A bizarre sequence in the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics opening ceremony has created instant anger, controversy and, of course, social media controversy. At one point, a group of drag performers, transsexuals performers costumes to look like something in that range created a tableau that seemed to evoke a very weird version of the Last Supper. Many critics, including Elon Musk, declared the number blasphemous and an intentional insult to Christians. The organizers, cowards and liars as such functionaries tend to be when controversy strikes, claimed that any resemblance to The Last Supper was unintentional, and this was supposed to comment on “the absurdity of violence against human beings” because a giant platter with a representation of the Greek God Dionysus had the drag Last Supper as its backdrop, or perhaps representing the menu at the Last Supper. See?
Oh.
Okaaaay.
You got that? Do you believe it?
Was it ethical to include this spectacle in televised, live entertainment seen all over the world? This seems like a good opportunity to use one of the ethics decision-making models. Let’s roll out the “TWELVE QUESTIONS TOWARD ETHICAL DECISION-MAKING,” adapted from Harvard Business School Professor Laura Nash’ s 1981 Harvard Business Review article, “Ethics without the Sermon.” (The ceremony also included this…
…an image of a famous French queen holding her own severed head. Someone else can figure that one out. At least it wasn’t Kathy Griffin).
Let’s say you are the final arbitrator of the proposed entertainment at the Olympics, and your decision will determine if the drag queen Last Supper, or whatever it was, makes the cut. Is the sequence unethical? Appropriate? Icky? These questions are designed to guide you to the ethical decision:
1. Have you defined the problem accurately? What’s going on here?
This, as always, is crucial. If the answer is, “The entertainment director hates Christians and Christianity and wants to deliberately upset them and then mock them later for getting engaged over a bit of cheeky art,” that will greatly influence the final verdict. I don’t believe that’s what’s going on here, having been in the performance art world for a very long time. This was an example of an artist seeking to do something memorable, “edgy,” colorful, bold and new having been given a gigantic metaphorical canvas to paint on. Let’s assume that no animus was intended.
2. How would you define the problem if you stood on the other side of the fence?
Oh, clearly: “A bunch of radical, “left-wing minority” wants to poke a finger in the eyes of all decent people everywhere.”
3. How did this situation occur in the first place?
Easy: the opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games, like the Academy Awards dance numbers, have been escalating in over-the-top theatrics and “Springtime for Hitler” scale craziness for decades. When every Olympics opening ceremony has to out-WOW! the last one, this is what happens.
4. To whom and to what do you give your loyalty as a person and as a member of the organization?
The Paris Olympics Committee, the city of Paris, France, and the Olympics themselves, as well as all the athletes, the attendees, the a participating nations and the TV audience, roughly in that order. All are stakeholders.
5. What is your intention in making this decision?
Presumably the intention of the final decision-maker is to ensure that the ceremonies enhance the Olympics as a whole, make as many people as possible happy, and achieve what entertainment is always supposed to achieve: entertaining the audience while remaining true to the values of the Olympic Games.
6. How does this intention compare with the probable results?
Oopsie! It should have been obvious that this would upset a lot of people and focus significant criticism on the Paris Games.
7. Whom could your decision injure?
See #4 above, in addition to annoying, insulting, and angering Christian groups and other religious viewers who did not tune in to see their faith be ridiculed….whether that reaction is reasonable or not.
8. Can you discuss the problem with the affected parties before you make your decision?
Sure. Obviously, that didn’t happen. (It would have spoiled the surprise.)
9. Are you confident that your position will be as valid over a long period of time as it seems now?
If the position is, “Nah, a drag queen Last Supper is just asking for controversy,” yeah, I’d say that decision isn’t likely to be challenged, at least until nobody is offended by satire or outrageous art, or Christianity joins Ancient Greek paganism in the scrapheap of history,” neither of which seem likely or imminent.
10. Could you disclose without qualm your decision or action to your boss, the head of your organization, your colleagues, your family, the person you most admire, or society as a whole?
This depends on who you are, who you care about, and what society. These are the famous three ethics check points: “The Mirror Test” (Could you look at yourself in the mirror after doing this?), the “Mom Test” (Would you be ashamed telling your mother you approved this sequence?), and “The New York Times Test” (If the front page said that you were behind the drag Last Supper, would that bother you?).
