The 2024 Summer Olympics Showed Media Gaslighting At Its Worst

It’s a common setup in cartoons and comedies – one character walks in on a strange situation only to have another character insist, “It’s not what it looks like!” Cute and funny in these contexts, its more insidious psychological cousin is called gaslighting. Psychology Today defines gaslighting as a situation where someone is deliberately fed false information, leading them to question what they know to be true. Consistent exposure to this type of manipulation leads people to wonder whether they can trust themselves at all.

I think, by now, we all understand how this plays out in the media. We’ve been told that the harmful effects of hormonal birth control are all in our heads. We’ve been told that controversial approaches to topics like race and gender are certainly not being taught in public schools. This is despite real-world evidence that many of us can point to around us. And it’s frustrating, to say the least.

Nowhere has this manipulation been more blatant, however, than the 2024 Summer Olympics. I was struck, in watching the unfolding controversies, with how huge the gap was between what was obviously happening and what the media expected us to believe.

The firestorm has centered on two lightning-rod events. At the Opening Ceremony, we saw a segment appear to mock a key scene from Christianity, a major world religion. And in women’s boxing, we watched a “female” competitor with a distinctively male appearance punch her opponent so hard she quickly forfeited her match.

In both cases, we were told that what we thought we saw wasn’t reality. Let’s unpack.

Paris Opening Ceremony Puts “The Last Supper” in Drag

Olympic opening ceremonies have historically set the tone for the games and encouraged unity while showcasing the host country’s culture.

The 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, for instance, featured 2,008 drummers in Beijing National Stadium performing an incredibly impressive routine with traditional Chinese drums.

The ceremony in Paris this year seemed to err more on the side of division. There were bright spots and beautiful moments, such as Celine Dion’s performance at the Eiffel Tower, but these were unfortunately overshadowed by a segment that caused outrage.

One of the theatrical settings featured a drag show, which seemed clearly designed to reference Leonardo da Vinci’s famous painting, “The Last Supper” (with the scene in question being Jesus’s last meal with his disciples and the institution of the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist). 

The recognition of this was widespread and immediate, with viewers hitting social media to complain as it was happening live. What was even more interesting was that it wasn’t just self-identifying Christians who were offended by what felt like a parody of this religious scene. Even many who don’t claim the faith found it unsettling and in very poor taste.

Perhaps the most prominent of these critics was Elon Musk, who found it “extremely disrespectful.”

Rapidly afterward, the damage control started. The official line from many media outlets became that the drag segment was never intended to parody “The Last Supper” and was instead intended to reference a different painting, a more obscure work by artist Jan van Bijlert called “The Feast of the Gods.” 

Art history sleuths will find this a flimsy justification in light of the fact that Van Bijlert painted “The Feast of the Gods” about 150 years after Da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” and very likely referenced it. “The Feast of the Gods” is a pagan reimagining of the Christian scene and reads to some as a mockery of the religion. 

Official statements from the ceremony designer and the Paris 2024 producers were in conflict. A statement from the producers claimed that designer Thomas Jolly “took inspiration from Leonardo da Vinci’s famous painting to create the setting,” adding that “[Jolly] is not the first artist to make a reference to what is a world-famous work of art.”

But Jolly himself said, “It’s not my inspiration, and that should be pretty obvious… The idea was to depict a big pagan celebration, linked to the gods of Olympus, and thus the Olympics.”

In either case, social media users attempting to upload footage of the ceremony to provide commentary were served copyright notices, and it’s now impossible to find official footage of the segment or the full opening ceremony on YouTube. After the confusion, the evidence was quickly scrubbed.

This included a deleted Instagram post by one of the segment’s performers, directly linking the show to the “Last Supper” image.

Olympic organizers were eventually compelled to deliver a statement. Paris 2024 spokesperson Anne Descamps said that organizers felt the “ambition was achieved” to create an opening ceremony “[celebrating] community tolerance” and that “if people have taken any offense we are, of course, really, really sorry.”

