President Macron’s use of the phrase ‘en même temps’ has become a political cliché, signalling duality, a need for nuance, or (as his supporters would tell you) a spirit of practical compromise. During the carnivalesque opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympics, President Macron exercised his favourite catch-phrase again on X (formerly Twitter). He was referring to the singer Aya Nakamura’s celebrated performance with the Republican Guard military band in front of the Académie française: a wonderful riposte to the confected race row that preceded her performance.
That performance gives a useful way to interrogate an ‘en même temps’ ceremony. The director of revels was the acclaimed Thomas Jolly, a three-time Molière award-winner who told interviewers: “France is a story that never stops being constructed, deconstructed, and reconstructed. It’s alive, it remains alive.” The ceremony’s official historian was Patrick Boucheron, chief editor of the celebrated and (in some quarters) controversial Histoire Mondiale de la France (2017), who spoke of how this was “not an ideological parade, a demonstration of power [… but instead…] it used humour and modesty to thwart national stereotypes.”
In the opening montage, Jamel Debouzze ran the Olympic torch into an empty Stade de France, before handing it off to Zinedine Zidane, who in turn looked to some neighbourhood kids and a masked torchbearer. The acclaimed novelist Leila Slimani who co-wrote the ceremony spoke of how this vision of universalism would allow people “to see different bodies, different colours, different visions of France.” From the very start, the ceremony played with themes of the grand national story (or roman national), but – en même temps – subverted these narratives with references to an open, mixed France which is as proud of its immigration and cabarets as its military pomp and institutional heritage.
Unsurprisingly, that narrative provoked reactions from the political right. Despite the surprising results of the Legislative elections at the start of the month, this is still a France in which over 12 million voters cast their ballot for the far-right National Rally. The communication of progressive cultural values could inspire, but ultimately political realities were not in step. For every positive cultural story, like the “black-blanc-beur” narrative of the 1998 French men’s football world cup, with Zinedine Zidane at its heart, there was still the shadow of far-right Jean-Marie Le Pen reaching the second round of the 2002 Presidential election.
Revolutionary values without government
President Macron had called for a “political truce” during the Olympics, and some joked that the masked torchbearer was going to be revealed as the President’s newly anointed pick for Prime Minister. After the Legislative elections, the President has still to name a government, and it remains unclear whether the left-wing New Popular Front alliance will be able to transform its share of seats into a stable government.
Running through a performance of Les Misérables, before being serenaded by the headless aristocrats and heavy metal band Gojira at the Conciergerie, we got a very different sense of republican grandeur. As President Macron told L’Histoire (‘L’Entretien’, L’Histoire, 2017, p.12), his was a generation which “in terms of history had neither totems nor taboos.” Perhaps there are still some. When the huge sparkling phryges gyrated amongst the slippery disco on the pont Debilly, they found themselves amongst a controversial reimagining of the Last Supper, culminating in Philippe Katerine’s star turn as a blue-painted nude Dionysus. The Olympic organizing committee apologised to critics, though Katrine said “in France, artistic creation is free, I took advantage of that. There was no desire to pass on militant messages but republican messages.”
There were strong echoes of the 1989 bicentennial of the Revolution in this ceremony’s vision of French history which was open, global, and mixed, and as Le Monde’s historian commentator for the ceremony, Guillaume Mazeau said, these choices were “both historical and political in the current context of identity and nationalist tensions”.
Symbolic Liberty and Securitisation
Ultimately, the games were as much a celebration of Paris as of France, and a reminder that the games are hosted by cities not countries. For all the focus on liberty, equality, and fraternity, the more pertinent motto was fluctuat nec mergitur – storm-tossed yet unsinking – as befitting a ceremony which took place amid downpour, political drama and a security clampdown.
Leaving the confines of the stadium was intended to take the opening ceremony to the people. This entailed extraordinary security measures, however, which necessarily impacted the lives of ordinary Parisians in what some see as an ongoing “security drift”. The “grey zones” set up to protect the Olympic opening ceremonies created traffic chaos and a negative impact on businesses. There were even awkwardly resonant moments after the sabotage attacks on railways earlier in the day, such as the prominence of a stopped train in the opening torch montage with Zizou, or the masked torchbearer setting the Académie française ablaze to herald the entrance of Aya Nakamura.
Ten golden statues rising from the Seine helped fête the legal, political and cultural defence of rights in the French republic. News that the statues are to be offered to the city of Paris to help redress the gender balance of statuary (currently 260 male to 40 female) was also a positive note. Historical nuances around these statues were welcome, and, for example, the introduction of Louise Michel acknowledged her anti-colonial activism in New Caledonia alongside her role in the Paris Commune. Yet, on the same day as the Opening Ceremony there was a sense of how that gilded tribute to liberty could ring hollow, as the High Commissioner of New Caledonia confirmed details of night-time curfews amid ongoing unrest.
For all that – en même temps – the Opening Ceremony was a theatrical triumph. Yes, it lacked tight coherence and seemed riotous at times; to quote my eight-year-old daughter: “it’s chaotic”. This was, however, the chaos of the carnaval: time-honoured inversions of power, poking fun at authority, and painting with a broad historical brush.
Clearly, this cultural celebration of an open France will not solve political problems at home. Like the carnaval, it might provide a momentary space to forget and celebrate together, though sore heads may follow festivities. Macron’s en même temps posited a progressive, open France which was nonetheless proud of its fine traditions. Building that France will be the work of a government he has yet to appoint.
Andrew WM Smith is Director of Liberal Arts at Queen Mary University of London. He is a historian of Modern France whose research focusses on themes of resistance in France framed broadly. His upcoming book focusses on transnational resistance in the Larzac struggle, and an article on this topic was recently awarded the French History article prize.
