Doesn’t “The Feast of the Gods” already reinterpret The Last Supper as a Dionysian party? Not as blasphemy, but as artistic reference. If so, then mere art is already a reason to do such a thing, even within the deeply Christian culture of the 17th century. The celebration of a work of art that has long been held in a French museum is then quite plausible as a reason to reference that art in a nationalistic opening ceremony.
You ask whether anyone in France would have minded about the reference. It’s a fair question — one that undercuts your point. If nobody within the milieu of the organisers would have been shocked in the first place, then it becomes much harder to believe that the thrill of blasphemy was a strong motivating factor.
Cultural referencing of a religion you don’t hold to is an odd thing, but not a new thing. After all, Europe kept doing this with Greek and Roman gods long after Christian dominance was an established fact. France still loves its culture and its past, even when it doesn’t relate to it in the same way as before. This doesn’t have to be seen as futile or insulting.
Wonderful piece santiago. I think secularism's issue has always been and always will be finding purchase beyond mere values. Establishing a cultural and emotional purchase is difficult but necessary for any set of values and stories to retain some sort of power. For all of secularism's good deeds and missteps, I struggle to see how that alone can ground a polity.
It might be worth mentioning that the real seizure of church assets -- its enormous land holdings -- came during the revolution. The 1905 act to take over the churches themselves was an afterthought, and a conserving one, as you point out.
But, yes, it will be great fun to rebuild a wooden spire "stone by stone." And, yes, it's ironic that the only properly-buried French monarch is Louis XVI. But there is a connection here: the real Alcibiades, the real passionate actor in the French story has been the mob: le peuple, la canaille, les sans-culottes, les enragés, and, a recent novelty, les gilets jaunes (who, while less urban than the others, are hardly reconquistas). A spark from workers in the rafters put the torch to Notre Dame, but the church's existence in the 21st century may be due to the fact that the mob that pillaged it in the 1790s, confined to ground level, could not find much to burn.
So here's a question, had the blasphemic Olympic intro been broadcast only in France, would it have created much of a ripple? The last time I checked, the only French group among whom laïcité did not remain popular was -- the Muslims.
"To me, though, what happened in the Basilica of Saint-Denis is even more disturbing. That church was the burial place where generations of French kings had been buried — including the remains of the first French king, Clovis. Revolutionaries trashed the place, dug up the tombs of French monarchs, and tossed their bones into a pit."
Perhaps their memories of the Bourbon kings, who had sent millions of Frenchmen to their deaths in idiotic wars for glory, were fresher than yours. I can't bring myself to condemn the desecration of their remains. (Well, maybe on second -- or third -- thought.)
You mean at the same time that the Revolution was sending hundreds of thousands of their fellow Frenchmen to their graves - to be followed by the Napoleonic Wars (Napoleon himself an offspring of the Revolution as well), the democratic crush of 1848 and 1870, or soon afterwards the very democratic France going into WWI?
I doubt those mobs any actual painful memories of the long dead Bourbon kings - just their own king. Some idiots just gave the idea, and the rest followed the flow.
1) We were talking about "foreign battlefields" and by implication, whether the post-1789 wars were quite as "idiotic" as the Bourbon wars. But yes, I'm happy to acknowledge that the Revolution was harshly repressive in crushing internal resistance.
2) Not sure how 1848, 1870, and 1914 fit into the discussion.
3) The mobs may or may not have had any memories of their ancestors being dragooned into royal wars (I suspect they did; peasant folklore has a long memory), but the idiots who gave them the idea probably did.
“Europe can’t shake the memory [sic] the old boss. I think the Olympic ceremony shows that secular Europe does not really exist, at least not in a robust sense. If your way of offending Christ is by summoning Dionysus, then all you’re doing is replacing the new God with an older one.”
A great piece. I’m a new fan.
And I guess I get that the above is the more important, bigger point to you.
I just find it interesting that you never explicitly point out - even though to me you make it quite clear - that “secular” France violated its own supposed precepts (national religion?) by bringing an attack on religion explicitly into its opening ceremony.
You explain well why this was acceptable to the *artistic* powers-that-be and why a similar attack on Islam would not pass decorum standards. Again, arguably the more *interesting* point.
Still, IMO the piece would have been even stronger had you first pointed out the obvious hypocrisy - NOT simple double standard, the difference to which you explicate quite clearly and wonderfully, but simple hypocrisy - in making the ceremony be something that would obviously be taken as blasphemous by the faithful. Where was the secular in the “avowedly secular” French government?
One other thought, I have to say the Humanism in this opening ceremony was super rich and reminded me of the Humanists in Ada Palmer's Terra Ignota series. I think this philosophy is hurtling us toward the end of history, but Palmer's speculation is way more entertaining.
