[00:00:04] Hi, my name is Brendan Malone and you're listening to the dispatches, the podcast that strives to cut through all the noise in order to challenge the popular narratives of the day with some good old fashioned contrarian thinking. You might not always agree, but at least you'll be taking a deeper look at the world around you.
[00:00:22] Hi everybody. Welcome along to the Friday Freebie edition of the Dispatchers podcast. My name is Brendan Malone. It is great to be back with you again. And today's topic of conversation is the truth about the Olympics opening ceremony and even more importantly, how to respond. Before I get into any of that though, because we have got a huge jam packed episode today. Lots to unpack and to talk about. Don't forget, if you want a daily episode of the Dispatchers podcast, simply go to patreon.com leftfootmedia. The link is in today's show notes and become a five dollar monthly patron. For just $5 a month, you will get a episode of the Dispatches commentary on current affairs, social issues and culture every single day of the week, Monday through Friday. A huge thank you to all of our patrons. It's thanks to you that today's episode is made possible. Right, let's just jump straight in, because like I said, there's a whole lot to unpack in this episode and I don't want it to take forever, but I know it is going to be a longer episode. So we all saw, or probably a lot of us saw, the opening ceremony. And in fact, the opening ceremony.
[00:01:30] What seems to have happened is that most people around the world saw the unmistakable iconography of Christ's last Supper in a particular scene, not during the whole thing, because it was a performance that actually lasted for quite some number of minutes. And during that performance, there were multiple tableaux, multiple images, multiple scenes. But there definitely was one scene where people all around the globe saw the unmistakable iconography of Christ's last Supper. This was so unmistakable that everyone from journalists to social media pundits, to media outlets, to ordinary everyday people, to mums and dads, we all recognized exactly what was being depicted on the screen in front of us. Whether you were a practising Christian, someone who has lapsed in your faith, someone who was an agnostic, or someone who had never so much as even darkened the doorway of a church, everyone immediately recognised the unmistakable iconography of Christ's last Supper in that particular scene, that particular tableau during the Olympics opening ceremony performance. And it was so obvious that people were able to name it. The fact that that actually happened is quite a powerful indicator of what's gone on here before you even look at any of the evidence. And that's what we're gonna do today. I think it's really important to recognize that the imagery, this iconography, which is so universally known, was immediately obvious to a global audience, regardless of who they were, what age they were and where they were watching. That's quite a telling fact. There are three important things, I think, that are worthy to note here before we jump into any of the evidence particulars. And that is this. Firstly, this was a highly political work, and it was deliberately evocative of the french revolutionary ideology and rebellion, which was a subversive and rage fuelled movement. It was actually quite an evil movement that deliberately and directly targeted Christianity with the brunt of its vengeful passion. And later in this episode, I will be quoting Thomas Jolie, the artistic director of the show, who is specifically tying his opening ceremony to the french revolutionary ideologies, just by way of example of the politically charged nature of this performance. Let's step away from the dionysian pagan orgy sequence, which was the part of the performance, which also included that imagery, that subversive use of the Last Supper imagery, and let's look at the performance in general. Aside from the fact that we had the Marie Antoinette display celebrating, of course, the murder of Queen Marie Antoinette, who was murdered after her children were tortured, to try and prompt them to accuse their mother of wrongdoing as part of an onslaught of terror that followed shortly after that, which culminated in the murder of a whole lot of innocent carmelite nuns. It was a brutal and evil affair, the whole thing. But before we even get to the performance with the drag queens, and we don't even need to talk about Marie Antoinette, that's obviously one political illusion. But we can talk about the ten statues of famous french females that Thomas Jolly had emerged from the Seine river during the opening ceremony. Of those ten famous french females, only one of them was involved in sports. And remember, this is a sporting event. Of the remaining nine, three of those remaining nine women were associated with pro abortion activism, and a fourth of those nine women was an anarchist who promoted acts of violence and class warfare. And I think this matters because it highlights the politically charged, politically loaded nature of the entire opening ceremony as a whole. Before we even get into unpacking the subversive nature of the bacchanalian orgy depiction that was also part of this and where the mimicking of the last supper occurred, I. During that performance, as part of it's not the whole thing, but it was a part of it. Secondly, this was not a static image. It would be more accurate to think of this imagery in the same way that we think of a film. It was deeply visual in nature and loaded with symbolic meaning, often subversive. And I think another thing to point out here is this is art. It is not engineering. In art, there are layers of meaning, and what you see can be more than one thing at the exact same time. That's what good artists do with their art, and particularly those trained in modern art, where the whole notion of subversive imagery and layering is really, really emphasised. And that's very much who Thomas Jolie is. We're going to talk more about him in a moment. But this is different from, say, engineering. In engineering, it's about utility and a symbol that you might see. It is what it is. So if you're looking at a bridge made of metal and you see triangles, that's what you're seeing. You are seeing triangles. There's no deeper philosophy, there's no layered meaning in that. They have used triangles because of the strength of a triangle. In engineering, they haven't used triangles because of their strength and also because they symbolize, perhaps, I don't know, this triangle or this, you know, trinitarian type relationship between people needing to make their way to work and earn money for the feeding of their family, plus the pollution of cars and vehicles on the road. And of course, a triangle has a hierarchy to it. And at the top is the capitalist overlord, who does harm to both and makes both of them his slaves. The environment and the family, there's nothing like that going on. It is a triangle. It is there for utility. But in art, there is layered meaning, there is symbolic meaning, there is more meaning going on here. And I think this is important because some people are treating this firstly like it's just a single static image, like one thing is all it is, and they're not accounting for the fact that in art you have layers of meaning. Lastly, and I think this is really, really important, and I'm going to mention it a couple of times today, there was a full 45 minutes between the mimicking of the Last Supper iconography, that brief scene of mimicking, and the appearance of Dionysus Bacchus and the bacchanalian orgy depiction. Bacchus Dionysus did not even appear into this performance until a full 45 minutes later. Now, this is important because I've seen a lot of people talking about this performance as if it was a static image rather than a series of different depictions, all staged one after the other during a lengthy, moving visual performance. So think about a movie. A movie can absolutely be one thing and have one very clear source of inspiration. But at the same time, it can also contain other things that are different. It contains layers of meaning, it contains symbolic meaning. In summary, the case I am going to lay out today is pretty straightforward. And that is this. That this was a performance that was both a depiction of a dionysian orgy, also known as a bacchanal or bacchanalia. And it also featured subversive imagery of the Last Supper. It was both. And. And I'm gonna do this by working my way through a timeline of events that actually starts a couple of years before the opening ceremony. And I'm doing this because I think it provides really important and highly relevant contextual information about Thomas Jolie, the events themselves and the aftermath in which we saw this initial downplaying of what had happened, and then that, about a day or so later, turned into attempts to deny what had happened. Now, lastly, I will finish by suggesting four practical things that I think we can do in response to the debasement that we witnessed at the opening ceremony. Now, one thing I really wanna stress, and this is really important, I really mean this, I know some good and faithful christians who have adopted a different take on this incident. To me, they agree with me that what we saw at the opening ceremony was self serving, hedonistic debauchery that actually was a subversive ideology, hijacking what should have been a ceremony of solidarity and human fraternity, particularly focused on sport. And then they reduced it to a tawdry cultural revolutionary debasement. However, at the same time as agreeing with me on that point, they take a different view to me on the presence of the mimicking of the last Supper iconography. They believe that there wasn't actually any depiction at all of Christ's last supper motifs and symbolism anywhere in that performance. Now, in this episode, I will be presenting what I think is the most compelling case. And that case is this. That even though it definitely wasn't the entirety of the performance, there also definitely was mimicking of Christ's last supper during this performance. So, again, this whole idea that a piece of art can be multilayered, it can be more than one thing. But I don't want this at the same time as presenting this case. I don't want this debased performance to be the cause of any uncharitable or unnecessary division and for that reason, I am hoping to make this my final word on the issue, as I am sure, just like me, you would all like to move on from having to even think about this sordid incident. And so I'm going to do my best to try and put a lid on it, put it in a jar, seal that sucker up and park it on the shelf somewhere and not return to it, and not waste too much more of the God given gift of my oxygen on this particular awful, hedonistic debasement that we were subjected to. Now, the other thing I will also point out here is that I am not psychologically trapped. And I just want to make this point. I think this is really, really important, because I think some people are accusing others now of having, like, a cognitive bias, and they're only seeing what they want to see. They were convinced that they saw the last supper imagery. They can't be told otherwise. They're only cherry picking evidence to suit their case, and they're ignoring everything else, and they're just fixated because they can't let go. Maybe pride's in there as well. They can't admit that they got it wrong. But I just wanna point out, I'm not psychologically trapped here. And in fact, if you know me, if you've followed me on social media, for example, for a while, you'll know that in the last few years, when I have made mistakes, I have publicly owned up and even apologized for mistakes for things that I've actually got wrong. Now, I believe that the case is very compelling to. And I look at this and I think it's inescapable. The conclusion I've come to, that there definitely was the use of mimicking of the last supper at one point during this particular performance. And I don't think it was accidental, and I think it was there