Opening ceremonies to Olympic Games are an opportunity for nations to tell a positive story to the world and to themselves. In 2012, Danny Boyle’s virtuoso portrait of a vibrant, multicultural Britain did just that. Sadly, a far less uplifting narrative has been taking shape across the channel, ahead of this summer’s Olympics in Paris.
A vicious outpouring of bile from far-right politicians has followed unconfirmed rumours that Aya Nakamura, a black French-Malian pop star, may be chosen to sing at the Paris Games. On the banks of the Seine, a racist banner was unfurled by far-right activists that read: “No way Aya; this is Paris, not the Bamako market.” Last week, Marine Le Pen weighed in, denying Ms Nakamura’s fitness for the Olympics role and ridiculing her lyrics, which deploy the argot typical of the working-class Parisian suburb where she grew up. “I’m going to talk to you about her outfit, her vulgarity, the fact that she doesn’t sing French,” Ms Le Pen said on national radio. “She doesn’t sing foreign either. She sings we don’t know what.”
Ms Nakamura, whose parents moved to France when she was a baby, is a global phenomenon at the age of 28. Her songs have been streamed more than 7bn times, she is the face of one of the country’s most famous perfume brands, and last year she sold out three Paris gigs in the space of 15 minutes. She should be celebrated as a multicultural success story. That, one imagines, was the thinking of Emmanuel Macron, who has reportedly suggested that she sing an Edith Piaf song at the Games’ opening. Instead Ms Nakamura finds herself a target for politicians determined to police the boundaries of “Frenchness” according to blatantly racist assumptions about who can represent France.
This is not the first time that the far right has cast its malign shadow over significant cultural events. Before the Euro 2020 football tournament held in 2021, the choice of a rapper of Congolese descent to write the French squad’s anthem provoked a furore. In 2016, a performer whose Senegalese grandfather fought for the French army was prevented from appearing at a commemoration event of the battle of Verdun. Notoriously, in the 2000s, Ms Le Pen’s father, Jean-Marie, criticised the number of black footballers in one of the most successful national sides in French history.
These were grubby and shameful episodes. But it is particularly troubling that in the case of Ms Nakamura, ethocentric prejudice appears to be embedded in the mainstream. In a survey conducted in the wake of Mr Macron’s reported invitation, 73% of respondents said she did not represent “French” music and 63% were against her headlining the opening ceremony. France has one of the largest and longest-standing minority ethnic populations in Europe. But after years of attrition in the culture wars, its public square is too often a hostile environment for people of colour.
This summer’s Olympic Games in Paris will follow European elections that increasingly look like a fork in the road for French politics and society. Polls point, depressingly, to a victory in June for Ms Le Pen’s radical-right Rassemblement National, ahead of a presidential election in 2027, which polls suggest she has a good chance of winning. The mockery and abuse of Ms Nakamura offers an unsavoury glimpse of what that dystopian future in France might look like.
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