French Culture Minister Rachida Dati has awarded DJ Barbara Butch the «Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres» decoration.
In case you have never heard of this person, well, she made the headlines when during the opening ceremony of the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris she appeared in a parody of Christ during a mock Last Supper scene.
The opening ceremony, with its questionable aesthetics, sparked outrage among believers and beyond for its ideological nature, marked by LGBT activism and deliberate provocation.
Beyond Butch’s questionable ‘artistic performance,’ it is the person herself who seems rather far removed from a ‘Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres’ (Knight of Arts and Literature). In terms of arts, Butch’s talent is limited to mixing and composing for her favourite audience, drag queens, with unambiguous creations such as one of her hit songs, “Muy Lesbienne.” This is certainly a far cry from the ideal of universal beauty. As for literature, Butch’s can be summed up in the tattoo with which she proclaims her artistic manifesto: “fat and dyke.”
What she is really known for is that she is a zealous advocate for two causes: body positivity (which led her to pose nude on the cover of the cultural magazine Telerama), and the LGBT lobby.
When she was attacked for her poor performance at the opening ceremony, Butch filed a complaint for “aggravated cyber harassment, death threats and aggravated public insults.” Her lawyer then portrayed her as a heroine of progressivism, criticising in a statement those who “can’t stand her representing France because she is a woman, a lesbian, fat, Jewish…” The lawyer concluded: “By attacking her, they are attacking the values, rights and freedoms of France.”
Under these circumstances, it is difficult to make any critical comments about the ‘lady’ in question—if she can be described with such a glorious term.
Butch said on Instagram that she was proud to have been made a “knightress” (une chevalière, but the word does not exist in French with this meaning).
As for Rachida Dati, who comes from the Right and originally from the ranks of the Les Républicains party and was the mayor of the very chic 7th arrondissement of Paris: this choice is another of her many gestures to the Left since she assumed office. Since taking up the emblematic post of minister of culture, she has been sending out numerous signals to the left-wing cultural scene, such as her announcement of a large, publicly funded centre dedicated to hip hop. The explanation is simple: she aims to succeed Anne Hidalgo as mayor of Paris. Parisians have cause for concern.
