Paris Olympics - opening ceremony

Good women are lifeless statues.
Flesh and blood women are asking for it.

I thought it was excellent. Showcasing French fashion students’ work was a great idea.

This caused a stir on twitter until a community note revealed it's a ripped stocking. It's clearer seen from a different angle.

Community notes to call out bullshit is the only positive thing Musk has done for twitter.

Agree with @Uricon2 about Marie Antoinette. Yuck. Completely dehumanised, just a symbol, a cliche played for laughs.

If you're going to make a historical point, focus on the person in power, the king. It looked and felt like another drag act.

@Theeyeballsinthesky "I would totally have put the flame at the top of the Eiffel Tower"

I was expecting them to do that! But the Montgolfiere with the flaming "basket" was a surprise just now when watching the end of the show. My mum wanted to tell me about... and I just went shhhhh.

Queer/Trans/Drag ..so yesterday

Yeah the drag bit was so fucking unsophisticated compared with the rest of it. .How people think this kind of shit is somehow ‘out there’ is beyond me. Were we meant to be shocked? I’m so bored of it. Diversité? Here’s some blokes who look like they got dressed in the dark, because there just isn’t enough of that around these days. And the last supper thing was just crass. Apart de cela tout va bien.

Had to laugh at the catwalk section, man caressing his "breasts" in a 90s drag stylee.

I would totally have put the flame at the top of the Eiffel Tower @KnickerlessParsons

It would have been so much better if the masked torch man/woman had turned out to be someone famous and if they'd had the flame at the top of the Eifel Tower.

I’m sad that as a society we’re stealing our children’s innocence so very very early in their lives.

why include that threesome? It was all way too overly sexual and inappropriate

I'm glad I didn't hang on for a big reveal then.

Nah!

Interesting tactic to have a bunch of sports people from other countries carrying the flame

I didn't manage to watch it until the end. Did the masked torch bearer turn out to be anyone interesting?

I rolled my eyes at the catwalk bits, hard, but enjoyed the rest.

Especially the groups dancing on the quays, on the barges and elsewhere. I watched the whole boat parade, and had my smartphone at hand to look up some of the small island nations from the pacific and caribbean. The sportspeople were enjoying it, apparently, despite the pouring rain :-).

Winner of best olympic dress would be Mongolia! Also loved the masked torch carrier, and the metal horse, carrying the flag bearer.
Will have to watch the last hour today, had to go to bed after the flag rising. It WAS long.

Aren’t the general public going to get bored of men dressing up and prancing about and contributing absolutely zero of annything else?

And there was Macron and the Missus in the pouring rain on his parade. I call it Marine le Pen's Revenge.

The whole thing while yes, a visual spectacle was too spread out and went on for far too long.

I also got the queer/trans/etc. vibe big time. But the organisers and designers were probably in the cohort.

...

I'm blue dabba dee daboo Dee daboo dah daboo Dee daboo dah

The whole catwalk bit went on for so long and was so badly executed (I'm sure the rain was partly responsible because who can walk in that let alone dance). I did read speculation that the whole ceremony had lots of subtext if you were French; without knowing what the context was I just thought it was boring. I can't see many people watching coming out with positive thoughts about the drag artists.

Papa Smurf was a horrible warning of the dangers of drinking absinthe.

Said it elsewhere, but I thought the beheaded singing Marie Antoinettes were bloody awful. I am sure she wasn't perfect, but she was a woman married off at 14 to a stranger and hardly the only cause of the French Revolution. At the time of her death, the artist David did a sketch and she looks what she was, a broken widow separated from her young children, a woman who had prematurely aged decades in months, in shabby clothes. She was taken on a tumbril to her execution surrounded by a baying mob (unlike her husband, who got a carriage)

I found that section sick, to be honest. They could have had positive representations of Marianne, even Napoleon, rather than a cheap, inaccurate caricature of a woman who died a wretched death.

On a slightly different note I enjoyed the photo on the front page of my newspaper. It was of Tom Daley and Helen Glover holding the GB flag.
The flag was resting up against Tom and Helen stood behind with her arms wrapped around his waist steadying the flag.

Tom, as we know because he said so, thinks trans women should take part in women's diving because, according to him, they are women. But of course when he wanted a child with his male partner he didn't get a trans women to be a surrogate.... Strangely then he suddenly knew what a woman was.

I just had to laugh - seeing him being propped up by a real woman. Every day's a learning day Tom.

I loved the bit at the end where Clare Balding asked Michael Johnson and Rebecca Adlington what they thought of it and they both had to resort to 'Well, it was ...... different.' and 'It probably looked better to the spectators than it did on the television screen.'

I think there's a general consensus that it's a hole in his tights.

Was that the general opinion of the public around the world? The French public? I am just curious.

I am on the fence about the whole thing- some beautiful parts, really stunning and well done but the fashion segment went on way too long.

In the Irish media this morning (two radio stations and newspapers) the general consensus was it was very different to the London but as fantastic and well done if not a bit too long. The standouts seemed to be the dancers on the building near the start, Celine Dion, the masked torch bearer and the statues, as well as the final carrying on the torch. So overall seemed to be extremely positive

I'm trying to remember was the child involved in the scene with this man's testicle hanging down from his sparkly knickers?