A Wambulance at the Last Supper

Ah, the forgotten Fruit of the Spirit: making everything about us.

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The list of reasons for Christians to not be offended by the Olympics’ Opening Ceremony is pretty long. For one thing, the Olympic Committee has said the tableau of drag queens I’m sure you’ve all seen was not based on the Last Supper, but on the (thematically appropriate) Feast of Dionysus. And even if it had been based on the Last Supper, Da Vinci’s painting is one of the most frequently memed in history, and has never (as far as I know) resulted in any mass outrage or Satanic panic discourse, so there’s no reason to think those godless French intended this iteration would have caused a unique stir. And even if this did represent a unique satire in the history of classical Western art parody, Da Vinci’s painting is not the Bible and is not sacred. The painting already has very little resemblance to the actual Last Supper, so it seems like the only people who would actually be offended are hardcore Leonardo-heads. 

So you have to stretch several ways to turn what actually happened in Paris into a direct, deliberate jab at Christians. You also have to be pretty hubristic. I lived in France and, let me tell you, the French are nothing if not French. The country very famously has a long, storied and beautiful subculture in which theater, cabaret, drag and the arts are foisted against each other by a rich and diverse community of queer artists. These artists bring their own stories to their creative work, and I’d be very surprised if any of those stories cared much about how it might be interpreted by white evangelicals in Franklin, Tennessee.¹

But let’s set all that aside. Let’s say that, okay, yes, for the sake of argument: The French decided they wanted to make fun of Christians and that the Opening Ceremony of the Olympics was just the place to do it. What, exactly, is the virtue in taking the bait here?