Lying about the Olympic Last Supper a sign of our times

Scène de la Cène à Paris sur la Seine

I’m really fed up with being gaslit. Can I get a vibe check?

Our whole culture, in the West at least, is rotten through with lying-as-norm.

Pick an example, any example. I’m going with butch Jesus and blue smurf Dionysus because when I posted about this on social media today, a New York Times reading acquaintance tried to correct me with a very sophisticated lie, and it annoyed me enough for me to go fishing on the internet to get to the bottom of things.

As everyone with internet access knows by now, on Friday night the Paris Olympic Games opened with a drag cabaret fashion show interpretation of da Vinci’s famous Last Supper tableau (la Cène in French). The scene featured LGBTQ+ icon Barbara Butch as Jesus, accompanied by apostles in drag, and with a musical performance by blue smurf Dionysus.

Christians were offended, upset and shocked, tweeting angry things and condemning the scene in statements. American tech company C Spire announced it was pulling its sponsorship of the Olympics. Notably, none of the Christians declared a holy war or shot up the creative director’s offices over it.

Source: X

This was all entirely predictable, unless you’re so embedded in a grievance minority cult that you have lost all contact with the world ‘out there’.

Facing backlash from 2.4 billion Christians (not to mention other conservative cultures, such as in China, whose broadcast commentators were reportedly stunned into silence during the spectacle) and the prospect of further sponsorship withdrawals, creative director of the ceremony Thomas Jolly swiftly denied the Last Supper reference.

“It was not my inspiration,” he said in an interview the next day. “I think it was pretty clear, there is Dionysus who arrives at the table… The idea was rather to make a big pagan festival linked to the gods of Olympus,” explained the queer-identified Jolly.

A pagan festival, that should make the Christians and Muslims feel better.

There was “never an intention to show disrespect to any religious group,” games spokesperson Anne Descamps told reporters.

"On the contrary, I think Thomas Jolly did try to intend to celebrate community tolerance. We believe this ambition was achieved. If people have taken any offence, we of course are really sorry," said Decamps.

Exactly what one would expect the people responsible for a PR and sponsorship crisis to say in a PR and sponsorship crisis. This is PR spin, folks.

But no one actually believes this story, do they?

Yes, Dionysus arrived on the scene after the tableau was set. But come on.

Source: X

And if the Last Supper reference was genuinely not intended, then how this scene got past the sensitivity readers without anyone, anyone, saying ‘hey, you know what, this looks an awful lot like that world famous historically significant religious tableau…’ is a story for the ages.

But actually, the New York Times wants you to know that “art historians are divided” on which feast was being represented at the ceremony. As though pastiche can only be derived from a single source of inspiration. As though art historians must first reach consensus before Christians can divine whether to be offended or not.

The art historian sophistry prompted educated-sounding people on social media to inform the world that the opening ceremony scene definitely wasn’t inspired by the Last Supper, because can’t you uneducated brutes tell a Dionysian feast when you see one?

The subtext is that anyone who angry-tweeted or pulled sponsorship over the Last Supper imagery is a buffoon who doesn’t know their art history.

I didn’t even angry tweet over this before today but now I’m mad about it, because once again everyone is being told not to believe their lying eyes. ‘Experts’ are being wheeled out to prop up PR messaging. And people who want to appear erudite are furthering the BS by politely correcting their friends on social media.

Perhaps the reason it pisses me off more than others is that I can do it too, but I choose not to. I worked in marketing. I am an English and Cultural Studies major. I fully understand how easy it is to twist a fact, find an expert, and apply a reframe to hit the message you want and pull the rug out from under the one you don’t want.

But I refuse to do it because IT’S LYING. I think the best thing we can do is keep saying what is obvious and put up with the withering looks from our erudite friends who assume we just don’t understand NYT op-eds well enough.

Anyhow, before the great re-write continues on this particular lie, I’m just going to highlight that three days ago, EVERYONE thought this was a Last Supper scene, not just the Christians.

The performers (post since deleted):

Drag Queens:

Source: 20 minutes, translated from French

Gays:

Source: X

Leftists:

Source: X

France TV in a since-deleted post, calling the scene “A LEGENDARY Supper” (again, la Cène is the French name for the Last Supper).

French culture website Sortir à Paris, noting the clever pun in staging the tableau on the Seine - Scène de la Cène à Paris sur la Seine:

Literally every single French media outlet that covered the event (English translated from French):

(Above includes Sud Ouest, Le Soir, L’Equipe, Notre Temps)

So, ok fine. We need art historians and the creative director of the show to tell us everyone understood it wrong. In any other setting this would be called an artistic fail.

But in our sick culture, everyone had better adjust to the expert queer professional opinion or you’re a dumb bigot.

Biden’s dementia cheap fakes, Covid vaccines saved a bajillion lives, ‘democracy’ wars, Ukraine, Palestine, Kamala the Border Czar, men can get pregnant - the New York Times and friends patiently explain with the utmost sophistry why you ought not believe your lying eyes or read any historical literature unsupervised.

Is this what it looks like when your civilisation is in decline? Asking for a friend.

Update 29 July 2024: This post was edited to include Barbara Butch’s Instagram story.

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