What will be remembered most about the French Olympics, in the end, will be the beginning. At the center of the controversy are some “tableaux” of the opening ceremony: in particular the rainbow-Lgbtq version of the Banquet of Dionysus (at least, that’s what the organizers intended) that instead millions of spectators interpreted as a gender parody of the Last Supper, with Christ replaced by an obese woman and a crowd of drag queens and transsexuals representing the apostles. Scenes that outraged some and enchanted others, but that contrary to what the spirit of an Olympics should be, that is, to unite, were strongly divisive, obscuring the most beautiful parts of the show. Now. We do not want to criticize the fluid and gay character, the Holy Father would say, of the show, falling into the opposite rhetoric of offending the spiritual roots of Europe. Nor do we want to uselessly ask ourselves what the reactions would have been if the parody had involved other, more sensitive religions. No. We do not make it a moral issue; or worse ethics. But aesthetics. We do not criticize the ceremony, boring overall, because it is blasphemous or provocative. But because it is ugly. And we will never forgive that part of Italy and politics that at the time rejected Italy’s Olympic candidacy, depriving us of the pride of enchanting the world by parading athletes on the Imperial Forums under the Roman sun. What bothered us was not the Goose Step of the worst Woke culture on the Esplanade du Trocadéro. Nor the apotheosis of the gay-trans world, celebrated so much as to make it not the same as the straight one, but better and therefore ultimately paradoxically different (and in fact many criticisms also came from homosexuals without feathers and sequins). No.
What left us perplexed – as simple spectators who have not missed an Olympic opening since Los Angles 1984 – was, in general, the lack of élégance and style that France should be a master of (but do you remember the class and irony of the opening ceremony of London 2012?). The obese drag queens, the transgender dance, the bearded women, the Gay Pride carnivals were perhaps not even scandalous. But aesthetically ugly and already seen. Which is much worse.