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The shocking Olympic Games parody of the Last Supper

As many – possibly hundreds of millions of people – are now aware, the Olympic Games hosted by France quickly became popular for all the wrong reasons.

For the organisers of the Olympic Games parody of the Last Supper – who were given a fantastic opportunity to showcase France and all it has to offer – the Paris 2024 Olympic Games might want to be quickly forgotten.

Speculation about what things meant during some of the performances ranged from complete parodies to just ‘weird’, and many questioning how relevant much of the performace was to sport. Some are asking was there a clear agenda to the reasons behind the performace?

We feel sorry for the organisers because perhaps in trying to be ultra-relavent and ‘contemporary’, they ended up producing something that was wholly inappropriate for a super-massive audience, and as a result was a wonderful opportunity completely missed.

The main ‘success’ for this modern world was to end up getting hundreds of thousands of people discussing how good, or bad they thought the ceremony was with the media and overwelming focus on that, rather than a showcase for France or a focus on the real reason for the olympic games – international top level sport.

Olympic Games parody of the Last Supper – was there really anything wrong with it? Does it matter?

Freedom of speech and expression is vital. However, regardless of how you interpret ‘freedom’, if you are fortunate enough to have the freedom to do almost anything, that doesn’t mean you should in whatever context it might be. (“’I have the right to do anything,” you say—but not everything is beneficial. “I have the right to do anything”—but not everything is constructive’ – 1 Corinthians 10:23, NIV).

There are boundaries (even if unseen or ignored), and there is a choice to make in crossing those boundaries.

So, how does this align with the Olympic Games parody of the Last Supper? If you’re given a blank canvas, what are you going to do with it – how are you going to cover it?

We’ve used the word canvas because of the section in the ceremony where there was a ‘living’ parody of the painting of the ‘Last Supper‘, which is obviously of particular interest to Christians. There were, however many other parts of the ceremony which were also, shall we say, strange. Here’s how some of the media reported it:

Paris ceremony ‘Last Supper’ parody sparks controversy (Reuters)

Olympic ‘Last Supper’ scene was in fact based on painting of Greek gods, say art experts (The Guardian) This could perhaps be true looking at the photos side-by-side, however, in our opinion, the sequence as a whole still overstepped the boundaries for a family show, and was just a little too close for those creating the show not to realise this could be a problem!

Olympic flag raised up-side-down (BBC)

Note that there was an attempt after the ceremony to explain the reasoning behind the scene not being related to the Last Supper, but there was also widely reported apologies regarding the segment in terms of the offence caused. Our opinion is that it would be better not to choose subject matter that could be mis-understood – even if it is ‘art’ or a parody.

Apologising is one thing…

As time progress over the next couple of days, there were apologies and explanations were given stating that it wasn’t a parody of the Last Supper, but rather based on another painting. In a BBC article, it was stated by the ceremony’s artistic director that “The idea was to do a big pagan party linked to the gods of Olympus.” Source: BBC. We’ve included some links below to the follow-up stories and apologies in the media.

Perhaps it was just a big cultural misunderstanding. Either way, with all the bad choices and big mistakes, we just hope that it didn’t mean people ran away faster than an olympic runner from the 2024 olympics before it even got going – hopefully not, as most people will most likely want to enjoy it for the sport and competition as they have since 1896.

We pray for a fantastic Paris Olympic Games full of great and entertaining wholesome sport. If, as some media has already reported, this was all just a big misunderstanding, then we can choose to forget it happened and move on. Let’s just hope the closing ceremony will be much more relevant, and most of all appropriate for everyone and that future hosts of the games (and other events) have been taking notes.

Running photo by Andrea Piacquadio, Pexels.