Symbolism of the Olympics Opening Ceremony
The Olympic opening ceremony has created quite a stir. To be honest, I am trying not to get involved in this kind of stuff lately, but I see so many people I know who don’t understand what is going on and why things in the world look the way they do.
The first thing I should say is that this is all very tedious. The whole thing is super obvious and simultaneously super boring. I understand that it is shocking to some people, but I don’t know why people are shocked at this point. Basically, this is just a continuation of what has been happening for the past 20 years, or even longer.
As the image of what has been happening in our culture becomes more and more transparent, I am happy that more people are taking notice. However, this is just a continuation of things that have already been going on.
Most of you know the Paris Olympics opened with several elements that were disturbing to some. The culmination of that disturbance was a representation of Leonardo Da Vinci’s “The Last Supper,” which featured drag queens and LGBT icons. In the middle of the scene, because it was The Last Supper, there was a meal. The meal gets opened up, and a plate appears in the scene. Inside is a strange, nearly naked blue man who starts to sing very strangely. Everyone in the scene begins to frolic very orgiastically, made even more disturbing by the presence of a prepubescent girl who gets taken into a man’s arms as everyone is caressing each other.
I think the funniest thing is that many people, including a lot of Christians, are going online saying, “It’s actually not the Last Supper, it’s the Feast of Dionysus. Why are all the Christians getting so mad? I am educated and I know this is the Feast of Dionysus.” The capacity of people to easily accept gaslighting is hilarious. To be fair, before I really watched the opening ceremony, I also shrugged off the idea that this was an attempt to mock the Last Supper. I heard so many people declaring that it wasn’t that and was instead a representation of the Feast of Dionysus. Which, really, is not much better if you know the history of Dionysus.
Anyway, the scene is clearly referencing the Last Supper. The name of the tableau was a wordplay in French, roughly translating to “the scene of the Last Supper on the same river.” The head of the event said he was referencing the Last Supper. The main person in the center of the table posted on Instagram that this was “the new gay testament,” but of course, she deleted the post later and changed it, saying, “No, no, no, it’s Dionysus.”
But the thing is, you have to understand what all this is about. They’re saying, “No, we are emphasizing openness, diversity, and inclusion,” and sure, that’s what they’re doing. But the problem isn’t diversity and inclusion, because a society needs these to exist. However, society does not benefit from celebrating diversity. The only way to celebrate diversity is through carnival, by turning unity upside down and emphasizing the fringe, the margin, and the imagery of the carnival.
The imagery of the carnival goes even further than that of the Western ideal of carnival (e.g., Halloween, Mardi Gras), which are moments of inversion usually followed by some kind of return to normalcy (in Christianity, it’s the fasts and Lent). These festivals are important and are part of the yearly cycle, illustrating the chaos and inversion as a limit of order. This is the only real way to celebrate diversity.
This is why there is an absolute coherence in this imagery. The rainbow flag, with its multiplicity of colors, isn’t unity but diversity. The image of the drag queen is the image of ambiguity. All of this was present in the Olympic ceremony and is simply part of the culture. There’s nothing hidden about this. I’m not saying this to gloss over what’s going on; I’m simply pointing out the discourse of what’s happening.
There’s a Methodist pastor who does his sermons in drag, and he says it clearly in his speeches: “The best way to enact systemic change is through joy and carnival. Drag is carnival. It’s over the top, loud, joyous, and laugh-filled. It’s in these moments where people on the margins are handed just a little bit of power, and when they hold onto this power longer than what was intended, things happen.”
Carnival is a means through which change, and transformation are brought about. The transformation involves the dissolution of normal identity to reconstitute it at higher levels. You can understand it as a revolutionary trope: the goal is to destroy identity in order to reconstitute it into a new one. What is this new identity? It is a transhuman identity, a universalist image where all distinctions disappear into a chaotic and amorphous being, and this is what was happening at the event.
A good way to achieve this transformation is to do it exactly as they did. The Last Supper is an image of cohesion in the West for the past 2,000 years. It represents how the West communes together, bringing multiplicity into one through the holy meal at the center of the Church, the community, and Western nations. To undo this and bring about a new identity, the best approach is to undermine communion and mock sacred things. This is not the first time this has happened. One of the drives behind the drag queen and rainbow movements is to replace the sacred with a new sacred, characterized by ambiguity, multiplicity, and difference. These are all concepts that the proponents of this way of thinking are advocating and practicing themselves.
