(This is the Second Part of the French Politics and Elections essay. Read the first part here)
“The issue of the whole was that what with opposition, and what with success, a violent and malignant zeal, of a kind hitherto unknown in the world, had taken an entire possession of their minds and rendered their whole conversation, which otherwise would have been pleasing and instructive, perfectly disgusting. A spirit of cabal, intrigue, and proselytism pervaded all their thoughts, words, and actions.”
– Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, 1790, p.93
The Surreal Olympic Interlude
The world’s eyes were glued in anticipation as the grand spectacle of the Paris Olympics unfolded—and the French delivered with surreal flair!
All the brouhaha over the Paris Olympic opening conjures images of Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the French Revolution. The emotional backlash echoes “a forceful expression of conservatives’ rejection” of arguably one of the unique opening ceremonies in recent memory.
During the Paris inauguration on Friday, July 26, a vibrant cast of drag artists, dancers, and performers in elaborate Greek mythology-inspired costumes gathered on the Debilly Footbridge.
A depiction of Greek gods revelling atop Mount Olympus at the Olympic’s opening ceremony stirred a tempest of public opinion. The pièce de résistance was a grand dinner platter revealing a blue-skinned, scantily clad Bacchus, played by French actor and singer Philippe Katerine. As the embodiment of Dionysus, the Greek god of wine, he swiftly earned the cheeky moniker “the semi-naked blue guy.” Some termed it “paganism”, while for others, it was “orgiastic” and “woke dystopia”.
Critics contended that the performance was a parody of Leonardo da Vinci’s iconic fresco “The Last Supper,” thereby satirizing Christian beliefs. This controversy sparked a heated debate about the boundaries of artistic expression and religious sensitivity, highlighting the complex interplay between art, culture, and faith in contemporary society.
Jesuit Fr. Thomas Reese wrote in National Catholic Reporter – “Bishops accuse Olympics of anti-Catholicism”. The French Catholic Church decried the festivities, asserting they “included scenes of derision and mockery of Christianity.”
“It’s common for our religion to be mocked, and we’re used to blasphemy in France. But this time, the context is different,” said Bishop Emmanuel Gobillard, a spokesperson for the Holy See for the 2024 Paris Olympics.
“The Last Supper is essential to Christian beliefs and practice, and any form of misguided message is unacceptable. Worse still, any expressions of mockery of what Christians hold sacred and deeply theological show the highest form of disrespect and insensitivity,” protested the Revd Professor Jerry Pillay, the World Church Council’s general secretary, in a letter to the President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), Thomas Bach.
In response, Paris 2024 spokesperson Anne Descamps clarified that there was “clearly never an intention to show disrespect to any religious group”. She offered a non-apological apology, “If people have taken any offence, we are, of course, really sorry.”
The Olympic ceremony’s artistic team clarified that the scene wasn’t a nod to Leonardo da Vinci’s “Last Supper” but a homage to the equally iconic theme of divine revelry. Opening ceremony director Thomas Jolly firmly insisted that “The Last Supper”—Leonardo da Vinci’s Renaissance masterpiece—was not the scene’s inspiration.
Defenders of the drag supper argue it was just a nod to Jan Hermansz van Bijlert’s “The Feast of the Gods”—because nothing says high culture like drag queens channelling Renaissance banquets.
The Olympics’ official X account hailed the scene as a take on Dionysus, aimed at highlighting the absurdity of human violence. Yet, critics couldn’t shake the visual echo of “The Last Supper.” Against the Catholics’ umbrage, the Art historians jumped in to offer a nuance.
Bijlert’s work, echoing da Vinci’s The Last Supper, shows how art references art across the ages. So, while the opening ceremony may not have blatantly alluded to da Vinci, it indeed draped itself in his legacy—possibly as a veiled critique of Christianity, offering a nuanced perspective for the informed audience.
