FT: Olympics organisers apologise as risqué ceremony sparks backlash

The Paris Olympics' opening ceremony faced backlash from conservative politicians and religious figures, accusing it of mocking Christianity..Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here..Join us for BizNews' first investment-focused conference on Thursday, 12 September, in Hermanus, featuring top experts like Frans Cronje, Piet Viljoen, and more. Get insights on electricity and exploiting SA's gas bounty from new and familiar faces. Register here..By Leila Abboud and Sara Germano In Paris.Religious figures and rightwing politicians complain about portrayal of Christianity .___STEADY_PAYWALL___.Organisers of the Paris Olympics' opening ceremony are facing a backlash from conservative politicians and religious figures who say that it denigrated Christians..Friday's celebration along the river Seine included a scene depicting a bacchanalian Last Supper that included drag queens and a man clad only in blue body paint, as well as a cheeky tribute to sexual liberation.."Clearly there was never an intention to show disrespect to any religious group. [The opening ceremony] tried to celebrate community tolerance," a spokesperson for Paris 2024 told journalists at a press conference on Sunday. "We believe this ambition was achieved. If people have taken any offence we are really sorry.".The three-hour outdoor ceremony on Friday night featured an armada of about 100 boats carrying more than 10,000 athletes down the river. The event also contained scantily clad dancers and portrayals of diverse sexual orientations and racial minorities..Read more: Olympic athletes vie for gold and social media stardom in Paris.French Catholic bishops said in a statement that the ceremony "unfortunately included scenes that mocked and derided Christianity". The Archbishop of Malta said he had written to the French ambassador to complain..Donald Trump Jr criticised the event in a post on social media site X, while Dutch far-right politician Geert Wilders claimed that the ceremony's bearded drag queens, a rapper and a pre-teen break dancer were "mocking Christianity"..Speaking before the ceremony, its creative director Thomas Jolly, who is known in France for genre-bending theatre and the musical Starmania, said that he wanted to symbolise French history, culture and literature while creating an inclusive performance that showcased the country's different communities.."You will never find in me any desire to mock, to denigrate anything. I wanted to carry out a ceremony which repairs, which reconciles and also which reaffirms the values of our Republic," Jolly told BFMTV on Sunday. .He also said the sequence that has caused the most controversy was not inspired by the Last Supper, but by a bacchanalian feast with Dionysus, Greek god of wine and festivity, at the center, a reference to the games' origins in ancient Greece. "The idea was rather to have a big pagan festival linked to the gods of Olympus," he said. .Jolly told reporters on Saturday that his aim was "not to be subversive" but rather to represent "diversity and being together" while keeping with France's long tradition of secularism. ."In France we have freedom of creation, artistic freedom . . . [and are] lucky to live in a free country," Jolly said. "We are a republic. We have the right to love who we want, we have the right not to be worshippers.".Olympics officials have long promoted the games as a unifying force that transcends politics; the opening ceremony has traditionally touted the host nation's values and cultural pride..Jolly's Paris ceremony included typical French touchstones from cabaret to fashion, but also set out to challenge authority and represent Gallic values such as secularism..At one point an actor playing the beheaded Marie-Antoinette sang a song from the French Revolution, segueing into heavy metal with flames shooting up in the background..Franco-Malian musician Aya Nakamura sang a medley of her hip-hop tinged hits, mixed with the 1970s Charles Aznavour ballad "For Me Formidable" and backed by a military band..Earlier this year the French far-right criticised the prospect of Nakamura performing at the ceremony. Marine Le Pen said in March that it would be "a humiliation for the French" and criticised the star for being "vulgar" and not speaking French properly..In a social media post after the ceremony, President Emmanuel Macron celebrated Nakamura's performance, seeking to compare it with his brand of politics that fuses policies from the left and right. "En même temps," he said, meaning "at the same time"..Read also:.Blitzbokke brace for Paris Sevens. Fine-tuning ahead of Rio Olympics.It's a sham: Study that blocked Caster Semenya from Olympics revoked – Insights from The Wall Street JournalQueen of the rink: Champion ice skater's 2022 Winter Olympics dream.© 2024 The Financial Times Ltd

FT: Olympics organisers apologise as risqué ceremony sparks backlash

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