To have allowed my dc watch the Olympic opening ceremony?

I loved the 2012 opening. !!!!

@Wishihadanalgorithm - where did you find the 2012 Opening ceremony please? If like to watch that again too.

Well it made you realise how, well, French the French are.

I loved the rock band and red ladies with their heads chopped off.

And the white horse with the silver rider.

And Celine.

Pouffe C'est la vie.

Why is this homophobic?

That building is the Conciergerie..... it's where Marie-Antoinette was kept prisoner before her execution. Well worth a visit. I thought that part with the red ribbons representing the blood of the revolution was done really well.

@MissScarletInTheBallroom you may recall that the 2010 ceremony was very much criticised at the time as "woke nonsense". Many on the right took a lot of umbrage at the celebration of multi cultural Britain and tbe NHS.

Also your husband would vote for a bunch of racists because of a few drag queens at thr Olympic opening ceremony ... okaaaaay

Transvestites is/was a term used for heterosexual men who liked dressing up as women.

This all makes me wonder if the French were just as puzzled by our show in 2012. Did they ask themselves why it was all so childish, so sanitised?

I was saying this!! Why didn't they paint it black?!

Well if that was the intention it's fucking stupid. My French husband (who voted for the Ensemble candidate) said nothing has ever made him want to vote RN more than all this woke nonsense. He wanted the French equivalent of James Bond and the Queen.

Seriously, FFS. Let's stick two fingers up at the millions of people who voted for the far right and make even more people want to vote for the far right. What a good idea.

It isn't. @Malahide is just being an eejit

@Mumdiva99 I think it's the Bibliothèque Nationale. I've not visited yet, but supposed to be stunning.

I'm impressed that you could all work out what the fuck was going on. We watched it but seems to have missed all the controversial stuff while debating whether the horse's support pole would have been less visible if painted black.

I find this turn of phrase absolutely baffling.

We keep being told that sex and gender are different. OK, fine, whatever.

So you're trans because your sex and your gender are different? But everyone else's sex is different from their gender too, because sex and gender are not the same and only one of these two things is actually real.

It's like saying I'm transastrological because my star sign doesn't align with my favourite colour. No, not like all of those other people whose star sign also doesn't align with their favourite colour and might not even have a favourite colour at all. They're cisastrological and have cis privilege, which means they should let me have whatever I want.

This isn't true. Drag is not permitted in Christianity so it is mocking.

Nobody is saying those individuals can't come to Christ/ are less worthy than anybody else, but to design a scene in a ceremony where they're all in drag is clearly mocking. Drag is about showing off/ exuberance, coming to Christ is about humbling yourself.

It's clearly mocking & it's really horrible + completely 100% unnecessary.

are you denying male anatomy ?

some of the female performers had visible tit bulges too

I just thought it was verrry french!

Watched with DS10 who thought the love section was just a 'boring bit about romance', and didn't seem bothered why there were 3 of them hiding away in a room.
The headless singers in the castle bit was bonkers, I loved it, and was delighted when 'blood' exploded from the windows haha!
The dancing was overall o-kay... Thought there'd be much more ballet...
Impressed though bemused by the Olympic flame being in a whole hot air balloon.
Delighted that Celine performed.
It went on for absolute ages, I was struggling.

I think you misunderstand. That was acceptable male attire for the wealthy at that time. Women looked different, they wore big dresses and would not have shown their legs like that. He is not dressed as a woman.

The headless women (marie antoinette?) on the side of the building were strange!!

Well..........Since you ask!

I bloody loved it. Watched from start to finish. I live in France, and to me it touched on all the cultural references. Love, inclusivity, égalité etc. The statues of notable women. The parkour, phantom of the opera etc. I felt very proud of my adopted city.

This. I liked all the lights on the Eiffel Tower, the metal horse in the water was ok but went on far too long, I liked Celines performance, everything else was a bit soggy and shit. The sogginess isn't their fault, obviously.

I thought parts of it were very good, parts went on far too long and parts were French in jokes. There was a fair bit of son et lumiere.

I have learned that the French invented the Minions.

I thought the library scene was rather sweet, especially communicating by holding up book titles.

I liked the characters exiting their paintings in the Louvre to watch the show through the windows.

It went on far too long though (especially the awful catwalk part and the Eurodisco) and it was difficult to make sense of it - which is inevitable when you spread things out along a watercourse and insert lots of previously filmed sections.

And the random nature of the boats was unintentionally (presumably) comic. A big slightly grotty river cruiser! A lovely wooden river taxi! Etc. I was fully expecting the UK contingent to have chartered an Uber Boat.

I gave up at the "obscurite" point which I think was the final section.

They were struggling with so much rain on the cameras and equipment. That was bad luck.

Tell you what though, whoever specified the dancing platforms and footwear did an incredible job. I was constantly expecting someone to fall over, with so much rain underfoot, but I didn't see a single slip.

This is a very good point and something I’m going to discuss with my French dh… who didn’t watch the ceremony… and if remember, I will be bringing up with his cousin, who votes far right when I next see her.

Apparently, this is what the naked blue Dionysus represented.

That's hilarious