Can you believe that, three months later, the Olympics Opening Ceremony is still making waves? So much that it triggered a parliamentary hearing? Time to wrap this up —with the most shocking bits.
Oct 22·edited Oct 22Liked by Comte de Saint-Germain
Bonjour Comte. How fun to type this. Please excuse the familiarity.
Kudos for a well-informed, thoughtful, detailed analysis of the Opening Ceremony, the controversy it spawned in some circles, its meaning, far reaching implications and aftermath.
I've enthusiastically "restacked" the last installment in the series you shared here and hope many people get to read it. Well done.
PS: Thank you for mentioning my stories on the same topic.
Bonjour Véro, no need for titles, we're all equal among Paris lovers :) Thank you for soldiering through it all, for the kind words and restack! I'm still reeling over the fact your broke the news about the media guide on August 18th, and on August 29th parkour fans were still arguing about who was behind the mask! Differential information flows will never cease to amaze me.
Amazing piece, again. Thank you for digging so deep. I agree with you that Festivité got so much wrath because LGBTQ+ people were so visibly featured in it. As you note, while France has a long history of anti-clericalism and of mocking the church (for good reasons, I may add), anti-LGBTQ+ hatred is going strong and stronger.
As you may have heard, 7 people were recently arrested for their threats against Thomas Jolly. Their trial will be early next year, with hopefully more people joining them in jail. For one, I'm happy to see the police taking this seriously (although I have no delusion that it's because it has been such a high profile case). I hope it deters people who feel they can say whatever they want online, falsely secure behind their computer screen.
Merci! Im an American living in Angoulême (haha) who watched much of this from the US & was enchanted as well as puzzled by some things. I recognized many allusions but your piece adds so much to my knowledge. The most vociferous comment I received was from a French friend who is admittedly bourgeois & pretty rich & Catholic. Nothing I could say would bring her down from her high horse. I wish this were in French - if she could bear to read it, it would teach her something about her own country.
The only other comment was from a younger French woman who was scandalized by “Les couilles.” I had to admit I’d missed them. 🫣 oups!
De rien Sara, bienvenue and thanks Véro indeed! It's OK to be vociferous (no work of art can please anyone, and I like passionate people), I just take issue with a conservative bourgeois minority:
- claiming it represents "true" France / common sense / majority opinion, when the latest sociology research shows French society is less conservative than what most media claim
- who has benefitted from ample and positive representations for centuries suddenly object to others being represented too. As throuple actor Yuming Hey said to haters: "If you don't see yourself in this opening ceremony, and if you feel like you've been excluded, then you've felt for 3.5h what I have always felt since I was born".
I'm a bit confused by this latest scandal as I don't remember seeing any "couilles" on TV. Philippe Katerine was wearing underwear throughout, and what some people thought may have been Germain Louvet's "couille" was actually just a small tear in his tights: his crotch remain fully covered in thick opaque briefs throughout and only a tiny bit of thigh skin was shown. Now I need to know where she saw any "couilles" :D
I have no idea. She works in my Paris hotel. After I wrote that, I remembered that actually she is Polish, although she’s fluent in French. Maybe she imagined it? 🤷♀️
I appreciate much of this post but saying Macron deserves to be booed at the games is wrong, imho. He's done a great deal to solidfy the EU, strengthen the economy despite huge challenges including Covid, protests fed by opposing external powers & much more. He's arguably one of France's most effective leaders ever.
We could argue whether booing is a polite, appropriate or effective tactic, but when it comes to these topics, let's look at the facts, shall we?
The EU: he is responsible for sending the largest number of anti-EU representatives to the EU parliament, Rassemblement National (RN) MEPs. Not only do they ally themselves with other anti-EU forces like Orban, but they literally stole EU money to fund their own racist & xenophobic party in France, and are under trial for this theft right now. So he has weakened the EU, both politically and financially. Then he dissolved the Assemblée Nationale, with again triggered the largest increase in the number of anti-EU RN MPs in history, this time in French Parliament. So he has weakened the EU both in Brussels and within France. He picked his new Prime Minister, Michel Barnier, because it was the one that RN approved. Macron has allied himself with RN, the most anti-EU party, to remain in power.