A week after a storm of criticism erupted around the event, Reuters reported that on Saturday evening in Rome, the Vatican Press Office issued a statement expressing deep sadness over the July 26 ceremony and aligning with those condemning the offence it caused to Christians and adherents of other faiths. “The Holy See was saddened by certain scenes in the opening ceremony of the Olympics in Paris and can only join the voices that have been raised in recent days to deplore the offence caused to many Christians and believers of other religions,” said the statement published by the Vatican press office late August 3.
Officials in Paris have opened an investigation into the death threats to Thomas Jolly, the director of the Olympics opening ceremonies, the controversial opening ceremony hit a raw nerve in the conservative bastion of the French and, in particular, the global Catholic diaspora. Even the Pope had to break his silence.
A spectacle of bold theatrics featuring a headless Marie Antoinette rocking out with her severed head decked in drag makeup. Including drag performances, a form of artistic expression often associated with the LGBTQ+ community, was a bold statement of inclusivity and diversity.
Yet, for the performers, there are no misgivings. One of the participants in the opening ceremony, Drag queen Paloma, a.k.a. Hugo Bardin, told the Associated Press, “We are currently in a complicated climate in France. This ceremony was to repair and bring people together.” Hugo Bardin, a former “Drag Race France” champion, added, “We are not. … We want to let people know that we have a place in the world, and we are claiming that place.”
The French principle of secularism – Laïcité
Spiteful? But this is the classic confrontation of reason against faith.
In the wake of snap elections that have left France in political limbo, the far-right is up in arms. Julien Odoul of the National Rally slammed the Olympic ceremony as ‘a cultural heist,’ accusing it of pillaging French values amid the nation’s growing political turmoil, a point of connection for the audience.
In a particularly wacky tableau from the ceremony, a woman bearing a bloodied, severed head—meant to represent the executed French queen Marie-Antoinette—made a dramatic entrance from a window of the Conciergerie, where she had languished after the 1789 Revolution. Guillotined alongside her husband, Louis XVI, she became a macabre focal point. In a theatrical twist, Marie Antoinette clutched her head and sang, “The aristocrats, we’ll hang them.” Just as the echoes of revolution faded, heavy metal band Gojira unleashed a guitar storm that shook Paris to its core.
Despite the spectacle’s flair, French hard-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon didn’t mince words, dismissing it as a grim reminder of outdated punishments and proclaiming, “The death penalty and Marie-Antoinette’s execution are relics of a bygone era we’d rather not revisit.”
A century ago, André Breton, in his Manifesto of Surrealism, demanded art and literature driven by the untamed unconscious, free from reason and moral constraints. The opening ceremony seems to channel this Surrealist spirit, launching a bold, subversive movement that challenges contemporary norms. In the fractured landscape of contemporary France, is this disruption the perfect fit?
France is not feeling well
France is not feeling well, the opening line of their book “Le mystère français,” sociologists Emmanuel Todd and Hervé Le Bras quip that “Catholicism seems to have reached a kind of afterlife,” setting the tone for a sharp and insightful exploration.
Unpacking it further, historian and demographer Emmanuel Todd paints a picture of two Frances: secular and egalitarian, and the other steeped in right-wing Catholicism and inequality. He claims that even as traditional Catholicism fades from public rituals, it remains a force in French politics and education. This “zombie Catholicism,” according to Todd, fuels a pro-European agenda so obsessed with secularism that it veers into Islamophobia.
In his book Who is Charlie? Todd argues how this manifested at the time of the Charlie Hebdo attacks and the subsequent Je Suis Charlie protests and how the “Zombie Catholics”, as he terms them, became the major force in those protests, underlining his view of a France split between a liberal centre and a conservative, hierarchical periphery.
France is in heightened security mode, and Paris is like a police state with the increased use of artificial intelligence surveillance and a clampdown on protests on an array of political issues. There was no precedent to the AI Surveillance’s legal parameters in Europe until the French National Assembly passed a law in March 2023.
Given the stalemate after the recent elections, the ceremonies may be over, but they’ve exposed fresh, deeper wounds. President Emmanuel Macron’s avowed claim in his support for the French principle of laïcité, the French notion of secularism, is the moot point of conversations. When he took office, he proclaimed, “Everyone should practice their religion with dignity,” yet firmly stated, “In the public sphere, the laws of the Republic must override religious laws.”
