Oh! Lympics! (The Last Supper, the last straw)
Christians everywhere demand more respect for Leonardo. But what about the other Ninja Turtles?
Is everyone okay? Please check on your friends.
Years from now, we’ll still be able to remember where we were when it happened: an event so brutal, so shocking, that it will live in infamy for generations.
I am, of course, talking about the moment when some French people sat briefly at a table during the 2024 Olympics opening ceremony. But take heart, fellow Christians. We will rebuild.
The moment, somewhere in the middle of a long and slightly chaotic opening ceremony, involved a bunch of arty folks with a queer vibe (some were apparently drag queens) strutting across a stage, catwalk-style, and then posing behind a table. A blue Dionysus then emerged from under a large silver cloche. It was all rather kitschy and OTT, and there was a moment where the arrangement of the players seemed to reference Leonardo’s painting of the Last Supper.
This was greeted with a collective ‘I see what you did there’ from global audiences, who then went about their business like normal people.
Syke!
Conservatives lost their tiny minds. Of course they did.
Even usually reasonable people felt that the tableau was an attack on Christianity, an insult to Christians and even mocking God.
But was it?
By now the Hot Take Industrial Complex has offered a much-repeated argument that any reference to an Italian painting, living or dead, was purely coincidental. But this defence is neither convincing nor necessary. If an artist wants to mock our faith, they are welcome to.
‘Ah, but what if they did that to Muslims?’ many Christians have asked. And while I find the concern for Muslims (notably lacking through decades of draconian anti-terror legislation and rhetoric from what we laughingly call our political leaders) touching, I think we can safely say that that’s a question for the Muslims. If we are so Christian, if we identify so strongly with the imagery of our faith that we can feel personally insulted by parody, if we love Jesus so damn much, then maybe we could behave like him. Forgive them.
Of course, that is not what the Congregation of the Church of Hurt Pride mean when they talk about Christianity, or even images of Christ. Christianity isn’t a faith of Grace and unearned mercy, not a series of teachings that tend to ever greater inclusion and identification with the marginalised. Christianity, for far too many who bafflingly identify as Christians, is the culture that gave us these nice buildings. Those pretty paintings. The social norms that held Europe together before brown people and gays made it icky. An imagined (not remembered) world of homogenous, hierarchical order.
This misunderstanding of Christianity has been easily co-opted by the Right in their invented culture wars precisely because it is hollow, performative and fundamentally shallow. What is a shame is that so many actual followers of Christ are so easily duped by rhetoric that appears to be ‘on our side’.
It isn’t. We are being duped, manipulated and used.
If you’re not sure I’m right, ask yourself what would be so offensive about the Olympic Supper.
Even if you accept this was a reference to the Leonardo painting, it takes a certain type of persecution complex to assume it’s an attack. Not all references are mean-spirited parody. Some are homage. Why is our default hurt and outrage rather than happiness that a secular culture can still find relevance in the imagery of our religion, even if (and why this would shock anyone not recently kicked in the head by a horse I do not know) they do not use it the way the faithful do?
Assuming the worst is giving “Why? Do you hate it?” as a response to “Did you do something new with your hair?” Which would be funny if it didn’t reveal something disturbing about us.
The aspect of the scene that KKKulture Warriors and those duped by them object to is not the insertion of a pagan god into a Christian scene. That would still be oversensitive, but at least coherent. No, the thing that got so many M&S knickers in a twist was the mere presence of queer folk in the tableau. LGBTQ+ people, queer vibes, the very existence of anyone outside of the rigid, imaginary binaries of ‘tradition’ was enough to make the heteros upsettero.
Not only does this betray a staggering prejudice and potentially loathing for LGBTQ+ human beings, it also demonstrates a profound fragility in the gender-sexual identity of conservatives. A foreign country, a piece of performance art, a reference to at least one other religious tradition than your own, and only a full complement of straights will make you feel safe? You are a snowflake.
But we knew this about the identity-obsessed Right.
Honestly, the most powerful critique one could make of the scene is that it is wildly overdone. Everyone from The Simpsons and Marvel to the magazine I used to edit (a magazine aimed almost exclusively at Baptist ministers no less) has parodied Leonardo’s painting. Doing it again in 2024 is, at worst, a little unoriginal. But in even that is a pointer to the ridiculousness of the outrage. It’s not the Gospel being referenced. It’s a painting. Not an accurate one, not one Inspired by God (in the orthodox sense). And somehow, the sola Scriptura mafia have elevated it to the level of a holy relic. It’s as bizarre as it is embarrassing.
Clutching pearls because other beliefs and other ways of life exist is not projecting the confidence and strength you think it does, cis.
Now that’s not to defend the Olympics. This is an event that was once literally hosted by Adolf Hitler. Looking to it as a font of ethics and morality may be a tad naive. Even this year’s Olympics has its problems.
Female host country athletes are forbidden from living (not just expressing) their faith if that faith is Muslim. Palestinians must watch Israel compete without sanction, even as Israel murders thousands of Muslims (and Arab Christians) with the backing of our own nations. But Christians, particularly northern, western Christians, are somehow the victims?
Calm down.
Have a glass of wine. Eat some pain.
Grow up.
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Ohai. Sorry for the long hiatus. You know how it is. Weird for something this trivial to bring me out of retirement like Rambo. I just think it’s important we focus on what’s important about the Olympics. Gojira and that sick-ass French Revolution stuff. Hope you’re doing okay! Things don’t stay awful forever. Remember.