I watched the Opening Ceremony of the Paris Olympics at my neighbour’s house. Part way through the ceremony I laughed and exclaimed: ‘Ha! A drag parody of the Last Supper!’ The other neighbours present also laughed, because the symbolism from Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper was clear.
The Last Supper imagery was evident to millions around the world. For some, the obvious parody of Christian imagery was a step too far. Church leaders, particularly from the traditionalist evangelical and Roman Catholic wings, were quick to condemn it as mocking Christian faith: it was insensitive and offensive.
Within 24 hours, however, a backlash against the offence-takers had set in. Other influential Christians, of post-evangelical and liberal Catholic sympathies, were dismissive of the outrage and quick to distance themselves from it all.
A former leading light in UK evangelical circles posted:
Fellow Christians, please stop the nonsense about the Paris Olympics’ parody of the Last Supper. It was a group of fashion designers one side of the catwalk. Nothing more… no parody. Just Christians getting their ecclesiastical knickers in a twist because someone created a meme out of context. We must do better.
This was reposted countless times by others keen to distance themselves from what they saw as the shouty, judgemental and knee-jerk naivety of evangelical and Catholic critics. Then the floodgates opened. My social media feeds were full of enlightened Christians keen to distance themselves from their embarrassing co-religionists.
A prominent UK Christian author reposted an image from the ceremony featuring a large crowd of drag queens behind the naked, bearded blue erotiSmurf representing Dionysus, Greek god of wine. The author claimed his picture of a pagan scene reflected the reality of the event, and that mischief-makers had edited it to give the impression of a parody Last Supper.
Others agreed the scene was taken from Greek legend, and referenced a Dutch painting of the Greek Olympian gods, with no reference to Leonardo da Vinci.
Those of us who had seen a parody Last Supper were told in no uncertain terms we hadn’t.
Others piled in. Yes! The outrage over nothing had been confected by ‘the usual bad faith actors’ from the religious right, keen to stoke culture wars. New memes about the naivety of conservative Christians appeared and were shared widely. Many of these were sarcastic in tone, accusing the concerned Christians of being uneducated. One carried an image of a blue flag, which the narrow-minded could use to declare themselves
Marked safe from having my feelings hurt because the Olympics held in France portrayed a French painting about Greek mythology and I’m too uneducated to know it had nothing to do with an Italian painting.
Several days after the spat, Christians were still denouncing fellow Christians for being dimwitted philistines, and apologising to the world for them.
The other accusation from progressive-minded Christians was that the confected outrage was a mask for homophobia. Those who criticised the scene in the Olympics opening ceremony were not only dimwitted philistines – they were dimwitted, homophobic philistines.
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Feminists & Atheists
I have Christian friends on social media of both liberal and traditionalist hues, so I watched the battle play out in real time. But most of my social media friends are not Christians. The other two groups particularly represented are feminists and atheists.
The comments from the feminists and atheists on the Olympics opening ceremony were strikingly different from those of the progressive Christians.
The message from the liberal-minded Christians was:
• It definitely wasn’t a parody Last Supper.
• Even if it was, please stop criticising it – you’re embarrassing us.
Almost to a person, the message from feminist and atheist friends was quite different:
• It was clearly a parody of the Last Supper.
• It was offensive and inappropriate, and raises issues that can’t be swept under the carpet.
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Dragging the Seine
It now appears the scenario did knowingly parody the Last Supper, and deliberately referenced Leonardo’s painting. That section of the ceremony was, it turned out, based on a French pun. ‘La Cène’ (the Last Supper) sounds identical in French to la scène (the scene), and La Seine (the river through Paris).
This was briefed in advance of the ceremony. One site, Sortir à Paris, had trailed the opening ceremony as including ‘a recreation of the Last Supper’ centred on performance artist Barbara Butch. It informed English readers that it was based on ‘a multiple pun in French’.
I was intrigued at the stark difference between the responses I was seeing from liberal-minded Christians, and those from feminists and atheists. The feminists and atheists were agreeing with the supposedly bigoted traditionalist Christians, and disagreeing with the liberal Christians.
