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0‘It was like us – a chaotic mess’: France enjoys Paris Games opening ceremony
Most French newspapers praise the Olympics spectacle but far-right commentators reject ‘woke propaganda’
July 27, 2024, The Guardian
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They had waited 100 years for it and the French, mostly, were determined to love their kitsch, crazy, subversive, waterborne and very rain-drenched Olympics opening ceremony. Less happy were far-right figures, who spied “wokeist” propaganda.
A thoroughly unscientific poll on the rue de Rochechouart in Paris – where the far right have never had so much as a look-in – found plenty of enthusiasm.
“It was a great ceremony – just a shame about the rain,” said Alain Vigent, 54. “It was like us, really: a joyful, contradictory, rather chaotic mess. With some truly amazing images. The Revolution, the singing head of Marie Antoinette …”
Outside the greengrocers, Sandrine de Souza, 38, said that after weeks of political stress and what had looked at one stage like the prospect of a far-right government, “all that exuberance” and “the willingness to go a bit mad” were very welcome.
“I understand some of it might have looked a bit strange to some people outside France,” she said. “But every Olympic host country loves its own opening ceremony. I remember London, that was a great spectacle. But you also had that whole chunk with nurses and doctors – it looked fun, but I don’t think anyone else understood it.”
President Emmanuel Macron, who when he first heard of the idea of staging the show along 6km of the Seine, with the great monuments of Paris as decor, had dismissed it as “not very serious”, led the praise, thanking Thomas Jolly, the show’s director, effusively on Friday night.
“Thank you and your creative genius for this grandiose ceremony,” Macron said on X. “Thank you to the artists for this unique, magical moment. Thank you to the police and emergency services and volunteers. Thank you to all who believed … We did it!”
The press were equally enthusiastic. “Beneath the deluge, the capital and its river, the Seine, became the theatre for a dreamlike spectacle that acknowledged the history of a France that is mixed, inclusive and unafraid of controversy,” said Le Monde.