I can answer these for whomever was the decision-maker, if he or she was any kind of artist: Sure, no, and nope. I’ve had to make calls similar to this one.
But never for the Olympics, and that’s a crucial difference.
11. What is the symbolic potential of your action if understood? If misunderstood?
If “understood,” the sequence will be regarded as a bold attempt to entertain. If misunderstood, what we have heard from critics: It was a deliberate insult to Christians and Christianity.
12. Are there circumstances when you would allow exceptions to your stand? What are they?
Well, some art absolutists would say that negative reactions to any art are irrelevant. The exception to that, I maintain, is when the art has a well-established purpose and mission other than just being art. In that case, and this was such a case, then the mission trumps the artistic “vision,” no matter how otherwise valid.
Professor Laura Nash’ s questions point to the conclusion that the Last Supper bit, even if the idea was just to evoke the Da Vinci painting rather than the religious event itself, was inappropriate and irresponsible.
Which, I believe, it was.
Ethics Alarms 
Now let’s see a similar mockery of “the religion of peace” and see how its practitioners respond.
“Now let’s see a similar mockery of “the religion of peace” and see how its practitioners respond.”
You beat me to it, GT.
“the intention of the final decision-maker is to ensure that the ceremonies enhance the Olympics as a whole, make as many people as possible happy“
FFsS; and they thought the (if you’ll forgive me) Tatted Blimp in the middle would accomplish that?
PWS
Well, there are reports of widespread power outages in Paris. Some are attributing it to divine retribution. Another explanation is that Jesus is not just very important to Christianity, but to Islam. Jesus is the only one in Islam who can forgive sins. At the end times, Jesus will come, fight the last battle, and judge the world. Jesus, not Mohammed. Jesus is quite important in Islam and this is an affront to Islam as well.
Twelve questions? Are you kidding me? Ever since the Allies ran the NAZIs out of the land of the cheese eating surrender monkeys, the French intelligencia have been assiduously working to deconstruct, i.e., destroy, the Western tradition and fart in its general direction. To quote a college buddy of mine, “There should be capital punishment for aesthetic crimes.” This is one. How do you say “Assholes!” in French.
So ironic. This is decadence served up on a silver platter. It’s as if this is a scene from “Cabaret” about ‘Thirties decadence in pre-War Germany. Is anyone in this ensemble dressed like Marlene Dietrich?
Yeah, decadence was the one word I was going to us to describe it.
Of course, I didn’t see it because I refuse to watch the Olympics.
As do I. They made a big deal of the equestrienne who abused her horse. What about the gymnastics industrial complex that abuses gymnasts?
“How do you say ‘Assholes!’ in French.”
Connards
PWS
Merci.
The last Summer Olympic opening ceremony seemed to have a Baal-worship ceremony. If you need to top that, mocking Christianity with a bunch of trans people is a predictable option. These people are all effectively pagans and mocking Christianity has been beaten into them their entire life from schools and Marxist culture. They live in an echo chamber where Christianity is mocked regularly and nobody complains. Think of the people in Bill Maher’s audience.
Christians are easy targets because we don’t fight back. We only make society better but we never fight back when the civilization eaters move in to consume the good left behind by Christians.
I hear you. Christians tolerate this nonsense. So the felching sodomites that staged and participated in this may think they are all hip and cutting edge, but they are only lame and cowardly. You want to be provocative with artistic blasphemy? Go mock Islam and see how well they shake it off.
Well, the truth is that tolerance, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, the concept of absolute truth, the value and equality of human life, and modern science are products of Christian morality and Christian, Western Civilization. Without a Christian society, none of those things can be supported. With the decline of Christianity, Christian morality and culture declines. You can see it in the attacks on reality (postmodernism and gender theory), the vast increase in crime as we move from a high-trust (Christian) society to a low-trust (most other societies) one. Without a majority Christian society, the idea of equality under the law disappears and we go back to a society where the strong are allowed to oppress the weak and one dominated by slavery.
The reason Christians tolerate criticism is because the concept of being able to criticize people, even powerful people, is a product of Christian civilization. No one else does it because they aren’t Christian. We are taking one of the few high-trust, tolerant, and fairly equal societies the world has ever seen and flushing it down the drain to be ‘inclusive’ to brutal slave societies.