on purpose, and it was a subversive use of imagery. However, I'm also someone who strives to live faithfully the virtues and genuinely, despite the difficulty of this and how hard this really, truly is to live humility. It's probably the hardest thing to actually live. And so if next week there was overwhelming evidence, I don't know what that would look like, but if there was some overwhelming, irrefutable evidence that I was just completely wrong, I was barking up the wrong tree, that there absolutely was no subversive use of the last supper imagery, that all we had here was just a subversive depiction of a orgiastic dionysian cult. That's all there was here put on stage, which would obviously be bad enough in and of itself. But if that's all it was, then I would happily admit that this was wrong. And in fact, over the last week, since this incident, since the first broadcast, there have been plenty of moments where I have gone back and forth on this, where I have heard other information that has made me think, oh, maybe I was wrong. And then when I go and look at the information, it actually doesn't really stack up. So I want to sort of walk through that today and explain why I believe this to actually be such a compelling case. One other little thing, too, before we get started. I do not possess a degree in art. I do have two younger brothers who both have degrees in art. And I have another younger brother who has a post grad in history and is now teaching at a classical education school in Canada where they are interested in the classics and these particular issues. But I don't have a degree in this area. I do, however, have a passionate interest in visual symbolism and narrative and thematics, particularly in cinema. And I think this has been something for me that has perhaps given me a different sort of perspective on this issue, because, as I said, this is visual, moving depictions. It's a series, a sequence of scenes all put together. It's visual artistry, it's performance based artistry. It is about the symbolic and thematic narrative presented through symbolism, through imagery. And so for me, it just. I don't know. I just see that at that level. And if you are a fan of my YouTube channel that I don't really post on as much as I should, you will know that I have a lot of videos on there talking about cinematic symbolism and the deeper symbolism that you see in cinematic imagery in particular. I also have a passion for history that, despite being woefully malnourished, is regularly being fed by me with important and respected historical works. I am also fascinated by the anthropological philosophy of Rene Girard and the profound and mystical symbolic scriptural theology of the Church fathers. And regular listeners will know that I often talk about the sacramental reality of the human experience and the profound importance of outward signs and the invisible reality they point to or that they make real in our lives and in our communities. Not everything is a sacrament, but there is a sacramental reality at work, and the world understood this. This is something that shifted after the enlightenment and really the post sort of baconian way of thinking, where it's very materialistic, very mechanistic. Our horizon shrinks, and we tend to miss this whole other layer of reality and other things that are going on. We lost sight of the fact that prior to that point, even within Christendom, we understood symbols not just as representations of something that had been, but as a type of participation in what was. They were a sort of adjoining of ourselves to something. And so I'm really passionate about this and have been for some number of years. And as my YouTube channel attests, I have often looked at visual symbolism in the cinematic arts and unpacked the layers and the deeper meanings that you can see in all of this. And so when I look at this performance, I'm bringing all of that to the table when I unpack and explore this. So with that rather long introduction out of the way, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, let me begin my case by referencing something that was publicly released by the Paris Olympics Committee two years ago. Back in 2022, they published a press release announcing that Thomas Jolie had been appointed. And this is what they said for Paris, 2024. Appointing Thomas Joly as artistic director of the ceremonies is an ambitious choice that is consistent with our vision. With his impressive career, Thomas Jolie is at the forefront of the young, creative and ambitious french artistic scene. His extraordinary shows are proof that he knows how to listen to this, break norms and take them to the next level. And then beneath the press release, which is a bit longer than that, there are different high profile referees who each add a paragraph endorsing his appointment. And two of those different high profile referees talk about. One of them talks about his fearless audacity in his art. Another referee talks about his artistic audacity and his talent to create powerful narratives that are all valuable assets to this new role. So what I'm doing here is I'm pointing to the fact that he has a particular reputation and he is someone who understands artistic symbolism and is known for that. Thomas Jolly is also a queer artist. He's a homosexual man who uses his art to promote queer ideology. I've read articles which indicate that he was also baptised, a Catholic, and that he also, in his own words, experienced bullying in school, and that he took to artistic performance as a way to find catharsis and empowerment. Now, on top of all of this, I also have in front of me a completely different magazine article from a french publication called the Dispatch. La Depeche, I think is how you say it in French. And it's a review of Thomas Joly's 2016 performance of Shakespeare's Richard III. So this is a stage performance, and this is a description. This is a very positive description of the show. Burlesque scenes, pirate lines slipped into the dialogue. Executors of low works who behave like kids in the playground and laugh until they roll on the ground before committing an assassination on orders. A chorus of common people who comment on the events under an umbrella. It is true that it rains in England a lot. Comic anachronisms. There is no boredom in Thomas Jolie's Richard III. He even goes so far as to involve the audience in the action. Richard having his usurpation of the crown legitimized by the citizens. That's the audience who cheer him, chant his name, duly encouraged by a complicit actor who acts like a bit of a room warmer. And I think in France, a room warmer is like a carnival barker, someone who's like an opening act, someone who gets the crowd going. And that's what they're comparing him to in this particular act. Now, interestingly, and the reason I mention this is not just to give you a taste of how he is, someone who pushes the boundaries, who is well skilled in performing arts, but also absolutely draws well and truly outside the lines. But more interestingly, and I'm looking at this right now in front of me, it also features this particular article, an image from the production itself. So this is his production, Richard Jolie's production of Shakespeare's Richard III. And in fact, it looks like this could even be Thomas Joly himself who's in this image. But regardless, this is taken directly from his play. And what we have here, I assume, is Richard III. And Richard III looks like a new wave singer from the eighties. Imagine a slightly thinner, perhaps, version of Robert Smith with the white face makeup on. He's got what looks like, perhaps something that Adam Ant would wear a. For those who remember back that far, if you don't Google Adamant. And this sort of very.
[00:22:08] Yeah, I would literally call it, like a new wave type outfit. And there's a feather sort of boa that is sort of behind him. But the important part in all of this is that this particular character is draped over a christian cross in a mock crucifixion pose. It actually kind of looks like a scarecrow draped over a cross. There's no mistaking this as, like, I'm not seeing things here. This is absolutely a cross. And it's just this particular character, this actor, and the cross that he has, he's sort of up on the front of it. He's hanging his arms over the back of it. He's draped over this in a mock crucifixion. Pose. Now, why I'm telling you this is because this tells me something very important. It tells me that Thomas Jolie does not hold to convention in his artistic productions. And he is not averse to including subversive depictions of christian sacred imagery in his performances.
[00:23:09] He's not averse to the layered meaning of art. He's not averse to actually colouring well outside the lines, subverting the traditional norms and his performances. Now, I've also taken the time to read his professional resume. I'm not sure how many people have actually done that, but I've read his resume. And 42 year old Thomas Jolie is no hack amateur. He isn't just well schooled and isn't just someone who's got a lot of experience, but he also teaches the arts and is clearly a well studied artist. I point this out because it would tend to undermine claims that perhaps I've seen some people hinting at or even making, that this was perhaps an ignorant, accidental depiction, or a clumsy and unintentionally offensive mingling of sacred christian imagery into his artistic performance at the opening ceremony. I just think it seems perhaps too much of a stretch to suggest that someone who is so well skilled in France, a land of subversion, artistic subversion, and subversion of the church in particular, and someone who is clearly schooled in the modern art way of doing subversive art, and who colors well outside the lines, would not be aware enough that actually, I think that kind of accusation actually makes him out to be an ignoramus, a bit of an idiot, who doesn't really know what he's doing. But clearly this is a man who has skill, he has artistic abilities, he is no hack amateur. One other important fact, and this is, I think, quite important in the context of all of this, there was another article from Medium, the magazine Medium, which was written to sometime shortly after Joly's appointment to the role of artistic director for the Paris Olympics. And this article includes the following, and, I think, very pertinent detail. Despite his accolades, Jolie's appointment has not been without controversy. Some have criticised his bold choices and unconventional approach, particularly his inclusion of daring artistic concepts. And this is interesting. So right back at the beginning, a couple of years ago, before we even get to the opening ceremony, there is public criticism in France because, again, of the subversive nature of his art, the unconventional boundary pushing, and his inclusion of daring artistic concepts that break with norms. And I see all of this as the first important plank in properly discerning what we saw in Paris at the opening ceremony. Now fast forward to that fateful July night just last week. And Thomas Jolie, in one of his normally unconventional and boundary pushing artistic performances, included a mimicry of Christ's Last Supper as part of a much larger performance that was inspired by a dionysian orgy depiction, the feast of the gods. This particular painting, which has been painted by different artists, by the way, is sometimes referred to as, again, the mimicking of the Last Supper, I think this is important to point out, took place 45 minutes before Bacas or I, Dionysus, even entered the performance. And that second scene, where Dionysus is present, looks completely different to the first, the one where the actual mimicking took place. They are not the same thing. Like I said, some people have been talking about this like it was just one single thing. They are fighting to account for artistic layering and artistic symbolism. And I think they're also failing to account for the practical realities that this was actually quite a lengthy production. And we are talking here about multiple different things.
