The latest micro outrage on the right is about a performance at the Paris Olympics opening ceremonies. It involved some drag queens at a table full of people that supposedly resembled The Last Supper, and the New York Times says that organizers "have remained largely vague about the references associated with the images."
Then there's this brief reference seven paragraphs down:
It is unclear whether the drag queens scene was intended to reference “The Last Supper.” The official account of the Olympic Games said on the social media platform X that the scene with the blue-painted man, the French actor and singer Philippe Katerine, was an interpretation of Dionysus, the Greek god of wine and revelry, which “makes us aware of the absurdity of violence between human beings.”
Am I being obtuse here? If the official Twitter feed says this tableau was some kind of takeoff on Dionysus and classical myth, then there's nothing vague or unclear about it. And that's what it said in real time:
The interpretation of the Greek God Dionysus makes us aware of the absurdity of violence between human beings. #Paris2024 #OpeningCeremony pic.twitter.com/FBlQNNUmvV
— The Olympic Games (@Olympics) July 26, 2024
This was posted as the scene was televised. It's not some post facto effort to weasel out of responsibility. Thomas Jolly, the artistic designer of the show, provided this explanation on French TV:
[The Last Supper] was not my inspiration and that should be pretty obvious. There’s Dionysus arriving on a table. Why is he there? First and foremost because he is the god of celebration in Greek mythology and the tableau is called "Festivity," He is also the god of wine, which is also one of the jewels of France, and the father of Séquana, the goddess of the river Seine. The idea was to depict a big pagan celebration, linked to the gods of Olympus, and thus the Olympics.
This is pretty detailed. It's obviously not something you could make up on the spot. Given all this, how did the whole Last Supper thing gain so much traction?
POSTSCRIPT: I'm still trying to suss this out. Perhaps the tableau was meant to illustrate The Last Supper morphing into an episode of Dionysian revelry, and that's now being deliberately obscured by focusing only on the Dionysus scene? I suppose Jolly didn't explicitly rule this out, though it's a stretch. But maybe?
Trying to rationalize the irrational is pointless. Right wing religious extremists will always see slights and insults in everything.
Similarly,
two wingnuts go to Deadpool & Wolverine for the purpose of being offended,
https://i.redd.it/qbhixh20qffd1.png
or so they claim.
(They saw the first two Deadpool movies and thought they were great enough they wanted to see the third one?)
The thing to remember about white evangelicals is that their numbers are shrinking and have been for a long time. That's such an important foundation to much of what we are seeing, and it fuels the sense of persecution that they often display.
Hard to say which is sillier - the outrage or the original artsy pretence that the scène actually says anything at all, let alone makes anyone but the artistes think about "the absurdity of violence between human beings" (what that even means rather escapes, nothing particularly 'absurd' about violance between humans - tragedy perhaps but not absurd - see natural world and intra-species violence...)
But the biblethumpers will not like the pagan explanation any more than the Last Supper one, will they? I think the scene exhibits a peculiarly French idea of secularism, a peculiarly French fascination with Greek mythology (often taught more than math in senior high school, much to my anger when my French kids were in it) and a peculiarly French lack of understanding that religious symbols are dynamite abroad if not at home. This is very different from Charlie Hebdo BTW. Charlie was a provocative magazine directed at a domestic audience. They weren't obliged to think of the sensitivities of salafists in Yemen of all places. Whereas the Olympics are about international harmony. Freedom of expression and all that but pagan symbols don't seem appropriate in the context. Anyway there was an apology and it'll blow over.
"but pagan symbols don't seem appropriate in the context." Seriously, symbols of ancient greece not appropriate for the olympics? That takes stupid to a whole new level.
"Whereas the Olympics are about international harmony. Freedom of expression and all that but pagan symbols don't seem appropriate in the context"
Cough, Christmas, cough, Easter, cough, Day of the Dead, cough.
"Christians" worldwide, particularly those in the US, have never had an issue with pagan symbols, just saying.
Maaaybe a bunch of outrage merchants who built fortunes by deliberately misinterpreting the obvious are doing what always they do..?
Their new Masters issued a fatwa.
"Also on July 27, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova criticized a campy scene at one point in the sprawling ceremony in Paris that some likened to Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper by saying it was a "mockery of a sacred story for Christians."
She accused the ceremony organizers of showing Christ's Apostles "as transvestites."
"Evidently in Paris they decided that if the Olympic rings are multicolored, you can turn it all into one giant gay parade," Zakharova said."
https://www.rferl.org/a/olympics-russia-paris-lgbt/33053205.html