This is the article that appeared in the September 2024 edition of Catalyst, our monthly journal. The date that prints out reflects the day that it was uploaded to our website. For a more accurate date of when the article was first published, check out the news release, here.
It’s settled. Those who denied that the vulgar show performed at the opening ceremonies of the Olympics was not about the Last Supper have been proven wrong. Referring to the bigoted artist, Thomas Jolly, a spokesperson for the Olympics said the following in a statement to the New York Post: “Thomas Jolly took inspiration from Leonardo da Vinci’s famous painting to create the setting.”
So much for the nonsense that this anti-Catholic stunt—which featured a mostly naked man and drag queens—was a celebration of the Greek god, Dionysus.
Every honest person knows that this obscene portrayal was done to assault Christian sensibilities. Yet many denied the obvious. Here are some who did.
- Boston French Consulate: “The ceremony was designed to celebrate the unity of the Olympic spirit.” They accepted Jolly’s lying response, saying that “the performance in question was inspired by the image of a pagan feast,” one that paid homage to Dionysus, “the Greek god of festivities and wine.”
- The official account for the Olympics on X posted “The interpretation of the Greek God Dionysus makes us aware of the absurdity of violence between human beings.”
- In an interview with BFM, Thomas Jolly said, “The idea was to do a big pagan party linked to the gods of Olympus.” He added, “You’ll never find in my work any desire to mock or denigrate anyone. I wanted a ceremony that brings people together, that reconciles, but also a ceremony that affirms our Republican values of liberty, equality and fraternity.”
- Phillippe Katerine, the performer who dressed as the semi-naked blue man in the Olympic scene, said that the performance “was mostly a misunderstanding. Because when it comes down to it, it wasn’t about representing ‘the Last Supper’ at all.”
- Barbara Butch, the DJ at the center of the skit, wrote in a now inaccessible Instagram post that she “was the Greek God of the Sun, Apollo, and referenced Jan van Bijlert’s painting ‘The Feast of the Gods,’ which is displayed in a French art museum.”
- Snopes “fact checker” Jack Izzo writes, “So at the end of the segment, when the top of a large serving platter rose to reveal a blue man (French singer Phillippe Katerine) wrapped in grapevines, Jolly was not referencing Jesus and ‘The Last Supper,’ but rather Dionysus, the Greek God of wine and festivity.”
- Writing for MSNBC, Anthea Butler commented, “The moral panic over a scene of drag queens feasting at the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics set off a firestorm of outrage from religious conservatives and politicians who believed the scene was a mockery of the Last Supper. Except it wasn’t about the Last Supper at all.”
- Sally Jenkins writes in the Washington Post, “That drag queen sequence was meant to refer, like Delville, to Greek pagan celebrations — not, as some Christian leaders insist, to mock Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘The Last Supper.'”
- Louise Marshall, an honorary senior lecturer at the University of Sydney and an expert in Renaissance Art, is quoted in the New York Times as saying, “Frankly, when I looked at the clips, ‘The Last Supper’ isn’t necessarily what springs to mind. It seems very lighthearted and funny and witty and very inclusive.”
- “The View” co-host Whoopi Goldberg said on the July 29 show that “The guy that put it all together said it was from ‘The Feast of the Gods,’ which is a 17th Century Dutch painting of the Greek Olympian gods, you know, the Olympian gods because it’s the Olympics.” She further stated “There are too many people in the picture for it to be the 12 disciples and then the seven or eight other people in the picture.”
- Dutch art historian Walther Schoonenberg posted on X that “The tableau vivant or ‘living painting’ in the opening ceremony of Paris 2024 was of The Feast of the Gods, by Jan van Bijlert from 1635.”
- In an Instagram post, “Full House” actress Jodie Sweetin said, “The drag queens of the Olympics were re-creating the feast of Dionysus, not the last supper.” The post continued “And even if you thought it was a Christian reference — what’s the harm? Why is it a ‘parody’ and not a tribute? Can drag queens not be Christian too?”
- Donna Kelce, the mother of NFL stars Travis and Jason Kelce, shared a Facebook post by user Jeff Rose that said, “The Opening Ceremony of the Olympics wasn’t a mock of the Last Supper. If you have any knowledge of the Greek origin of the Olympics and the French’s rich history of theater you would have gotten this. However, because of your veiled homophobia, some of you can’t discern factual information.”
Everyone of these persons are guilty of denying the truth. Worse, they seek to blame those who are offended for misrepresenting Jolly’s obscene and bigoted portrayal. What he did is hate speech, and attempts to justify it are as obscene as his stunt.