[00:27:08] Now, as I stated earlier, this particular scene was so instantly recognizable by so many different people and different ages, states and walks of life all around the world.
[00:27:23] That they were actually able to give it a name. And they were calling it the Last Supper. That's how instantly recognizable it was.
[00:27:32] So I don't think it holds it all when people say, well, no, it's something else. It doesn't really look like the Last Supper. But the fact that so many people instantly thought that's what they were seeing actually tells you that this imagery was powerful. And it was the like, the presence of the essential symbolic elements were there in such force that people straightaway recognized what they were looking at all over the place. Now, some have said, but hold on, Brendan. There's more than 13 people in that mimicking of the Last Supper. A couple of things in response to that. Number one, I think this is confusing depiction with replication. It's clearly not a replication of the Last Supper. Instead, this is a subversive use of imagery and symbolism. Think of someone like a celebrity impersonator, perhaps, as a good comparison. They don't actually replicate the voice of the person they are imitating. They mimic them. They adopt, perhaps, the intonation, the highs and the lows, the nasally quality of a particular voice. They will also often adopt the bodily postures or the way a person might comport themselves when they are talking. They will often pick up on and mimic their. Not just mannerisms, but maybe keywords they keep using. They might even dress like that person. But a good impersonator is not a replicator. They are a mimic. And so they don't replicate exactly what that person is. And if you look, you can always see or hear difference, but you know exactly what the mimicking is of. You see it. And so this is not like engineering. They are not fabricating and replicating a product, one after the other, after the other, after the other, all stamped and signed, sealed and delivered to look and act and be exactly the same. This is depiction. You take something and you mimic, you take something as your source and you use that as a subversive presentation during your artistic work. And that's what I think is going on here. It's not exactly a replica, and in actual fact, it's not meant to be a replica. There's so much of this particular performance that's actually got nothing to do with the dionysian feast either. Which brings me to point number two. The same people who are saying this and trying to dismiss the mimicking of the last Supper are also trying to make the claim that this looks just like the depiction of the dionysian orgy paintings, when it actually doesn't replicate those images either. And this is something that you can do for yourself. Just get online and go and have a look at the feast of the gods. There are different versions of this painting. There are different depictions of dionysian bacchanalian orgies. You can see these online. You can go to websites that have got nothing to do with the Olympic Games and several years ago. These are history websites and art history websites where they have curated collections that you can go and look at. And you realize pretty quickly that this imagery, all of it, it doesn't actually replicate the feast of the gods either. There are clear and obvious and very blatant differences.
[00:30:57] Now, Dionysus, for example, is all in blue in this particular depiction we saw at the opening ceremony. Yet in the painting that is supposedly being mimicked here, and we'll get onto that point in a minute, he is not blue. In fact, most depictions of Dionysus are not in blue. And my research has actually indicated that blue is actually the traditional colour of Hades, because it's symbolic of his coldness. It's not the traditional colour of Dionysus of Bacchus. Now, you can find, for example, these images of, for example, the infant bacchus, and he might be wearing a blue cloak, and there are examples like that, but the majority are not like that. He looks like an ordinary man. He just looks normal, basically, typical greek depiction of a sort of bronzed, muscular male. But he, and there are certain things that he does have, hair and grapes and stuff like that, is consistent. But to see him all in blue, you just don't see that so clearly. What they've done here is he's not replicating any of the artwork here. He is depicting, he's borrowing the symbolism and he is reinterpreting it as he sees fit. Now, one interesting thing about the blue in all of this, which is something I noticed, and this could be totally nothing, but this is what happens when you have a mind that is fascinated by symbolic layering in realities and what's going on here. You'll notice that the DJ, who stood in the position of Christ in that mimicking scene of the Last Supper, Barbara Butch was her name. She's wearing all blue. Dionysus is all blue. And you know who else is traditionally blue? In depictions of the Last Supper? Jesus wears a blue over garment in those depictions. And it's very blue and very similar, actually, to the blue of Dionysus that we saw at the opening ceremony. That blue is very similar to the blue that you see in Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper. Now, what I'm saying here is this could well be a type of symbolic meaning that he's loaded into the performance where you have this notion of the blue God, the son of God of Christianity, is actually now being usurped by the blue pagan God Dionysus, who is culturally subversive. He is known as a cultural subversive, who is the God of hedonism and pagan orgyistic celebration, who is part of a cult that is ushered out of society. They are on the fringes. And so you see how maybe the blue is a thematic element, a symbolic element to try and depict transition. There's also the fact that this whole idea of the Last Supper is very much the notion of transubstantiation in the catholic tradition. The idea is that the elements of bread and wine, they are transformed in some profound, mysterious way. The body and blood of Christ is present and under the guise of bread and wine. And so there is a hidden reality here. There is a transubstantiation that is going on and that plays perfectly into the ideology of the trans movement. And this whole notion of gender, something hidden, something performative, that's not really what you think it is a deeper meaning that has to be unveiled. There's all of that loaded into this. Now, again, this could be me just overthinking it, but I don't think it's unreasonable to perhaps raise that question in light of the fact that Dionysus is not typically blue in these paintings. But the main point I'm making here is that you can't say, well, this depiction I saw of the Last Supper is actually not an exact replica of da Vinci's Last Supper. So therefore, what I'm seeing here, there is no mimicking at all, because if that was the case, then you could not accept the explanation that this is a dionysian feast, because there's plenty of other differences. Well, there are elements in this performance that are totally foreign to both any sacred imagery of Christ's last supper and a dionysian orgy depiction like the Runway fashion show, the DJ spinning tables, the drag performer doing a singing and dancing routine. None of those things are part of a bacchanalian feast depiction or the Last Supper, the whole nother thing altogether. So what I'm saying is there's multiple layers loaded into this thing. And I guess the key message is you can't really have your cake and eat it too, if you're gonna say, well, I don't think this actually is a mimicking of the Last Supper, because I can count an extra three or four people on the very edge there. I think you then have to be forced to say, well, I have to conclude that this is not a dionysian orgy either, because in actual fact, it doesn't really faithfully replicate that either. In cinema. And this is, I think, a point to consider and writing in general, there is a principle sometimes called show don't tell. And what this idea is that you show the audience what is hidden.
