he issue of the whole was that, what with opposition, and what with success, a violent and malignant zeal, of a kind hitherto unknown in the world, had taken an entire possession of their minds and rendered their whole conversation, which otherwise would have been pleasing and instructive, perfectly disgusting. A spirit of cabal, intrigue and proselytism pervaded all their thoughts, words and actions.”

- Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, 1790, p.93

The media was fixated on the Paris Olympics.

The Paris Olympics opening ceremony served up a spectacle of bold theatrics, featuring a headless Marie Antoinette rocking out with her severed head, decked in drag makeup. Drag performances stole the show, with three queens joining 10,000 torchbearers to relay the Olympic flame from Greece to Paris via French territories.

The brouhaha over the Paris Olympic opening conjures images of Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France. The fervent backlash echoes a forceful expression of conservatives’ rejection of, arguably, one of the unique opening ceremonies in recent memory.

During the Paris inauguration on Friday, July 26, a vibrant cast of drag artists, dancers and performers in elaborate Greek mythology-inspired costumes gathered on the Debilly Footbridge.

A depiction of Greek gods reveling atop Mount Olympus at the Olympics opening ceremony stirred a tempest of public opinion. The pièce de résistance was a grand dinner platter revealing a blue-skinned, scantily clad Bacchus, played by French actor and singer Philippe Katerine. As the embodiment of Dionysus, the Greek god of wine, he swiftly earned the cheeky moniker ‘the semi-naked blue guy.’

Critics contended that the performance was a parody of Leonardo da Vinci’s iconic fresco The Last Supper, satirising Christian beliefs.

Jesuit Fr Thomas Reese wrote in National Catholic Reporter - “Bishops accuse Olympics of anti-Catholicism.” The French Catholic Church decried the festivities, asserting they “…included scenes of derision and mockery of Christianity.”

Explaining why France is not feeling good, historian and demographer, Emmanuel Todd paints a picture of two Frances: one secular and egalitarian, the other steeped in right-wing Catholicism and inequality. He claims that even as traditional Catholicism fades from public rituals, it remains a force in French politics and education. This ‘zombie Catholicism,’ according to Todd, fuels a pro-European agenda so obsessed with secularism it veers into Islamophobia.

“The Last Supper is essential to Christian beliefs and practice and any form of misguided message is clearly unacceptable. Worse still, any expressions of mockery of what Christians hold sacred and deeply theological shows the highest form of disrespect and insensitivity, ” protested Rev Professor Jerry Pillay, the World Church Council’s general secretary, in a letter to the president of the International Olympic Committee, Thomas Bach.

In response, Paris 2024 spokesperson Anne Descamps said there was “clearly never an intention to show disrespect to any religious group.”

The Olympics ceremony’s artistic team said that the scene wasn’t a nod to Leonardo’s Last Supper, but rather homage to the equally iconic theme of divine revelry. Thomas Jolly, the director of the opening ceremony, firmly insisted that The Last Supper, Leonardo da Vinci’s Renaissance masterpiece – was not the scene’s inspiration.

Explaining why France is not feeling good, historian and demographer, Emmanuel Todd paints a picture of two Frances: one secular and egalitarian, the other steeped in right-wing Catholicism and inequality. He claims that even as traditional Catholicism fades from public rituals, it remains a force in French politics and education. This ‘zombie Catholicism,’ according to Todd, fuels a pro-European agenda so obsessed with secularism it veers into Islamophobia.

In his book Who is Charlie? Todd argues how this manifested at the time of the Charlie Hebdo attacks and the subsequent Je Suis Charlie protests and how the “zombie Catholics” as he terms them, became the major force in those protests underlining his view of a France split between a liberal centre and a conservative, hierarchical periphery.

In view of the stalemate after the recent elections, the ceremonies may be over but deep wounds have reopened.

The writer is a critic, essayist and writer who splits his time between Toronto, London and Geneva