The opening ceremony of the 2024 Olympics turned out to be mega-scandalous. The Mona Lisa broken by the «man in the iron mask» with the Olympic torch and the extremely ambiguous cancan, far from the classic examples of the «Moulin Rouge», were somehow accepted by the public, as well as the severed head of Marie Antoinette. But the mockery of Leonardo da Vinci's «Last Supper» caused anger around the world. As a result, the video with the best moments of the opening of the 2024 Games had to be removed from official resources, and the organizers had to apologize. The only question remains how sincere they were.
Not only our public, brought up on Mishka who flew away in 1980 and the trip of the kind girl and her friends to Sochi, did not accept this idea, but also thousands of believers and simply educated people around the world. French bishops, billionaire Elon Musk, and the press secretary of the Russian president Dmitry Peskov spoke out on this matter. One of the Italian journalists even asked for political asylum in Russia.
The director of communications for the 2024 Olympic organizing committee, Anne Descamps, was forced to apologize. «There was no intention to offend anyone,» she said at a specially created briefing. «We tried to celebrate the tolerance of society. The number of people who watched the broadcast proves that we succeeded. If there are people who were offended, we apologize.»
There is absolutely no logic in her statement. The opening ceremony of the Olympics always attracts unprecedented interest all over the world, but no one expected to see this. Was there really not a single sane person in the Paris organizing committee who could have foreseen the reaction to the reference to the famous work of Leonardo da Vinci, in which the ancient Greek god Dionysus also appeared, slightly covered? At least, that is how the organizers presented this strange blue creature. Men dressed as women, a woman with a beard and other freaks took part in this number. What kind of tolerance the scriptwriters wanted to emphasize remained unclear to most viewers.
Why did the parody of The Last Supper cause the harshest criticism and denial among millions of people? This is one of the most famous works by Leonardo da Vinci. Perhaps only the Mona Lisa kept in the Louvre is more familiar. The Last Supper is not a painting or even a fresco, as is mistakenly believed. The brilliant Renaissance artist painted the wall of the refectory of one of the Milanese monasteries.
Today, it is not easy to see The Last Supper. Only organized groups are allowed into the monastery for 25 minutes. Buying tickets on the day of the show is almost impossible. For Italians, Leonardo's Last Supper is a source of national pride, and mockery of both the biblical story and the work of art was considered a real insult there. It is no coincidence that the most protests to the Parisian organizing committee came from the Apennines. As a result, the organizing committee's desire to show the values of a tolerant world resulted in the video even having to be removed from the official website.
Of course, this has nothing to do with sports. But, as they say, the aftertaste from the «brilliant» idea of the ceremony organizers will remain. It's good that no one had the desire to interpret Russian classics in a similar style.