[00:36:15] You don't tell them, you let them see it. You present visual representations on screen, or the way you describe things in a particular written piece. You're not telling the reader what's going on. You make the character, the human character or characters, the centre stage and the focus. And through their actions, the audience. Audience discovers. You show them what's going on, you don't tell them. And in visual imagery, this is quite an important principle. I don't have a big line of dialogue that tells you what a character is feeling. Instead, a more skilled cinematic artist will show you a depiction of actions, emotions, a look on their face, a look in their eyes, that kind of a stuff there. Symbolic meaning can, and also, in fact, regularly does have more than one meaning at the same time. And a good filmmaker or a good artist will layer their art with meaning. And an artist of Jolie's pedigree would be aware of all of this, that scene mimicking the Last Supper, and this is really key, looks far more like the iconography of the Last Supper than it does any depictions of dionysian orgies. Like if you put that image, that mimicking moment earlier on in the performance of the Last Supper, if you put that alongside an image of the Last Supper, you can quickly and clearly see all the commonalities. And, yes, you will notice the differences. Again, this is visual, modern art. It's not replication. It is a depiction of something. It's a borrowing of imagery, a borrowing of symbolism, and you will see more in common and more of the clear symbolism and parallels and similarities between what we saw at Paris in that moment and a depiction of the Last Supper than what you will if you put that scene alongside any of the feast of the gods paintings, any depictions of Dionysus and dionysian orgy, they just don't look anything like that scene. But that scene does actually have a lot of commonalities with the Last Supper, and that means something. This was clearly scripted and practised this way. They are all looking at the camera, they know where to look. They are posing for the camera in this regard, and the camera is positioned to shoot them at that particular angle. This has all been rehearsed to be this way. This is not some weird, happy accident. Now, an interesting little aside, some queer commentators I've actually read have been indicating that this might actually be an example of voguing. Let me explain. Voguing. It's a particular type of dance, performative dance, that comes from within the queer ideological movement. Have a listen to this. This is from the Smithsonian National Museum. Voguing is a highly stylised form of dance created by black and latino LGBTQ communities between the 1960s and eighties. New York drag competitions. So this is what we saw the other night. A drag performance known as balls, transformed from elaborate pageantry to vogue battles. As part of this ballroom culture, black and latino voguers would compete for trophies and the reputation of their houses. That is, groups that were part competitive affiliation, part surrogate family, named after the famous fashion magazine. Vogue took from the poses in high fashion and ancient egyptian art, adding exaggerated hand gestures to tell a story and imitate various gender performances in categorized drag genres through dance, drag queens showed how gender is performance. They pretended to put on makeup, or what they called beat face style their hair, and put on extravagant clothes. This creative performance through voguing was even used to peacefully settle disputes among rivals in an environment that assumed a degree of mutual respect and compassion. Using dance and pantomime, the voguers would read each other. Ultimately, the winner would be the person who threw the best shade. Now, I can't prove this, but it is interesting. If that queer commentary is correct, they could well be onto something that in actual fact, just like the vogue is of a bygone era, they have taken their inspiration from art and from well known poses to produce a complex type of voguing in that moment. And in actual fact, when you go back and look at that scene, it's quite interesting. It does look like certain people there, a considerable number, in fact, have snapped themselves into a pose. And you also do see other forms of voguing a bit later in the performance, when the people are coming down the catwalk and you see people either side of the catwalk, and they are literally doing the old school Madonna voguing that probably everyone is familiar with. Now, like I said, I can't prove this, but it is kind of interesting. And I can't help but wonder if maybe that's what this was. And a vogue is just part of a performance. It's literally just a depiction of something. It's quick, it's sharpen, and then you move on. And it's possible that that's what was going on here. Look, as I said, I can't prove it, but I just found that little piece of commentary kind of interesting. So after almost everyone around the globe instantly saw the last Supper, a global controversy quickly erupted after that opening ceremony performance. Now, this is an important factor. Like I said, the fact that so many people from so many varying walks of life recognized enough of the traditional iconography of crime, Christ's last Supper, to call it. That is quite a telling thing. In all of this, people saw something so familiar, they could name what it was. Now, this is not like someone saying, oh, I saw the face of Jesus in my toast when it cooked this morning. We are talking here about artistic, deliberate artistic behaviors of a boundary pushing modern artist who is putting on a subversive, deliberately subversive and hedonistic performance in the land of hedonism and subversion. And I think it's important to recognize that when you see something happening, you shouldn't be so quick to dismiss it and say, no, no, no. It just couldn't be that. This wasn't just christians, like I said, who saw this everywhere. People all around the world, of all stripes and flavors, they saw the imagery straight away, and they recognized it. And it was so recognizable, they could name it. And this wasn't some conspiracy theory. It wasn't something that was cooked up in the dark recesses of the Internet where someone is like, look, if you add a triangle here, and then you add a square here, and then you divide this by the square root of 27, and you look to the book of revelations, chapter three, verse 29, then you will see all of this described. And this is what's playing out in front of you. No, there's nothing complex about this. It's actually really simple and straightforward. It was so obviously what it was that so many people recognized it. That's what's happened here. Now, this recognition was just. It was everywhere, and it just took off like wildfire. Just a few interesting examples. Not all of them by any means, because there were so many of them. There is a Paris tourist website called Sator a Paris, which means going out in Paris. And I've probably mispronounced the French. The. I apologize to my french listeners. I will be butchering your language today. And there were a whole lot of. You can go and see the images online still that basically there were search engine returns from people in different languages. Because this is a multi language website, it's designed for tourists to discover what is actually happening in France and what they can participate in and what they can see. And when you search up around the Olympics, there was a search engine return on Google that was telling you this website contained text in different languages that basically was saying the same thing. And it was this. Da Vinci's last supper is transformed into a drag queen catwalk show. And this is a description of what you are going to see in the Olympics opening ceremony. Now, that's kind of interesting to me. So possibly they wrote this after the fact. That is a possibility.
[00:45:16] Or maybe, just maybe, being that they're a tourist website, they were told in advance, this is what you need to tell tourists about this performance. Either way, that text was scrubbed from the website. Once the narrative shift happened, a lot of these particular examples were changed. Once the narrative was changed, there was another interview that was done by french media with a drag queen, a drag performer who I believe has some renown in France and is known as Big Bertha. And this was the question that was asked of Big Bertha as a drag queen. How did you feel when you saw the parade sequence? And this was the answer big Bertha gave. I had chills. I was extremely proud. This image of the last Supper, everyone thinks of this religious scene, but it is also a message. I am of the christian religion, and this religion is let us love one another. Everyone is accepted in the house of God. In fact, in this scene, there were all genders, all faces, all french people. I. This religion I adhere to, it makes a lot of talk, but our France today, it is this one. So here's someone again, seeing in this what is clearly visible in the imagery that was presented to the world in a now deleted tweet. The french state tv, specifically at the time, they posted a video, and they were, as you can imagine, they were taking constant social media clips and posting them with various descriptions of what people were seeing in the clips. And they specifically described it as a depiction of a last Supper scene. Lots of commentators and media all over the globe reported it as a last supper depiction before any controversy had arisen. Now, definitely after the fact, they were reporting that, but before any of the controversy, they were reporting as that, because quite clearly, the imagery was pointing them in that direction. And this is the even more important bit. Pochet, I think that's how you say that, who was one of the drag performers in the actual show, said in a french interview that was given to the french media. The idea is to bring a new perspective. And this is this performer talking about the show that had happened the night before. In the past, there have been a lot of representations of the apostles table, and it never shocked anyone, as luck would have it, when it's lgbt and drag queens, it's disturbing. So there is someone who was actually in the performance indicating publicly to the media that there was a representation at one point of the apostles table. Now, what's interesting about that is some people have picked up on the fact that earlier on in the interview, the same person talks about the idea of, oh, what's the problem? There was no one dressed up like Jesus. Again, this is artistic subversion. You take the original image and you change it radically and you use it for your own purposes. Another key performer in all of this who publicly stated that this was absolutely the last Supper was Barbara Butchenk. And Barbara Butch is the lesbian DJ who has attracted quite a lot of global fame now as a result of this. And here's the thing that a lot of people don't seem to realize. Barbara Butch didn't just make a direct comparison to Christ's Last Supper once on her social media, she did it twice, and in two different posts at different times.
[00:49:04] So, first of all, there is the one that was really infamous, that everyone saw where Barbara Butch posts an image of the screenshot of the actual performance on the night, the part of the performance that contained the mimicking of the Last Supper. And then beneath it, Barbara Butch also included an actual artistic depiction of the Last Supper. And in all caps, she wrote as the caption for this post. Oh, yes, oh, yes. Exclamation mark. The new gay testament exclamation mark. But that's not the only post that she made. And obviously in that one, she's directly comparing the two in the second post, which was an Instagram post, and it's basically like a list of the key components that are coming up in this particular performance. Like, it's just describing different things that are going to be displayed and presented in these different scenes. And at the very top of the list, it says, barbara Butch as Olympic Jesus. She posted that on her instagram. Now, about a day or so later, once the narrative had changed, these posts, they were then deleted, and it's almost certain that she was instructed to delete these.
[00:50:25] There's a whole other sort of question about that, because she replaced that post, the one. Oh, yes, oh, yes, the gay new testament. She did the same thing again. She posted a similar image and this time she referenced a particular painting of the feasts of the God. But quite clearly, it doesn't actually look a lot like that painting at all, what we're seeing in the image of her there. And not only that, but there is also a big question mark over whether in fact this particular performance was inspired by that particular painting. We'll get to that in a minute. But if it was, there's a whole nother problem here. This doesn't actually make the problem go away, as some people think that it does. But here's the thing. Some people are trying to say, oh, no, no, no, no. These are just performers in the performance.
