The Olympic Debacle was not a Perversion of the Lord’s Supper but Something Worse
brianjmann.substack.com
Collin Garbarino (WNG Arts & Culture Editor) reflects,
The Olympics are in full swing, but let’s spend a minute talking about the opening ceremony that stirred up so much controversy. About halfway through the event, viewers were subjected to a tableau of drag performers preparing for a banquet at a long table. When the main course shows up, it’s a mostly naked man painted blue representing Dionysus, the Greek god of wine and revelry. Christians around the world immediately voiced indignation at having their faith mocked through what they assumed was a parody of Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper.
From the beginning, I was unconvinced the resemblance was intentional. First, The Last Supper resides in Milan, not Paris. It would be odd to allude to an artwork in Italy when the rest of the event focused on France. Second, art has a pretty firm tradition of depicting Jesus surrounded by 12 people. The lady wearing the sun crown at the Olympics had far too many people cavorting around her. It seems much more likely that the tableau was inspired by numerous paintings of the Greek gods feasting, which is exactly what the director claimed.
The problem is that most people have very little exposure to fine art, and The Last Supper is on a very short list of Renaissance images that everyone knows. It’s not surprising that people drew a connection to the world’s most recognizable painting in which people recline at table. This cognitive leap was probably strengthened because the opening ceremony also featured da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, which resides in Paris.
I don’t think the resemblance was intentional, but it’s possible the visual language of The Last Supper slipped in unintentionally due to its ubiquity. Renaissance art and the art of classicism regularly mingled Greco-Roman imagery, Christian iconography, and contemporary concerns in the same work. There’s a long artistic tradition of Christ and Apollo possessing overlapping visual cues.
Of course, whether or not the tableau was inspired by The Last Supper, it was still in poor taste and an affront to Western civilization’s traditional Christian sensibilities.
In some ways, however, this offensive scene can be seen as wholly appropriate for the Games. The ancient Greeks held the Olympics to honor their pantheon of pagan gods, and the Greeks often mocked their gods with bawdy, lewd depictions during religious festivals. The Greeks also engaged in licentious, deviant sexual practices. I spent an academic career studying ancient history, and the more I thought about the Greeks, the more I hated them. Greek civilization is the worst, and I think it’s a tragedy that Western civilization began idolizing the Greeks about 150 years ago. Welcome to the new paganism.
We often think about Christian morality as being normative, but most of human history looks like what we saw at the opening ceremony. Its organizers weren’t attacking Christians; it’s sadder than that. In this celebration that exalts humanity to the level of divinity, they forgot that Christians even existed.1
The Olympic Debacle was not a Perversion of the Lord’s Supper but Something Worse
The Olympic Debacle was not a Perversion of the Lord’s Supper but Something Worse
The Olympic Debacle was not a Perversion of the Lord’s Supper but Something Worse
Collin Garbarino (WNG Arts & Culture Editor) reflects,
From Collin Garbarino’s column in the Muse on World Magazine here.