Drag, Olympics, and Offense

It’s Olympics time! We’d be remiss if we didn’t chime in on the Dionysus / Last Supper controversy!

A few quick comments:
1. I’ve seen a lot of people arguing that it wasn’t meant to depict The Last Supper, rather its referent was a painting of Dionysus and a bacchanal. This is plausible (though some sources, including the English version of the Olympic app guide indicate a Last Supper inspiration at least in part). But! Artist intention is only part of a work’s ‘meaning’. Meaning is produced between artist, artwork, and viewer. In that sense, even if the intention was not to reference the Da Vinci Last Supper, we have to reckon with the interpretation instead of just saying: you’re uncultured and read the tableau wrong.’ Which leads me to perhaps a more important question to me than artistic meaning:

2. What should Christians be offended at? By this question, I want to be clear I’m not slipping into whataboutism, i.e. don’t be offended at this when there are bigger things happening such as wealth inequity, violence, etc. I am genuinely interested in the nature of offense. Is it that something holy has been cast as unholy or sinful? One of the unique things about Christianity is that our God is holy because of God’s nature. Human action in no way affects the power or nature of God. How could a parody of the last supper in any way diminish the glory of God? God doesn’t need protecting. This was the lesson sword-wielding Peter learned in the garden. Even in Gethsemane, it was never the Christ follower’s job to stand in the way of Jesus and those who would lead him down a path of humiliation.

The job was to stay with Jesus. There’s more to say, but I’d love to hear your opinions and thoughts in the comments below.

Michael Toy
Public Theologian

PS for other reading (on a similar subject, whose views I don’t necessarily agree with 100%): https://jesusinlove.blogspot.com/2007/10/queering-last-supper.html
https://cassidyhall.com/2023/03/01/lastsupper/