You won’t see an international festival mock Muhammad like this.
The ceremonies opening the Olympic Games in Paris went from panic and fury over a coordinated arson attack on the French rail system to a firestorm of controversy over a drag queen show that somehow made it into the program.
And a strong dose of apparent sacrilege — in the form of mockery of the Last Supper — just made things worse.
The controversy came over a drag show that featured French drag “star” Nicky Doll (nee Karl Sanchez) and his fellow men-pretending-to-be-women watching actual women in a fashion show and staring “fiercely at the models strutting,” according to Out.com, the website of the gay and lesbian magazine Out.
“In a subsequent segment, Nicky and the other queens were shown actually walking the runway as well,” Out reported.
Well, they did more than walk the runway.
The Out.com report didn’t mention it, but they also staged a tableau that was taken by many observers to be a sendup of classic depictions of the Last Supper, the meal Jesus ate with the apostles before his betrayal and crucifixion — and the institution of the Christian sacrament of Communion.
🚨Just in: The 2024 Olympic Games featured imagery involving women and drag queens at the opening ceremony re-creating the last supper.pic.twitter.com/xuCflvlJT4
— The Calvin Coolidge Project (@TheCalvinCooli1) July 26, 2024
To be clear, it wasn’t clear that the apparent parody was actually intentional.
As it was for the arson attacks that paralyzed key French rail lines beginning early Friday morning, responsibility for the international affront of satirizing a moment the world’s 2.4 billion Christians believe is the seminal event in their religion (not to mention the history of the human race) wasn’t being broadcast Friday.
Drag Queens mock Christianity as they recreate Jesus’ Last Supper during the Paris Olympics Opening Ceremony. #Paris2024 pic.twitter.com/0RTChRPcJw
— Oli London (@OliLondonTV) July 26, 2024
What do you think?
Wtf is going on at the Olympics opening ceremony? pic.twitter.com/rWIjH8ZVwP
— Harrison Faulkner (@Harry__Faulkner) July 26, 2024