Didn’t people expect performers in France to push well beyond what others might consider “acceptable” and push the edge sexually, I know I did and that’s just one reason that I didn’t watch the opening ceremonies.
To be completely transparent, I really don’t give a damn about the Olympics.
Well, some art absolutists would say that negative reactions to any art are irrelevant.
“The exception to that, I maintain, is when the art has a well-established purpose and mission other than just being art.”
^^^^ This. Why does it seem that certain people so often forget this one prime consideration?
Silly me. I thought there were only 13 people, total, at the Last Supper, not 18, 17 of whom are are visible in the bottom photo. And that a reference to Dionysus (and the partying associated with that particular demigod), which this pretty clearly is, might suggest a link to the Greek origins of the Olympics. Simplest solution: sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, desperately seeking victimhood is an equal opportunity malady, and Christians (and pseudo-Christians) are not immune.
Sure, Curmie. Thanks for enlightening all of us rubes. Good work. Fuck you.
I guess we’re not sophisticated enough to get all the subtle references. Are you going to issue a Cliffs Notes for us?
And don’t come crying here next time someone gets run out of academia on a rail for some woke nonsensical reason. You’ve been in academia for the last forty years and stood by as it’s been run into the ditch. You’ve made your bed, you can sleep in it.
Now, now, OB….
Curmie was patronizing him and he stomped on him.
Well, a couple of points:
1. As I learned in my revue directing days, the highest number of people a typical individual can count without counting is six. Anything more is initially a bunch. The distinction between 13 and 18 isn’t germane. The image is a bunch of people on one side of a long stable with a central religious figure in the center.
2. I have no idea whether the idea was to imitate the Last Supper—but I am 100% certain that the fact that alignment was last-supper-like had to be known to the director.
3. Similar, a competent director has to know how a substantial number of audience members will perceive staging. If what that is will cause problems, then it’s a conscious decision to let it stand.
4. The Olympics pulled all the videos of the number. Hmmmm. So clearly someone felt the set-up was unpleasantly provocative; it wasn’t just that everyone couldn’t count.
Supposedly it is supposed to be based on another painting called feast of the gods. Maybe it would have benefited from a pre-ceremony description. Unfortunately it’s too late to go back and change that.
Because everyone is as familiar with that painting as “The Last Supper.”
if you look closely enough, one of the characters exposed himself. That’s probably why the video got yanked.
Why would I, or anyone, want to look THAT closely?
Still, one has to wonder what geniuses decided that a transsexual drag performance of any sort would be just the thing for an Olympics presentation.
If they went through the 12 questions, they wouldn’t.
@Steve-O Well, never mind, you’ve essentially covered that below. I should read on before posting .
People believe that there are three phases to western civilization
Pre Christian tribal paganism
Christianity ascendant
Post Christian modern enlightenment
But the reality is there are only two divisions to history:
Paganism
Christianity
Paganism
It won’t be long now that the brief moment Christianity’s minima impact on civilization is in the rear view mirror that all the horrors of pre Christian Europe will become regular practice again.
It doesn’t help that Christianity never was able to fully tame mankind’s innate wretchedness.
Yeah, a friend of mine on Facebook, a professional director, made a snotty post asserting that anyone who didn’t see that was illiterate. That’s a disingenuous argument. There appear to be many classic paintings called “Feast of the Gods” or having that theme. So the apologists went looking for one that seemed similar to The Last Supper, and shouted, “See? THIS is what that thing was imitating!” Except that imitating a model few will recognize is silly, when the audience is a large and diverse one.
Your friend is full of it. Being something of a museum junkie, I’ve seen classical art at locations literally all over the U.S., Europe, and much of the rest of the world, and would not have pegged that as related to any “feast of the gods” theme.
With the smaller groupings to each side mimicking the arrangement of the Apostles, and a divinity’s “halo” over the head of the central figure, The last Supper is a logical connection (seen that, too). Though Christ doesn’t have a typical halo in Da Vinci’s work, his head is framed in the brightest spot in the picture.
The number of my friends who are “full of it” defies exposition.
Yeah it was totally just a reference to a bacchanalia (as if that’s any better).
Complete gaslighting Curmie and you know it. The only people denying what it obvious was are people who also like intentionally offending the very group that essentially brought all the good western civilization enjoys.
But go ahead. I’m sure you feel very cultured.
