The power of symbolism

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Stained windows inside the Notre-Dame, a medieval Catholic cathedral in Paris, France. (Photo: Photo by Veit Hammer on Unsplash)

Thomas Jolly’s esoteric opening ceremony of the ’24 Olympic Games in Paris, and the caterwauling that has ensued from it, reminds us of the power of symbolism, especially in our digital age. Many people, Christians in particular, felt offended by the subplot of religious ridicule in the Dionysus revelry part of the jamboree during the opening ceremony.

I do not agree with those who say the organisers did not consciously intend to mock the sacred Christian iconographic symbolism of The Last Supper, famously painted by Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci. The damage control ready explanation is that the organisers say they chose their symbolism based on Jan van Biljert’s Feast of the gods, which depicts the feast of Dionysus of Greek mythology. It is disingenuous to deny that the jamboree also did a mocking riff on the Christian hieroglyph of the Last Supper. Or to argue that the symbolism of the Last Supper is not part of Christian creed or canon, when you know that Christians hold the event and its symbolism as a sacred part of their religion. For one, the symbolism and its art would never have existed had Yehoshua, the Christ of the Christians, not held a last supper on Maundy Thursday to establish the sacred Roman Catholic rite of the Eucharist. The basic law of semiotics is that the meaning of a symbol is assigned by what the majority understands it to be, not by some esoteric origins known only to the initiated. Nobody says when they see the sign of the cross it is a symbol of slaves that were crucified by the Roman empire way before Yehoshua of the Christians. It is universally understood that the cross is the symbol of Christianity, that is where it derives the power of its significance.

As said, I have I also have great difficulty believing those who claim not to see the political subplot of religious mockery in the jamboree. Or those who say that the ultimate claim of the organisers was not to scandalise. In parts, the jamboree was clearly a stupid attempt at subverting the Christian moral narrative and authority. In the recent past, on TV, there have been many literary allusions and parodies of Da Vinci’s The Last Supper, from The Simpsons to The Sopranos. They never elicited such an outcry from Christians, because The Sopranos made a literary allusion to the Last Supper without mockery or ridicule, and in The Simpsons the parody was non-malicious and without the blasphemous scorn of the Olympics’ jamboree. I use the word blasphemous in the strict sense of sacrilege against someone’s beliefs and sacred things.

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Christianity might not own the Last Supper symbolism, but would the symbol have been able to gain so much power and presence without Christianity? Who today knows or remembers the Dionysian feast of the gods, except perhaps some lonely professor of ancient Greek mythology?
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There are those who argue, disingenuously, that the Christian religion doesn’t own the Last Supper symbolism. Or that Christianity purloined it from ancient mythology. Set aside the Christian argument that their religion refines and directs to God the natural human instincts found in vague forms in human history of thought and traditions. And that Christianity is not a mere philosophy but a life force that integrates the living goodness in human experience and universal thought. This is why almost all human traditions find something relatable in it. Christianity might not own the Last Supper symbolism, but would the symbol have been able to gain so much power and presence without Christianity? Who today knows or remembers the Dionysian feast of the gods, except perhaps some lonely professor of ancient Greek mythology? This is the reason why most people immediately understood the Olympian jamboree as a riff on the Last Supper and not Jan van Biljert’s bacchanalian Feast of the gods.

The organisers of the jamboree understood this too well despite their duplicitous damage control. The sophisticated ignorance of the woke is on steroid display on their trump up damage control of the apologetics that grasps at straws. We can see through the arrangements that this was also supposed to depict the Last Supper of Jesus. In Greek mythology Dionysus (Bacchus in Latin versions is known as the mad god who tears people into pieces for the mere fun of resurrecting them) usually has a dark skin, which the organisers probably feared that it would give wrong racial connotations, so they chose to make him blue. In the iconography depiction of the ancient gods, the blue complexion evokes Dharmic tradition of Rama or Krishna. Also, Dionysus was never part of Olympic celebrations. It would have been unbecoming to the wisdom of the ancients to depict an Olympics event, which celebrates masterly control over one's bodily functions and emotions with Dionysus, the god of revelry, intoxication and ecstasy. Zeus and his son Heracles (god of physical excellence) were the ones honoured during the Olympics. In fact, even among pagan ancients the Dionysian rambunctious celebrations were a thing of serious critique and censure among many ancient Roman people. This is one of the reasons why the promulgated temperance of Christianity, based on Stoic philosophy of self control and masterly, gained popular traction to an extent that the Dionysian celebrations, with their infamous orgies which horrified many people ended up going underground. For them to emerge on the Paris Olympics is a bizarre thing. A person informed on Greek and Latin mythology all they would take out the jamboree was that the gay and trans community are now associated with uncontrolled revelry, debauchery and unbridled passion. And the question is why would they allow themselves to be abused by being portrayed in this manner? Of course, in the lexicon of the woke it is the religious who are ignorant.