[00:51:14] They're not the artistic director. What would they know? And in response to that, I say, I don't think that's reasonable. These people have spent weeks and weeks of intensive rehearsals with Thomas Jolie and the rest of the artistic directors, preparing for this and practising and working through this scene. And they have almost certainly been involved in the preparation, the wider preparation, for months now for this particular event. If you've ever been involved, even in a small town theatre production of something, you will know that you spend lots of time with the director, the artistic creatives, and they give you lots of instructions and they tell you what's going on in scenes and they give you guidance and direction and they tell you what to think about the performance. I just think it is not reasonable. Now, you can try and dismiss this evidence in other ways, but what I don't think it is reasonable to do is say, oh, what would they know? I'm sorry, they were actually in the performance, and they were close to the artistic director for a lot of time, and they would have received direct instruction about what they were doing in the performance. So you can't just turn around and with a wave of a hand say, well, they're not the artistic director, so this just doesn't mean anything. They're not plebs on the street. Like, you're right. These are people who are actually in the performance. Now, what's interesting is, in the last day or so, there's been a whole other backlash that has arisen now because people have rather uncharitably gone and targeted Barbara Butch with online abuse. And so I believe she's filed an official complaint with the police, the french police, about this. And she posted a statement on her instagram, and this is what she said. Whatever some may say, I exist. I've never been ashamed of who I am, and I take responsibility for everything. And this is the interesting bit, including my artistic choices. All my life, I've refused to be a victim. I won't shut up now. I could be perhaps reading too much into this. I am a bit of a wordsmith. I have been involved for almost 20 years now in helping organizations craft pr and media releases, and in spaces where you need to be very careful with the way you use words and where narrative is important. And so maybe I'm just a little bit too attentive to words, and I could be reading into this, but I do find it interesting, that particular phrase, including my artistic choices, if there is no problem here, like, this is just a buccanao, if this just is a dionysian greek depiction that we've seen, and there's nothing more here than what artistic choices are you referring to here that you would actually need to take responsibility for this? Possibly, and I say possibly again, don't overstate this, but possibly, this could indicate that in actual fact, they know there was a subversive use of that imagery. Then on Saturday, an Olympic official told the media that, quote, unquote, Thomas Jolie took inspiration from Leonardo da Vinci's famous painting to create the setting. The same person then went on to tell the reporter he is not the first artist to make reference to what is a world famous work of art, from Andy Warhol to the Simpsons, many have done it before him. So this is day one. And what they're trying to do here is they're trying to lean into the controversy and say, oh, no, no, no, no. It wasn't. It wasn't obscene. It was just borrowing imagery. But it's okay. Lots of others have done it as well. That was the first tactic that they tried to take, and then they walked it back. And what's interesting is, again, I'm seeing people just trying to dismiss this outright. This is not a journalist who's saying this. This is not a pleb on the street. This is an Olympic official who is clearly in the comms team, who has the authority to respond to media inquiries, and they are telling this to the media. Unless this person is woefully incompetent at their job, there is no way they would be making such definitive statements about anything unless they actually had certainty. They had clarity. They had perhaps some instruction sheet that spoken with. They were aware of what was actually going on here, and that's why they said what they did. This is a very strange statement to make, and it's certainly, again, it's the source as well. Now, again, you can try and write this off in other ways and say, well, they just didn't know what they were talking about. But what I don't think you can do is say, what I've seen some people saying is, no, this person doesn't count because they weren't the artistic director.
[00:55:56] They were an Olympic official who had authority to speak to the media, and they made a very clear and direct statement about what had happened. This is either extreme recklessness to the level where this person is absolutely not qualified to have that job, and that could be one possibility, or this is actually really what the truth is. And then they realized that the controversy wasn't going away. They couldn't just steer down the people who were upset by this. And so they changed the narrative. They tried to shift the narrative in another direction. Now, the next thing that happened was the Olympic officials apologized, and the media coverage at that stage was still referencing the fact that there was a mimicking of the Last Supper. Now, I know people are making the distinction. They're saying, hey, the Olympic official in this case, when they apologized, didn't talk about the Last Supper, but the journalists were just reading that into it, like they were just including that in the story, even though the Olympic official didn't say that. We'll come back to that particular point in just a moment. But again, what this tells us is the notion of the last supper imagery being present was so powerful and clear that it just seemed obvious that you would include this in the reporting. That's, I guess what I'm trying to point out here and now this is where things start to spiral a little bit out of control. And we start to get this new narrative. And the new narrative is backed up in a couple of different ways. But in actual fact, there are still big questions here. Because it was at some point before or around this time. That they simply pulled the official video of the opening ceremony. They just memory hold it. They pulled it offline at some point before or around this time. And as of checking Friday morning, early Friday morning, that video is still not available online. They've taken it offline, which is kind of strange. And my mind straight away goes to a very obvious question. Why would you remove that footage and keep it offline if there is nothing in that footage that in any way implicates you in actually having participated in an opening ceremony where there was mimicking of the Last Supper? If it's so obvious and so clear that there is no last supper mimicking here, and there's no problem here at all, and it is just a purely dionysian orgy scene, why was the footage pulled? And why has the footage not been returned to the Internet? Now, to be fair, part of this could actually be the fact that it wasn't just the mimicking of the Last Supper. It was also the subversive display of hedonism. And that display of hedonism could well have offended other countries that are not mired in this toxic ideological spiral into oblivion. And they may have been so offended by it. These are cultures that still have a sense of tradition and have a family focus and have a sense of what virtue is. And they might well have been so shocked by it that they've laid complaints at that level. And maybe they've pulled it down for that reason. And they're sort of trying to quell any diplomatic problems in that regard. So that could be one answer, which is not a great sign in and of itself. But also the question is, it was pulled, it seems, in relation to this accusation of there being a depiction, a mimicking of the last Supper as part of this performance. And it just seems strange that they would do that if that really wasn't the case. Now, around this time as well, a new narrative began to emerge. And basically, after the apology, after the admissions that there was something here, we basically started hearing the claim that in actual fact, this had all just been one huge mistake. And that, in actual fact, there was no mimicking of the Last Supper. Because this was actually just a depiction of a dionysian orgy scene. Now, the media around this time also started reporting that Thomas Joly had been inspired by Jeanne Valbellier's feast of the gods painting.
[01:00:13] But there's some important things to note about this new narrative. Number one, I went and actually sourced the original french interview to see what Thomas Jolie had actually said.
[01:00:28] And the creator's defence here doesn't actually deny that there was last supper imagery used as part of the performance. He doesn't say no, there was no depiction at all, no mimicking ever at any point in this performance. Instead, he's responding to a specific question that was put to him about a specific moment in the performance. Let me explain to you what that question was. Another criticism of Jean Luc Melancon, and he is a French politician, is the wild and much discussed performance of Philippe Catharine. He's the guy who appeared in blue at the end. He's dionysus in a setting and costumes that could evoke the CHRISTIAN last SupPer, the last meal of Christ with his apostles. Now, that's the question that was actually put to him. So you see, straight away, he's not talking about the performance as a whole. He is asked specifically about the Dionysian orgy component. And this is the scene in particular they're referencing at the end, where we have dionysus, the blue smurf guy, in the scene. And this is what he says in response. It is not my inspiration, the Christian last supper. There's Dionysus, Philip, Katerine, painted in blue, who arrives on the table. He's there because he's the God of celebration in Greek mythology, the God of wine, who was one of the jewels of France and the father of Sequiana, the goddess who is connected to the river, the Seine. The idea was to have a pagan celebration connected to the gods of Olympus. But as you can see here, he's speaking specifically about the end of the performance.
[01:02:19] Also, you'll notice, and by the way, why that's important is because the actual mimicking of the last Supper, which is a lot shorter, happened 45 minutes before that particular scene.
[01:02:32] Now, also you'll notice that he is keenly aware of the deepest symbolic nature that's at play in all of this. He's talking about the deepest symbolism that is layered into this performance.
[01:02:46] What this tells me is that Thomas Jolie is an artist who is clearly not thinking on a purely superficial level about his creations. There is meaning here. It is layered. And he is someone who has put a lot of symbolic thought into what is going on here. And I think that matters in light of what we've seen unfold here. Number two, I couldn't find a source interview anywhere where Thomas Joly actually states that he was inspired by Jean Vanbellier's feast of the gods painting. Now, art historians who know better than I could, correct me, but I believe this dutch painter painted this famous painting of the feast of the gods, and it resides in Dijon in France. That's where it hangs right now. So it has a special connection to France. But I couldn't find anywhere where he actually says that was his inspiration. Now, I know the media have been reporting that, but as far as I can tell, this actually seems to have originated from a social media user who was just speculating. She just got online in the very early days and speculated that this is what it actually was.
[01:03:59] So it's kind of questionable what's going on. Now, there might be some conclusive report where he's actually interviewed and I've just missed it, but I couldn't find it. I tried looking everywhere and everywhere. What I find is the same thing. Media outlets who are reporting but not quoting, so they are quoting him when he talks about his inspiration, but they don't quote anywhere. And he definitely doesn't say that in the original interview that I could find. And maybe I've missed it. I could be wrong about that. But if he has used this painting as his inspiration.
