Yesterday, the 2024 Summer Olympics opened in Paris with a 4-hour Opening Ceremony. While the boat parade and singers seemed to have a good reception, there were parts of the show that have led to public outcry from some people.
Specifically, a portion of the show was a drag performance that included a 'recreation' of Da Vinci's The Last Supper. For a variety of reasons (see below) there are people who are put-off, offended, angry, and more.
So far, the French Government has praised only the security forces, reporting "no incidents" at the 300,000 person ceremony. Will they release an official statement addressing - either acknowledging the controversy, apologizing, refusing to apologise, explaining why they chose this segment of the performance, etc - the response?
Close date is 1-week post-closing ceremony (happening Aug 11, Paris local time). If a statement comes before then, resolves yes. Otherwise, no.
Must be an official and direct statement from within the French Parliament or bodies related to the event (such as the organization committee). One-off quotes from people with a government title will likely not resolve this market - if it's a personal/individual opinion or mention, it's not an official statement.
Tracing Woodgrains posted this tweet thread, saying "I hated this performance and think it brought shame on the entire country of France."
A user posted this video clip from the show to twitter, currently at nearly 900k views, calling the performance "disrespectful toward many athletes."
"Mocking God" is trending, and there are any number of tweets you can find about this so I'll save an exhaustive list.
Articles:
News.com.au: Aussie legend slams ‘demonic’ detail in opening ceremony that upsets billions
(NPR skipped over this part in their summary)
NPR: An ambitious Olympics opening ceremony showboats French culture on the Seine River
1,000
3.00
tbc: I've simply added a couple of tweets out of the many as they were at the top of my feed, and a few random results (from different countries) for articles just to give context to the question for those who haven't seen anything about the 'controversy.' there are, of course, articles and people expressing their support or affinity for the opening ceremony.
general discourse has been reduced to a fairly reliable and replicable formula, unfortunately not for the better. there are some responses written by people who take some effort to elucidate their side, but they're more rare and often get lost in the noise (or are met with the low rung onslaught), at least as far as open forums go.