The economy: he is responsible for the worst economic policies in years, which can be summarized as "taking from the poor to give to the rich". He believes in trickle-down economics, which do not work. French billionaires just keep the money for themselves, they don't invest it in R&D or create jobs. Even the insane margins at supermarkets just fed rich shareholders (who are less taxed under Macron) and triggered inflation, so people have reduced their consumption, worsening the economic situation. He's reduced the rich's taxes so much that the national debt skyrocketed, and now his own new government is blaming his own previous government, and just cut 4000 teacher jobs and other badly needed services. During Covid he did fund unemployed café workers etc, which was a good thing because they could keep consuming and cafés could stay afloat. Except later on he stopped investing in workers and small businesses, and restarted transferring money to his rich friends in megacorporations, who again do not invest in creating French jobs or in raising wages, but hid their profits offshore.
Protests: since 1789, the French have not needed *any* external powers to feed protests, thank you very much. The French elite has always been responsible for protests, because unlike other elites, they have refused to share wealth and power. Macron's economic policies (tax the poor via VAT, cut their benefits, and give the proceeds to the rich, see above) are responsible for these protests. Had the economic situation of the majority of French people improved, they would not have protested. Add to that the fact that Macron has the worst police violence record since de Gaulle's in the 1960s. His police is so violent that the UN had to intervene. The number of peaceful protesters maimed by police (especially gouged eyes due to rubber bullets and illegal grenade usage) is so large that they reached measurable epidemic levels and got published in *medical journals*. So, to make Macron look bad, "external powers" only needed to document the facts: he brought it on to himself.
He's arguable one of France's most effective leaders at:
- returning the favours of the media-owning billionaires that got him elected in the first place
- normalizing racist, xenophobic, classist, sexist, queerphobic hate speech, both within his own government appointees and by parroting RN talking points, making RN rise at every poll, in an unprecedented way since he took office
- looking competent for the English-speaking media by looking younger than previous candidates, and by parroting the Reagan/Thatcher dogma that very capitalist countries love so much. But an objective look at the metrics showed he's only effective for the most privileged. He remains "le président des riches".
He did not send the RN, very obviously. Of course, most billionaires create jobs (although I don't think they should generally keep so much in profits). In a current proposal they will pay down some of the debt. France invests much in workers through myriad programs. The offshore situation is being improved.
Bonjour Comte. How fun to type this. Please excuse the familiarity.
Kudos for a well-informed, thoughtful, detailed analysis of the Opening Ceremony, the controversy it spawned in some circles, its meaning, far reaching implications and aftermath.
I've enthusiastically "restacked" the last installment in the series you shared here and hope many people get to read it. Well done.
PS: Thank you for mentioning my stories on the same topic.
Bonjour Véro, no need for titles, we're all equal among Paris lovers :) Thank you for soldiering through it all, for the kind words and restack! I'm still reeling over the fact your broke the news about the media guide on August 18th, and on August 29th parkour fans were still arguing about who was behind the mask! Differential information flows will never cease to amaze me.
Amazing piece, again. Thank you for digging so deep. I agree with you that Festivité got so much wrath because LGBTQ+ people were so visibly featured in it. As you note, while France has a long history of anti-clericalism and of mocking the church (for good reasons, I may add), anti-LGBTQ+ hatred is going strong and stronger.
As you may have heard, 7 people were recently arrested for their threats against Thomas Jolly. Their trial will be early next year, with hopefully more people joining them in jail. For one, I'm happy to see the police taking this seriously (although I have no delusion that it's because it has been such a high profile case). I hope it deters people who feel they can say whatever they want online, falsely secure behind their computer screen.
Definitely, if it could set a precedent that could be applied to less famous people, it would be a great !
Insane that this is happening
Merci! Im an American living in Angoulême (haha) who watched much of this from the US & was enchanted as well as puzzled by some things. I recognized many allusions but your piece adds so much to my knowledge. The most vociferous comment I received was from a French friend who is admittedly bourgeois & pretty rich & Catholic. Nothing I could say would bring her down from her high horse. I wish this were in French - if she could bear to read it, it would teach her something about her own country.
The only other comment was from a younger French woman who was scandalized by “Les couilles.” I had to admit I’d missed them. 🫣 oups!
Happy to find your Substack. Thanks, Vero!
