Living around the corner from the Olympic Village, I felt so proud of Team Ireland and Paris 2024.
When French singer-songwriter Yseult Marie Onguenet – known mononymously as Yseult – sang Sinatra’s My Way at the end of the closing ceremony on Sunday, August 11th, I mouthed “felicitations” from my sofa. From beginning to end, the French did it magnificently and most definitely they did it their way.
During the Olympic Games I felt envious, for the first time, of my friends with dual Irish/French nationality, while simultaneously indulging in unratified dual patriotism.
The ambience in the City of Light was one of respect for the 80 countries and refugee teams competing, and the visitors and Parisians who stuck around enjoyed a stress-free and well-organised two weeks. We felt part of a global celebration, united in a love of sports and celebration.
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A headline read, The Biggest Surprise of the Paris Olympics: Even the French Have Nothing to Complain About.
However, we also know that headline wasn’t entirely accurate.
Some were shocked by Thomas Jolly’s (artistic director of all four Olympic and Paralympic ceremonies) “Festivities” scene, seeing a resemblance to Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper, and I feel genuinely sorry that they felt hurt. The Olympic committee and Jolly apologised.
Jolly explained that the scene was a nod to Dionysus (aka Bacchus), the Greek god of fertility, wine and revelry, depicted by French singer Philippe Catherine body painted in blue. Jolly’s idea was to have a pagan celebration connected to the gods of Olympus. The crowned Barbara Butch, a French DJ and lesbian activist, was cast in the role of Apollo, the god of music and dance. Some felt the scene resembled “The Feast of the Gods” (by 17th-century Dutch artist Jan van Bijlert) more than the Last Supper.
In Greek mythology, Dionysus is the father of Sequana, the Goddess of the river Seine, who appeared as a horsewoman in silver armour in a dreamlike scene riding a mechanical horse down the Seine. The opening ceremony paid homage to Paris’s river, whose €1.5 billion spruced-up waters became the magical thread connecting Olympic Greece and Paris.
The controversial scandal reminded me of when I worked for Saudia, the national airline of Saudi Arabia, when the airline’s logo was changed in the 1980s. The new logo represented two swords crossing and a palm tree. It was greatly lauded until some influential person found that the swords crossing might be interpreted as a crucifix if looked at from a certain angle. The backlash was rapid and drastic – all aircraft had to be repainted with a newer logo, where the swords crossed at a different angle, and every single item bearing the logo had to be replaced.
Even our designer airline scarves came under the microscope. While awaiting replacements, black indelible markers were used to blackout the offensive logos, making tying the scarfs while hiding the blackened bit an extra trial for this Irish woman, who had never mastered the French knack for scarf tying, even before the censorship.
I thought Jolly’s opening ceremony was full of beauty and imagination from beginning to end and, despite torrential rain, showed France’s avant-garde creativity in all its splendour. It was always evident that France’s Olympic opening ceremony would stand out from any prior event.
Patrick Boucheron, a self-described “historian of images” who worked alongside Jolly, said they had “envisioned the Olympic opening ceremony as a manifesto against fear”. They wanted to create a unifying narrative.
I am sure some people were genuinely upset by the Dionysian scene. However, I also suspect others were trying to refuel pre-Paris 2024 tensions, harping on about the scene to divide and separate.
French far-right politicians, French Catholic bishops, Donald Trump, Elon Musk and the US Christian right were among the “shocked”. On the night of August 3rd, eight days after the opening ceremony, the Vatican surprised many by also condemning the Festivities scene.
Before the snap French legislative elections between June 30th and July 7th, Mélanie Berger-Volle, a 102-year-old former member of the resistance, canvassed against the French far right. She reminded us that Hitler was legally elected. Jean Lafaurie, a former resistance fighter, also warned, “France is really in danger, but so is the whole of Europe at the moment.”
Berger-Volle was selected by the Loire district to carry the Olympic flame due to her participation in the Resistance during the second World War. France’s motto, Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, which she strived to uphold, is again in danger.
Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party (formerly named the Front National) included former Waffen SS military unit members in its ranks. When we recall how the Nazi regime carried out a campaign against male homosexuality and persecuted gay men between 1933 and 1945 and look at the Dionysian scene again, I wonder, was it also the inclusivity that upset some people?
Apart from the reminder that far-right danger is once again at the doorstep, I feel Paris 2024 has lived up to the word “together” that was added to the Olympics motto last year. In 2023, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) approved the addition of the word “together”, after an end dash, to the motto; its motto now reads “Citius, Altius, Fortius – Communiter”, Latin for Faster, Higher, Stronger – Together.
I’m still basking in a warm glow of togetherness – from the Olympics and Paralympics. I’ve never been prouder of Ireland, my home country, and Paris, my hometown.
I recently learnt that the first Irish Tricolor flag was an 1848 gift from a group of French women sympathetic to the cause of Irish Independence. The flag was intended to symbolise inclusion.
The historical and cultural ties binding Ireland and France are ever stronger.
Despite lacking scarf-tying skills, I feel a magnetic pull to be a Franco-Irish woman and to have a “blocking’” vote in the 2027 French presidential election.
- Patricia Killeen is from Phibsborough in Dublin. She left Ireland in 1992 to travel the world. She now lives in Saint Ouen, on the outskirts of Paris. She hosts Turning Points for World Radio Paris.
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