I happen to share the view of the feminists, atheists and traditionalist Christians that the episode really was inappropriate, and that it highlights important cultural issues. But to me, the most fascinating issue was why some Christians, particularly of post-evangelical and liberal Catholic sympathies, found the whole Olympics Last Supper outcry quite so triggering.
Why the stampede to distance themselves from the conservative critics of the parody – like teenagers courting the cool set at school, panicking that their social reputation will be tainted by association with the unhip types they once used to hang out with?
It seems to me it has something to do with a type of post-evangelical angst, and the rise of the drag queen as a kind of redeemer figure in some Christian circles. Hold onto those thoughts for now.
First, brief thoughts on why the Olympics Last Supper parody was inappropriate.
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Punching Down
The context was the opening ceremony of an event that more than any other stands as a symbol of unity in a divided world.
The French have, of course, been poking fun at Christianity for centuries (a). My undergraduate degree was in French literature, and I enjoyed the provocations of Voltaire, Rousseau, Sartre et al. There’s a place for robust debate about the existence of God, the failings of the Church, and religious satire. No faith should be immune from having fun poked at it.
But the Olympics opening ceremony wasn’t a seminar room, or satirical review. It was the unifying ceremony of a global celebration of sport and goodwill, a celebration keen to encourage underrepresented regions of the world to take part.
The Cène on the Seine featured Western arty types parodying an iconic image of a faith which today is overwhelmingly African, Latin and Asian, and by far the most persecuted in the world. It was Westerners punching down – in an arch, knowing, superior sort of way.
In social justice circles today, imperialism and racism are viewed as original sins of Western culture. By a supreme irony, the drag parody of the Last Supper managed to be a distilled expression of both. It featured camp, arty, and mostly male Westerners, poking fun at a faith that is globally poor, ethnically mixed and majority black, persecuted, and predominantly female.
Hardly a message the Olympics should be sending to the watching world. In terms of communicating welcome and goodwill to all continents, the scène of the Cène on the Seine was insane.
But the irony of a would-be inclusive moment being received as excluding and offensive would have seemed strange to the creators of the spectacle, for two reasons:
• Christianity, to the progressive Gallic mind, self-evidently represents oppression and the shackles of dogma.
• Drag queens, more than any other group, have come to embody inclusion and diversity in our day.
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Drag & Inclusion
This second idea, that the drag queen is the ultimate embodiment of inclusive, tolerant values has gone deep in our culture. Of course you’d want to include as many drag artistes as possible in any celebration of unity and inclusion. N’est-ce pas, chéri? (b)
On 14 July, in the build up to the Games, drag queen Minima Gesté (aka Arthur Reynard) was chosen to carry the Olympic torch. Photos appeared around the world of Gesté alongside a male torchbearer. Together the pair represented diversity – at least, if you exclude actual women.
The drag queen at a glance represents the most hallowed values of our age: tolerance, diversity, freedom to be your true self, fluidity of identity, playfulness. BBC News Online has become particularly obsessed with drag, daily trotting out the most trivial of stories that happen to involve a drag queen.
Kamala Harris pointedly launched her campaign for the US presidency in July 2024 on RuPaul’s Drag Race. What better way to flag up a programme of progressive values?
It was natural that a global event dedicated to inclusion would reach for the drag queens. Who could possibly object to the group that, at a glance, communicates inclusion?
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Drag Night at the Clapham Grand
I’ve written about drag and Christianity elsewhere. I charted the recent, strange arrival of drag in church, and its warm embrace at post-evangelical events such as Britain’s Greenbelt Festival – which now hosts drag performances for adults, talks on the history of drag, and drag events for children.
Why has the progressive church opened its arms so warmly to drag? The rationale is that it’s about diversity and inclusion, God accepting us as we are, us learning to accept our true selves.
I suggested in my article, along with many feminists, that in reality it’s a sexualised parody of women – men dressed up in womanface, similar to the old minstrels in blackface.
More specifically, drag is men parodying women in the areas where women have been most demeaned and objectified down the decades, reinforcing stereotypes from which women have had to fight hardest to free themselves.
The big comedy tits and constant innuendo, the giddy bimbo persona, the comically excessive make-up and hair, the tottering around on high heels, the incessant use of trashy and demeaning terms such as bitch, ho and slut. In the first series of RuPaul’s Drag Race UK, the first contestant was Baga Chipz, so named because ‘I love to be covered in Daddies sauce’. For good measure, Ms Chipz added that she was ‘a right trollop with big knockers’.