The burden of responsibility was placed on those who may have been offended rather than on the Olympics for making a poor judgment call.

Women’s Boxing Gold Medalists Previously Disqualified As Men

The Opening Ceremony debacle was bad enough, but Paris 2024 quickly proceeded to a fresh controversy that’s arguably worse. 

As the women’s boxing matches began, an early fight in the 66 kg category between Italian Angela Carini and Algerian Imane Khelif ended after only 46 seconds, when Carini withdrew. She had received a startling series of powerful punches, including one that broke her nose. Disoriented and upset, she ended the match (with Khelif declared the winner) and fell to her knees in tears. Bystanders heard her yell, “It isn’t fair!”

Anyone observing Carini’s opponent Khelif would be forgiven for thinking that Carini was not, in fact, fighting another woman. The difference in frame between Khelif and the other boxers has been plain to see. Accordingly, media whistleblowers quickly picked up on the fact that Khelif – along with another Olympic boxer, Taiwan’s Lin Yu-Ting – had faced previous disqualification by the International Boxing Association (IBA) for failing gender eligibility tests.

These tests were not simple testosterone level measurements – the tests determined that both Khelif and Lin possess male XY chromosomes vs. the female XX. Chromosomal formation has historically been the scientific determinant of biological sex. 

At issue is the fact that the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which sets Olympic boxing regulations, has updated its eligibility requirements to reflect more fluid conceptions of gender. The IOC now only requires women’s division competitors to “declare” that they are female and maintain testosterone levels below a threshold that is well above average for most women.

These updates match the IOC’s official inclusion policy, which specifically states that eligibility rules should not “exclude athletes from competition” based on “gender identity, physical appearance, and/or sex variations.”

That final category is the most worrisome. No evidence has emerged that either Imane Khelif or Lin Yu-Ting identify as transgender – and IOC President Thomas Bach has relied on this, stating in a press conference that both boxers were “born as a woman,” “raised as a woman,” and “have a passport as a woman.”

Yet if this is the case, the evidence being what it is, it seems quite likely that both may be individuals with a genetic abnormality called “Difference of Sexual Development” (DSD). These are the “sex variations” that the IOC’s guidelines refer to – clearly making allowance for competitors with male physical advantages to compete against chromosomally typical women. 

Outlet after outlet, however, has been making the case that these honest concerns about fairness and safety are hateful and mean-spirited. NBC News, for instance, called alarm over the boxers’ participation “specious” and dragged Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling for speaking out.

These media outlets dismiss the IBA and its findings, stating that the test results were never released and were inconclusive. Meanwhile, the IBA continues to be clear on exactly what the tests determined, and the World Boxing Association, along with the Independent Council on Women’s Sports, have stepped in with support.

Another type of result speaks volumes: Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-Ting both dominated their opponents to win Olympic gold.

Closing Thoughts

The main thing I couldn’t help but notice regarding both of these controversies is that they seemed to evoke feelings of disgust.

Both events – unfolding on live television – brought people out of the woodwork to express reactive anger, admittedly before tallying the facts. This isn’t uncommon in today’s media landscape, and in each case, there were contradictory emerging details – was the Opening Ceremony referencing “The Last Supper” or a different painting? Is this apparently male boxer transgender or a “woman” who happens to have DSD?

The more I’ve thought about this, though, the more it seems clear to me that it doesn’t really matter, and this is why many are so upset. It’s impossible to believe that an international phenomenon like the Olympics wasn’t paying attention to optics – “The Last Supper” correspondence was obvious. And the videos of Khelif and Lin fighting speak for themselves – do they look fair to anyone honestly watching? Do they look like a woman in a boxing ring with a man?

What we saw, by deep instinct, immediately put off many of us. And the strength of these reactions, brought on by the craziness of the events, was dismissed – once again – as hysteria. The disgust is partially from being told that we can’t trust what we’re seeing. And “shame on us,” as usual, for drawing certain conclusions.

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