Last Supper / Bacchanalia - Updated

Update 7/29/2024 8:43 pm CDT - the original post stated that drag queens are trans persons.  Jean kindly corrected me: they are not the same.  According to Google's experimental Generative AI, covering some of the same ground as Jean did in a comment below:

While some drag queens may be transgender, and some transgender people may enjoy drag, they are not inherently the same. Being transgender is about one's internal sense of self, while drag is a form of performance or expression.

Consequently, below the break, I've revised the original post in order to correct that error.  I've also expanded the content a bit, including quoting from some news articles to provide a fuller explanation of the controversy.

A topic below on the Paris Olympics developed into a discussion of a controversial segment of the opening ceremonies, in which some drag queens allegedly parodied Leonardo Da Vinci's famous Last Supper mural.  A number of religious public figures took to traditional or social media to criticize the segment as disrespectful or worse.  Among those who expressed dismay was Robert Barron, the bishop of Winona-Rochester, MN and a prominent Catholic media content creator.  Barron started his well-known Word on Fire ministry as a Chicago priest and I've 'fessed up in the past to admiring him. 

In recent days I'd become aware of the outcry against the segment in question, but I hadn't been able to watch the opening ceremonies in their entirety, and I had not seen that particular segment.  In prepping to writ this blog entry, I searched for the video segment on YouTube but wasn't able to find it; I suspect it may have been deemed too controversial for the platform.  

In the blog discussion under the original topic, Jean mentioned that she'd welcome my comments on the controversy.  Rather than reply in the comments section under that topic, I thought I'd do a (very) little homework, and share my thoughts here in a separate thread.  That way I could try to present Leonardo's mural and an image of the opening ceremonies segment side-by-side (or top-and-bottom) as you can see above the break, and perhaps we could all try to assess if there is anything to the criticism.

Here is Crux's Elise Ann Allen's description of the controversial segment:

At one point during the ceremony, a group of 18 drag performers, including several famous Drag Race France personalities, struck poses behind what appeared to be a long table with the Seine River and Eiffel Tower in the background.

At the center was a woman in a low-cut dress wearing a large silver headdress, reminiscent of the halo behind Jesus’s head in many artistic depictions of the Last Supper, indicating his divine status as the son of God. The woman made a heart shape with her hands as the group stared into the camera before breaking out into a routine.

As models then took the stage for an impromptu fashion show, the Last Supper characters swayed on the sidelines as a little girl stood with them.

Later, a large serving tray was placed on the stage, with the top being removed to reveal a scantily clad man painted head to toe in blue, apparently evoking the Greek God Dionysus in a bid to point to the “absurdity of violence between human beings,” according to the official English-language Olympic Games profile on social media platform X, previously known as Twitter.

Allen's article rounds up a series of Catholic bishop responses, from Americans as well as Europeans.  All panned the segment.  The two Americans whose reaction Allen reports on, Barron and Bishop Andrew Cozzens of Crookston, MN, both looked at the segment through the lens of the American bishops' National Eucharistic Congress, whose national gathering had taken place in Indianapolis the previous week.  Perhaps it is not surprising that attendees of that conference emerged ready to defend the Eucharist in public. 

Those in charge of the Olympic opening ceremonies have now stepped forward to explain that no disrespect was intended.  From Eric Legatta's article in USA Today:

[T]he opening ceremony’s artistic director, Thomas Jolly, has insisted that the scene is not a reference at all to the Last Supper.

Rather, the performance is a nod to a pagan celebration featuring Dionysus, the Greek god of fertility, wine and revelry.

Portrayed at the Olympics by French singer and actor Philippe Katerine, Dionysus – known to the Romans as Bacchus – has a close tie to France: In Greek mythology, he is the father of Sequana, the Goddess of the River Seine.

Even the official Olympics account on X said on Friday that the “interpretation of the Greek God Dionysus makes us aware of the absurdity of violence between human beings.” The post did not mention the Last Supper, while others commenting on the post described the performance as a depiction of a Dionysian feast.

My thoughts in brief:

• Comparing the two images at the top of the post, I can see some superficial similarities: both images are tableaus of people in a line; there is food on both "tables" (I think the bottom platform turned out to be a fashion-show runway or some such); and both images have dark-ish backgrounds (and perhaps some similarities in color palette)
• In addition, as Allen noted, the drag queen at the center of the opening ceremonies image is wearing a headdress which seems to be modeled on a halo.  
• All that said, a closer look shows that the two images are at least as different as they are similar. I'm not very knowledgeable about art, but there are more than 12 trans persons in the bottom picture (that number 12 is a significant element of the Last Supper), and there doesn't seem to be the Eucharistic elements of bread and wine.  And the drag queens are not really grouped together as they were in the Renaissance painting. 

I'll add two other thoughts:

1.  Both of these images are works of art: the older is a mural, whereas the one from Friday's opening ceremonies might be classified as performance art.  I can speak from some modest authority, or at least experience, in making this observation: art and its interpretation is complicated.  Consider music, which is my (very small) area of the arts: the composer may have had a particular thought or image in mind in creating a work; but then those who perform the composition may bring a different interpretation; while those who hear the work being performed (or a hear a recording of the performance) may hear things that had not consciously occurred to either the composer nor the performers.  The same is true of a work of theatre or television or film (and this opening ceremony might be understood as a theatre piece): the author's, director's, performers' and audience members' reactions and interpretations may diverge widely.   So I'm not going to immediately leap up and claim one side or the other here is right or wrong.

 2.  I strongly suspect that, had the performers in the opening ceremonies segment not been drag queens, there would be little or no controversy.  I am supposing 85% (at least) of the outrage is because, if this really was supposed to be a parody of the Last Supper, it would have shown Jesus dining with people in drag.  If I am right about this, then my reply to the critics is: Get over it!  Jesus died to save drag queens (and trans people, whom I had originally thought they were!) along with everyone else.  Salvation is on offer to all of us, hence that word "many" in the Institution narratives.