Viewers react to Paris Olympics opening ceremony: “One of the most memorable moments of 2024” or “freakshow”?

27 July, 2024

Paris Olympics opening ceremony

The 2024 Paris Olympic Games opening ceremony has proved extremely divisive, evoking heavily politicised reactions and accusations of Satanism online.

Last night (July 26), the Paris Olympic Games opened, with 300,000 fans watching from the riverside as an armada of boats carried athletes along the Seine in the pouring rain.

The opening ceremony included performances from Gojira, Lady Gaga and Celine Dion – who moved viewers around the world with her triumphant return to the stage, having not performed in four years following a diagnosis of Stiff Person Syndrome.

Reactions to the musical performances, and Dion’s in particular, were warm. The more unique moments of the ceremony, which ranged from performances featuring Marie Antoinette figurines, a man painted in head-to-toe blue body paint and masked torch-bearers, were less so.

Far-right commentators took umbrage with the inclusion of drag and trans performers, as well as what appeared to be a recreation of the last supper – moving the conversation away from the ceremony’s more theatrical elements to level accusations of “trans propaganda”, and on the more extreme end, “Satanism”.

Another dominant political element to the online commentary of the ceremony was the Israel-Gaza conflict. Against a backdrop of ongoing atrocities in Palestine, many viewers celebrated the presence of Palestinian athletes, with one reporting: “The delegation from Palestine was massively cheered as it passed along the Seine river in Paris.”

Fans online largely rejoiced when Israel’s team was audibly booed as they cruised along the river, with others questioning why they were not banned from the event.

The quirky ceremony has proven extremely divisive, but many viewers revelled in the chaos, labelling it light-heartedly “very French”, with one viewer joking: “if you’re not watching the olympic opening ceremony the main torchbearer is a masked vigilante wearing keens and les miserables-style revolutionary rags who entered on a boat to the phantom of the opera theme and is now doing parkour around paris to techno. extremely french”

Check out footage of the 2024 Paris Olympics opening ceremony and more viewer reactions below:

Meanwhile, Snoop Dogg carried the Olympic torch through Paris ahead of the opening ceremony last night.

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