First it starts with a comedy video which turns into this weird creepy thing about kids running through the Paris sewers, encountering an alligator, then getting rowed out and into the Seine by a ghost and it cuts to reality and all the nations are going down the river on boats past a bunch of water jets because they're not doing this in a stadium.
This looks awful and ridiculous. Compare this to the spectacle of London 2012.
Now they're doing some weird old Hollywood movie musical style musical number with Lady Gaga and she's on a staircase, which is... somewhere in Paris?
I am so fucking confused.
Edit: They just cut to Macron and he looks as confused as I am.
I always find it strange when host nations choose performers from the non-host nation. Like why is Gaga there? She’s not French.
I wonder how many celebrated French singers are upset that she opened the performance while mangling the French language? Like, I don’t think she did terrible, but was also clearly not a native speaker
The answer is probably none. The Olympics is a celebration of multiculturalism not just the culture of the hosts. If anything, it speaks about the impact of colonialism and historical french cultural hegemony during the XIX century.
Oh, and she does speak french, with an accent, but she does speak it.
Honestly the people who care about this sort of thing are way more upset that a black gasp woman gasp sang rap gasp for the opening ceremony. I'm talking about aya Nakamura.
Gaga, ooh-la-la?
She is even used in memes because one of her lyrics sounds like "I don't wanna be french" which makes it even funnier
Celine Dion will be there too apparently. I guess she's from a Francophone part of Canada at least?
Nah, sounds English to me.
She's Canadian. Quebecois. Her parents too. She is descended from French ancestors, but she is not French. Of course, being from Quebec, she speaks French fluently. I'm not sure if people in France can tell she's Canadian from her accent or the words she uses or whatever. Canadian French is different in some ways from French spoken in France. Not enough to not be mutually understood- similar to the UK and the US.
French with a Canadian partner here. Trust me with some deep-countryside type Quebec folks, we definitely can't understand anything they're saying. To be fair, the same could be said about folks in deep rural regions in France...
True about parts of the UK too though. Especially Scotland.
Yes, I go there regularly and same deal, I struggled even more in Ireland but I think that's because of my Scottish friends I've developed a bit of an ear for it.