The 60s and 70s culture of seaside postcards and Carry On films never really went away; it found a home in drag and became nastier.
The most violently misogynistic drag event I’ve attended featured the Canadian Jimbo the Drag Clown, at Drag Night in London’s Clapham Grand. The entire ‘show’ was Jimbo squirting cream at the audience from enormous fake breasts, jokes about female anatomy, and pulling objects out from between his legs.
I haven’t read a single word from any progressive Christian commentator on the most offensive aspect of the Cène on the Seine: the fact that it was a drag show.
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Queens of Heaven
To a certain post-evangelical and liberal Catholic mindset, the drag queen has assumed the status of a hallowed, redemptive figure, one who mediates healing and atonement. In some circles, drag queens have become a new sacred caste. It’s worth taking a moment to reflect on this.
Inclusive, liberal Catholic and post-evangelical Christians characterise their movements as motivated by a rethink of theology (questioning archaic dogmas), and extending the scope of social justice (centred on liberation and equity). Less often admitted is the extent to which liberal Christianity is motivated by a very personal angst about one’s own past.
Liberal-minded Christians who grew up in conservative evangelical, Pentecostal and traditionalist Catholic churches are likely to have encountered teachings and pastoral approaches they now find narrow and exclusionary, and a church culture they now shudder at.
Of course, revisiting and interrogating earlier expressions of faith is entirely healthy. Real faith is self-critical and unafraid of hard questions.
But a determined flight from hurt or shame in childhood can leave people vulnerable to looking for healing and redemption in dodgy places (a classic trope is the ex-Catholic drawn into a cult).
It was natural that a Christian movement dedicated to inclusion, and in reaction to a narrow faith from the past, would reach for today’s cultural icon of inclusion, the drag queen, and make them centre stage. The presence of a drag queen adds a halo of warm inclusivity; it blows a raspberry at the puritanical pastor or prejudiced priest from the past. It tells the world, ‘I’ve broken free’.
For a certain type of liberal-minded Christian, the drag queen represents faith in the creative, limitless possibilities of the liberated self; freedom from legalism and judgement; the possibility of a life unburdened from shame.
When conservative Christians slammed the drag Lord’s Supper, they were unwittingly blaspheming against a redemptive icon of today’s progressive church: the new Queen of Heaven.
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Blind Spots
After my original feature on drag in church appeared, I was contacted by a number of people from inclusive churches, and a number of gay men.
All told me they hated drag. The women told me drag felt abusive and demeaning, and the gay men told me it gave a creepy, misogynistic image of the gay community.
All told me they couldn’t possibly say this in their inclusive churches, because it went against the party line.
It will be clear by now that I think today’s infatuation with drag is misguided, a serious blind spot in the culture. And that sentimentality about drag is a blind spot in progressive Christianity.
There should be no place in any Christian tradition for drag.
To say that is not to be prudish, humourless, homophobic, or a dupe of the far right. It’s simply to say that men portraying women as sex clowns is an act of cruelty, and the opposite of progressive.
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Summary
Back to the Cène on the Seine. Here are some of the reasons it was inappropriate:
• It was Western luvvies parodying a faith that’s overwhelmingly African, Latin and Asian. That’s an imperialist mentality.
• It was parodying the most persecuted faith in the world. That lacks compassion.
• It was a sexualised parody of women. That’s misogyny.
• On all three counts, it was punching down, and in tension with the Olympic ethos.
And some of the reasons drag has no place in Christian faith:
• Drag replaces woman as divine image-bearer with an image of woman as sexualised cartoon.
• The antidote to an excessively narrow faith is not an unboundaried faith.
• A cultural fad should not be the driver or yardstick of faith.
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(a) Less humorously, a church is destroyed in France on average every two weeks, mostly due to arson. Many others are vandalised.
(b) English translation: 'Wouldn't you, darling?' Or possibly, 'Innit, babes?"
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© Mike Starkey 2024
[Audio version available]
Pic: The Last Supper, Leonardo da Vinci, (1495-1498). Public domain.
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