“With me. This day. Paradise.” The words of Jesus to the thief nailed to a cross next to his.
Incredible, really. Heroic, even, such a reaction to his own betrayal, abandonment, and brutal state-sponsored execution for the crime of trying to get people to treat each other better as human beings, scratching out a measure of social justice in the process.
He could probably handle a little teasing.
If that was in fact what was going on at the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics Friday, with that brief side excursion into a colorful sort of drag show that some (many) saw as a twisted take on Leonardo’s “The Last Supper.”
Or you could call it an arch artistic interpretation, what with a chubby Dionysus rendered as blue as the inflated Violet Beauregarde from “Willy Wonka” and served up on a garnish-laden platter. The original party animal tends to deflate all offense-taking.
Never mind, as was widely reported, that a French museum subsequently shared an image of a 17th-century Dutch painting with Apollo at the haloed center of a Mount Olympus feast, not Jesus (a better match and more accurate inspiration, down to the number and variety of acolytes), the outrage was as dispiriting as it was expected.
But that’s what the internet and social media are for. What’s that the sociologists say? That reading is the only proven way to increase your I.Q.? It’s remarkable how quickly social media became the opposite.
About the ceremony, this John Q. Public laughed and gaped, enthusing aloud to himself, “This is great!” All of it — the athletes’ entry by boat on the Seine, Juliette Armanet’s rendition of John Lennon’s “Imagine” accompanied by a burning piano atop what looked like a floating pile of garbage, Marie Antoinette all in red, holding her singing severed head in her lap, and on to the unabashed modernism of the robotic horse running across the water, masked and silver-clad flagbearer astride.
The sheer showmanship is what’s appreciated. The head-spinning effort to entertain. The sincerity behind the striving for something different and fun. It out-cirqued Cirque du Soleil, from the acrobats swaying to and fro on 20-foot poles to the hot-air balloon drifting away engulfed in fake flames.
The stabs at inclusiveness, too. Why not? With liberty and equality comes responsibility — responsibility to lighten up in an open society. Now bring on the track and field.