An impassioned discussion has arisen around the world over a part of the opening ceremonies of the Paris Olympics last weekend. One of the staged scenes along the Seine where the athletes of each nation were being ferried to the stadium included a line of drag performers posing shoulder-to-shoulder on a bridge before turning it into a fashion-forward catwalk. Later, those same actors celebrated over a meal where the dish was revealed to be a nearly nude man painted blue.
In all honesty, even that explanation still left a lot of us puzzled.
A Lot of Us Saw the Similarities
I have to admit that when I first saw the scene, I
immediately thought it looked awfully similar to Da Vinci’s Last Supper. Unlike
the famous masterpiece that more resembles a staged class photo than a meal,
this was a live tableau that included drag queens and actors posing as
characters from Greek mythology. But the resemblance was enough to stop me in
my tracks, wondering what in the world these folks were doing and what it had
to do with the Olympics.
Leonardo Da Vinci, Last Supper, c. 1495–1498
As is my habit, when I encounter a controversy like this, I research it. My goal is to try to understand what I am seeing rather than coming to a quick judgment. Most debated issues have more than one angle to be considered and sometimes, though not always, the truth lies somewhere between opposing sides, each of which believe only they could possibly be right.
Given the reference to Greek mythology by the creators of
this scene, I spent some time uncovering some of the classical Greek images
that may have inspired the French display. Along the way, I discovered an angle
I had not considered before.
Leonardo Da Vinci painted The Last Supper as a mural
on the wall above the refectory of the Dominican convent of Santa Maria delle
Grazie in Milan. He is often described as a polymath, a human being talented in
a wide range of skills and, in Da Vinci’s case, curious about a wide range of
aspects of the world in which he lived.
He was also a man of his times, the Italian Renaissance,
which sought to simultaneously revive the classical virtues of the Greek and
Roman eras as well as to combine those virtues with a Christianity just
emerging from both the highly cognitive scholasticism of the elite as well as the
common superstitions of the Middle Ages. Da Vinci was adept at portraying
images from Greek mythology, some of which he produced for paying patrons. Many
of these images would influence the Christian imagery he would create.
Archetypes Expressed Through Cultural Lenses
That’s hardly surprising.
Carl Jung spoke of a collective unconscious in which all
human beings share from which archetypal imagery that has spoken to humanity
over time has emerged. While archetypes essentially remain the same over time,
they are expressed through the lens of the cultures in which they appear. For
example, the archetype of the holy Mother and sacred child has appeared in
images beloved around the world: Guan Yin, bodhisattva of compassion in Asia,
Isis and Horus in ancient Egypt and the Madonna in Christian cultures. And the
archetype of the sacred feast has appeared in a number of forms as well.
It had not initially occurred to me as I mused over this
controversy that Da Vinci may well have portrayed the Last Supper using an archetype
of a sacred feast he borrowed from classical Greek and Roman imagery. And given
the fact so many of us almost immediately identified the French display - whose
creators insisted was inspired by Greek mythology - with Da Vinci’s
masterpiece, that seems quite likely.
Banquet of the Gods. 1840. Carlo Bellosio. Italian
1801-1849. oil/canvas.
Of course, there have been many other depictions of that sacred feast over time. They range from the earliest visions of the Last Supper in the 6th CE mosaic at Ravenna that probably reflected the actual event with disciples reclining on the floor and Jesus at one end of the table rather than in the center, to the 16th CE tavern scene by Tintoretto where the smoke of the oil lamps above the heads of the bar maids and feasters morphed into angels overhead. That’s one of my favorites.
But that hard work paid off. I have lived a much richer life
as a result. And thus I had an entry point into the research I conducted after
the initial outcries over the events in Paris. For that I am grateful even as I
see this as a wakeup call for American education. Sadly, I think that is
unlikely to happen anytime soon in this age of book banning and historical
revision to prevent the beneficiaries of our society from ever feeling
uncomfortable.
Questions We Must Ask Ourselves
That, in turn, led me to another question. Why would we
presume that the French designers of the opening ceremonies of the world’s
games had somehow been intent on disrespecting the world’s largest religion and
30% of the world’s living souls? What would prompt us to engage in this kind of
self-focused persecutorial thinking? Why would we be so special that the
designers of one of the few gatherings of peoples from around the globe would
use this occasion to dis us? That’s more than a little paranoid.
I must admit that I do not have the answers to those
questions. But I think they are questions we Christians must ask ourselves. The
notion that an infinite G-d who is the source of all that exists is somehow
worried about being “mocked” by finite human beings is not terribly credible.
Clearly, defending public perceptions of ourselves is a very human preoccupation, particularly for those of us with brittle facades and fragile egos. But why would an infinite G_d who lies beyond all human conceptions require finite human agents to protect the divine reputation? At what point do our concerns move from the sacred - toward which all true icons point - to the image itself? And at what point in this often unconscious move do we lapse into an unrecognized idolatry, the worship of the works of our own hands and imaginations?
But that also applies to those of us who found ourselves engaging in knee jerk, pearl clutching reactions to this display as well. This is a reality check for us. We need to be aware of our tendencies to jump to conclusions – here wrongfully – and to presume that everything is about us.
More importantly, we need to be aware of how presuming the bad faith and malevolent intentions of others frames the way we see the world in incredibly deleterious ways. In a time when humanity is perhaps more polarized than it has ever been, even as we face a potential extinction event in anthropogenic climate change, we simply do not have the luxury of indulging such negative, deterministic presumptions. As Benjamin Franklin so pointedly observed during the American Revolution, "Gentlemen, we must all hang together or most assuredly, we shall all hang separately."
May those with ears hear.
Harry Scott Coverston
Orlando, Florida
If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an
unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding.
Most things worth considering do not come in sound bites.
Those who believe religion and politics aren't connected
don't understand either. – Mahatma Gandhi
For what does G-d require of you but to do justice, and
to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your G-d? - Micah
6:8, Hebrew Scriptures
Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief.
Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly now. You are not obligated to
complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it. - Rabbi Rami
Shapiro, Wisdom of the Jewish Sages (1993)
© Harry Coverston, 2024
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