De rien Sara, bienvenue and thanks Véro indeed! It's OK to be vociferous (no work of art can please anyone, and I like passionate people), I just take issue with a conservative bourgeois minority:
- claiming it represents "true" France / common sense / majority opinion, when the latest sociology research shows French society is less conservative than what most media claim
- who has benefitted from ample and positive representations for centuries suddenly object to others being represented too. As throuple actor Yuming Hey said to haters: "If you don't see yourself in this opening ceremony, and if you feel like you've been excluded, then you've felt for 3.5h what I have always felt since I was born".
I'm a bit confused by this latest scandal as I don't remember seeing any "couilles" on TV. Philippe Katerine was wearing underwear throughout, and what some people thought may have been Germain Louvet's "couille" was actually just a small tear in his tights: his crotch remain fully covered in thick opaque briefs throughout and only a tiny bit of thigh skin was shown. Now I need to know where she saw any "couilles" :D
I have no idea. She works in my Paris hotel. After I wrote that, I remembered that actually she is Polish, although she’s fluent in French. Maybe she imagined it? 🤷♀️
I appreciate much of this post but saying Macron deserves to be booed at the games is wrong, imho. He's done a great deal to solidfy the EU, strengthen the economy despite huge challenges including Covid, protests fed by opposing external powers & much more. He's arguably one of France's most effective leaders ever.
We could argue whether booing is a polite, appropriate or effective tactic, but when it comes to these topics, let's look at the facts, shall we?
The EU: he is responsible for sending the largest number of anti-EU representatives to the EU parliament, Rassemblement National (RN) MEPs. Not only do they ally themselves with other anti-EU forces like Orban, but they literally stole EU money to fund their own racist & xenophobic party in France, and are under trial for this theft right now. So he has weakened the EU, both politically and financially. Then he dissolved the Assemblée Nationale, with again triggered the largest increase in the number of anti-EU RN MPs in history, this time in French Parliament. So he has weakened the EU both in Brussels and within France. He picked his new Prime Minister, Michel Barnier, because it was the one that RN approved. Macron has allied himself with RN, the most anti-EU party, to remain in power.
The economy: he is responsible for the worst economic policies in years, which can be summarized as "taking from the poor to give to the rich". He believes in trickle-down economics, which do not work. French billionaires just keep the money for themselves, they don't invest it in R&D or create jobs. Even the insane margins at supermarkets just fed rich shareholders (who are less taxed under Macron) and triggered inflation, so people have reduced their consumption, worsening the economic situation. He's reduced the rich's taxes so much that the national debt skyrocketed, and now his own new government is blaming his own previous government, and just cut 4000 teacher jobs and other badly needed services. During Covid he did fund unemployed café workers etc, which was a good thing because they could keep consuming and cafés could stay afloat. Except later on he stopped investing in workers and small businesses, and restarted transferring money to his rich friends in megacorporations, who again do not invest in creating French jobs or in raising wages, but hid their profits offshore.
Protests: since 1789, the French have not needed *any* external powers to feed protests, thank you very much. The French elite has always been responsible for protests, because unlike other elites, they have refused to share wealth and power. Macron's economic policies (tax the poor via VAT, cut their benefits, and give the proceeds to the rich, see above) are responsible for these protests. Had the economic situation of the majority of French people improved, they would not have protested. Add to that the fact that Macron has the worst police violence record since de Gaulle's in the 1960s. His police is so violent that the UN had to intervene. The number of peaceful protesters maimed by police (especially gouged eyes due to rubber bullets and illegal grenade usage) is so large that they reached measurable epidemic levels and got published in *medical journals*. So, to make Macron look bad, "external powers" only needed to document the facts: he brought it on to himself.
He's arguable one of France's most effective leaders at:
- returning the favours of the media-owning billionaires that got him elected in the first place
- normalizing racist, xenophobic, classist, sexist, queerphobic hate speech, both within his own government appointees and by parroting RN talking points, making RN rise at every poll, in an unprecedented way since he took office
- looking competent for the English-speaking media by looking younger than previous candidates, and by parroting the Reagan/Thatcher dogma that very capitalist countries love so much. But an objective look at the metrics showed he's only effective for the most privileged. He remains "le président des riches".
He did not send the RN, very obviously. Of course, most billionaires create jobs (although I don't think they should generally keep so much in profits). In a current proposal they will pay down some of the debt. France invests much in workers through myriad programs. The offshore situation is being improved.