The Emancipatory Significance of the Opening Ceremony of the Olympic Games in Paris by Slavoj Žižek

The ironic, obscene spectacle of the Paris Olympics opening ceremony was as far removed as possible from the sterile, humorless political correctness that critics have decried. It not only presented Europe at its best; it reminded the world that only in Europe is such a ceremony possible.

LJUBLJANA – Two major cultural events this summer, the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games and the release of Deadpool and Wolverineboth offer dazzling spectacles steeped in irony. But that’s about all they have in common, and by analyzing their differences we can better appreciate the deeply ambiguous nature of irony today.

Ironic distance from the prevailing social order often functions as a thinly veiled form of conformism. The ObserverWendy Ide writes about Deadpool and WolverineWhat is just the latest installment in a seemingly endless cycle of Marvel superhero blockbusters, the film can be “obnoxious and very funny all at once… But it’s also sloppy, repetitive, and sloppy-looking, with an over-reliance on meme-derived jokes and painfully meta comic book fan gags.”

What a perfect description of how ideology functions today. Knowing that no one takes its central message seriously anymore, it offers self-referential jokes, multiverse hopping, and slimy asides that break the fourth wall. This same approach—irony in the service of the status quo—is also how much of the public endures an increasingly mad and violent world.

But Thomas Jolly, the director of the Olympic Opening Ceremony, reminds us that another kind of irony is possible. Although he followed the Olympic Charter closely in showcasing the host city and French culture, he was widely criticized. Leaving aside Catholics who mistakenly saw the depiction of bacchanalian feasts as a mockery of the Last Supper, the negative reactions were best summed up by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán:

“Westerners believe that nation states no longer exist. They deny that there is a common culture and a public morality based on that. There is no morality, and if you watched the opening of the Olympic Games yesterday, you saw that.”

This suggests that the stakes could not have been higher. For Orbán, the ceremony was a sign of Europe’s spiritual suicide, while for Jolly (and many of us, I hope) it was a rare manifestation of Europe’s true cultural heritage. The world was getting a taste of the land of Descartes, the founder of modern philosophy, whose radical doubt was grounded in a universal – and therefore ‘multicultural’ – perspective. He understood that one’s own traditions are no better than the supposedly ‘eccentric’ traditions of others:

“I had learned, even in my student days, that there is nothing conceivable so strange or so implausible that it has not been asserted by some philosopher, and I further realized in my travels that all those whose sentiments are strongly opposed to our own are not necessarily barbarians or savages, but may possess reason to an equal or even greater degree than ourselves.”

Only by relativizing particularity can we arrive at an authentic universalist position. In Kantian terms, holding on to our ethnic roots leads us to engage in a private use of reasonwhere we are limited by contingent dogmatic presuppositions. In What is Enlightenment? Kant contrasts this immature, private use of reason with a more public, objective use. The former reflects and serves only one’s own state, religion, and institutions, while public reason requires one to take a transnational position.

Universal reason is what we saw in the opening ceremony: a rare glimpse of the emancipatory core of modern Europe. Yes, the images were of France and Paris; but the self-referential jokes made it clear that this was not a private use of reason. Jolly masterfully achieved ironic distance from any ‘private’ institutional framework, including that of the French state.

Conservatives are simply wrong when they dismiss the ceremony as an expression of LGBTQ+ ideology and politically correct uniformity. Sure, there was an implicit critique of conservative nationalism; but in content and style, it was even more aimed at rigid PC moralism – or “wokeism.” Rather than worrying about diversity and inclusion in standard PC mode (which excludes anyone who disagrees with a particular idea of ​​inclusion), the show was all-inclusive. Marie Antoinette’s guillotined singing head was aimed at the Mona Lisa floating in the Seine and a merry Bacchanalia of half-naked bodies. Workers repairing Notre Dame danced at work and the show was not in a stadium but in the whole city, which remains open to the world.

Such an ironic and obscene spectacle is as far removed as possible from sterile, humorless political correctness. The ceremony not only presented Europe at its best; it reminded the world that only in Europe such a ceremony is possible. It was global, multicultural and all that, but the message was delivered from the point of view of the French capital, the largest city in the world. It was a message of hope, proposing a world of great diversity, with no place for war and hatred.

Contrast this with the view offered by the right-wing Russian political philosopher Alexander Dugin in a recent interview with the Brazilian journalist Pepe Escobar. For Dugin, Europe is now irrelevant, a rotten garden protected by a high wall. The only choice is between the American globalist deep state and a peaceful new world order of sovereign states. It would be peaceful, he suggests, because Russia would distribute nuclear weapons to all developing countries, so that the principle of mutually assured destruction would apply everywhere.

As a contest between the US deep state and Donald Trump, this year’s US presidential election will decide the fate of humanity, according to Dugin. If Trump wins, de-escalation is possible; if a Democrat wins, we are headed for world war and the end of humanity.

Contrary to what people like Orbán and Dugin think, Jolly’s message is deeply ethical. It whispers to conservative nationalists: Watch the ceremony again carefully and be ashamed of what you are doing..