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?
Because wingnuts are morons who never let mere reality interfere with their beloved grievances?
Given all this, how did the whole Last Supper thing gain so much traction?
Is this a rhetorical question?
Victimology is CENTRAL to the right-wing / authoritarian ethos. Authoritarians as "relentless sociotropic boundary-maintainers," "The Paranoid Style in American Politics," etc. ad infinitum. Writ small they're just a bunch of emotionally underdeveloped whiners. Writ large they're an unhinged mob bent on retribution for imagined ills.
And the contemporary Republican Party is BUILT on grievance, in particular Christianist White-nationalist grievance. So of COURSE they're going to see slights to themselves (interpreted as slights to, eg, Christianity, reality notwithstanding) in ... well, pretty much EVERYTHING, especially FOREIGN things, and throw tantrums about them. At this point, tantrums are about ALL they know how to do.
A large chunk -- easily half -- of the current Republican Party are a bunch of delusional cultists. And you can't ask for rational explanation of a delusion.
????
I'm pretty sure the number of Republicans who have studied Greek mythology well enough to recognize Dionysus in a tableau is vanishingly small. They just saw people reclining at a table and thought, "Hey, that looks like the Last Supper. How dare they!"
EDIT: which is pretty much what drickard said above.
Maybe Republicans don't realize that the Olympics is an international event under no obligation to cater to the state laws of Florida? Or maybe they don't like being reminded that Christian mythology was based on earlier pagan stories and while most people assume Mithras was the template for the Jeesus character, others contend he was modeled on Dionysus.
republicans are so used to textbook publishers deferring to texas board of education, as well as so resigned to woke mind virus plagued corporations acquiescing to california environmental rules, that they assume the rest of the world uses the us as a guide, just as communist vermonters work from a lone star republic curriculum & real american arkansans drive cars that only a dippy californian could love.
Because culture war distraction helps them try to change the subject from all the gilead, childfree cat lady, weird stuff from the wingnut elegy guy last week.
This is not complicated
Look, they had everyone sitting on one side of the table for the TV. Just like Leonardo did! It must be "The Last Supper!" Look, there's a purple dude ruining it!!!
Just like All In The Family did. And every other TV sitcom. The audience chair is always vacant.
You mean everyone doesn't have a sofa in the middle of the living room? Particularly in their super spacious Manhattan apartments or lower price range tract house?
Xtians love to feel butt hurt. That is all.
Oh come on! It's faux outrage to stir up the evangelicals. Now the Olympics are part of the culture war. This is a Trump thing so you aren't going to find depth in it.
In addition to the points above, there is the American right wing absurdity of blasting Europe generally as the “place where the people with real grit left to move HERE.”
A simplistic analysis hundreds of years ago and even dumber in 2024. Yet, you can see it coming a mile away.
had orby in budapest popped off about this yet?
did marine le pen say jackdick about ir?
Given all this, how did the whole Last Supper thing gain so much traction?
Because Republicans are know nothing morons and bigots, so all their stupid brains could see is drag queens at a dinner table and ipso facto their reptilians brains went into attack mode thinking Satanists mocking the last supper.
Reactionaries gonna react.
Here endeth the lesson.
The French were mocking The Last Supper and - hold on to your hats - The First Supper*, which is a double-insult to America and All That Is Good And Decent.
* you can read about it in the Apocrypha (5 Baruch, and Letter of Aristeas to a Goatherd)
the country that gave us the babylonian captivity & chaos in the papacy mocking religion?
say it ain't so.
Because wingnuts think they own all imagery of all things, and they live to imagine they're being offended?
And they're too stupid to read.
And, even if it was the Last Supper, so what?
Anything that survives outside living memory survives in a cultural context independent of its exact origin, like Christmas, Beethoven and Shakespeare.
Religious psychotics have no patent or copyright on it.
But why is it OK to mock summer religions but not others?
The tableau is obviously reminiscent of The Last Supper. Whether or not it was intended to mock Christianity, the framing is obviously inspired by the painting.
I am quite sure, however, that the choreographers of the opening ceremony never considered showing anything that might be seen as mocking Judaism or Islam.
Piss Christ is OK but college professors get fired for showing pictures of Mohammed.
I will take your argument seriously when the Olympic opening ceremony shows a gay Mohammed.
the only reason piss christ didn't merit the same violence as the charlie hebdoo mohammad portfolio is that the christianist reactionaries in opposition had a voice in government (giuliani) at the ready to legally fuck up andres serrano's shit.
give that time another mayor in new york, & that situation was definitely devolving to a scott phillip roeder situation.
It's because in the West, in France, the basic ideas and popular imagery of Christianity, like the Last Supper, Michelangelo's David and Christmas, have evolved as cultural elements in their own right independent of their origins. They're part of the framework of the popular mind.
On the other hand, a cosmopolitan, world-wide world is still a new thing. Elements of Islam and Judaism do not have that same kind of broad, popular penetration, or casual understanding in the Western world. If the Olympics were somewhere in the Middle East would you be surprised if there were some general references to Islam in the opening ceremony? Not taken this lightly, certainly, but still there they would be.
i promise you: anyone who is offended by this segment did not read beyond your first sentence
I dunno, man. It doesn't look at all like The Last Supper to me. I mean, there's a table? I guess? With a number of people around it not at all close to 13?
This kind of feels like Christians WANT to be offended, and are just looking for a cross to nail themselves to, so to speak.
Something tells me you do not know which religious elements precede the the others. Something also tells me you've not found your religious sensibilities util a few days ago.
