Paris 2024: France Gets Flamed
The Olympic Flame arrived via Marseille and will be carried across France before arriving in Paris. The Games' last-minute to-do list includes tightening security and hiding "undesirables."
This whole Olympic thing is getting a lot more real. Walking across Paris, a visitor will encounter a frenzy of bandstands being erected and an endless series of big and small nods to the games in the form of decorations and icons and Olympic merch.
But the real action this week was in France’s 2nd-largest city to the south. After 12 days of crossing the Mediterranean Sea from Greece, a large wooden ship called the Belem arrived in the Old Port of Marseille early on May 8 carrying the Olympic Flame. More than 1,000 boats and 150,000 spectators were on hand to welcome the symbolic start to the Games.
If you live in France and are not an Olympic torchbearer, you are basically the only one. During its 11-week journey, the torch will be carried by 10,000 people through 450 towns before finally landing in Paris on July 26.
“It’s fantastic to give that sense of pride to the French people and to show to the whole world what we’re capable of achieving,” French Sports Minister Amélie Oudéa-Castéra told the AP. “We’re going to give happiness to the whole world.”
The event also included the debut of the official theme song of the Paris Games called “Parade” which was composed by Victor le Masne. The Marseille orchestra performed it live for the first time from the Palais du Pharo. This isn’t the live version, but you can hear an extract of the song that blends classical-disco-boogie-techno (don’t even ask me to explain) on this Olympic hype video from the Marseille ceremony.
Culture War Games 2024
The official posters for the Paris 2024 Games were unveiled at the Musée d'Orsay. And, of course, it was the perfect setting to launch yet another culture war.
In this case, the posters depict what organizers describe as a “phantasmagorical city.” French designer Ugo Gattoni, best known for his collaborations with luxury brands, created a fictional city where famous Paris landmarks are smooshed inside a stadium. Plenty of little symbols of French culture and the Olympics are hidden throughout the poster, which has a Where’s-Waldo-On-Acid vibe. (Or, as the French call him, “Charlie.”)
The official announcement noted that it took Gattoni more than 2,000 hours of work across 6 “intense” months to create the poster. Apparently, nobody told him that he could have done this in 30 seconds with GenAI, but, whatever. As part of the design, he “reinterpreted monuments of the capital, the symbols of France, the different competition sites of Paris 2024, numerous sports and characters.”
Alas, that reinterpretation managed to infuriate the increasingly-less-fringe elements of French politics who saw it as yet another attack on French values and identity. Why? Well, if you squint super hard at the domed building (Les Invalides) left of the Eiffel Tower, there is a spire on top instead of the cross that sits there in real life.
(Side note: We recently visited the Invalides and there were, like, a thousand holes made by rabbits who have decimated the whole grounds. And, as it turns out, they are playing havoc with the sprinkler system. The city estimates they have caused €366,000 in damage and are trying to get them declared a nuisance so they can take extreme measures to deal with it, such as catching them or even going Fatal Attraction on them. Environmentalists and animal rights groups are fighting back, insisting that we just have to learn to live with animals. The Paris mayor is already taking flak for cutting down some old, diseased trees in the city. If she starts murdering cuddly little baby bunnies I’m pretty sure riots will break out. Still, Paris is being devoured by rabbits and it just feels like we’re not talking about this enough!)
Anyways, the Invalides…Removing the cross caused conservatives to lose their minds. Naturally, out came the w-word. The French right has become obsessed with “woke” (or, as they call it le wokisme), an American disease they fear is multiplying faster than those Invalides rabbits. And even worse (and I hope you’re sitting down for this next part), the poster does not include…the French flag!
As right-wing National Assembly-person Eric Pauget huffed on Twitter (one of only many):
“The cross at the top of Les Invalides ... erased. The French flag ... totally absent. The #wokisme which advocates the erasure of our history, our Judeo-Christian roots, our identity is very present, even the Olympics are paying the price!”
Zut, alors!
