{"id":26320,"date":"2024-08-02T16:40:58","date_gmt":"2024-08-02T22:40:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/french-police-investigating-abuse-over-last-supper-tableau\/"},"modified":"2024-08-02T22:40:58","modified_gmt":"2024-08-02T22:40:58","slug":"french-police-investigating-abuse-over-last-supper-tableau","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/french-police-investigating-abuse-over-last-supper-tableau\/","title":{"rendered":"French police investigating abuse over \u2018Last Supper\u2019 tableau"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Drag
Drag queens prepare to perform on the Debilly Bridge in Paris, during the opening ceremony of the 2024 Summer Olympics on July 26. (Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi\/The Associated Press)<\/span>Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

PARIS \u2013 A storm of outrage about the Paris Olympics\u2019 opening ceremony \u2013 including angry comments from Donald Trump \u2013 took a legal turn July 30, with French prosecutors ordering police to investigate complaints of online abuse from a DJ and LGBTQ+ icon who performed.<\/p>\n

DJ Barbara Butch said she suffered a torrent of online threats in the wake of a contentious scene at the Games\u2019 opening ceremony. A lawyer for Butch told The Associated Press that she had filed a formal legal complaint alleging online harassment, death threats, and insults. The lawyer, Audrey Msellati, said the complaint doesn\u2019t name any specific perpetrator or perpetrators of the alleged crimes.<\/p>\n

The Paris prosecutor\u2019s office confirmed that it received Butch\u2019s complaint and said it tasked a police unit that specializes in fighting hate crimes to investigate. The police probe will focus on \u201cdiscriminatory messages based on religion or sexual orientation that were sent to her or posted online,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n

Although the ceremony\u2019s artistic director Thomas Jolly has repeatedly said that he wasn\u2019t inspired by \u201cThe Last Supper,\u201d critics interpreted part of the show that featured Butch as a mockery of Leonardo da Vinci\u2019s painting showing Jesus Christ and his apostles. Butch, who calls herself a \u201clove activist,\u201d wore a silver headdress that looked like a halo as she got a party going during her segment of the show. Drag artists, dancers and others flanked Butch on both sides.<\/p>\n

Trump, in the United States, said Monday he thought it was \u201ca disgrace.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m very open-minded,\u201d the former president and current Republican nominee told Fox News host Laura Ingraham, who specifically asked about comparisons to \u201cThe Last Supper,\u201d \u201cbut I thought what they did was a disgrace.\u201d<\/p>\n

French Catholic bishops and others were among those who said Christians had been hurt and offended. Paris Olympics organizers have said there was \u201cnever an intention to show disrespect to any religious group\u201d and that the intent was to \u201ccelebrate community tolerance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jolly has said he saw the moment as a celebration of diversity, and the table on which Butch spun her tunes as a tribute to feasting and French gastronomy.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy wish isn\u2019t to be subversive, nor to mock or to shock,\u201d Jolly said. \u201cMost of all, I wanted to send a message of love, a message of inclusion and not at all to divide.\u201d<\/p>\n

Performer Philippe Katerine, who appeared in the next scene painted blue and nearly nude in a tribute to Dionysus, also told Le Monde newspaper that \u201cThe Last Supper\u201d had not been referenced at all in preparations for the overall sketch.<\/p>\n

In a statement of her own, posted on Instagram, Butch said: \u201cWhatever some may say, I exist. I\u2019ve never been ashamed of who I am, and I take responsibility for everything \u2013 including my artistic choices. All my life, I\u2019ve refused to be a victim: I won\u2019t shut up.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said she \u201cwas extremely honored\u201d to perform in Friday\u2019s ceremony and \u201cmy heart is still full of joy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m committed, and I\u2019m proud. Proud of who I am, of what I am, and of what I embody, both for my loved ones and for millions of French people. My France is France !\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n

In an AP interview Tuesday, Msellati described Butch as in \u201ca fighting spirit\u201d \u2013 eager to defend herself and her choices, and still very proud of her participation. \u201cShe has no regrets, even now,\u201d the lawyer said.<\/p>\n

She said hateful messages targeting Butch are \u201carriving almost every minute,\u201d and that Jolly and the ceremony\u2019s drag artists have also been targeted by cyberbullying.<\/p>\n

Another performer in the controversial scene, drag queen Paloma, said Tuesday that she had not filed her own complaint.<\/p>\n

But, she said, \u201cif the insults continue, I will join my friend Barbara Butch in her approach. For now, I am trying to focus on the on the thousands of loving messages I receive.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of the criticism, Paloma said her \u201cfirst reaction is to say that if Donald Trump is not reacting, then we have not done our job. Unfortunately, we were going to get a negative reaction no matter what we did.\u201d She also said it was hypocritical for critics to use religion as a basis for \u201ca reaction that is very homophobic, very transphobic, queer-phobic, drag-phobic, even antisemitic and fatphobic.\u201d<\/p>\n

And another drag queen in the scene, Piche, said she was \u201creally happy that queer people were able to be represented in this show. There was no moment that the idea of offending someone or a religion was on somebody\u2019s mind. It was just a joyful, happy pop culture moment that most of the planet felt.\u201d<\/p>\n

AP journalists Nicolas Vaux-Montagny and Kwiyeon Ha contributed reporting.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Barbara Butch said she suffered a torrent of online threats<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26321,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-26320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26320\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26320"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=26320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}