TL;DR: Whatever the truth of the matter is, you're one of the last people who can make that accusation. You've mis-fired once again.
You realize, of course, that any perceived resemblance is to a painting and not the actual event. No one knows what the actual event looked like (or even if it really occurred). However, when is the last time you were at a large gathering where everyone sat on the same side of the table?
So what they're really getting worked up about is the resemblance to a painting in which considerable artistic license is evident.
It's the way dinner parties on stage are presented.
Those pearls won't clutch themselves.
They must really hate Mel Brooks:
https://youtu.be/VA1sx-vyWVk?si=OpvyxnBVngfPjWLL
he's jewish.
that's axiomatic.
And Robert Altman et al: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRHN5vxnZrI
What we should talk about is that someone who is voting for Donald Trump this year is living in the wrong country.
I know that sounds like a lot of people, but that's because they're all the wrong, all at once. Do we need that?
Isn't it wrong, wrong to them, to think we should keep them here? There is so much more for them in so many other places.
They are calling for mass deportations, maybe it is they who should leave. I suggest Russia. They seem to like the leader there.
the arend & anneesa feenstra piece.
They don't like anything that has in the past, does now, or will in the future, make America great. They want to live in a brutalist fantasy of the dark ages. We should help them realize that dream. There are plenty of wide open spaces in Siberia, Uganda, Argentina, Hungary, and some other places, they might claim for their own with a little elbow grease, and with global warming those places are only going to keep getting nicer!
I suggest Antarctica.
There's a brief moment (captured in most of the outraged screenshots) where the people at the table lined up pretty closely with The Last Supper. It's close enough at a number of points that it seems intentional, but who knows? Strange coincidences occur.
My guess is that there were a number of inspirations for that segment, and they probably threw in a brief nod to a ridiculously famous painting. I don't feel like that's particularly controversial. In fact, this is even more trivial than the usual sort of "victimhood" that the right likes to mock when it's done by any other group.
First, there is a large very online mob of right-wingers who spend a great deal of time looking and listening for things to be outraged about that they then post all over social media.
Second, there is a much larger very online group of right-wingers who are really stupid and simply re-post and repeat whatever the first group gives them.
It gained traction because nature abhors a vacuum, of information as much as anything else. If we don't get it out there first and loudest, they will make something fit from their sheaf of misunderstanding, and stick with it to the bitter end. Ignorance is so dangerous.
The average person can probably identify about five famous works of art, and The Last Supper is one of them. They've probably never heard of Dionysus. And that includes reporters.
It's also, in part, wilful ignorance. Articles about offending Christians is an easy way to get a lot of clicks and engagement. Actual context only gets in the way.
Tableau vivant has a long history of making those in power uncomfortable anyway, at least in early modern Europe. It was political long before it became a staple of country house parties.
I guess if they ever have the games in Rome they'll be sure not to show a recreation of the dinner at Trimalchio's.
So much news,
J.D. Vance has a great idea about dolphin porn,
https://www.rawstory.com/jd-vance-dolphin-search-history/
By the way, don’t we have some faux outrage about the MFM threesome a couple of set pieces before the runway show/alleged last supper mock?
I was expecting some comment on that one but since “ Challengers” perhaps not.
Whatever it was, it happened in another country. Their tax dollars didn’t fund it. They weren’t (and still aren’t) forced to watch it. Americans generally have hundreds of options for TV watching. It would be nice if all these reporters reporting on it thus asked the outraged why the fuck they don’t just change the channel if they don’t like it?
Have to keep the rubes fired up and angry. Otherwise, they arent very useful.
The idea that the French Olympic Committee would knowingly set out to offend the country's 35-40 million Christians is mind-numbingly idiotic. Why are MAGA folk offended? Well if you start with the prior that Christianity is under attack and France has been taken over by the Muzzies, it all makes perfect sense.
Wounded Ear,
https://www.politicalflare.com/2024/07/legendary-white-house-photographer-reveals-ap-photo-implying-trump-wasnt-shot-look-closely-at-his-ear/
You be the judge!
Always trigger ready: their victimhood.
The interpretation of the Greek God Dionysus makes us aware of the absurdity of violence between human beings.
I don’t get it. I mean, I get that violence is absurd or something, but what does Dionysus have to do with it? Oh well. “drag queens” aren’t all that interesting either. But I am enjoying the freak out.
10 Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 11 Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. 12 Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
This is good for them?
We can mock their ignorance all we like, but they GOTV - can we do it thus time?
Well, obviously it was a mockery of the Last Supper. The Greeks persecuted Jesus and his followers, driving them out of the Sinai, and thanks to Moses, he brought Christians through the Red Sea, only to be hung on the cross. -- The Life of Jesus according to Donald John Trump, Evangelicalist
/S
Remember "Life of Brian"?
It was a satire on Hollywood religious movies, British left wing politics and religious conformity, but the Holy Noise Machine treated it as pure sacrilege. Which only led to more comedy:
https://youtu.be/ZYMpObbt2rs?si=1ODtT_4fJeSo5khU
What really horrified the men in purple was the film's core message; "You've got to work it out for yourself." If everyone did that, they'd all be out of a job.
The Coens did the same thing and got away with it, because they used dialogue from the actual doctrines-- but juxtaposed.
https://youtu.be/KJEiDRi4Itc?si=_ueJNsLhA581QaaK
Although satire, it managed to still be a source of eternal truths such as "blessed are the cheesemakers."