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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favorite tales on this weekly e-newsletter.
Organisers of the Paris Olympics’ opening ceremony are dealing with a backlash from conservative politicians and non secular figures who say that it denigrated Christians.
Friday’s celebration alongside the river Seine included a scene depicting a bacchanalian Final Supper that included drag queens and a person clad solely in blue physique paint, in addition to a cheeky tribute to sexual liberation.
The three-hour outside ceremony on Friday night time featured an armada of about 100 boats carrying greater than 10,000 athletes down the river. The occasion additionally contained scantily clad dancers and portrayals of various sexual orientations and racial minorities.
French Catholic bishops stated in an announcement that the ceremony “sadly included scenes that mocked and derided Christianity”. The Archbishop of Malta stated he had written to the French ambassador to complain.
Donald Trump Jr criticised the occasion in a put up on social media website X, whereas Dutch far-right politician Geert Wilders claimed that the ceremony’s bearded drag queens, a rapper and a pre-teen break dancer had been “mocking Christianity”.
Talking earlier than the ceremony, its inventive director Thomas Joly, who’s know in France for genre-bending theatre and the musical Starmania, stated that he wished to symbolise French historical past, tradition and literature whereas creating an inclusive efficiency that showcased the nation’s totally different communities.
Joly instructed reporters on Saturday that his goal was “to not be subversive” however somewhat to symbolize “variety and being collectively”.
The Final Supper scene was in line with France’s lengthy custom of secularism, he stated.
“In France we now have freedom of creation, inventive freedom . . . [and are] fortunate to dwell in a free nation,” Joly stated. “We’re a republic. We have now the precise to like who we would like, we now have the precise to not be worshippers.”
Olympics officers have lengthy promoted the video games as a unifying drive that transcends politics; the opening ceremony has historically touted the host nation’s values and cultural pleasure.
Joly’s Paris ceremony included typical French touchstones from cabaret to style, but additionally got down to problem authority and symbolize Gallic values comparable to secularism.
At one level an actor enjoying the beheaded Marie-Antoinette sang a tune from the French Revolution, segueing into heavy metallic with flames taking pictures up within the background.
Franco-Malian musician Aya Nakamura sang a medley of her hip-hop tinged hits, combined with the Seventies Charles Aznavour ballad “For Me Formidable” and backed by a army band.
Earlier this yr the French far-right criticised the prospect of Nakamura performing on the ceremony. Marine Le Pen stated in March that it could be “a humiliation for the French” and criticised the star for being “vulgar” and never talking French correctly.
In a social media put up after the ceremony, President Emmanuel Macron celebrated Nakamura’s efficiency, searching for to match it together with his model of politics that fuses insurance policies from the left and proper. “En même temps,” he stated, that means “on the similar time”.
