“We were shocked by the mockery of 'The Last Supper' at the opening of the Paris Olympics. C Spire will withdraw its advertising from the Games” – the American telecommunications company announced on X a few hours after the event. The company declined to comment to the New York Post. with answers to questions about which ads were pulled and how much it cost to make its presence known at the games. C Spire is the sixth-largest telecommunications company in the United States.
Olympics. C Spire Pulls Ads. “We Will Not Be Part of the Last Supper Mockery”
C Spire CEO Suzy Hays said the company continues to support “the athletes who worked hard to get to the games.” “However, we will not be part of an offensive and unacceptable mockery of 'The Last Supper,' and we are therefore pulling our ads.”
Controversy was sparked by a performance during which people sat down to a representation of Leonardo da Vinci's “The Last Supper” instead of Jesus and his apostles. LGBT+. “We didn't want to be subversive. Never. We wanted to talk about diversity. Diversity means being together. We wanted to include everyone, that's all. In France we have freedom to create, artistic freedom. We are lucky to live in a free country. I didn't have a specific idea that I wanted to convey. France is a republic and we have the right to love who we want, we have the right not to be religious, we have many wash in France and that's what I wanted to show,” said artistic director of the opening ceremony Thomas Jolly.
A Pastiche of the “Last Supper” at the Olympic Opening Ceremony. “Why Not Make Fun of Christianity?”
The philosopher, theologian and former Dominican, Prof. Tadeusz Bartoś, spoke about the high-profile ceremony in an interview with Gazeta.pl. – French bishops are not quick to make political statements, but here they really reacted quickly – assessed the expert. The French episcopate stated that the pastiche of “The Last Supper” at the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics was “a mockery and a mockery of Christianity”.
As Bartoś emphasized, the clergy's argument about mocking Christianity is quite troublesome, because “why not mock Christianity?” – Kitsch, mockery, irony. All these things already existed. Comedy was invented by the Greeks in the 5th century BC, so why can't you laugh? They (the French episcopal – ed.) did not write why. “You can laugh at anything, at President Macron, at the Prime Minister, at the judge, at the policeman, just not at us,” the professor pointed out. – Generally, monotheistic religions tend to regulate human thinking very strongly. You can think this way, you can speak this way, but you cannot do that way, the expert emphasized.
According to Professor Bartoś, “insulting people is something completely different than mocking religion”. – We either laugh primitively and vulgarly, or intelligently. In my opinion, this staging of the “Last Supper” was not vulgar mockery. It was very aesthetic – he assessed.