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PARIS — French authorities are investigating death threats made against Thomas Jolly after the artistic director for the 2024 Summer Olympics’ opening ceremony filed a complaint against his harassers.
Jolly has been subjected to significant harassment in the days since the opening ceremony due to a segment called “Festivity” which featured a group of dancers and drag performers in a scene that many thought paralleled Leonardo Da Vinci’s “The Last Supper.”
The scene prompted outrage from various Christian groups, who accused Jolly of mocking Christianity, and prominent culture warriors such as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and former U.S. President Donald Trump.
Barbara Butch, a lesbian DJ and an advocate against fat shaming, featured in a leading role in the scene, also reported being subjected to threats and harassment online — prompting her to file several complaints as well.
The Paris prosecutor’s office said Friday that it had analyzed messages sent to Jolly and transferred the case to the body in charge of examining hate crimes. For Butch, it said it had identified “facts likely to be characterized as insults aggravated by discrimination, death threats, and public provocation to willfully harm someone’s life or physical integrity.”
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo offered her “unwavering support” to Jolly in a statement on Friday.
Following the performance, Jolly clarified that “The Last Supper” was “not the inspiration” behind the segment. He later told French 24 hour news network BFM that then scene was meant to resemble a pagan celebration “connected to the gods of Olympus” and was not meant to insult Christianity.
“In France, we are allowed to love, how we want and who we want, we are allowed to believe or not to believe … We have a lot of rights, and the idea was to showcase these values,” Jolly told reporters after the ceremony.
“It would be very unfortunate if our work was used to recreate hatred and division … given that we managed to found peace and underline how we can achieve great and moving things when we are together,” he said.
