Controversy continues surrounding the opening of the Olympic Games

Paris. Four days later, the controversy continues surrounding the opening ceremony of the Paris Games, which included drag queens and was denounced by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as an attack on Christianity and described as “shameful” by former US President Donald Trump.

The claim to LGBT+ culture and a possible allusion to the last Christian supper have raised criticism on social media, especially from conservative sectors around the world. The long ceremony of almost 4 hours along the Seine River in Paris caused a sensation and broke television audience records.

But while praise was unanimous for the spectacular images of Paris, certain stage scenes were much less enthusiastic.

“I will call the Pope as soon as possible to share with him the immorality committed against the Christian world and against all Christians. The Olympic Games were used as a tool of perversion that corrupts human nature,” Erdogan said at a meeting of his Islamo-conservative party.

The criticism brought together sworn enemies such as Iran’s Supreme Ayatollah and the Republican presidential candidate in the United States. “Respect for Jesus Christ (…) is an indisputable issue for Muslims,” ​​said Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

“I’m very open-minded, but I think what they did was disgraceful,” Trump added in a television interview.

At the centre of the controversy was the performance of French singer Philippe Katerine, naked except for a loincloth, his body painted blue and with a bouquet of flowers on his head, in front of a long table that could recall the last supper of Jesus Christ and his apostles. The man who praised nudity while singing was an allusion to the god Bacchus, one of the divinities of the Greek Olympus, said Katerine, who declared himself “shocked” by the controversy and asked for forgiveness “if I may have offended anyone.”

“Let it be clear that Thomas Jolly and I never talked about religion, or dinner,” the singer said in statements to the newspaper. The world this Tuesday.

Thomas Jolly is the artistic director of the Games’ opening and closing ceremonies, an artist who designed a bold spectacle featuring thousands of dancers and acrobats, in the first Olympic ceremony held outside a sports venue.

“I have never had the desire to mock or denigrate anything or anyone,” Jolly emphasized.

The purpose of the “Festivity” sequence was “to make a big pagan party,” he insisted.

But the French ecclesiastical hierarchy also expressed its outrage. Some television channels broadcasting the ceremony hastily cut the footage.

The wave of outrage over a passage in the ceremony took a legal turn on Tuesday, when Barbara Butch, who performed in the show, reported that her lawyer filed a lawsuit alleging abuse that the LGBTI+ icon has suffered following the inauguration.

The young woman presiding over this scene, with a large golden tiara on her head, is the diyei Barbara Butch, a feminist activist who filed a complaint for cyberbullying, death threats and public insults.