2024 Paris Olympics Opening Ceremony Controversy

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Overview

The 2024 Paris Olympics Opening Ceremony Controversy refers to a controversy surrounding several segments of the opening ceremony of the 2024 Summer Olympic Games in Paris, most notably a segment resembling The Last Supper scene. The segment, which featured drag queens, a transgender model, and a blue-painted man in a revealing outfit, became a subject of argument online, particularly from conservative Christian users on social media.

Background

On July 26th, 2024, the opening ceremony for the 2024 Summer Olympic Games took place in Paris, France. On that day, the full ceremony was streamed on YouTube^[1] (shown below).

Several segments of the opening ceremony became a subject of controversy, most notably a scene that was interpreted by some viewers as a parody of the Last Supper, a Christian scene of Jesus Christ sharing his last meal with his apostles. The contentious scene featured drag queens, a transgender model and French singer Philippe Katerine painted in blue and wearing a revealing outfit portraying the Greek god of Wine Dionysus.

On July 26th, 2024, X^[2] user @LibertyLockPod posted a video of the segment, criticizing it, with the post (shown below) garnering over 31,000 reposts and 184,000 likes in three days.

Other segments that sparked controversy included imagery of a silver horsewoman galloping over the Seine River, which some users misinterpreted as Death of the Four Horsemen, and a headless Marie-Antoinette that appeared during a performance by heavy metal band Gojira (reaction video seen below due to DMCA issues). Combined, the segments led to some users describing the opening ceremony as "satanic."

For example, on July 26th, 2024, American conservative political commentator Matt Walsh made a post that referred to the scene as "demonic," with the post gaining over 9,500 reposts and 58,000 likes on X^[3] in three days.

Developments

In the hours following the ceremony, a blurry image of a man that appeared during the Dionysus segment was circulated^[4]^[5] online due to the man's testicles appearing to stick out of his costume. However, this was debunked as other images showed that the bright spot was a hole in the fishnet stockings and not the performer's testicles (shown below).

Following the controversy, on July 28th, 2024, the spokesperson for the organizing committee of Paris 2024 apologized to Christian groups who were outraged by the scene resembling The Last Supper^[6] in which they said:

Clearly there was never an intention to show disrespect to any religious group […] If people have taken any offence, we of course are really sorry.

The Paris Olympics artistic director Thomas Jolly denied that The Last Supper served as a reference for the segment, saying that the idea was to "have a grand pagan festival connected to the gods of Olympus."^[7]

The silver horsewoman, interpreted by some as death, was meant to be "the embodiment of Sequana, goddess of the Seine River and a symbol of resistance."^[8]

Online Reactions

The opening ceremony, and the Dionysus segment in particular, sparked backlash on social media as some users accused the organizers of offending Christians, while others criticized the ceremony in general over its perceived "wokeness." For example, on July 26th, 2024, X^[8] user @andst7 made a post critical of the Dionysus segment seemingly mocking Christians that received over 13,000 reposts and 86,000 likes in three days (shown below, left).

On July 27th, 2024, X^[9] user @_annatx wrote, "this is going down as the worst opening ceremony in history," with the X account @USA_Polling replying with a photograph of the 1936 Berlin Summer Olympics. The post (shown below) garnered over 14,000 reposts and 233,000 likes in two days.

The image of Philippe Katerine covered in blue paint achieved particular virality online as the singer was compared to a smurf in memes (examples shown below).