Paris 2024: debate over Olympics opening ceremony
The Summer Olympics opened in Paris on Friday. Instead of walking into the stadium as in the past, the athletes travelled down the Seine in boats. They were welcomed by an array of spectacles on the banks and bridges, before finally disembarking at the Trocadéro opposite the Eiffel Tower. Commentators' opinions of the event differ widely.
Tried and failed
A disgruntled Naftemporiki writes:
“If there was one thing that was missing from the opening ceremony, it was a clear identity. A jumbled mess of miscellaneous elements thrown together into a spectacle that, regardless of its intentions, was decidedly low on aesthetics. With its grand history and culture, this city could have been the perfect backdrop for a modern party. Ultimately, it drowned in a sea of rhinestones, sequins and kitsch. The LGBTQ community was rightfully represented, but falsely presented - as a caricature. And the 'disrespectful' last supper certainly backfired in promoting inclusion, acceptance and peaceful coexistence for all.”
How to push people to the right
For Portal Plus, the event was way too woke:
“It should be clear to everyone that the Olympics is not the Eurovision Song Contest, which we know is a manifestation of European sexual liberation and exhibitionism. ... Politically-speaking the whole thing is even more catastrophic, because the misuse of the Olympics is grist to the mill of autocrats like Putin, Erdoğan and their ilk, who have been repeating the mantra of decadent, sick, degenerate Europe for years. ... Gradually, they will win the sympathies of more and more Europeans who are sick of political correctness and of being expected to stoically endure local apologists of woke ideology treating them like fools.”
French style
As Islamic cleric Sheikh Said Ismagilov writes in Telegraf, the much criticised elements of the show were hardly unexpected:
“We shouldn't forget that France is the birthplace of secularism and the battle against religious belief and the Church. It would be most surprising if the show's directors were to ignore militant French secularism. ... So as long as one was prepared, nothing scandalous happened: it was business as usual in Paris. If the games had taken place in a conservative religious country (for example Saudi Arabia), it would have been a very different show, and that show would not have appealed to those with secular views.”
Mirroring the state of the world
The world's conflicts cannot be hidden behind these celebrations, T24 comments:
“For all the lively choreography that interweaves the many areas of contemporary art, and the seamless unfolding of the opening ceremony, the event also mirrored the world's unrest and inequality. Every Olympics has its shadow side. In Paris this time it is the removal of [homeless] migrants from the city centre, the exclusion of certain countries, the sense of unease among some of the participating countries. ... The ancient Olympic motto 'citius, altius, fortius' (faster, higher, stronger) is more thought-provoking than ever.”
Taking part is everything - sadly not for Russians
The New Times laments Russia's exclusion from the Olympic family:
“The Olympic Games in Paris are clearly separating Putin's Russia not just from Europe, not just from the West, but from the whole world. Ships sailed across the Seine with teams from Iran, Turkey, China, Azerbaijan and other countries whose regimes can hardly be described as harmless, including North Korea. ... The Soviet Union was not excluded from the Olympic movement, but Putin's Russia is. Putin's state has left the civilised world - but the Russians have stayed, although for many politicians and officials in the West it's easier to simply dismiss every Russian citizen as a Putinist.”
A hommage to Parisians
For Libération, the celebrations were an homage to the resilience of the hosts after the 2015 terror attacks:
“After the trauma it would have been easy to curl up into a ball and surrender to all the sadness and to the votes driven by hatred and the facile search for scapegoats. While France teeters on the brink and the RN have never been so close to power, the Parisians, who have been forever wounded, are showing absolute dignity. In the face of fear and racism, they responded with openness and trust. For the past nine years they have lived and breathed resilience and the celebration of life. They have become the very embodiment of freedom. ... This ceremony was a wonderful hommage to Parisians... And as Parisians this is how we understood and experienced it.”
A political manifesto of a scene
The Tages-Anzeiger praises the French willingness to take risks:
.“For the French themselves there was one particular scene in the ceremony that outshone the rest, a political manifesto of a scene, that was carefully staged by the directors. It played on the Pont des Arts, a wooden bridge between the Louvre and the Académie française, two pillars of French culture. In the middle of the bridge was a meeting between the Garde Républicaine, which normally accompanies the president, and Aya Nakamura, a rapper from the banlieue, 29 years old, with Malian heritage and the most-listened to francophone singer in the world, as they say in France. ... The scene, entitled 'Égalité', brought together everything that is great about the republic”
Homeless were removed
The opening celebration was yet another Potemkim village, the web portal TVXS protests:
“It did not take place in a stadium, and instead the athletes arrived by boat, travelling up the Seine - past historical buildings like the Louvre and Notre Dame, and under Paris' famous bridges. Absent from the live coverage, however, were the 'undesirables', the people who otherwise live under those bridges. ... Advocates for human rights and the homeless in Paris say that police had rounded up thousands of homeless people in the city, clearing their camps and depositing them in other parts of the country - thus keeping them out of the focus of the cameras and cutting them off from the humanitarian aid networks on which they depend.”
The West is destroying its own roots
Catholic theologian Vito Mancuso is up in arms in La Stampa about the drag re-enactment of Leonardo Da Vinci's Last Supper during one of the shows:
“The desecration of the Christian and Western tradition by the opening in Paris speaks volumes about the world today. It reveals the poverty of our time, it demonstrates the underlying cultural and spiritual destitution, it symbolises the ever-increasing hostility towards our history. Like a plant without roots, a civilisation without roots withers and dies. ... The sluggish movements of the so-called drag queens was emblematic of the torment of the Western soul, writhing in hostility to itself and its own tradition.”
The Bible is just an excuse
The outrage over the modern interpretation of the famous Last Supper scene is just a pretext, snorts NRC columnist Frank Huiskamp:
“If it was a deliberate allusion to this painting which has been parodied so often over the years, then it should be more cliché than controversy. ... But it's not about the allusion either. It's about the people who made the allusion. Gays, lesbians, trans people. It was grist to the mill for the anti-woke crusaders, for all the people who are shocked by the sight of a rainbow zebra crossing. The Bible is just a shield to hide behind when it suits them.”