I'm glad I wasn't the only one who could see the Last Supper tucked neatly into the opening ceremony. But the real pity was the reminder of French promiscuity in that menage a trois sketch.
What's interesting to me is the reaction of the old boss, or parents to these blasphemous children. If I see youth acting foolishly, I shake my head and pray they'll come to their senses. Middle age has taught me that what seems right to young people is often foolishness, but the fever usually breaks with experience and a few hard knocks. Somehow the parent's overreactions seem more childish. If you really are firm in your convictions, you should pity those who ridicule, you, not lash out defensively, like some goody two shoes child.
After all, as Shadi reminds us, God will have his Judgement in the afterlife.
Good contextualisation, but doesn’t the fate of the Cult of Reason show that secularism was dead on arrival - that one cannot have Apollo without Dionysus (as also evidenced by the camp portrayal of revolutionary violence in the Opening Ceremony)? I also don’t think we need to see the Christian and the pagan as necessarily at odds: there is a tradition of identifying Christ *with* Dionysus, including by Simone Weil, who notes that the first and last acts of Christ’s public life involved wine: firstly, turning water into wine - and finally, turning wine into the blood of God.
Well, perhaps but the audience for the opening ceremony was international, not secular French. This was a grand opportunity for France to say something important rather than blasphemous and vulgar. A lot of effort and talent went into the production of the ceremonies and I am at a loss as to who thought this was a good idea and an honoring of such effort. What a missed opportunity!
This editorial in Al Jazeera echos my sentiments:
Over the years, there have been numerous controversies surrounding the Olympic Games, from allegations of sexism and cultural relativism to just plain mismanagement. But as far as I’m concerned, the opening ceremony in Paris this year was conspicuous for its mediocracy. It obviously tried very hard to represent an inclusive culture, but it ended up looking like a drunken fight in a fairground." https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/7/29/paris-olympics-opening-ceremony-was-an-insult-to-women
Doesn’t “The Feast of the Gods” already reinterpret The Last Supper as a Dionysian party? Not as blasphemy, but as artistic reference. If so, then mere art is already a reason to do such a thing, even within the deeply Christian culture of the 17th century. The celebration of a work of art that has long been held in a French museum is then quite plausible as a reason to reference that art in a nationalistic opening ceremony.
You ask whether anyone in France would have minded about the reference. It’s a fair question — one that undercuts your point. If nobody within the milieu of the organisers would have been shocked in the first place, then it becomes much harder to believe that the thrill of blasphemy was a strong motivating factor.
Cultural referencing of a religion you don’t hold to is an odd thing, but not a new thing. After all, Europe kept doing this with Greek and Roman gods long after Christian dominance was an established fact. France still loves its culture and its past, even when it doesn’t relate to it in the same way as before. This doesn’t have to be seen as futile or insulting.
Wonderful piece santiago. I think secularism's issue has always been and always will be finding purchase beyond mere values. Establishing a cultural and emotional purchase is difficult but necessary for any set of values and stories to retain some sort of power. For all of secularism's good deeds and missteps, I struggle to see how that alone can ground a polity.
It might be worth mentioning that the real seizure of church assets -- its enormous land holdings -- came during the revolution. The 1905 act to take over the churches themselves was an afterthought, and a conserving one, as you point out.
But, yes, it will be great fun to rebuild a wooden spire "stone by stone." And, yes, it's ironic that the only properly-buried French monarch is Louis XVI. But there is a connection here: the real Alcibiades, the real passionate actor in the French story has been the mob: le peuple, la canaille, les sans-culottes, les enragés, and, a recent novelty, les gilets jaunes (who, while less urban than the others, are hardly reconquistas). A spark from workers in the rafters put the torch to Notre Dame, but the church's existence in the 21st century may be due to the fact that the mob that pillaged it in the 1790s, confined to ground level, could not find much to burn.
So here's a question, had the blasphemic Olympic intro been broadcast only in France, would it have created much of a ripple? The last time I checked, the only French group among whom laïcité did not remain popular was -- the Muslims.
lol wooden spire!
"To me, though, what happened in the Basilica of Saint-Denis is even more disturbing. That church was the burial place where generations of French kings had been buried — including the remains of the first French king, Clovis. Revolutionaries trashed the place, dug up the tombs of French monarchs, and tossed their bones into a pit."
Perhaps their memories of the Bourbon kings, who had sent millions of Frenchmen to their deaths in idiotic wars for glory, were fresher than yours. I can't bring myself to condemn the desecration of their remains. (Well, maybe on second -- or third -- thought.)
