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dolores ibarruri's avatar

I definitely understand your frustration, discourse online about topics like this can be maddeningly polarising, to the point where I also just reflexively tune them out. Which is a shame because I feel like there is an interesting conversation to be had if it's done respectfully!

I can see the validity of both sides of the argument, and in my opinion they point towards an interesting problem in terms of how we can sustain a flourishing global civil society in which different cultures and religions can come together despite adhering to mutually irreconcilable values.

I'm not French myself, but I know a fair bit about French culture because one side of my family comes from a former French colony, and I have relatives on that side of the family that have married French people and live in France.

Based on this, I would say that my answer to the question "What has this got to do with the Olympics?" is that, from my understanding, an Olympics opening ceremony is meant to showcase the culture and contributions of the host country to the world. And strange as it may seem, I would say that that's French culture!

An important stream of French culture since the late 18th century has been transgressive by design. It's all about celebrating throwing off the shackles of the former dominance of the Catholic church and the king over society by questioning everything and not giving a hoot what people think! I think that's what the ceremony was trying to convey. Of course against that tendency there's always been the Catholic and conservative backlash, but if we're thinking about what are contributions of France to global culture, Voltaire, Diderot, Simone de Beauvoir etc. are always going to rank more highly than de Maistre. Many places have been conservative and catholic, but there's only ever been one Voltaire, and who else but the French could have thought up something as crazy as "Un Chien Andalou"?

So that's the case for French weirdness as being appropriate to the Olympics. But on the other side, while I'm not religious myself, I can respect your position as a Christian who isn't crazy about tuning into a TV ceremony and seeing the symbols of Christianity being profaned. In my opinion, there's not really a neat solution to this unfortunately. In my view, I can understand where the French are coming from in that Christianity is part of their heritage too, so in a sense they have a right to use and interpret those symbols as they see fit (if they had been profaning Buddhist or Hindu symbols I think that would have just been plain weird).

This situation reminds me a bit of when Qatar hosted the World Cup back in 2022. At that time, many Westerners expressed anger towards Qatar's banning of LGBT rights and poor protections for the workers who built its football stadiums. But on the other hand, many of my Middle eastern and Pakistani friends were really frustrated by these complaints as they felt this politicising the world cup and diminishing a non-western country's moment to shine, which I get.

I think it was the philosopher Seyla Benhabib who said that in a multicultural society, there won't always be a neat or easy way to resolve disagreements. That's applies doubly so to global civil society. If there is a kind of solution I would say it's this: when it's France's turn to host the Olympics, they're entitled to celebrate their individualistic and transgressive culture, even if it makes others a little uncomfortable. But when it's say, Russia's turn to host, we in the West can't complain when their ceremony is more conservative and less LGBT friendly.

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SarahT's avatar

I’ll take the Greek mythology reading kid bias any day! ⚡️

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