[01:04:32] This painting was painted over 100 years after da Vinci's last Supper, and it is considered derivative of it. And I have seen historians actually providing commentary about the possibility of deliberate subversion of da Vinci in this particular painting. Now, if this is the case that he has used this painting, it seems highly unlikely that he wouldn't be aware of all of this. And it would also make a lot more sense of why he would feature a brief passing mimicking of the Last Supper, because he is visually putting on that stage exactly what Jean Vanbyere did in his painting.
[01:05:14] Like, is it not possible, at the very least, that Thomas Jolly, if he truly was inspired by this painting, was actually visually depicting that derivative and subversive nature of the second painting?
[01:05:27] And again, I should say here, too, Dionysus is not blue in that particular painting. So in Jeanne Vanbellier's feast of the gods, Dionysus looks like an ordinary man. There's no blue there at all. But this whole thing, again, this is sort of the messy nature of what's going on here. Now, something else that's important, point number three is that Dionysus is not actually one of the four greek pagan gods traditionally associated with the Olympics. Don't believe me? You can go to the Olympics website and they have a whole section dedicated to Olympic Games mythology, and they list the four greek gods who are traditionally associated with the Olympics. Zeus, Hera, Athena and Apollo. But the one name that's not on that list is Dionysus. So he's not actually an obvious choice that you would choose.
[01:06:17] However, there is possibly a reason why you would choose him, even though he's not associated. It's because he is part of a greek pagan cult, a roman pagan cult that is associated with hedonism, subversion, being cast out of society, sexual licentiousness, orgies and the likes. And so it's actually more likely that this particular depiction was chosen because of its subversive nature. Nothing. Because there is a genuine and strong connection. In fact, I've seen greek commentators talking about this, saying, hey, look, I'm greek. And we've never had this tradition of associating the Olympics with Dionysus.
[01:07:03] Now, point number four, Jolly has said that he saw the moment as a celebration of diversity. And the table on which Butch, this is Barbara Butch, spun her tunes was a tribute to feasting and french gastronomy. So here he is inserting another layer into this.
[01:07:23] And so, again, this shows you that there are multiple things happening all at once in this. And it would be, I think, naive to think it's just one single thing. That's not how art works, that's not how this is being played out, and it's clearly not what he's telling us here, in his own words. Number five, Thomas Jolie's earlier comments the day before actually point to something else. And this is what he said the day before. This is when the controversy had first started to erupt. And in response, at a press conference, he said, this ceremony is political for me, in the sense of polis, the greek word. It unites the city, the continent, the world. Stressed the ceremony's director on Saturday morning at a press conference. There is no desire to be subversive or shocking, but to say, we are this great, we, with the republican ideas of inclusion, generosity, solidarity that we desperately need. Here, artistic creation is free. We have this chance. There is no desire to pass on militant messages, but republican messages. In France, we have the right to love each other as we want. In France, we have the right to believe or not believe. The idea was to make these values shine through. So that's day one, when he's defending it, and he doesn't actually mention the dionysian orgy depictions or anything else. He seems to, in fact, be kind of leaning into the possibility here that there actually was a mimicking of the last Supper. Why do I say that? Well, he talks about, and clearly, once again, indicates the political layering of political symbolism and political messaging that he's deliberately layered into this artistic work.
[01:09:15] Secondly, he has mentioned twice in this statement the republican ideas and the republican messages. Now, if you don't quite understand this, and this is possible for people outside of the french context, republican ideals. He's talking here about the french culture that is post enlightenment and post french revolution. It is shaped by these ideas. And part of the republican ideas is the freedom to just say whatever you want, and in fact, not just to say offensive things about religion, but to actually relish in deliberately doing and saying provocative and offensive things against religious beliefs. Like he says, here in France, we have the right to believe or not believe. But clearly he's not talking about a dionysian belief here, because no one in France is worshiping at the temple of Dionysus. There's none of that going on. So what is he referencing there when he says, in France, we have the right to believe or not to believe? I don't think it's unreasonable to read that statement as him actually saying that. Look, you can believe what you want to believe. I believe something different, and I am free, according to these republican ideas and these republican messages, to actually say what I want. And even if you are offended, then that is just the french republican way.
[01:10:44] Remember the Charlie Hebdo incident, that awful murder that took place at the Charlie Hebdo magazine when the islamic extremists stormed the building and once again reminded the world that the worst response you will get from christians is a response of love, where they'll get upset and then they will lovingly pray for your conversion. Whereas other religious traditions, like Islam, has members who actually will do much more violent and oppressive things than that. Now, that particular incident happened as a direct result of the Charlie Hebdo magazine ridiculing and mocking Islam. They weren't just talking about Islam, discussing ideas and having a higher order debate about the merits or otherwise of islamic doctrine. And they didn't just depict the prophet Muhammad, they drew a very crude cartoon, a pornographic cartoon of Muhammad. And this is something that was celebrated in France. This is a very sort of normal way of thinking. This is the sort of republican ideals that are very much part of the reality of France, and the France that was shaped in particular in the light of the Enlightenment and in particular the French Revolution.
[01:11:56] And a big part of this, of course, was targeting the church with their ridicule and mockery here. Now, note, he doesn't even mention the dionysian orgy depiction at any point during this first press conference. Instead, like I said, he seems to be defending what he has created here. And for some reason, as he was talking about republican messages and republican ideas, I was reminded of the festival of reason. Let me read you from a couple of different historical websites about the festival of reason. In ceremonies devised and organized by french revolutionaries. So this is in the wake of the french revolution, churches across France were transformed into modern temples of reason. The largest ceremony of all was at the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris. The christian altar was dismantled and an altar to liberty was installed. And the inscription to philosophy was carved in stone over the cathedral's doors. Festive girls in white roman dress and tricolour sashes milled around a costumed goddess of reason who impersonated liberty. A flame burned on the altar, which was symbolic of truth. In the interior, a greco roman structure had been erected beneath the gothic vaulting. A mountain made of painted linen and papier mache was built at the end of the nave, where liberty, played by a singer from the opera, dressed in white and holding a pike, bowed to the flame of reason and seated herself on a bank of flowers and plants. Some people described the festival of reason as lurid, licentious or scandalous. Besides the goddess of reason being worshipped, there were apparently revolutionary songs sung and scantily clad women who danced. And this is an interesting description. This has come from a website, a history website, and this is an article that was published years ago. It's got nothing to do with the Olympics at all. It's just talking about this particular moment in french history. The festival, quote, unquote, involved revolutionary songs, scandalous dancing and bacchanalian behaviour. Yes, that's the same Bacchanalian, the same Bacchus Dionysus. That's what's being described there. So again, this would actually make sense of what he's done here. After the cathedral was plundered, and this is another website with a slightly different description, it became the stage for a packed public event in which a seductively dressed actress portraying the goddess of reason was worshipped atop a mountain. Enlightenment philosophers, busts and statues of the liberty God replaced religious statues and seductively dressed women danced and sang songs extolling the revolution. The centuries old cathedral that's Notre Dame, was renamed the Temple of Reason. Almost everything inside was looted aside from its bells, eventually dechristianisation extended all the way to instituting a new atheist state religion devoted to revolution. That concept was controversial, though, and eventually Maximilian de Robespierre proposed the cult of the supreme being, a civic religion that allowed for the existence of a God, but was rooted in revolutionary concepts. In 1794, Paris hosted the festival of the Supreme Being, a massive celebration that included music, parades and pageantry. And when Rob Speer was actually guillotined after that, the whole festival of reason, and because that was from another group that was a bit more extreme than he was. But this festival of the supreme being also went by the wayside. But for some reason, that's what I thought of when he started talking about republican values there and these ideas and this history. And again, this would seem to fit quite well with what we saw displayed at the Olympics. The official Olympics Twitter account then posted out after this new narrative was proposed. They then posted out a couple of days after that and they had an image, a picture of Bacchus, of Dionysus, the big blue guy and the platter and everything else, him sitting on the table. And they said this. The interpretation of the greek God Dionysus makes us aware of the absurdity of violence between human beings. But here's the thing. The reference to Dionysus promoting peace doesn't actually make sense, because that's not what Dionysus was known for. He instead represents a subversive cult associated with violence, social destabilization, hedonism, sexual licentiousness and even cruelty. In fact, it was so subversive that some pagan leaders suppressed it. And here's an interesting fun fact for the day. The Romans, who actually suppressed the cult of Bacchus because of its violent, anti social nature, they then subsequently, when they went about suppressing Christianity, lifted from those same legal statutes that they'd written for the cult of Bacchus, Dionysus, they lifted some of the exact same wording and applied that to Christianity when it came time to suppress them. So it seems very strange to me that you would be putting forward Dionysus as a model or a symbol of the absurdity of violence between human beings. To call that a stretch is. Yeah, is being generous, basically. Because if you truly did want to have a representation of peace and the absurdity of violence between human beings, then why would you not have included the greek God of peace, Irene? Or I think in English, it's Irene, isn't it? Irene. So if that's what you're aiming for, why wouldn't you have had her there instead of Dionysus. This actually doesn't make a lot of sense. Now, Brett Weinstein tweeted out something interesting, and I thought this was an interesting take on it. He said this. It was designed to divide us. It's not a golden calf. It's a full grown steer. And that's obviously talking about that image. They had the golden calf up on stage at one point. That's not the last Supper. It's the feast of Dionysus. It's a carefully constructed Rorschach test. And for those who don't know, a Rorschach test is that test where you look at the ink blots or. I think it also extends to other images, doesn't it? Not necessarily just ink blots, but images that can be interpreted different ways by the person who's actually looking at it. And so they say to you, what do you see when you look at this image? So it's a carefully constructed Rorschach test, created to make each side look mad in the eyes of the other. It's part of a coup against the west. And in true style, Bret Weinstein always brings something just that little bit more beautifully eccentric to the table. But I think there's a certain interesting sort of aspect to this. And some have talked about gaslighting. And when I was thinking about the situation, if I could sum it up, to me, it sort of seems like this, that basically people who are denying that there was any depiction at all of the last supper in this performance, at any stage. So there's no disagreement that there was also a dionysian pagan festival presented here. And there are other things as well. There's a drag performer. So there's a drag show. There's a Runway fashion show. There's singing. There's all sorts of stuff going on, right? That's not just Dionysus or the Last Supper, but there was a mimicking at one point of the Last Supper. Now, the people who are saying that that didn't happen want me to think the following way. I believe they want me to think that an artist trained in modern art, which sees subversion as the primary goal of art, that's the different approach that modern art takes. Rather than the use of beauty and artisan skill to draw people deeper into goodness and truth, that's the more traditional way of looking at art.