Fair enough. I guess what disturbed me was the desire to destroy the past as well as the present. (That Orwell quote …)
Sadly, the revolutionary government would soon also be sending Frenchmen to die on foreign battlefields …
Yes, but in many cases those Frenchmen were defending against aggression by conservative states who wanted to crush the Revolution.
You mean at the same time that the Revolution was sending hundreds of thousands of their fellow Frenchmen to their graves - to be followed by the Napoleonic Wars (Napoleon himself an offspring of the Revolution as well), the democratic crush of 1848 and 1870, or soon afterwards the very democratic France going into WWI?
I doubt those mobs any actual painful memories of the long dead Bourbon kings - just their own king. Some idiots just gave the idea, and the rest followed the flow.
Nick:
1) We were talking about "foreign battlefields" and by implication, whether the post-1789 wars were quite as "idiotic" as the Bourbon wars. But yes, I'm happy to acknowledge that the Revolution was harshly repressive in crushing internal resistance.
2) Not sure how 1848, 1870, and 1914 fit into the discussion.
3) The mobs may or may not have had any memories of their ancestors being dragooned into royal wars (I suspect they did; peasant folklore has a long memory), but the idiots who gave them the idea probably did.
> Not sure how 1848, 1870, and 1914 fit into the discussion.
In that the "democratic" France would soon do its citizens worse repression and massacre-wise than those Bourbon kings ever did
You think the Republic after 1848 was more violent and repressive than the Bourbons?
“Europe can’t shake the memory [sic] the old boss. I think the Olympic ceremony shows that secular Europe does not really exist, at least not in a robust sense. If your way of offending Christ is by summoning Dionysus, then all you’re doing is replacing the new God with an older one.”
A great piece. I’m a new fan.
And I guess I get that the above is the more important, bigger point to you.
I just find it interesting that you never explicitly point out - even though to me you make it quite clear - that “secular” France violated its own supposed precepts (national religion?) by bringing an attack on religion explicitly into its opening ceremony.
You explain well why this was acceptable to the *artistic* powers-that-be and why a similar attack on Islam would not pass decorum standards. Again, arguably the more *interesting* point.
Still, IMO the piece would have been even stronger had you first pointed out the obvious hypocrisy - NOT simple double standard, the difference to which you explicate quite clearly and wonderfully, but simple hypocrisy - in making the ceremony be something that would obviously be taken as blasphemous by the faithful. Where was the secular in the “avowedly secular” French government?
One other thought, I have to say the Humanism in this opening ceremony was super rich and reminded me of the Humanists in Ada Palmer's Terra Ignota series. I think this philosophy is hurtling us toward the end of history, but Palmer's speculation is way more entertaining.
I'm glad I wasn't the only one who could see the Last Supper tucked neatly into the opening ceremony. But the real pity was the reminder of French promiscuity in that menage a trois sketch.
What's interesting to me is the reaction of the old boss, or parents to these blasphemous children. If I see youth acting foolishly, I shake my head and pray they'll come to their senses. Middle age has taught me that what seems right to young people is often foolishness, but the fever usually breaks with experience and a few hard knocks. Somehow the parent's overreactions seem more childish. If you really are firm in your convictions, you should pity those who ridicule, you, not lash out defensively, like some goody two shoes child.
After all, as Shadi reminds us, God will have his Judgement in the afterlife.
Good contextualisation, but doesn’t the fate of the Cult of Reason show that secularism was dead on arrival - that one cannot have Apollo without Dionysus (as also evidenced by the camp portrayal of revolutionary violence in the Opening Ceremony)? I also don’t think we need to see the Christian and the pagan as necessarily at odds: there is a tradition of identifying Christ *with* Dionysus, including by Simone Weil, who notes that the first and last acts of Christ’s public life involved wine: firstly, turning water into wine - and finally, turning wine into the blood of God.
Well, perhaps but the audience for the opening ceremony was international, not secular French. This was a grand opportunity for France to say something important rather than blasphemous and vulgar. A lot of effort and talent went into the production of the ceremonies and I am at a loss as to who thought this was a good idea and an honoring of such effort. What a missed opportunity!
This editorial in Al Jazeera echos my sentiments:
Over the years, there have been numerous controversies surrounding the Olympic Games, from allegations of sexism and cultural relativism to just plain mismanagement. But as far as I’m concerned, the opening ceremony in Paris this year was conspicuous for its mediocracy. It obviously tried very hard to represent an inclusive culture, but it ended up looking like a drunken fight in a fairground." https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/7/29/paris-olympics-opening-ceremony-was-an-insult-to-women
Magnificent piece - did not expect that!