Paris Olympics - opening ceremony

Carla Bruni?

@LaeralSilverhand
As far as wishing you had seen more French artists perform - which ones specifically do you think should have performed and didn't?
We don't know (or I don't anyway!), we could have been offered some interesting and fun French surprises. Wheeling out Celine, great though she was, is like us featuring Kylie as our top attraction

That doesn't really fit with the actual attitude most French people adopt about the Quebecois, much less the Acadians. It's a pretty common experience that they are snubbed as having nothing to do with the sophistication that is France, not to mention their language being called barbaric (though it may in fact be closer in some ways to historic French.)

Happy for you to be picky! I didn't realise 😁

And yes, Air not playing was a real shame. They are currently on a world tour.

@CantDealwithChristmas Daft Punk are no more but Thomas Bangalter's Stardust featured. As did M83, DJ Mehdi and Justice. On the hip hop front Rim'K was live but agree, could have been more.

Anyway, Gojira live did it for me.

Air! I forgot about Air. But seriously clubs around the world are still playing Air and Daft Punk today. Their influence and staying power cannot be understated. An Olympic hopeful in I dunno Kyrfyzstan or South Africa will recognise a Daft Punk track over a Gaga one, easily.

Baffling to me!

Daft Punk
Air
Vanessa Paradis
... to name a few

Oh my god, so many! Proper groundbreaking French artists, or mainstays that are talented and uniquely French - , not just bland anglophone global pop artists who had their moment in the 2010s like Gaga.

Christophe Mae. Zazie. Raphael.

Also if you think about how important France has been to deep house - where were Daft Punk?? They CHANGED dance music!

And also...hip hop?? France is the second largest hip hop market in the world and some newer artists are utterly graoundbreaking so where were Freeze corleone, gazo, koba lad, PNL, MHD, zola, niska, oboy, moha la squale, kaaris, gradur, sofiane?

Total missed opportunity

Not the op your referring to but Vanessa Paradis would have been a brilliant choice.

@CantDealwithChristmas you seem to be ignoring the fact that both were singing much-loved French songs. Personally I think they were absolutely fine as choices - Paris is an international city and it's ok to have international stars there. France does not have any homegrown stars with the international recognition of Lady G or Celine Dion (the world of pop music is Anglophone after all) so in my book, and as far as the French are concerned, absolutely fine to import a couple of stars who are much loved there AND internationally.

As far as wishing you had seen more French artists perform - which ones specifically do you think should have performed and didn't?

It's globalism & Macron is a globalist which is why they featured so many outside artists instead of French..

Gaga's big in Japan too. She sings in Spanish, nonsense German and says she feels the greatest affinity with Italian culture because of her heritage. My point being, her fame in France doesn't really mean that she's been adopted as French. She's not part of the Francophonie as she's not a native French speaker. It just means she's globally famous.

Re Celine Dion, do the French really think she's 'basically French'? Because the attitudes of the Québécois to the French and relations between the two are rather more complex than your airy generalisation would suggest.

I think it depends what you think the purpose of the Olympics Opening Ceremony is. If you think it's an opportunity to show off your country's unique history and culture, then Gaga, Dion and drag queens were a Fail. If you think it's about a pan-global, bland watering down of cultural achievement, then it was OK I guess.

Still would've preferred to see more French artists perform.

Much as I enjoy the early musical output of Snoop Dogg, I too have no idea why he was there.

He has a french bulldog who he adores, and occasionally raps about his frenchie. So maybe there was an error in translation.

Lady Gaga is HUGE in France - she's basically been adopted as one of their own. Her biggest ever attended shows are in France. She also sings in French reasonably well. Celine Dion is Francophone (as is the Mali-born Aya Nakamura who also performed). That basically makes her culturally French as far as the French are concerned. The French take a very expansive (and somewhat paternalistic) view of la Francophonie - basically, if you speak French as a native language, you're in the club.

A bunch of other stuff that people claimed "wasn't French", such as the Minions, actually is.

Here's the full playlist from the night and you can see that every single song has a French connection: https://www.sortiraparis.com/en/news/olympic-games-paris-2024/articles/317447-paris-2024-olympics-the-playlist-broadcast-during-the-opening-ceremony

Celine Dion (Canadian, stretched to being Swiss in Eurovision) at least speaks French, although is not famous for singing in it. Rafal Nadal (Spanish) was there because he won the French Open alot. Lady Gaga, Snoop Dog and a John Lennon song: no idea. I was rather surprised the French featured so many international names.

Interesting that the BBC said their commentators had been given little info to work with.

If the next ones are in California and Australia, will the entire ceremony consist of drag queens?

The way I see it, you need talent and incredible hard work to create something like de Vinci's The Last Supper.

You need absolutely zero talent to squeeze your overweight body into a leotard and take the piss out of the last supper.

There's a wider point here about cultural decline but I'm feeling too declinist to bother to make it.

Agreed. Given the stagnant economy, the constant threat of stochastic terrorism including the multiple attempts to disrupt these olympics by the far left, and the powerful far right, the French definitely have a lot on their plate and don't care what we Brits think.

It is funny, though.

On a related note why were Lady Gaga and Celine Dion there? Why couldn't they have showcased french artists?

The "Diversity" and "Inclusivity" wasn't very diverse or inclusive.
I thought, If I hear one more Edith Piaf related noise I'm going to kick the telly and I HATE Imagine, who would imagine using that tripe to peacewash the whole thing?

They are not as original or free thinking as the English, ironically.

And after all, the idea that drag is being clever and inclusive is hardly anything but following the crowd.

At the end of the day, I don’t think the French care what others, least of all Les Anglo-Saxons, think.

French exceptionalism is as much a thing as American exceptionlism. They really don’t spend the most fleeting of moments worrying about what the neighbours might think (unlike the British who constantly think the rest of the world is laughing at them when the rest of the world mostly doesn’t even give them headspace).

💯

I think it was cringe and embarrassing and shat on France's great history and culture from a height

but ALSO I think the French only have themself to blame, they gave the world Michel Foucault without whom identitarian woke rubbish would not exist

In other words the French have made their couche and now they have to coucher in it.

Yes, that is true, I don’t think they meant harm. But the painting has become like a relic in its own right, a Divinely inspired creation.

It was tacky to drag out sexily dressed drag queens, a child, and crow about being inclusive.

Quite disturbing he was stood next to a young child.