Opinion: France is putting a multicultural face forward at the Olympics. Not everyone is pleased about it

Editor’s Note: Adam Plowright is the author of “The French Exception: Emmanuel Macron – The Extraordinary Rise and Risk.” The views expressed in this commentary are his own. Read more CNN Opinion.

Every host country of the Olympic Games faces a reckoning. It’s not a trial like a war or national disaster. It can’t be compared to an election of the sort America faces this fall. But the world’s biggest sporting event holds a mirror up to a nation like few other events.

Part of the reason is that organizing it is so mind-bogglingly complex. It stress tests a country’s government. It places incredible burdens on the state bureaucracy. Frequently, given the cost overruns, it strains the public finances. But it also begs answers to bigger, uncomfortable questions.

The hardest of them is deciding what the Olympics mean. After a public investment of billions of dollars and years of preparations, what do we, the host country, want to show the world about ourselves? In the case of France, which will play host to 10,000 athletes and 10 million spectators in less than two months’ time, the response remains unclear.

So far, the run up to Paris 2024 has served only to spotlight the country’s stark divisions, its doubts and neuroses. Most of the attention — and rancor — has focused on the grandiose, norm-breaking opening ceremony being planned on the river Seine.

The concept — a flotilla of river boats will carry athletes through the heart of the City of Light — seems gloriously French in its ambition and potential beauty, but it’s also possible to detect a whiff of Gallic hubris. An opening parade in the stadium, with athletes trudging around in tracksuits? Mais non! Not for us. Isn’t an open-air parade a bit risky in our terror-hit world? We must be “iconic”!

This sort of grandstanding appeals to the likes of President Emmanuel Macron and might have been more widely appreciated in a more confident France, the one of the 1960s and 1970s — not the contemporary version that is so riven with self-doubt. Instead, many people seem genuinely worried.

And nothing has done more to sour the mood — or sow division — than the row over the music for the opening ceremony. From the moment it leaked to the media in late February, the news that pop star Aya Nakamura was set to perform has split opinion.

That the Mali-born and Paris-raised singer is one of the best-known and most-streamed French artists internationally counted for little in the eyes of many conservatives, and indeed most of the country, according to polls. Neither did her reported desire to adapt Edith Piaf, one of the legends of French chanson. 

The intended statement — about multiculturalism, creativity, inclusion — was drowned out by criticism described as “pure and simple racism” by the country’s justice minister. Far-right leader Marine Le Pen took aim at Nakamura’s supposed “vulgarity,” suggesting that her representing France would “humiliate” the country. Others accused her of mangling the French language. Her main offense appeared to be simply not looking or sounding “French” enough for her detractors. (The singer clapped back in song, lambasting the “load of enemies” who have expressed disdain for her music.)

It was inevitable that the Games would be dragged into the culture wars about France’s identity and future, even more so in the middle of campaigning for European elections. Eagle-eyed critics soon spotted that the official Olympics poster, a hand-drawn artist’s depiction of Paris, lacked a Christian cross that should have been atop the Invalides landmark.

“What is the point of holding the Olympic Games in France if we then hide who we are?” asked Marion Marechal, an arch-conservative whose party attracts the country’s disaffected Catholics. Elsewhere, the Paris mayor had to jump to the defense of a drag queen when she was hounded online after announcing that she was running a leg of the Olympic torch relay.

So what will it all mean? What message will France deliver to the world? Will the arguments and the self-doubt, the braying and the grumbling, all be forgotten once the boats take to the water on a shimmering Seine on July 26?

As things stand, the infrastructure is ready or being finished.

The budget overrun is small by historical standards. The vision is nothing but impressive. It’s possible to imagine the Games being a powerful statement about the efficiency of French administration and the country’s enduring beauty, which would rouse national pride. A success might also be seen as a triumph for the democratic world in its ideological struggle with the world’s autocracies.

Yet even if Nakumura dazzles at the opening ceremony, even if the Games enhance the country’s reputation for elegance and refinement, don’t expect such a divided, querulous nation to remain long in the fuzzy, feel-good mood of national accomplishment.