They took down the Olympic tableau mocking Da Vinci’s The Last Supper from YouTube. Oh, the reactions that stayed behind! The tech firm C Spire withdrew its advertising from the Olympics because of the mockery. The governor of Mississippi declared: “God will not be mocked.” Elon Musk described the performance on X as “extremely disrespectful to Christians.” Sky News Australia had a panel discussion that raised the issue of double standards, alleging that the performance did not criticize religion as such but aimed at Christianity, a low-risk target: “Have some courage, try with Islam. You’ll have a fatwa slapped on your head…” The French Catholic church was scandalized, protesting that they saw “scenes of derision and mockery of Christianity.”
On the other hand, news reports from outlets more associated with the Left or with secularism largely ignored or downplayed the “Last Supper” tableau. NPR did not mention it in real time until the controversy became public. A photo of the tableau did not make it into their web page entitled: “First look: Photos from Paris Olympics opening ceremony.”
An article in the British newspaper Guardian sidestepped the controversy by choice or because they didn’t notice its shocking nature in real time, describing the opening as “a high-kitsch, riverside spectacle.” The article said, “The show had promised to light-heartedly deconstruct French stereotypes.” They printed without comment a picture of the blue Dionysius lying in front of the human tableau.
The French producers of the performance declared it all a misunderstanding. The director, Thomas Jolly, said: “his inspiration was not the iconic New Testament scene painting by Leonardo da Vinci but ‘a pagan feast linked’ to the gods of Olympus.” If that was his intention, he did not do homework about the visual image they were preparing.
The “pagan feast” and the Last Supper would not have looked all that different, except for one key factor. At a Greek symposium, as they called a Greek “pagan feast,” a learned gathering over food and wine (literally: “drinking together”), participants reclined. The Dionysian figure has it accurately. In The Last Supper, part of Da Vinci’s genius was to freeze all of the participants in movement. None of the participants recline. In the Olympics tableau, as in The Last Supper, none of the participants (other than Dionysius) recline. Add to that the halo (headpiece?) placed over the central figure, echoing the light behind Jesus’ head in the Da Vinci masterpiece, and you have evidence of intent to mock.
For Left-associated observers, the tableau was a non-event in real-time, perhaps just one more example of Guardian’s “high kitsch spectacle.” They did not particularly respond to it.
For people associated with the Right and practicers of religions (not just Christianity), it felt like a slap in the face.
I have seen few, if any, positive responses (except for the actor who played Dionysius, who declared himself “feeling ‘super good’”). Has anyone described it as artistically fine, thought-provoking, or sending “a message of love, a message of inclusion and not at all to divide” as Director Thomas Jolly claimed? If that was the message, Jolly and his collaborators encoded it in visual language not decodable by a broad International Olympics audience, or anyone outside the inner circle of those in the know. It excluded the rest of us. If we take Jolly’s apologetics at face value, his art failed miserably as art.
What will stay with us when this blows over? What fascinates me in a horrible sense, like when my doctor looks at an inflamed spot on my arm and murmurs “fascinating,” is just how different the Left and Right report the events and why. In that difference lies our shared social catastrophe.
I fear that Jolly’s artistic failure to communicate a message of love and inclusion will be with us for many years because it unintentionally reflects a broad, indeed international, societal failure. Whatever the participants' athletic achievements, we will remember this Olympic Games for its blue Dionysian Last Supper tableau and responses to it. We confronted an ugly truth. That truth reveals itself in the degree of planning and thinking that created this event, and the creators who didn’t realize there was a problem. It reflects itself in the oblivious performers who made it happen. It shows itself in the mix of unconcerned and deeply hurt responses to the tableau in real-time.
We witnessed theatrical preaching by a group that saw itself as righteous and reached out to the rest of us (whom it saw as possibly prejudiced?), seeking to preach a message of love and inclusion while failing to examine its biases. It was an act of prejudice against Christians in the name of tolerance. As such, it insulted all of us. In the name of tolerance, it requires repentance.
The entire opening ceremonies was horrible except for Celine Dion and the Olympic flame thingie. That was cool. Other than that a big dud
I only learned of the controversy by reading your post. Programming an "out-of-left-field" insult into a welcome event screams how horridly callous and stupid people in an insular group can be...