short period of time, for the sake of showing the limits of order and conformity. Drag is a kind of carnival; a subversion of the natural order. It is used by people like Barbara Butch as a “means of bringing about change” through the “disillusion of identity, in order to bring about a new identity in the higher orders.” Thus, by blurring the natural identities of male and female–not just at the physical level but also at the divine level–a completely different identity can be substituted in its place. What kind of identity? As Pageau states, “a trans-human identity, a post-human identity, a universalist identity where everything disappears into a chaotic amorphous state of being.”
And what better way to dissolve meaning and identity for a modern person than to reorder something as iconic as the image of the Last Supper. Without a doubt, it is one of the most important images in Western Civilization (which is always on the chopping block for these individuals) but more importantly it is, as Pageau states, a representation of “what has been an image of cohesion in the West for the past two-thousand years. It is one of the central images of how the West communes together, brings multiplicities into one holy meal. It is the center of the Church, it is the center of the community, it is the center of Western nations. And the best way to undo that, in order to bring about a new identity, is of course to undo that communion and mock things that are sacred.”
Hence, the symbol of Western (Christian) unity and sanctity was remade at the opening ceremony by replacing it with the imagery of a pagan feast, a mythological trope representing revelry, drunkenness and licentiousness (and even violence) as Dionysus is torn apart in one version of his story. Many in comparative religion circles have pointed out numerous allusions between Christ and Dionysus, which is precisely why the Last Supper was the perfect image to juxtapose with a Dionysian feast. This point was exemplified by the blue Dionysian figure singing about a pagan view of the world before the scene changed to someone singing a rendition of John Lennon’s song “Imagine,” which for those who are familiar with the lyrics, is anathema to two thousand years of Christian heritage.
Pageau was utterly amused by how many “sophisticated” Christians allowed themselves to be gaslit by people who are clearly trying to usurp a traditional and holy image with an “orgy...with a hint of pedophilia” that celebrates “multiplicity and inclusion, which is the opposite of communion.”
And yet that’s exactly what happened.
We Should Have Expected Nothing More
Much of the time when the Catholic/Christian corners of social media erupt with ire over the latest blasphemy or outrage, I often think to myself, “Well what do you expect?” Aside from living in a fallen world, we live in a world that has, by and large, left any meaningful adherence to Christianity behind. We may still live in nations that are nominally or culturally Christian, but when giga-atheist Richard Dawkins grudgingly admits that he is a “cultural Christian,” you can be assured that the term or the sentiment doesn’t carry any significant meaning.
Furthermore, we are two generations removed from the tumultuous 1960’s when our culture’s connection to and advocacy of traditional or religious values began to loosen. Is it then any wonder for us to see such dreck and nonsense in Paris? It was created, choreographed and performed by people who have taken in only tidbits of scraps of leftovers of our rich Christian past. In making use of their limited knowledge, their strategy is to force just about everything and anything they can think of into the God-shaped hole in our souls and psyches, including outright paganism. This is not new, and par for the course in our contemporary culture. Consequently, the spiritual horrors that were displayed at the opening ceremonies were almost exactly what we should have expected.
Does this mean that there were no anti-Christian and/or satanic-minded people behind the opening ceremony who are vehemently opposed to the Gospel and wish to knowingly and willfully blaspheme against it? No, of course not; the same French values that Thomas Jolly said he wanted to honor, are the the same ones born out of the French Revolution that persecuted the Catholic Church during the Reign of Terror. That same Jacobin spirit still lives on in many leaders in France and in Europe. However, I do not think it was everyone. In fact, Pageau amusedly considered that many of the people responsible for (or who took part in) the parody were probably themselves not fully cognizant of the significance of the imagery involved.
France, historically referred to as the “eldest daughter of the Church,” is a nation under an ever-growing occupation by Islam and other secular forces, but which still views the Cathedral of Notre Dame as a national monument. Therefore, we can hope and pray that, for the most part, what we observed at the opening ceremony was, in the words of Hosea, a case of a people who are perishing “for a lack of knowledge.”
While we should continue to always raise our voices in holy indignation when blasphemous and unholy events occur (as they always will), we should also take heart and see it as a message from God to return to the “old evangelization,” and endeavor to bring the light, life, and love of Christ to the dark places of the world, such as present-day France.
Photo Credit- LY Sports News