It is strange to observe all this ahistorical, anti-(Christian) religious gloat in Western wokeism. Someone I can no longer find now on Facebook succinctly commented there: “This egregious display of artistic licence, ostensibly justified under the aegis of “woke” relativism, betrays a pernicious disregard for the sacrosanct nature of religious beliefs and the concomitant human rights of the faithful.” I also find it unbelievable that the organisers are not aware of the inherent destructive consequences of the cultural hyper-sexualisation of children in particular, to an extent that it is normalised. Most of us find nothing enlightening about vulgar displays of hanging testicles and thrusting pelvises in front of children. That this crass vulgarism is normalised in the West, and hence shoved upon the world stage during an event that is supposed to promote global inclusivity, is just another display of Western intellectual arrogance that thinks anyone not subscribing to their values – or lack of, in this case – is an uncouth Barbarian. What I find most exasperating in the whole affair, beyond gaslighting us about their intentions, as if they don't understand media optics, is the assumed arrogance that if you understand something differently to what they claim to be their intentions, then the fault is your ignorance or stupidity and not their duplicity. This is at the helm of Western culture insolence throughout history, treating other people's worldview as non significant. If you don't subscribe to occidental values, or lack of, it is because you're a démodé dullard. In this case they call you 'non inclusive' to mean the same thing of you being excluded to their fake inclusivity.  And by being inclusive they actually mean you must subscribe to their own Weltanschauung, which must in turn always be hegemonic for the nature of things to be in order.

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That this crass vulgarism is normalised in the West [...] is just another display of Western intellectual arrogance that thinks anyone not subscribing to their values – or lack of, in this case – is a backward barbarian.
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I agree with those who think the Christian religion is low-hanging fruit for ridicule and mockery in the West. You hardly ever find this blatant disrespect directed to Islam or Judaism, two other major global religions from the monotheistic leaf. Because they’re mostly scared of Muslims, who respond with militancy to slights against their religion. And Judaism has been mostly protected by the fear of being labelled anti-Semitic ever since the Nazi era. It could be argued that Christianity is an easy target because it is part of Western culture, so Western people feel entitled to ridicule it as part of self-criticism, and all that. If only it were so. The truth of the matter is that the spite against Christianity, especially among the so-called “woke” brigade, emanates from historical grudge and moral contestation because it was the first religious force to challenge and defeat secular moral relativism during the ancient Roman era. The Christian moral philosophy of the Church Fathers was partly founded in reaction to, and to counteract, ancient decadent Greek and Roman practices. It destroyed their secularist power to arrogate the rights of destructive individuals and what constituted an affront to humanity’s moral fabric. The moral secular thought has never forgotten or forgiven Christianity for this. It took an African saint (St Augustine) to paint a picture of self-destructive Western degeneracy in clear intellectual and historic terms in his seminal book, The city of God. Perhaps, again, as Steve Biko saw it: “The great powers of the world may have done wonders in giving the world an industrial and military look, but the great gift still has to come from Africa – giving the world a more human face.” Even during the darkness of the European Middle Ages, it was the religious institutions of Christianity and Islam that saved the day for the so-called Western civilisations by picking up and collecting the remnant pieces of intellectual human enlightenment. Christianity has the longest institutional memory regarding moral ailments of the world, which now and then pop up their head, from the decadent carapace of secularism in the name of individual freedom and enlightenment. To diss it as reactionary anti-humanism enlightenment is one of the misconceptions of our age.

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We are aware that the origins of the Olympic Games are polytheistic and a pagan sport activity, with naked athletes and all that. Notwithstanding the fact that the current Olympics, founded in 1900, are nothing similar to that, you can still find a way to celebrate your pagan rituals without feeling it necessary to spite other people’s beliefs.
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We are aware that the origins of the Olympic Games are polytheistic and a pagan sport activity, with naked athletes and all that. Notwithstanding the fact that the current Olympics, founded in 1900, are nothing similar to that, you can still find a way to celebrate your pagan rituals without feeling it necessary to spite other people’s beliefs. After all, that is the real meaning of polytheism. What we find hypocritical is not just the commodification of diversity in the Olympics ceremony, but the internal contradictions and contraventions of some of the Olympic Charter’s own points. For instance, one states: “The goal of Olympism is to place sport at the service of the harmonious development of humankind, with a view to promoting a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity.” How does allowing a state that is blatantly committing genocide against the Palestinians, to participate in the games, promoting a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity?