Of course, I believe that this is destructive. In some ways, it undermines and twists Christianity to fit this new vision of reality. A good way to achieve this is by taking the Last Supper and replacing it with an orgy and festival. There are certain analogies one can draw between the feast of Dionysus and holy communion. In Christianity, communion brings multiplicity into one — the scandal of communion, where we eat the body of our God, is transformed into a vector of unity where all things are collected together. A good way to subvert this is to revive these Dionysian parties instead of true communion, presenting the god Dionysus as the meal we enjoy to celebrate our diversity.
In Dionysian stories, there is the idea of ripping apart the person, and this is celebrated. The celebration of diversity, multiplicity, and inclusion is the opposite of communion, yet so much its opposite that you can see the manner in which they are related. It’s all part of this orgy culture of the Bacchanalia that is being reinstated in our culture with a hint of cannibalism and pedophilia.
We’ve become so jaded and accustomed to this inanity that we just take it in and watch it like it’s nothing.
What people might not be aware of is what the blue man was singing about. He was singing about inclusion, removing all our differences, and seeing each other as if we’re all naked. He continued by saying we need to celebrate each other as if we’re all naked, repeating this as everyone started rubbing against each other. Then, there are Christians saying, “I’m educated, I’m not offended by this image.” Really? Is that truly where we are? It is where we are, and the whole image was so clearly sexual in its references, celebrating diversity.
If you look at what happened right after that feast section, the naked Dionysus handed it off to the next show called “Darkness,” which consisted of another frenetic dance. Then, we cut straight into “Imagine” by John Lennon. If you want to know what’s going on, it’s pretty clear.
We are so far down the line that the notion that people who gaslight and lie, saying “no, that’s not what’s referenced,” are unaware of what’s being referenced is just false. Of course, they know what’s referenced because they genuinely believe it’s a good thing. What we’re seeing is the return of Dionysus, and it makes sense because that’s what Dionysus represents: the extreme of the natural world. We are witnessing civilization being undone.
It’s not as if the frenetic aspect of the world isn’t integrated into Christianity — it actually is. We can’t deny that. However, the reason it holds society together is because it’s not solely that. Communion brings together ecstatic excess within a reasonable holy communion of holy love, merging all the extremes. The way to undo that holy communion is to separate the parts from the whole. This leads to revolution, and the revolution leads to chaos and madness.
There are many other images within the ceremony that could be pointed to and questioned, such as the grim reaper figure on the horse. But honestly, we shouldn’t attribute too much intent to these people. Many of them are unconscious vehicles for things they don’t fully understand or realize their part in. We should be careful not to assume this is always a well-thought-out, intentional act. It’s more about people aligning themselves with certain virtues and values that play out in different ways. My hope is that most people will eventually wake up and see what’s been happening for generations now.
Many are throwing around the word “satanic,” and I think that’s okay if we understand it correctly. On one hand, you have the Satanists who say, “We’re just being ironic and cynical; we don’t really believe in Satan. This is all just a play, irony, and jokes.” And the answer is, of course, that’s what it is. That’s part of the problem with celebrating irony and inversion in an event meant to bring nations together and celebrate human excellence. When everything about your celebration is ironic, mocking, and degenerate, that is satanism. I’m fine with believing that some people aren’t sincere in their satanism, but at some point, these jokes will run dry, and new moral taboos and systems of control will be installed.
We must remain attentive and not be distracted by these little blips. We need to look at the long arc and see what’s really happening, attaching ourselves to what truly unifies us: the virtues and stories we have in common. As a Christian, when I see this mockery of Christ and what was the center of Western unity (the Holy Eucharist), I have to attach myself even more to the unity found only in Christ. Inversion and mocking are empty and will run out. The things that are good, true, and beautiful will win in the end, and it’s up to each of us to foster them and make them priorities in our lives.
It’s much easier to get offended over things; it’s harder to foster what is important and valuable. Don’t freak out. This is par for the course, and things are going to get crazier.
