[this was drafted in August 2024 but could not be posted at the time]

« Un spectacle extraordinaire, unique au monde et dans l’histoire des Jeux qui, je crois, a rendu nos compatriotes extrêmement fiers. » Emmanuel Macron ne tarit pas d’éloges sur la cérémonie d’ouverture des Jeux olympiques de Paris 2024, qui s’est déroulée sur la Seine vendredi 26 juillet. Ce samedi, le président de la République s’est réjoui du « formidable spectacle […] que les artistes et les athlètes ont donné ».
(published in various French newspapers in late July 2024)

As many noticed, the opening ceremonies to the Olympic games in Paris have been the occasion for much commentary. They will probably remain one of the most remembered ceremonies. I did not notice any cultural anthropologist weighing in and so, as I prepare to teach my first introductory course in the discipline, I thought I would write something and, given some of my critics who say I am not concerned enough with “power,” I will start with the paradoxes of governmentality.

In exerg to this post, I have quoted what the President of France said about the ceremonies. To emphasize the governmentality of these. I also mention that they, by themselves, have cost something like $150,000,000 to the French government. I am not exactly sure of the process that led to the selections of the main designers and directors of the “tableaux” that punctuated the athletes’ parade (as is the case for the actual production of governmentality, the actual people involved, in whatever multiple capacities, and in whatever settings is something that would be very hard to trace). What is certain is that nothing publicly seen arose for some mysterious “collective consciousness” (“culture” as the water the fish do not know about).

So, what was it was shown publicly? Most saliently it was the set of short theatrical pieces held in and around famous places along the Seine. These were projected giant screens (and transmitted by the media). According to one of the official sites, the tableaux represented the following themes:
Enchanté, Synchronicité, Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité, Sororité, Sportivité, Festivité, Obscurité, Sollenité, Solidarité, Éternité.
These themes are abstractions which the authors (producers, directors, etc.) represented using all the tools now available: music, song, fireworks, artificial intelligence, etc.

Now, lets play anthropologist and pay attention. The list of the themes is exactly what one would expect from any State in this occasion, and, in this case, from the French State, starting with the inclusion of “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité” expanded as what might expect in the 21st century. I will assume that this list was proposed to the State, reviewed by the State, and approved by the State through its various bureaucracies and hierarchies. I will also assume that the scripts of each tableaux was similarly proposed, reviewed, approved. No spokesperson for the French State has mentioned being surprised by what was finally published on the giant screens set up by the Seine, and transmitted on all visual media.

This was not the product of a poor poet composing a revolutionary play in his garret fearing arrest by the State.

This leads us, of course, to the two tableaux that became fodder for most of the commentaries published in the media. The one representing Liberté (Freedom) and the one representing Festivité (Feasting). Not only did many of the usual “celebrities” (political, religious, artistic) weighed in but YouTube and Tik Tok was soon full of people reacting to the tableaux in the first seconds of their appearance.

Liberté starts with an enactment of a very famous painting of an allegory of Liberté (a half dressed woman) leading French troops to victory. The image of this (imaginary) woman is followed by the image of another woman (an immigrant from Austria?), in a bright red dress, headless, holding her head adorned with a high hairdo. The head sings “A ça ira, ça ira,” liberally translated as “All will be well” (don’t worry? Be happy?)—as long as you are not an “aristocrate” for, as the next verse of the song says “les aristocrates, on les pendra” (“we will hang the aristocrats”). The people around the world who have attended French schools, or are even vaguely aware of French history, will have recognized, in the first second, Marie-Antoinette, the queen who was beheaded for political reasons. The same will probably recognize the song as the song that may have been sung while she was guillotined. This last a few seconds and is immediately followed by explosions, red fog, a very hard rock version of the song accompanied by the evocation of blood flowing from the sky.

Festivité starts with a brief still image many Christians around the world, as well as people who know Western art, and probably more, immediately recognized as an evocation of a famous painting by Leonardo da Vinci. Thomas Joly, the director, argued that it was actually an animation of a painting by the Dutch painter Jan van Bijlert titled “The feast of the gods.” Given that the tableau moves to a apparition by the Greek god Dionysus, a god that appears in van Bijlert painting but not da Vinci’s, then Joly may be reporting on an initial inspiration.

Joly claimed he had never noticed what many many did notice: the opening of the tableau reminded people of da Vinci’s Last Supper—whom they knew about, and very few of any of van Bijlert whom very few had ever head about. Furthermore there is evidence that the latter was actually trying to represent the Last Supper in a Protestant, humanist, setting that frowned on Catholic representations. Van Bijlert did put Apollo in the Christ position, something that had been done before. One can also mention that da Vinci’s painting has been caricatured many times (for example in a very funny sketch by Monty Python).

So, what does all this have to do with “culture”?

First, as monumental governmental production, the event belongs to “high culture” even though it borrowed heavily from what is usually classified as “popular culture.” By placing various styles of rap and heavy metal rock-n-roll in the context of a critique of French history, it transformed it. Some might say that it was appropriated by the French State for its own political purposes.

But, generally, cultural anthropologists are not overly concerned with “high culture,” particularly when wondering about contemporary State productions. They generally prefer the view from below, from the point of view of those who were not involved in the production but may have been variously triggered by it. At this point is that anthropologists have very little evidence about what someone watching the ceremonies about anywhere in the world have made of it—though any sampling of reactions of YouTube and elsewhere demonstrate that people made all sorts of things with the intentions of the producers.

In the absence of any systematic way of analyzing the responses, I will just focus on two sets of comments that highlight the complexity of any cultural analysis in the context of any State such as France. First there is what Thomas Joly said in response to the early criticisms of the two tableaux. Second is a comment by the president of France about France and culture.

Joly, in brief, said that his ideas where “republican,” “inclusive,” “kind,” “generous,” “solidary.” And in added that “in France” one can love whomever one wants, one can believe or not believe, and that “in France” one has many rights. It was the “goals of the ceremony” to “make visible these values.” Some anthropologists and sociologists have argued that “culture” is invisible to the people that live by them. In this case, such matters are fully above board: what the spectators were shown illustrated values of France in a full discursive, and multi-modal, way.

Emmanuel Macron, considered here as a “native” with “power,” has spoken often about France and culture. Media commentators like to oppose what he said at various times. This ranges from “Il n’y a pas une culture française, il y a une culture en France et elle est diverse.” [“there is no French culture, there is a culture in France and it is diverse.”] to “[Je refuse] la prétendue vérité de l’identité française, figée, déjà écrite et nostalgique ou d’une modernité qui exigerait l’effacement de pans entiers de notre passé… Notre identité est ce ‘palimpseste’, ce récit encore en cours” [I refuse a pretended truth about french identity as solidified, already written and nostalgic, or a modernity which would require the erasure of entire moment in our past… Our identity is this ‘palimpsest’].

Both Jolie and Macron, more or less explicitly, address other people with some power on the representation of France who present other pictures of France. Among these internal “others,” one is regularly mentioned (including by Joly). He is Philippe de Villiers, a politician famous for the theme park (Le Puy du Fou) he built with theatrical representations of the kind of moments in the history of France over the past two millenia that appeared again and again it in the schools of my generation and earlier.

In brief, and as I have argued many time, if there is a French culture, it is in the ongoing debates about it that can be observed among the French, but also in other conversations with, say, German philosophers (Dumont [1991] 1994), “Americans” (de Tocqueville [1848] 1969), and now of course with the many around the world who were affected by French colonialism, some of whom are not moving into France.

 
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