An Olympic-sized Last Supper Dionysian outcry

Modern Relics is a semi-regular newsletter about what happens when religion happens online and in popular culture. The vibe is like...

Quite a lot has happened since the last edition! I went to several events, including the 17th Triennial Assembly of the Uniting Church. Tragically, there were yellow cards. While at the meeting I was part of a few group chats full of memes (many by me lol). I'll share a few if you want, maybe in the Modern Relics Discord?

I also went to a friend's 30th birthday party where the theme was "funeral", so my husband and I did the most Modern Relics thing possible and showed up in MEMENTO MORI t-shirts.

Also I saw a (now deleted?) post that implied that Pope Francis said the f-slur a third time but I can't seem to verify it anywhere. If anyone has any leads of that, I'd love to hear them because that would be so funny.

Remind your friends to subscribe please!

Last Supper... Olympics... Dionysus... it's all connected, man!

It's the Olympics, the event where every four years we're reminded professional sportspeople are hot. This year the sports festival kicked off with controversy.

What happened? During the opening ceremony, French DJ Barbara Butch, wearing a halo headdress, stood in the middle of a long table flanked by queer performers, including drag queens. Then, a mostly-naked blue man appeared served on a silver platter – a reference to Dionysus the Greek god of fertility, wine and pleasure.

It makes sense. Dionysus is Greek, the Olympics are Greek, and Dionysus is associated with gender-bending and androgyny. Also, Dionysus is apparently the father of Sequana, goddess of the Seine River where the ceremony took place.

Regardless, this would have always upset a certain kind of person, and to those people having a central figure surrounded by other people along one side of a long table was suspiciously reminiscent of Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper. Many Christians and right-wing culture warriors cried blasphemy.

It's unclear if the scene really was inspired by da Vinci's painting. Personally, I think the resemblance is weak. There are too many "apostles" and none of their costumes or poses appear to reference the painting.

However, Barbara Butch posted a picture of the performance above an image of da Vinci's painting on Instagram with the caption "OH YES! OH YES! THE NEW GAY TESTAMENT!" I can't verify if this was posted before things got spicy, or later in response to the controversy as a further provocation.

Opening ceremony artistic director Thomas Jolly says The Last Supper wasn't the inspiration at all. According to the Olympics Twitter/X account, the scene "makes us aware of the absurdity of violence between human beings" which I'm not sure it does, but ok sure.

Rather than a reference to The Last Supper, which has no connection to France, some art historians say the inspiration is the lesser-known Old Master Jan van Biljert's The Feast of the Gods, which hangs in Dijon's Magnin Museum. The museum readily claimed the inspiration on Twitter/X posting, "Does this painting remind you of something?"

Ironically, The Feast of the Gods may itself have been a reference to The Last Supper painted 150 years after da Vinci's work during the iconoclastic Protestant Reformation. So maybe everyone is right??

From The Guardian:

That may go some way to explaining the confusion. “In the context of the Reformation … the artist found a strategy for painting a Christ-related Last Supper under cover of a mythological subject matter,” the museum said.

Either way, The Last Supper is one of the most commonly parodied works in Western art history. In 2009, South Park won an Emmy for an episode featuring such a parody. Google images is littered with them, many of which are sold commercially.

These parodies aren't typically controversial among Christians because da Vinci's works themselves don't hold intrinsic importance to the faith. The Eucharist/Holy Communion and the historic Last Supper it commemorates are sacred, but acting like da Vinci's work is somehow untouchable is silly.

Meanwhile, Paris Olympic organisers have apologised, but the online harassment of the performers involved has gotten out of control. Barbara Butch has had to call the police and fellow performer and drag queen Nicky Doll says she's suing British conservative Laurence Fox, who recently lost a similar case to a drag queen in the UK.

Interestingly, in the world of religious studies Jesus and Dionysus are compared all the time – both are gods of resurrection and wine, although in different ways. Classics professor John Moles even suggested (controversially) that the description of the Last Supper in the Gospels was influenced by the ritual meals performed by the Dionysian cult. We're back to where we started!

P.S. This happened before the whole Olympic controversy kicked off, but maybe this gave Bacchus/Dionysus too much power in the spiritual realm and is what caused the whole thing.

Unrelated post about the Olympics

Thanks for sending this to me Brian!

Some posts about Whoopi Goldberg

Here's the background to all this.

Is it offensive to call yourself mydogategodshat

Discuss in the comments.

An astrologer predicted Kamala Harris' rise

Apparently she also predicted the date it happened? Meanwhile, here are some mean tweets about Joe Biden that mention his religion but aren't being mean about his religion per se:

Catholics believe in ghosts

Thanks for sending this to me Travis!

Do you reckon these girls are actually Amish or what

A few people sent me these TikToks of some young, Amish-looking women doing meme dances.

I love how they mime riding a horse-drawn carriage when they get to the "just wanna drive" part of the song.

Anyway, the first video on their page is captioned "If you tell my bishop then I will tell him you're on here too. #amishtiktok #amish #amishlife" but like, is it possible they're really using a secret phone? Does that happen is that how that works?

Also this video seems to imply they know about the Power Puff Girls even though they claim they don't know what the Power Puff Girls is? They are wearing blue, green and red!!

Maybe they are Mennonite and they're just claiming to be Amish online for clicks. Good for them get that bag.

Staying relevant

Here's that TikTok by the way. Are you evangelised yet?

Oh that's two videos in a row featuring Apple by Charli xcx I'm adding it to the Modern Relics Spotify playlist.

I used to smoke and drink and dance the hoochie-coo

Thanks to Aunty Barb for sending me this iconic Toni Tennille and The Pointer Sisters video.

I keep seeing this girl's videos all over the place and I can't work out if it's ironic or not

Thanks for sending this one to me Andrew!

Okay one more

Thank you to my husband for sending this to me!

Until next time!