A great Olympics opening ceremony should be a profound, stirring celebration of a country’s history and culture. It should also be absolutely batshit. On those metrics, I would consider Friday’s kickoff to the Paris games a rousing success.
The spectacle was, from my perspective, very French: I didn’t understand most of what was going on, but kept being aggressively told it was all very cool and so I convinced myself that I loved it. And then there was the Céline Dion of it all. (Not French, but can speak it!)
I could never have—even on my most potent cocktail of melatonin, weed gummy, and white wine—dreamed up the orgy of music, dance styles, and energetic skipping through the streets of Paris that made up the eclectic ceremony.
The can-can! Parkour! A queer ménage à trois in a library! Les Misérables! A nonbinary masked individual riding a horse. A choir of beheaded Marie Antoinettes singing in windows while a heavy metal plays and fire rages. An Olympic torch that resembled a giant blunt, or maybe a flaming baguette. A hot air balloon cauldron that looked like it was about to float on over to Oz. The Minions???
But the twin highlights of the affair seemed incepted from my dreams entirely: rousing performances by Lady Gaga and Céline Dion, in her triumphant return to singing on a major stage after battling a rare autoimmune neurological disorder.
Dion was a reward for anyone who sat through four hours of a decidedly bonkers fantasia. After watching thousands and thousands of athletes being dragged through the Seine looking like drowned rats while skateboarders dressed as clowns did tricks in the background, there she was.
In a blissfully dramatic fashion befitting Dion’s stage persona, first you heard her voice, a gold-medal belt that hasn’t been projected with that force publicly in years. I got instant chills. Then the camera zoomed in on the Eiffel Tower, dazzling with twinkling lights, to reveal Dion on a makeshift stage floating in the middle of the landmark.
She looked positively regal in a beaded, sparkling white evening gown, her hair pulled back into a bun. She gesticulated muscularly while she hit each note. With two speakers flanking her, the image immediately evoked Eva Peron on her balcony—or, if you’re gay like me, Patti LuPone singing “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina” in Evita.
During an instrumental break, she gazed out at the City of Light before her, from her ascendant position in one of the world’s most iconic landmarks. Tears welled in her eyes, echoing the raindrops splashing on the piano beside her. I can’t imagine what it must have felt like for her to make a comeback in such a monumental way—not just a return to the stage, but a return to a stage on the Eiffel Tower with the world watching.
“I actually can’t talk,” announcer Kelly Clarkson said after the performance, clearly through her own tears. “To have that moment. She’s a vocal athlete. She’s incredible.”
It was an emotional finale that elevated a weird day of tons of rain, unusual performances, and, in true Olympic fashion, irresistible moments of inspiration and talent.
Earlier in the ceremony, which seems a lifetime ago at this point, Lady Gaga was a surprise performer—in that she was not on the official media guide, and yet everyone in the world knew that she was performing by the time she descended those stairs. She opened the show doing what I can only assume is a French translation of Seussical, shaking a feathered tail with plumes shooting out of her hair and serving Mayzie LaBird realness.
If you don’t understand that reference, I’m both sorry that you have a blindspot for an underrated piece of musical theater culture—and also that you probably couldn’t appreciate just how unabashedly gay so much of the ceremony was. (I mean… there was a choreographed dance of giant Louis Vuitton trunks.)
Gaga nailed every shimmy and shake, clearly having the time of her life belting out the French classic “Mon Truc en Plumes,” which translates to “My Thing With Feathers.” Is it strange that the Paris Olympics chose an Italian American pop star to open their show? Or is it brilliant? The MVP of any televised ceremony is always going to be Lady Gaga. (Plus, she sang some of “La Vie en Rose” in A Star Is Born, which makes her canonically French in my world.)
Lady Gaga performing at the Paris Olympics opening ceremony.
Maja Hitij/Getty ImagesWatching the opening ceremony was, as always, a surreal experience: the horny thrill every time they showed Emmanuel Macron; the desire to call the head of every TV network immediately and beg them to have Kelly Clarkson offer running commentary to every live event.
I laughed along to Gaga’s cheekiness. I stared bewildered at 90 percent of the dance routines. I cried as Céline sang. I feared for the competitors’ safety: One thing every athlete should do on the eve of the biggest physical contest of their lives is take a three-hour evening boat ride in the pouring rain. I learned that you can, apparently, get seasick from watching boats bob up and down on TV.
And, most importantly, I got stoked for the next two weeks of making the Olympics my entire personality.
