PARIS — In an Opening Ceremony that featured a seductive ménage à trois, a singing decapitated head, and a nearly-nude blue deity, it’s a scene of mealtime that’s drawing essentially the most warmth.
Nicely into the four-hour-long ceremony, a group of drag queens and different performers gathered to pose in a scene that was intentionally harking back to Leonardo da Vinci’s well-known portray, “The Final Supper.” The scene ended with the revelation of a beefy blue Dionysus, apparently able to partake in all method of earthly pleasures.
Da Vinci’s “The Final Supper” — which is definitely in Milan, not the Louvre — depicts Jesus’ remaining meal with the apostles, the night time earlier than Christ’s crucifixion. It’s a holy and sacred second in Christianity, so seeing nontraditional performers put a 2024 spin on it didn’t go over effectively with a vocal phase of the Christian religion.
Matteo Salvini, an Italian official, posted the photographs side-by-side on X and wrote, in Italian, “Opening the Olympics by insulting billions of Christians world wide was a very dangerous begin, expensive French. Seedy.”
Kansas Metropolis Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker, who aired his conservative views on religion and household earlier this yr, posted video of the scene, together with a Bible verse, Galatians 6:7-8. That verse reads, partially, “Be not deceived, God isn’t mocked.”
“Be not deceived, God isn’t mocked. For what issues a person shall sow, these additionally shall he reap. For he that soweth in his flesh, of the flesh additionally shall reap corruption. However he that soweth within the spirit, of the spirit shall reap life eternal.”
Galatians 6:7-8 pic.twitter.com/bhCHoO1HXk
— Harrison Butker (@buttkicker7) July 26, 2024
Paris Olympics officers pushed again on the rivalry that the efficiency was anti-Christian. “Clearly, there was by no means an intention to point out disrespect in direction of any non secular group or perception,” organizers mentioned in a press release to the Telegraph. “Quite the opposite, every of the tableaux within the Paris 2024 Opening Ceremony had been meant to have fun neighborhood and tolerance.” Organizers additional famous that popular culture, from “The Simpsons” to “The Sopranos,” has parodied “The Final Supper” for many years, if not centuries.
This wasn’t the primary sociopolitical controversy of those Video games, and it gained’t be the final. In any case, the one factor that travels sooner than Olympians is opinions in regards to the Olympics.
