By announcing the dissolution of the National Assembly on June 9, Emmanuel Macron had bet on a “clarification” that… did not happen. Some know the Head of State’s pronounced taste for theater, but it was from a director that this promised clarification finally arrived on July 26, 2024: Thomas Jolly, the artistic director of the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics.
First clarification: despite the gaping wounds in French society and the divisive speeches that the extremists like to fan, this flame of unity that still unites the population is not completely extinguished. That evening, the French still do not have a new government, but there are 23 million of them in front of their televisions watching a spectacular and unprecedented show. Signing in the process the second best audience in the history of French television. Did the French enjoy it? According to a Harris poll, more than 85% of them considered the show a success. Only 5% of those questioned found it “not at all successful”. “There are more of us who want to live together well, but we are less noisy… except last night”, rejoiced Thomas Jolly the day after the event.
Here comes the second clarification: deeply divided at the ballot box, the French came together and agreed, at least for one evening, on the desire to have a direction, a story, a vision for their country, something that has been so lacking for a long time in the political class. That evening, this vision, however short-term it may have been, we owed it to the man who successfully relaunched Starmania last year. A light vision certainly – no question here of pension reform or the French budget -, which allowed the French to find the sun in the middle of their night: a creative, audacious, talented nation in its diversity, which assumes its differences, its irreverence and its “champagne” side.
So, 7:30 p.m., first shivers. The gong of the opening ceremony sounds to the sound of Paradethe official musical theme of the Paris Olympic Games composed by Victor Le Masne (known for having worked with Juliette Armanet and the group Justice). In the process, the Pont d’Austerlitz disappears behind a thick blue, white and red cloud. We are suddenly plunged back into France in the 1920s. Champs-Elysées by Michel Drucker and its unforgettable theme song (not the original but the one restyled in the show’s final years). That time when the French still crowded around the television on Saturday evenings to watch the same program.
Marion Maréchal, Mélenchon, Rohff… Same fight
In the stands, Emmanuel Macron, for his part, seems to have trouble cracking a smile. However, the opening ceremony is a three and a half hour ode to “at the same time”. Metal marrying lyrical music, voguing rubbing shoulders with the Auvergne bourrée, an American pop star covering Zizi Jeanmaire or even this improbable pas de deux between Aya Nakamura and the Republican Guard. Delegations parading by boat to a playlist that sees Véronique Sanson, Desireless, Sheila, Michel Polnareff, Justice, Gala or Europe, to name but a few. And the French, from the quays or from their living rooms, celebrated. Savored. Communed. Knowing how to put aside their differences and sort things out when something bigger than them is at stake, when something majestic is before their eyes. Denying in passing the angry tweet from Marion Maréchal posted at 9:14 p.m.: “It’s difficult to appreciate the rare successful scenes between the decapitated Marie-Antoinettes, the kissing trouple, the drag queens, the humiliation of the Republican Guard forced to dance to Aya Nakamura, the general ugliness of the costumes and choreography. We are desperately looking for a celebration of the values of sport and the beauty of France in the midst of such crude woke propaganda.”
“The Republican Guard forced to dance to Aya Nakamura”?: “It was incredible for us, believe it,” the head of the Republican Guard’s music reacted the next day. “A threesome kissing?”: more of a modern version of the “ménage à trois” popularized by the Germinal by Zola. A formula that the Anglo-Saxons are also fond of, and of which French literature and cinema are full of examples. “We are desperately seeking the celebration of the values of sport”?: even then, we would have had to wait until the fabulous passing of the torch between Charles Coste, the oldest Olympic champion still alive, and the duo Teddy Riner-Marie-José Pérec. She is not the only one.
“The deluge that then fell on the City of Light can only be divine punishment. For some reason, every cloud has a silver lining: after that apocalyptic evening, I became a believer,” the philosopher Alain Finkielkraut mocked. An unbearable spectacle for the salespeople of decline, that of a France that is emerging for a moment from the gloom in which their argument always aims to confine it. Good news: whether they are politicians, editorialists or intellectuals, right or left, many of the personalities that evening stopped crossing swords for a moment to collectively salute “one of those events that mark a generation”. Of course, everyone has the right not to have adhered to the entire spectacle and to cast a critical eye on certain pictures. But here is another clarification: there are voices that, in their obsession with a France condemned to failure, will always refuse to see things clearly. They will never get rid of the image of a country that is doing badly: and for good reason, it is their fuel, their intoxication. By massively approving the opening ceremony, the French have given them a scathing denial.
The specter of anti-blasphemy
Ironically, on the left of the left, Jean-Luc Mélenchon also “did not like the mockery of The Christian Last Supper: what’s the point of risking hurting believers?” A godsend for far-right sympathisers, who did not fail to point out on X: “If even Jean-Luc Mélenchon did not appreciate the beheading of Marie-Antoinette and The Woke Last Supper, that sets the tone for the bad taste of these passages!”
This is perhaps where the final clarification lies: in this hubbub of indignation, the spectre of anti-blasphemy seems to be emerging once again. A cause that we would probably be wrong to underestimate, judging by the surprising alliances that it is capable of creating. Thus, this tweet from rapper Rohff on July 27: “A thought for the Christians who, like us Muslims, respect the people of the book. The Olympic ceremony was unfortunately the scene of uninhibited Satanism in public, in the eyes of the entire world. The contempt for religions has just become a historic event. All that was missing was the antichrist…”.
Parody of The Last Supper? Reproduction of the banquet of the gods of Olympus? What does it matter! In the land of Charlie Hebdo, there will never be an apology for blasphemy.
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