Ah, but that was only the start of the official Culture War Games. As I wrote earlier this week, French singer Aya Nakamura — who is of Mali descent — was rumored to be performing at the Olympics opening ceremony, possibly singing a song by French legend Edith Piaf. That produced the predictable racist backlash from France’s conservative corners, who insist they are just protecting the culture and the language and really aren’t racist at all.
Olympic Lost And Found
As the Games draw closer, the drumbeat of Olympic news grows louder.
Construction has been completed on the 52-hectare village in the suburb of Saint-Ouen-sur-Seine, just north of Paris. The village will welcome 14,500 athletes and staff for the Olympics and then 9,000 for the Paralympics. When the Games are done, the plan is to turn the village into an eco-friendly neighborhood with housing for 6,000 people, plus 2 schools, a public park, shops, offices, and pedestrian areas.
Meanwhile, there was brief Panic On The Streets Of Paris when a city hall employee reported that his bag had been stolen on a train. The ever-reliable Internet informed us that that bag may have contained sensitive security plans for the event. Yikes! But, in the end: Nope.
While the employee did lose his computer and a USB memory stick, they did not contain the security plans, according to The Guardian (if you look at the URL for the story, it says bag-containing-security-plans-for-paris-olympics-stolen-from-french-train.)
However, the USB key did include info about traffic management plans for the Games. There is now an official investigation underway to find the culprit and try to avert any traffic-related mischief.
But the bigger traffic chaos could be caused by a planned strike of public transportation and public sector workers. (And garbage collectors are now threatening their own strike.) Their union has officially filed notice that they plan to strike during the Games because they want more social and financial support in terms of extra pay as well as housing and daycare. The Games are going to require extra hours and scramble schedules, and the union believes the government is not doing enough to address the impact on workers.
Shrinking Seine Spectators
The French government has backed away from an ambitious plan to let 600,000 people watch the Opening Ceremony for free along the banks of the Seine. Officials cited security and logistical issues, including a decision not to clear out the booksellers along the rivers that had provoked so much controversy.
Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin now says there will be a total of 300,000 spectators allowed — 104,000 with paid tickets and 222,000 who can watch for free along the river, according to The Independent. “To manage crowd movement, we can’t tell everyone to come,” Darmanin said. “For security reasons that everyone understands, notably the terrorist threat of recent weeks, we are obliged to make it free but contained.”
The Games are already posing a massive security challenge, especially this ceremony which will be the first Olympic opening not held in a closed stadium, according to The New York Times. Athletes will float down the Seine on barges across a 3.5-mile stretch. The task will be complicated by the fact that organizers are having a hard time attracting enough security workers for the games, according to the Washington Post.
And then there is the weather, and the race to ensure the Seine will be clean enough for some of the water events planned for the river.
La Purge
As part of the effort to sanitize Paris’ image ahead of the Games, it appears that the city is cleaning up what one group has labeled the “undesirables.”
These include clearing out squatters camps of refugees, asylum seekers, and undocumented immigrants, mostly from Africa, who were camped too close to the Olympic Village for comfort, according to the Libération newspaper. Le Monde reports also that migrant camps are being scuttled: “For several months, local organizations have been denouncing what they call the ‘social cleansing’ of the Paris region. They claim that authorities are clearing the city's most impoverished residents off the streets in preparation for the 2024 Olympic Games.” Apparently, not even working on construction crews for Olympic sites offered immigrants and undocumented workers much protection, according to a NY Times investigation.
Meanwhile, The Local says that a report from a coalition of 17 non-government organizations that support sex workers "shared the same conclusion as to the increased repression and sometimes changes in police practices…The approach that we characterize as 'repression first' has obvious consequences on the security and health of sex workers.”
While local officials fear a flood of sex workers arriving for the Games, the non-profits say that’s nonsense. Instead, they urged police to focus their efforts on criminal rings that prey on prostitutes.
Chris O’Brien
Le Pecq
Wow definitely missed the rabbit memo !