[01:19:39] And this artist is also a progressive and a member of a subversive ideological community.
[01:19:46] He's part of the queer ideological political movement who is from and working in the land steeped in the French Revolution's ideology, which is deliberately and aggressively hostile to Christianity and has a history of subversion of its sacred things. And also the same land has spawned post modernist thinkers, Herbert Marcuse Foucault, Jean Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and others throughout its history. And this artist from this place, who has had this training as part of an opening ceremony that was deliberately and highly charged with ideology and politics throughout, in the very part of the performance, involving a troupe of performers from a culturally subversive sexual ideology. So this is a drag show with drag performers, which has long seen itself to be at war with christian tradition. Think of someone like Wilhelm Reich, actually, the guy who invented the phrase the sexual revolution. He's a Marxist. And what Wilhelm Reich means by sexual revolution is not revolutionary ideas about sex. What he means is that you need to use sex as a weapon in the marxist revolution. You bring hedonism, you bring promiscuity, and you tear down the traditional christian norms of chastity, of family and fidelity, and you tear the society down this way. You use this as a weapon against the society, so therefore you can rebuild it in the shape and according to the way of Marxism. So there's this long standing tradition of sex as a subversive weapon, a revolutionary tool to tear down. And the enemy is always identified as the christian tradition. And this is happening also in a France with such extremes on the left right now that they have just elected an actual communist into their coalition government.
[01:21:40] And this artist from this land, at this particular moment, in this particular place, was deliberately recreating a depiction of a bacchanalian orgy, which is the liturgy of a culturally subversive cult of sexual hedonism, when Dionysus is actually not one of the four guys traditionally associated with the Olympics, apparently relying on a painting which was derivative and used as a version of da Vinci's Last Supper portrait, which was painted over 100 years earlier, where one main performer in this actual performance published social media posts on two separate occasions that indicated there was a connection to Christ's Last Supper, and another one called it the table of the apostles. And where an Olympic official told the media that Thomas Jolie had actually taken inspiration from da Vinci's Last Supper, and where the artistic director said that his inspiration was a dionysian orgy, and that he was reflecting the french revolutionary ideals, but didn't actually outright deny there was any subversive inclusion of a mimicking of the Last Supper iconography at any point at all during the performance despite it being directly associated with the painting people are claiming he was inspired by. And that disputed scene in the performance was so instantly recognisable that almost everyone around the globe, regardless of whether they were christian or not, instantly saw the iconography of the Last Supper at that point in the performance.
[01:23:13] Oh, and also, they quickly took the video of the opening ceremony down off the Internet and it still hasn't been restored as of today.
[01:23:22] And despite all of that, apparently people like me who think there was a subversive use of imagery from Christ's Last Supper are apparently actually just delusional or ignorant or willfully dishonest, or perhaps a mix of all three. Apparently, we're just not seeing things as they really are. Now, I would counter that by saying that in actual fact, based on all of the evidence we have in front of us right now, this looks exactly like a layered act of symbolic artistic subversion which has blown up in the face of those who put this together. And so there is now a desperate attempt to put out the raging inferno by trying to convince everyone that they really shouldn't believe their lying eyes, that what they actually saw was not really what they saw. Here's what I think is actually the most reasonable interpretation of these events. A french performance artist who was known for pushing the boundaries and artistic subversion, along with his performers, decided to insert a short, subversive reference to Christ's last Supper. They probably thought this was being funny and avant garde and all the rest of it in a much longer piece that was overall designed to depict an orgy with Dionysus.
[01:24:39] And I think they thought that they would actually get away with this. And I think that they thought there won't be a problem. Because normally when you do this kind of thing in the west, what happens when people actually speak up about it? They get ridiculed. The media joins in. You call them bigots, you call them names and you laugh at them, right? And you just carry on your merry way. But not this time. This time it was a little bit different. This time this was a global event, the Olympics, with all of these sports, and it attracts people from all over the world and all eyes from all sorts of different places, some countries who have not yet been corrupted by the madness of these various ideologies. And they saw this and they were rightly upset. And so they actually started lodging official complaints as nations against this, and this whole thing blew up. And then they were desperate to try and shut this down as quickly as possible. Now, let me just put a bit of a bow on this before I finish up, by saying how I think we can respond to this, by telling you how you can have. And I'll use film as a metaphor here. And I'll use one example of my own, a made up example, a metaphor to show you how something can be two different things at exactly the same time in the same visual production. And then I'll actually use a real world example to illustrate this. So, first of all, imagine if I told you that I had created a western. And this western was inspired by the directors Sergio Leone and John Ford and their great westerns. And it was set in the late 17 hundreds. And all the costumes, the period pieces and the imagery, you saw it straight away. It's a western. You know it's a western. Everything in this is a western. You see the influence of John Ford, you see the influence of Sergio Leone. It's all there. There's no denying it. I've called it a death in Colorado Springs. And it's a very typical sort of spaghetti western type plot. And it's all there. It's all obvious. But let's say earlier on in that film, I have a scene involving a local family who live on a ranch. And this family are quite powerful in the local town, and they are well known, but they are also faired because they run a lot of the business interests in the town and they are also ruthless, and they operate with standover tactics. And this particular day, in this particular scene in the film, there is a wedding happening at the family farm. And this wedding is the wedding of the eldest daughter in the family. And she's getting married. And everyone from all around and from other parts of the country have all come together to celebrate this wedding. And the father of the family is really well respected. He is loved by some, he is feared by others. And they are an italian family. And one person turns up to the wedding and you see this scene, and it's depicted outdoors. He's wearing his western clothes. It's outside. It's not in a darkened office. He's not wearing a suit from the 1930s or forties. And he sits there and he says to the father of the family, this italian father, please, you must, Don, do this important thing for me. I am being threatened and harassed. My business is in jeopardy. You must help me. I've tried everything else, but no one will help. And the Don, the father of the family, says to this man, I will do this thing for you because you've come to me on this, the day of my daughter's wedding. And I will ask another favor of you in future. In return, what would you think if you saw that scene straight away? You would say, that's the godfather by Francis Ford coppler. Different director, different film, completely different genre, crime drama, completely different era. This is not the same thing at all. But in actual fact, this has no bearing on what the actual visual production is. It's still a western. It's still influenced and inspired by John Ford and by Sergio Leone, but it also has a particular scene that mimics Francis Ford Coppola and the Godfather. But that scene is not exactly like the Godfather. In fact, there are some very clear and noticeable differences in the way that plays out. But the key elements of symbolism are there. The key iconography of that scene from the Godfather are there, and it is unmistakable to anybody who knows what they are looking at. That's how you can have, in a visual, artistic presentation, two very different things that are present at exactly the same time. Now, let me give you a real world example of this. Some years ago, in fact, perhaps I'm a little bit embarrassed to say this. Some decades ago, I was sitting there in the early two thousands with a couple of my nerdy film friends watching UK director Neil Marshall's film Dog Soldiers. It's a bit of an independent cult classic. It's about a group of british soldiers in the early two thousands who are on a training exercise up in the Scottish Highlands in this very remote, rural, sort of small, villagey type area. And unbeknownst to them, they've actually ended up stumbling into a village where werewolves live. And so the film is basically a werewolf movie and it's about these soldiers trying to escape. Now, one of the characters in this film, one of the soldiers, his nickname is Spoon. And there is a particular scene in this film where Spoon and other soldiers are trying to get away from a werewolf. And Spoon is destroyed. He is eviscerated by this bestial creature, the werewolf. And one of the other soldiers yells out, where's spoon? And the soldier who was there with him when he died, when he took his last breath, he turns and he yells, there is no bleeping spoon. Now, my nerdy film friends and I watching this back in 2002 or 2003, I think it was when we were watching this movie, we all turned to each other and we instantly said, that's the Matrix.
