Of course! Curmie remembers seeing the painting in person over a half-century ago, possibly in the company of that friend; we were roommates on a spring break trip to London and Paris sponsored by the school’s French club. Curmie saw it again a couple years later while on a college Language Study Abroad program, and photos have crossed his path a few times in the ensuing decades. He’s mildly embarrassed that he didn’t immediately see the tweak (if you’ll pardon the expression, Gentle Reader) to the spectators, but mostly he’s still giggling over the pearl-clutchers’ inability to partake of the low-hanging fruit: the part of the portrait that is suggested but not seen is indeed a little risqué by American television standards. The resounding silence from the American right is indeed ironic, especially in the context of what did get their collective skivvies in a twist.
Most of the
controversies arising out of this year’s Olympics had to do with actions, past
or present, of the athletes: were the Chinese swimmers (still) doping, what
should be done about the convicted child rapist, what the hell was that
Australian woman doing,
stuff like that. A couple of stories were
about how members of the media behaved.
And, of course, there was the Great Floor Exercise Debacle,
in which most Americans thought Jordan Chiles was much abused based primarily
on the fact that she is American and the other contenders for the bronze medal
are not.
But none of these stories make it to the podium in the
Olympic Pearl-Clutching finals. To reach
those lofty heights, a contender must claim victimization on the basis of
something other than nationality, and the top scorers are not the athletes
themselves, but television viewers, who must claim to have suffered mightily
themselves. The outrageousness of the
outrage, not its reach, is what determines the winner.
We begin, then, with the bronze medalist, the furor over
Algerian boxer Imane Khelif. Yes, it was
a bit ridiculous to make a big deal out of the fact that an athlete who
competed as a woman in the Tokyo Olympics was allowed to do so again in
Paris. And yes, the Italian woman who
initially accused her of being male recanted after the “agony of defeat” wore
off.
But we can’t rank this any higher than third place because
there’s some very real mitigation. Transgender
women, those who went through puberty as males, are in fact likely to have
better upper-body strength than women who were born female. As Lia Thomas has amply demonstrated,
mediocre or merely good male athletes can become stars by doing little more
than declaring themselves female. There
was, of course, a fair amount of internet chatter (without evidence, of course)
that Khelif is transgender. Some of this
came from despicable but somehow trusted folks like Elon Musk and J.K. Rowling,
both of whom Khelif has sued for cyberbullying.
Curmie, an advocate for both free speech and victims’
rights, hasn’t completely wrapped his head around the legal issues. What is definitely true is that Khelif is
intersex, not trans. A lot of the people
who expressed outrage believed the false reports; we can raise an eyebrow at
their willingness to think the likes of Musk are even capable of truth-telling,
but we can’t blame them too much. And
the fact that she’s been beaten before doesn’t automatically mean she doesn’t
have an advantage.
Moreover, there is no standard means of dealing with such
issues: should we be considering testosterone levels? the presence or absence
of XY chromosomes? visible male dangly bits?
The Olympics apparently make their decisions based on what it says on a
passport.
Curmie has a friend whose passport says “male” even though
it was issued to someone who was born female and had only just begun the
transitioning process: I can’t speak to the details with confidence, but I’d
bet that surgery hadn’t happened, and testosterone boosters had only just begun
if in fact they’d begun at all. If
that’s what the process looked like in that direction, it’s doubtful that going
the other direction would be much different.
And there are certainly countries which would be willing to (ahem)
bend the rules if there were no criteria other than passports.
Moreover, Khelif was indeed disqualified from the 2023 World
Championships after the fact by the Russian-controlled International Boxing
Association for unspecified offenses totally unrelated to the fact that she had
the audacity to beat a Russian boxer. (Ahem.) The IOC cut ties with the IBA and criticized
that judgment, which they claimed was “sudden and arbitrary” and devoid of due
process. When you’re too corrupt for the
IOC, you are definitely not the good guys in the story.
Still, we can understand those who are hesitant to advocate
for Khelif in the absence of further evidence.
So these pearl-clutchers aren’t the champions of their event. But the mere fact that the same people who
insist that everyone should be permanently classified according to the sex they
were assigned at birth are the ones howling that Khelif should not be allowed
to compete… erm… according to the sex she was assigned at birth is
enough to earn them a spot on the podium.
In the silver medal position is the weeping, wailing, and
gnashing of teeth that accompanied the perception that there was a brief moment
in the opening ceremony that someone decided had parodied the Last Supper… not the
event, to be sure, but the painting.
Every pseudo-Christian yahoo with access to an X account or a Fox
station was sore aggrieved, although it’s unclear whether people were actually
offended or whether they dutifully pretended to be so when instructed by
right-wing media. And no, the fact that a
lot of people purported to be offended does not mean there’s legitimacy to
their claim.