March Endeweld, President Macron’s biographer, astutely notes that Macron embodies “the enclaves of Christian tradition that thrive on robust social structures and economic systems, standing firm against the tides of globalization. This starkly contrasts the more Jacobin regions that have found themselves stripped of state protection.”
Regardless of your take on the Olympic opening, a surreal twist will be offered at the Pompidou Centre this Fall to celebrate how surrealism has spread far beyond Paris—just when you thought the avant-garde was out of fashion!
51 Days Later, a New Prime Minister
Heat returned to the French political scene after the temporarily induced political truce for the Summer Paris Olympics.
As France buzzed with anticipation for a new Prime Minister, amidst a whirl of political intrigue and behind-the-scenes machinations, Emmanuel Macron, at 46, had already earned his title: Le Disrupteur. Coined by Isabelle Lasserre in her 2022 biography, this moniker perfectly encapsulates Macron’s audacious reshaping of the French political landscape.
When Macron refused the candidature of Lucie Castets, proposed by the four-party left-wing coalition, Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP), cries accusing him of stealing the election grew. With 193 out of 577 seats in the assembly from the July 7 elections, the NFP and its potential allies hold a narrow edge over rival blocs yet command just a third of the vote. Contrary to some expectations, France has no constitutional or historical requirement dictating that the President must select the Prime Minister from the party with the most seats.
Did Macron have to pick a left-wing prime minister? Not really, says constitutional expert Benjamin Morel. According to Morel’s chat with Le Monde, Macron’s claim of ‘institutional stability’ for overlooking Lucie Castets is more of a political manoeuvre than a legal necessity. “He’s not right, but he’s not wrong either. Article 5 is extremely vague. It defines the broad outlines of the role of the President but does not confer any particular power, competence or role with regard to the appointment of a government,” added Morel.
Despite what his critics claim, it appears instead that he’s scrambling to untangle himself from a mess of his own making, trying to find a way out of the trap he set.
In a strategic move to recalibrate after the July snap elections, Macron took 51 days after Gabriel Attal resigned as France’s prime minister, naming 73-year-old Michel Barnier as the new head of government.
Barnier, a seasoned politician and former EU Brexit negotiator, is now the oldest premier in modern French history. He replaces Gabriel Attal, who, at just 35, served a brief and turbulent eight months in office during a time of significant political instability. Barnier outlined his priorities and committed to addressing the “challenges, angers, and sufferings” facing the French people. He emphasized that his government will focus on key issues such as education, security, and immigration control. Moreover, Barnier pledged to tackle France’s financial debt with honesty and forthrightness, signalling a robust approach to the country’s pressing issues.
Beneath the surface of Macron’s (and Barnier’s) rhetoric lies a clear signal of his pro-European stance (as explored in part one) and the mounting urgency of meeting the October 1 deadline for drafting France’s 2025 budget, a crucial step for navigating the nation’s strained finances.
The summer’s parliamentary shake-up has left the new Assemblée fragmented and primarily opposed to Macron. The Socialists are ready to topple Barnier’s government, while the far-right Rassemblement National (RN) is waiting to see his policy platform before deciding.
The presidential bloc and the right-wing Les Républicains are expected to support Barnier. Although the left-wing Nouveau Front Populaire and RN hold 319 seats—sufficient to unseat Barnier—it’s uncertain whether they’ll align their votes.
In a provocative gambit, the President is banking on Marine Le Pen’s far-right Rassemblement National (RN) to bolster Barnier’s position by opposing a no-confidence motion. Thus, Le Pen finds herself cast as the unlikely arbiter in the latest chapter of French political drama.
In the meanwhile, this weekend, over 100,000 protesters flooded the streets of France, rallying against Macron’s choice of a right-wing prime minister and condemning his perceived undermining of democracy, all in response to a call from the left-wing party La France Insoumise.
Narendra Pachkhédé is a critic, essayist and writer who splits his time between Toronto, London and Geneva.