Having said all that, I do not think that the anger against the jamboree merits a call to boycott the Olympics. After all the greater part of it was a beautiful ceremony that was only sullied by the jamboree section. If anything, all this showcases in no uncertain terms the loss of the moral and artistic compass of the West. Paris in particular used to be the helm of religious, cultural and artistic excellence that produced great philosophical, theological and literary thinker. The jamboree reduced the ceremony into a crass debauchery of cultural idolatry, the worship of the golden (blue) calf in the biblical lexicon. You can try to intellectualise it by quoting from Nietzsche why it followed the Dionysian spirit of creativity, but all that will not wash away the stink of decadence it brought into the whole thing.

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We must not equate licentious relativism with the noble value of tolerance.
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The pernicious power of symbolism was also shown during the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, when he rose from the floor with a defiant power fist. The same disingenuous argument of black power not owning the defiant fist symbol was made, as if this allows a racist, misogynistic, reprobate and vile white man a right to misuse the symbol for his fascist agenda of disinformation and white malice. I found it unconscionable also. Naturally, the temerity of the affront cannot be felt by those who don’t wear my (black skin or Christian) moccasins. We must not equate licentious relativism with the noble value of tolerance. The duplicity and hypocrisy of all this would be revealed were you, for instance, to do a mocking parody of someone wearing drag colours. No one would say the gay community does not own rights to rainbow colours, or that those colours are a mere prism spectrum, when the intended mockery found the mark. They would understand exactly the malicious intent to mock the gay community, and there would be immediate calls for the person to be cancelled.

Let me end again by quoting my FB commentator: “Furthermore, this incident serves as a stark reminder of the perils of unchecked relativism, which, by countenancing the mockery of sacred beliefs, creates a fertile terrain for the proliferation of fundamentalist extremism and homophobic bigotry. The wanton disregard for human rights and dignity, exemplified by this incident, necessitates unequivocal condemnation and censure, lest we acquiesce to a dystopian ethos wherein the sacrosanct is subject to the capricious whims of artistic expression.” I am not particularly fond of calling for censorship against things I don’t agree with. So, I do not endorse that part of the statement. But I reserve the right to be offended when an offence is aimed at me. This doesn’t make me un-Christian or unable to turn the other cheek. It just makes me human. And before you accuse us of being prudish, know that some of us have no problem with tableau spectacles, like Fellini’s Satyricon for instance. What we object to is maliciousness vulgar voyeurism of the Hunger Games tropes that mock other people's values and beliefs because they differ from yours. 

Also read:

Kuns, godsdiens en daai Olimpiese openingstoneel

Elders gesien: Op Olimpus word die gode bymekaargemaak

Die Olimpiese Spele, feminisme en sumo

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Kommentaar

  • Christianity. What does the word Christian mean? I have no idea. As per usual, the large proportion of people who self identify as Christian, but who took no offence in the opening ceremony, are rarely heard. I suppose such Christians will be considered not real Christians by the 'real' Christians. Having been raised as a Calvinist myself, and having often had to listen to ministers of the Calvinist churches shaming the Catholic pope the anti-Christ, and also relegating Catholics to people who 'worship Mary the mother of Jesus', instead of Jesus, I am astounded to see the love and reverence that has now developed amongst Protestants for Catholic artworks. It used to be quite different when I was a Calvinist myself. We used believe in the doctrine of 'sola scriptura'. Seems now, the church these days suddenly also place a high premium on Judeans pictured as Europeans by Catholic artists.

    Christianity clearly has a problem, and finds it difficult to adopt to a world where the LGBTQI community is accepted and celebrated. This is obviously because of the Bible, which equates ancient and outdated moral values to the will and words of their God.

    I really fail to see Christianity's perceived moral superiority. The Bible is laden with slavery and genocide. That is not to mention atrocities conducted by Christians such as, colonialism, the Atlantic Slave trade, the thousands of innocent women burned alive after being accused of witchcraft, the inquisition, the crusades, the rampant pedophilia amongst the priests and the extended efforts of the church to protect the sexual offenders, the wars of 'Christian' nations such as the USA, which dropped atomic bombs, the general oppression of women, ag, and the list goes on, and on, and on.

  • I agree with the above comment.

    And. The simple concept of freedom of expression.

    And. Go to the beach. People in bathing costumes. These people in the photo are suitably dressed. And it is funny - this blue old Bachus. It is just a laugh, so live, and be happy for once.

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