It is Tuesday morning as the Captain pens this missive.
The opening ceremonies for the 2024 Olympics in Paris were held on Friday.
That was four days ago.
And my news aggregator’s feed is still filled with the outrage over one brief scene in what was a more than four-hour broadcast.
Mates, they were not mocking the Last Supper!
THEY. WERE. NOT. MOCKING. THE. LAST. SUPPER!
Yer Captain has addressed individuals personally on social media, but here I will put it out there for the whole world to see.
Or at least my 100-or-so faithful readers.
Captain’s Note: Thank you all so much for making my efforts worthwhile.
To be honest, the opening ceremonies did not have my full attention on Friday night.
I found NBC’s coverage disjointed at best.
France threw everything they could into the 3 ½ mile journey up the Seine River and the NBC cameramen simply could not keep up.
So I looked up occasionally from the book I was reading to see what might be happening next.
When the cauldron was lit (which was pretty cool!), the Captain took the First Mate to bed.
On Saturday morning we awoke to the hailstorm of faux outrage! Everyone from the expected Christianist podcasters and has-been Christianist celebrities on up to Speaker of the House Mike Johnson weighed in with almost scripted reactions.
“GOD WILL NOT BE MOCKED!!!”
Even presidential candidate Trumpf saw the issue was catching traction (something his campaign has not been doing since VP Harris became Dem choice) and he jumped on the bandwagon.
Yer Captain would dare to posit, none of them even watched the opening ceremonies.
Yet they saw the screen-capture and heard the growing outrage and clambered aboard.
So on Monday morning, with obviously nothing else to do with my time, I rewatched the first three hours of the opening ceremonies. Here’s what I saw:
At the very beginning of the broadcast, Kelly Clarkson, inexplicably one of the NBC commentators for the event, admitted France had kept everything a secret. There had been no rehearsals, no script. Clarkson, Mike Tirico, and Peyton Manning (why, again?) were seeing it all for the first time.
Yes, the people who were supposed to be telling those of us back at home what was going on had no clue what was going on!
That became readily evident during the first musical number when they all laughed with glee to discover it was Lady Gaga beneath all the pink feathers!
Likewise, when the torch carrier in black began leaping across rooftops – was it the Phantom of the Opera (as the boat scene suggested) or Satan (as some Christianists tried to claim) – Tirico described him simply as “this individual”.
Clarkson chimed in, “We can’t even tell if he is a ‘he’.”
Profound.
Throughout the broadcast, as people spoke or sang in French, there was no explanation or translation given. My television’s closed-captions simply declared, “Speaking French”.
Can-Can dancers along the riverbank: no comment.
An operatic singer from high atop “some building” belting out a song that sounded remarkably similar to the French National Anthem, but we don’t know.
A scene from “Les Miserable” only elicited a “How cool!” from Clarkson.
To bring some order to the chaos, the broadcast was broken up into themes, the titles of which were superimposed on-screen at the beginning of each section: Liberte’ – Égalité’ – Fraternite’ and so forth.
Again, “Speaking French”.
But… duh!
The segment in question kicked off the third hour.
The theme was “Festivite’”.
Captain’s Note: For you non-Francophiles, that means “Festivity”.
By this time, someone at NBC was obviously writing notes to hand to the commentators. Tirico introduced the segment with, “…when you talk about food, music, fashion… they’re engrained in French culture.”
So your Captain doesn’t understand why, at this point,
anyone was expecting to see a reenactment of a very solemn Italian painting.
Remember, this is Paris!
For a few brief seconds we see the image so many Christianists wanted to equate with DaVinci’s “Last Supper” painting – again under the heading of “Festivity”, an attitude not normally associated with the Eucharist.
Here are the two images. Look at them closely. Compare.
Captain's Note: The upper image was carefully cropped so you can't see there are people on the opposite side of the "table", that there are many more than twelve at the "table", and there is a red carpet running the length of the "table".
The Paris scene also featured several drag queens around the “table”, which is very much an American idiocy right now and triggered a lot of folks.
The image on the bridge (apparently screen-captured for the ignorant, unwashed masses) was fleeting as the scene immediately erupted into a fashion show.
No, that is NOT a table they are standing around, it is a catwalk.
Laying on the catwalk in front of the central figure (who IS wearing a crown) is not bread and wine, but a DJ’s turntable.
Regrettably, NBC cut back and forth between the fashion show and the boats bearing the athletes toward the Eiffel Tower for the lighting of the cauldron.
There were also numerous commercial breaks.
The Captain stopped reviewing at the end of the third hour, as the U.S. and French teams were introduced and the lighting of the cauldron came next.
I never saw the “half-naked blue man” representing Dionysus which several other photos showed.
Perhaps he came later, or perhaps NBC was simply done at that point. But that image, too, would have helped explain what the scene was really about.
What I did hear was Kelly Clarkson’s comment:
“I don’t know if we’re going to show it again, but that runway […] Everyone is included at that table. Like, every… It doesn’t matter who you are. They represent all ages, all ethnicities, everything is represented on that runway and I think it is so important that Paris did that. It is very cool.”
To which Mike Tirico replied, “It’s the spirit of this city, isn’t it?”
Yes, indeed it is!
And that spirit was conveyed throughout the opening ceremonies.
It’s just that most Americans somehow missed the message.
So, yer Captain blames the French producers of the opening ceremonies for keep everything secret.
And I blame NBC for not doing a better job covering it anyway.
And I blame the ignorant, unwashed masses in America who don’t understand history and art and view everything through the lens of a very narrow, American/Christianist understanding.
It’s like we’re reverting back to our Puritan roots!
God forbid!
Since even before the opening ceremonies, people have found a thousand other things to be outraged about during these Olympics – an international event that is supposed to bring peace and understanding to the world.
Like the mechanical horse galloping up the Seine.
To Parisians, the rider was Sequana, the Goddess of the Seine River, a symbol of peace, solidarity, and unity.
It seemed kinda obvious, as she led the procession of the nations into the Place du Tracadero.
But Christianists in America, who apparently only read the bad parts of the Bible, saw it as a harbinger of doom, pointing to Death riding on a pale horse in the Book of Revelation.
Captain’s Note: No, that would be Clint Eastwood.
It’s kinda sad, really.
Let me close with this familiar sermon illustration.
One Sunday morning a pastor was delivering a special message to the children in worship. He wanted them to guess what he was describing: “It is small and furry creature… with a long fluffy tail… It lives in trees… It eats nuts…” The children were looking puzzled.
Finally, one child spoke up. “Preacher, I know the answer is supposed to be Jesus, but it sounds like you’re describing a squirrel!”
Mates, sometimes it really is a squirrel.
