‘Life of Brian’ Defender Elon Musk Blasts Olympics as ‘Extremely Offensive to Christians’
In a less stupid world, the most controversial part of the Paris Olympics opening ceremony would have been when the Minions were callously drowned for our amusement. Instead there’s now a major controversy brewing involving “dancers and drag queens” forming a tableau that some people interpreted as being representative of The Last Supper.
Catholic leaders have called it a “mockery of Christianity,” despite the fact that it was actually supposed to be a depiction of the Greek God Dionysus and the “Feast of the Gods.” Yeah, apparently Christians don’t have a monopoly on dinner parties thrown by deities.
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Although, as far as we know, this is the first time that Dionysus has been represented as a ginger Dr. Manhattan.
Of course, even if it was supposed to be The Last Supper, the iconic religious tableau has been the subject of parody and revision for decades without sparking the kind of freak-out we’re seeing now. Mel Brooks did a whole Last Supper-themed sketch in The History of the World, Part I, and nobody lost their shit.
The key difference here seems to be that the new routine featured drag performers who, as everybody knows, are willfully corrupting America’s youth through their nefarious… children’s book readings at local libraries. I mean, what’s next, bake sales?!?!
One of the most vocal critics of the not-Last Supper was noted theologian non-religious rich guy Elon Musk, who claimed that the whole thing was “extremely disrespectful to Christians.”
This is especially ridiculous coming from Musk, considering that he has previously heaped praise on one of the most famously controversial attempts to subvert religious iconography in modern pop-culture history: Monty Python’s The Life of Brian.
While the Python’s ultimately cut any references to The Last Supper when their focus shifted away from Christ specifically, lampooning the Virgin Birth and concluding the film with a musical number sung by a chorus of crucifixion victims, was enough to land The Life of Brian in hot water with evangelicals. In fact, it was straight-up banned in countries like Ireland and Norway.
The Olympics segment, even if it was a parody of The Last Supper (again, it wasn’t) was arguably far more tame than what the Pythons did 45 years ago. But Musk has previously championed this very same film, claiming that one scene, in which Eric Idle asks his friends to call him “Loretta,” predicted the current debate over trans rights — despite the fact that any parallels were obviously unintentional. He also conveniently ignored the fact that the character’s friends actually try to respectfully refer to Loretta using the correct pronouns for the rest of the movie.
So it seems more than a little hypocritical to criticize the Olympics Opening Ceremony after praising the Pythons’ supposedly “blasphemous” comedy. It’s almost as if the sanctity of the Holy Scriptures wasn’t his primary concern.
