French President Emmanuel Macron has spoken out in support of Thomas Jolly, the artistic director of the Olympics’ opening ceremony, who has faced vitriolic criticism from conservatives and has filed a police complaint alleging death threats and cyber harassment. The Paris prosecutors have launched an investigation into Jolly’s claims, Variety has confirmed.
Jolly filed a complaint on July 30, the same day that the DJ of the ceremony, known as Barbara Butch, also filed a complaint for cyber harassment. While the opening ceremony has been widely praised for its originality and innovation — and is the first in modern history to be hosted outdoors — it has also been the subject of backlash from the Catholic Church as well as from prominent conservative figures like Rob Schneider and Candace Cameron Bure, who objected to a scene which seemed to riff on Leonardo Da Vinci’s painting “The Last Supper.”
Jolly told French outlet BFMTV over the weekend that the segment was in fact not inspired by “The Last Supper,” and was instead a tribute to Greek mythology, but it has continued to stoke controversy.
While visiting an Olympic site at the Invalides, Macron was quoted by news outlet AFP saying “nothing justifies that an artist be threatened. The French were very proud of this ceremony. France gave the face of what it is — it showed its audacity and it did so with the freedom it needed.”
In his complaint, Jolly said he was the “target of online threats and slurs criticizing his sexual orientation and his wrongly-assumed Israeli origins,” according to the prosecutors office.
Butch, who took part in the scene that appeared to be inspired by “The Last Supper,” announced earlier this week on Instagram that she had been “the target of an extremely violent campaign of cyber-harassment and defamation.”
Her attorney, Audrey Msellati, said Butch has been threatened with death, torture and rape, and has also been the target of numerous antisemitic, homophobic, sexist and fat-phobic insults. “Barbara Butch condemns this vile hatred directed at her, what she represents and what she stands for,” said the attorney.
Reacting to the controversy over the apparent parody of “The Last Supper,” Jolly said the scene which unleashed a torrent of hate speech was meant to raise awareness “of the absurdity of violence between human beings,” and denied he had been inspired by the Da Vinci’s religious painting.
Instead, Jolly said the idea was to “have a grand pagan festival connected to the gods of Olympus.”
“It was pretty clear, it is Dionysus who arrives at the table. Why is he there? Because Dionysus is the Greek god of festivities (…) and wine, and is the father of Sequana, the goddess of the Seine river,” he said.
Jolly is now busy preparing the closing ceremony which will unfold at the Stade de France and will feature a Tom Cruise stunt, along with “world-famous performers.”