[01:30:44] And sure enough, after the film had finished, back in the days when we were still hiring dvd's, we went and put on the director's commentary track and we skipped all the way through the film right up to that point. And the director says, this line here came directly from the Matrix. I was mimicking that line in the Matrix. What he was doing here was a classic example of subversive use of something that had come from another artist. Now, dog Soldiers is nothing like the Matrix. It's not a Sci-Fi film. It's not set in the future. It's not an action film. It's, you could say, maybe a horror action, but it is nothing like the Matrix. Not even remotely close. In that scene where we saw the line about the spoon, nothing like the scene, the famous scene involving the spoon in the Matrix. In fact, you could say it's the exact opposite. The Matrix one was very calm and Zen like. This one was anything but.
[01:31:44] We all recognized straight away the subversive use of something from another artist in this film. That's a real world example of how you can have two very different things at exactly the same time in the same production. This is how art actually works. And here's the thing that I think that underpins all of this. They basically, instead of focusing on the Olympics and fraternity around sport, they made this about themselves and about politics.
[01:32:15] Like I said earlier, why delete all the footage if there was nothing at all problematic about the performance? If the narrative claiming that there is no imagery, no depiction, no mimicking of the last Supper at all here, and anyone who thinks otherwise is just an ignoramus, well, then you've got nothing to fear by having the footage online, have you? So people can go back and watch it again.
[01:32:35] Now, people might be tempted to say, but, Brenna, what motive do they have to mislead the public? Well, like I said, this has now erupted into a bit of an international scandal. At least two nations have officially the island of Malta and Iran. And on top of all of that, they also had other problems with that opening ceremony as well. They wrongly named in the program and so they were wrongly announced.
[01:32:59] The nation of South Korea. They announced them as the nation of North Korea. And it wasn't just a slip of the tongue. It was a major administrative mistake. And the nation of Korea lodged an official diplomatic complaint about it. That's how serious it was. They hung the Olympic flag upside down. They've got other issues going on. There's a bit of a scandal now that has erupted over male boxers, biologically male boxers, boxing in the female boxing part of the Olympic competition. They have also had issues with the river and the dirtiness of the river and questions about preparedness. They've also had other issues with air conditioning and problems about the type of food they've prepared, which hasn't really been conducive to the athletes. It sounds like they went the whole way of trying to do the modern progressive thing of saying, we're going to have this sort of vegan fare on offer. You're an athlete. It's not really enough. You need more than that. And on top of all of that, article 50 of the Olympic Charter, clause number two says this. No kind of demonstration or political, religious or racial propaganda is permitted in any Olympic sites, venues or other areas. And they take this very seriously. Apparently they will send athletes or groups of athletes home. That's one of the potential punishments they have. And they list that in the rules that you could be sanctioned with if you do this. And it seems to me that maybe, just maybe, they are worried that someone might press the issue on the opening ceremony and what happened in that performance, the possibility that this demonstration was political in nature, that maybe there's a religious component and does that violate that particular charter? There are bigger things at stake here. And of course, overall, you just don't want to have this massive scandal blowing up. So what are you going to do? You're going to do anything you want to to try and put down that controversy. Now, just one other thing before I talk about how we can respond to this. There's a couple of reactions I've seen, and so I just wanted to talk about reactions, people reacting to this. Some people have said, hey, there's bigger issues in the world. Think of Gaza, the war in Ukraine, etcetera. And to be fair, I'm not actually sure what people can do concretely and practically to end the suffering in Gaza or the war in Ukraine. That is something that is well above my pay grade. All I can do is take it to God in prayer, but I can't end that war and neither can you. That is well above our pay grade. But even leaving that aside, it's both. And it's not a false dichotomy. It's not either or. The big issues matter like that. And so do big issues like blasphemy, like public blasphemy on a global stage that also matters. And in fact, our love for Christ and our love for the teachings he gives to us, those same teachings which call us to care for the poor and address the big issues like war in the world are motivated and come first from a love of Christ that is so profound that we are naturally wounded and are compelled to condemn any attack on Christ. And so it's a bit of a false dichotomy here. Now, of course, people have got a bit upset about the fact that people have got upset, but here's the thing. I would say that in actual fact, it's a very normal, healthy and appropriate reaction when you are confronted with the debasement of your saviour, your friend and your brother, whom we claim to be in a sacred and loving relationship with, the most appropriate and normal and very healthy reaction is actually sadness and condemnation of the act. Imagine if this debasement was done to someone in your family or someone that you loved dearly, and they did this in the town square and everyone saw it. It would actually look kind of strange if you just said, oh, well, no big deal. My loved one is bigger than that. I don't care. Now, some people might react differently, and so I'd say, don't judge others for their reactions to this and don't let it rob you of your peace. Now, you might feel compelled to speak up and share your thoughts about this, but others, they might feel, after looking at this and seeing and feeling the woundedness of this, they might feel that they should just go away and pray about this and do something else that's a bit different, but also equally proactive. So try not to judge people for their reactions on either side of this and try not to let it rob you of your peace. So let me finish by just highlighting what I think are four practical things that we can do. Number one, I think we can pray, and we should pray for Thomas Jolly and all of the other people who were involved in the hedonistic debasement of Christ at the opening ceremony the other night. Our family's been doing that every night, right? Christ loves them, and he sacrificed himself in total self giving love for their salvation. And when the prodigals are squandering their inheritance and dining in the pigsty, we need to imitate the welcoming love of the Father who went out to the gate every day, anticipating, waiting and hoping for their return, and not the closed disdain of the older brother. There would be much rejoicing in heaven if instead of becoming a diabolical portal to usher more rage into the world, this incident became the catalyst for increased christian prayer and the portal for God's saving grace in the lives of these people. As a result, remember romans 828? All things work together for good for those who love the Lord. Now, in Catholicism, you might not be a Catholic who's listening, but in Catholicism we have this beautiful prayer that you might like to use. And it goes like this. Oh, my Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of hell and lead all souls to heaven, especially those most in need of your mercy. The next thing you can do is do a quick examination or audit of your own life, your relationships, your marriage, your family life, whatever's going on, your business life, all of that sort of stuff. Are there areas of discord? Are there places where love is lacking on your part? Are there places where chastity is lacking? If so, ask God for his help and then commit yourself to improvement in these areas. Make the world more like the image of Christ's self giving last supper and lessen like the image of Dionysus and his cruel, hedonistic feast and orgy of self gratification. Number three, do something that makes it harder for hedonism to take root in your life. Make an extra little sacrifice today by doing something that is not required of you. So you might be required to do certain duties today. Add an extra duty on top of that that you're not required to do. Shut down your screen a little earlier tonight and spend some time reading the scriptures or contemplating Christ instead, or reading a good and important work. Do something that requires discipline and even a little bit of suffering and struggle on your part. Like go to the gym, lift some weights, go for a run, go for a walk instead of just sitting on the couch. Actually do something that requires you to really go to battle against hedonism. And lastly, number four, do something practical that brings goodness, truth, and beauty into someone else's life today. The answer to a culture lacking in goodness, truth and beauty is to foster that very goodness, truth, and beauty in your own local community. That's how you save the world. A lot of people today are obsessed with global events and obsessed with saving the world. But we can't actually save the whole world. What we can do, and should do and are called to do, is to bring goodness, truth and beauty to be salt and light in our own local community, our own local world. And if you do that, then you've just changed the shape of the entire globe. So that's my thoughts. Thank you so much for tuning in. Don't forget, if you want a daily dose of commentary from the dispatchers, go to patreon.com leftfootmedia. The link is in today's show notes and become a five dollar monthly patron. A huge thank you to all of our patrons. It's thanks to you that this episode is made possible. Thanks once again for tuning in and don't forget, live by goodness, truth and beauty, not by lies. And I'll see you next time on the dispatches.
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