Fallout From The Controversial 2024 Olympics Opening Ceremony Keeps Getting Worse

As of Friday, July 26, the 2024 Summer Olympics were underway in Paris. We've got athletes who've trained their entire, young lives for one shot at worldwide recognition. We've got over 15 million visitors flocking to the City of Light for a chance to witness humanity's most long-lived sporting tradition with Greek roots over 2,700 years old. We've also got an opening ceremony with some fantastic musical performances, like when French metal band Gojira rocked out on platforms jutting out from Place de la Révolution amidst a pyrotechnics show and operatic accompaniment. 

One part of the opening ceremony, though, drew the ire of prominent Christians and pulled attention away from sportsmanship, international cooperation, and artistry. Near the end of the four-hour-long opening ceremony, a group of drag queens danced their way along a table and struck poses around a central queen who wore a headdress and had a mixing table in front of her. When everyone was in place a blue dude representing the Roman god Bacchus — or Dionysus by the Greek name — was revealed as the centerpiece of an arrangement of food.

Fast-forward several days and we've witnessed a merry-go-round of fury, recriminations, explanations, apologies, etc., between political leaders, religious leaders, YouTube talking heads, Olympic organizers, and more. Meanwhile, and in absolute, tragic irony, the Olympic Games official X (formerly Twitter) account wrote that the segment in question was intended to represent the "absurdity of violence between human beings." 

To the casual viewer, the opening ceremony drag performance might come across as nothing more than colorful, kitschy, or over the top. Folks familiar with the French artistic ethos and aesthetic — the nation that gave us cabaret and the Moulin Rouge, impressionism and surrealism, Decadent literature, etc. — will immediately recognize such sensibilities in the performance. Others, however, saw a direct attack on Christianity and interpreted the performance's final scene of Bacchus as ridiculing Leonardo Da Vinci's legendary 1498 "The Last Supper" painting. However, as Art News reports, the performance bears a striking resemblance to Dutch painter Jan van Bijlert's 1635 painting, "Festival of the Gods" (which currently resides in a French museum) — not Da Vinci's "The Last Supper."

Religious leaders like the French Bishop's Conference said on X that the Olympics opening ceremony, "included scenes of mockery and derision of Christianity," and that Christians have been, "hurt by the outrageousness and provocation" of the Bacchus performance. Across the pond in the U.S. Louisiana Representative and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson wrote on X that the drag show was "shocking and insulting" to Christians before talking about "traditional values" and quoting the Bible. Jenna Ellis, 2020 attorney for Donald Trump's campaign and self-described "servant of Jesus Christ," called the performance a "disgusting, perverted, sacrilegious display" on X. Even Elon Musk chimed in on X, saying that the performance was "extremely disrespectful to Christians." 

Meanwhile, NBC News quotes Olympic artistic director Thomas Jolly as saying, "We wanted to include everyone, as simple as that. In France, we have freedom of creation, artistic freedom. We are lucky in France to live in a free country."  

[Featured image by Stéphane Maréchalle via Wikimedia Commons | Cropped and scaled | CC 1.0 Universal]

As The Wrap cites, the Bacchus performance that's caused such distress amongst Christians was meant to be a "big pagan party" that connected the current Olympic games back to the Greeks who worshipped the gods of Olympus. Dionysus is "the god of celebration in Greek mythology," Olympic artistic director Thomas Jolly recounted, and, "the god of wine, which is also one of the jewels of France, and the father of Séquana, the goddess of the river Seine." 

Via France 24 Jolly said that he, "wanted a ceremony that brings people together, that reconciles, but ... affirms our Republican values of liberty, equality, and fraternity." The message was lost, though, on religious leaders around the world. The Russian Orthodox Church said in reaction that Europe is embracing a "godless culture." Even Sunni Muslim leader Al-Azhar chimed in saying the depiction was insulting to Jesus, "disrespecting his honorable person and the high status of prophecy in a reckless barbaric way that does not respect the feelings of believers in religions and high human morals and values," via TRT Afrika.

Regardless of the intent, Olympic organizers wound up delivering an official apology to Christians and offended individuals the world over. As The Washington Post quotes, Olympic spokesperson Anne Descamps said, "Clearly there was never an intention to show disrespect to any religious group. If people have taken any offense we are, of course, really, really sorry." Organizers have also removed the video of the performance from YouTube, although fragments remain on sites like X. Mississippi-based tech company C Spire also pulled their ads from the 2024 Summer Games.