Or, how about this interpretation of the Opening Ceremony: I suspect very few people recognized the Greek celebration. Billions more recognize that painting, though.
“The Last Supper” is Da Vinci’s artistic representation of Christ’s institution of the Eucharist before he entered into His Passion. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John wrote about it. 1.3 billion Catholics believe the Eucharist is the Real Presence of Jesus. Whether one agrees with that or not is immaterial and irrelevant. France has a long Christian tradition.
Couple that with the other events in the Opening Ceremony (save and except Gojira’s ‘Marie Antoinett’ bit because heavy metal/death metal has had a long history of using startling imagery), and it is clear that those designing the Opening Ceremony intended to stick poles in the eyes of western history, culture, and civilization, even those western tradition has moved human progress more in 1000 years than any other period.
Your pizza ad campaign post questioned whether the ads celebrated ignorance and illiteracy over education. The Opening Ceremony – all of it – elevated the profane to “high art” while simultaneously denigrating religion and western society, treating them as sophomoric and pedestrian. The worship of trans issues in place of personal exceptionalism in sport should lead to a conclusion that the supposed bacchanalian party (what was it? gluttony?) was intended to insult Catholics, in general, and Christians in general, and the West. If not, why didn’t Mohammed lay on the table while being “attended to” by this child brides?
jvb
A link to the Olympics’ Greek origins requires drag queens, a guy with his ball sack out, and an underage girl? Really, Curmie? Whether it was a reference to The Last Supper or a bacchanal seems quite beside the point.
I’ve watched the openings of at least five or six Olympiads that I can think of. I decided to take a pass on watching this one live and catch up to it later. I’m glad I decided not to. It’s one thing to shake things up a little and keep them fresh. However, this was such a departure from tradition as to be jarring, and appeared to be almost at cross purposes with what the Olympics are supposed to be about.
The Olympics are supposed to be about achieving great things and coming together in a sense of world brotherhood. Originally there was also a sense of this being something for noble people, which is why originally only amateurs were permitted. The opening and closing ceremonies are supposed to be about the host country showcasing its best. I’ve seen some unusual stuff in my day, like the building of a Shinto shrine at the 1998 Winter Olympics, the flying beds to try to showcase the National health Service in London in 2012, and the entrance of all of the First Nations in the Winter Olympics in Canada sometime back, I don’t remember the date. Okay, these were all unique things about the nations hosting that they were proud of.
The Olympics have never been about quasi horror nor bizarreness. A cephalophore (bet you’ve never heard that word before) queen and a deliberately shocking parody of a sacred event are not supposed to be what the Olympics are about. That’s the kind of thing that rock stars who like to push the envelope do. The Olympics have also never been about showcasing odd sexuality, in fact sexuality has nothing to do with the Olympics. The Olympics have never been about insulting either host or guest. I would note that in 2002 in Salt Lake City, not even 6 months after September 11th, it was our intention to bring the ground zero flag into the stadium. Some of the international Olympic officials complained that it was too nationalistic. They were quickly told that it is not normal to insult your host, and that would have been an insult to the US. It’s also not usual to insult one’s guests. I am going to go out on a limb and say there are probably a fair amount of Catholics among the athletes, especially from Latin America and some of the European countries which are traditionally Catholic. As was pointed out above, no host country would be so crass as to deliberately insult Islam in the face of probably a substantial number of Islamic athletes. This is really no different than doing that.
My brother said that David Bowie would consider this ceremony too trippy. I think he hit it right on the head.
Remember when china’s opening ceremony was literally a blatant celebration of ant-like conformity to the hive?
Western civ had a chance to answer that and this is what it did….
We deserve to lose just as much as the collective does.
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Curmie!. What’s with the esoterica? It’s a track meet! Come on!
The table and the window are completely suggestive of the Last Supper. But okay, let’s stipulate the vignette is supposed to be a Dionysian bacchanal. Why? What’s more Apollonian than The Olympics? It’s an athletic competition. It’s the opposite of celebrating chaos and depravity, the yang to social order’s yin. It’s all about training and skill and discipline. Why is cross dressed people debauching themselves relevant to an Olympics? Because it’s Greek? The games come from a society that had a reputedly significant homosexual strain? Because the athletes used to compete in the nude? Does everything have to be camp? Idiocy.