The facts that there were a lot more people in the image
than there were at the Last Supper, that there was no table, that the artist
who created that particular vignette insisted it was intended to reference both
the Greek origins of the Olympics and the notion of Dionysian (or, to use the
Roman term, Bacchanalian) revelry: all this is to be ignored, apparently. Even the Vatican got into the act, albeit
belatedly, with this bizarre statement:
“The Holy See was saddened by certain scenes at the opening ceremony of the
Paris Olympic Games and cannot but join the voices raised in recent days to
deplore the offense done to many Christians and believers of other religions
[?!?]” (emphasis added).
Curmie confesses that he didn’t know what the hell that
moment was all about. He didn’t think of
Dionysus, although in retrospect that identification makes sense, but he fancies himself
reasonably adept at understanding both cultural references and symbology, and
never thought of the Last Supper, either.
It was just another in a series of rather strange vignettes that bespoke
the avant-garde or, perhaps more specifically and relevantly,
Frenchness.
But let’s assume for the moment that Curmie was just asleep
at the proverbial wheel on this one, and that the MAGA hordes were correct that
DaVinci’s Last Supper was being referenced.
At the risk of rendering further offense, Curmie wonders, “So
what?” The Christian religion is not
being parodied.
First off, that would be a remarkably silly thing to do in a
city whose principal tourist attractions include the cathedral of Notre Dame (it
is an amazing space, and Curmie is very happy it will soon re-open), the chapel
of Sainte-Chapelle, and the basilica of Sacré-Cœur. But more to the point, there is nothing
sacred about that painting. A painting
of a bunch of white guys all sitting on the same side of a long table isn’t
likely to represent, even to believers, an accurate portrayal of a meal served
a couple of millennia ago. It’s on a
religious theme; that’s it. It would be
only marginally sillier to have forbidden Curmie to cheer for his alma mater’s
football team when we played the Holy Cross Crusaders.
There are, in fact, sacred relics in Paris. When Curmie was last in that city,
Sainte-Chapelle housed what they proclaimed to be the crown of thorns, a piece
of the true cross, and so on. (Those
relics are now apparently housed in the Louvre.) Make fun of those—or of items of similar
significance to another religion—and you’re a first-class jackass, even if
you’re “right” to doubt their authenticity.
But to suggest a pastiche of a painting obliquely and perhaps even
unintentionally? Seriously? Your God is pretty much a wimp if he can’t handle
that level of presumed disrespect. And
so, O Much-Abused Faux Christian, are you.
There’s no question that these folks deserve their silver
medal. But the fact that few observers
immediately caught on to what was being represented, and that it’s
merely a stretch as opposed to a fabrication to see the Last Supper referenced lends
a pinch of legitimacy to the hand-wringers.
Despite their over-enthusiastic clamor, therefore, they don’t get the
gold medal.
Remember, it’s the outrageousness of the paranoia, not the extent to which it gained traction, that earns points in the battle for the pearl-clutching gold. The top of the podium is therefore reserved for those who gasped at the demonic figure in the closing ceremony.
It is, as Curmie recognized immediately, and suspects you
did, as well, Gentle Reader, a replica of the Winged Victory of Samothrace. You can see the original here, to the right. It strikes me as a particularly apt usage, combining the
notion of victory, certainly relevant to the competitions of the previous
couple of weeks, with the Olympics’ origins in Greece (Samothrace is a Greek
island), with the host city (the statue has been on display in the Louvre for about a century and a half).
It is certainly one of the most famous statues in the
world. What’s better known? Well, the Venus de Milo, Rodin’s Thinker,
Michelangelo’s David, Christ the Redeemer overlooking Rio de Janeiro, the
Statue of Liberty… and maybe something else that’s slipping Curmie’s mind right
now. But it’s certainly in the top ten
in the world.
Ah, but not to the proudly ignorant X user Carolann,
who asserts that it is a “headless, and armless Angel with what appears to be
an effigy of Lucifer (The Golden Voyager) standing in gold. Certainly a fitting
close to the MOST demonic & satanic Olympics in history.” Needless to say, there are followers who say that
it is “a slap in the face to all Christians” and similar hogwash.
Someone points out what virtually anyone with a modicum of
cultural literacy knows (or at the very least suspects), but our gal Carolann
responds with the classic “we can see what it is from here.” It is impossible to argue with such
idiots. Evidence means nothing to
them. Only two things enter their minds:
chauvinistic hatred and the quest for victimhood.
The latter used to be the sole preserve (or nearly so) of the
so-called underprivileged or disenfranchised, whose failures are to be excused
because of their demographic profile: hence, for example, criticisms of Kamala
Harris’s politics or performance, even if deserved, are dismissed as racist or
sexist or both. But now the (pseudo-)
Christian right is demanding their place in the Victimhood Hall of Fame,
despite the lack of anyone actually doing anything to even inconvenience them.
The good news is that this particular hallucination doesn’t
seem to have generated much of a following, but the mere fact that someone could go
on the record with such paranoid ramblings about imaginary threats to an
already privileged position is somewhere between chilling and terrifying. Yes, the MAGA cultists are weird.
La la, how the life goes on.
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