Comment | The top elite of Paris imitate the Netflix blockbuster, and the consequences can be dire

on Netflix a movie was released in June, which gathered a bewildering number of viewers both in Finland and elsewhere. By Xavier Gens guided by A wall in the depths (2024) takes advantage of our fear of sharks, this time in the center of Paris. Judging by the more than 70 million viewers, something has hit the mark.

I wrote about the movie column fresh.

Column after the release the shark output disappeared from my mind until a couple of weeks ago it popped up again. The reason was the coverage of the Paris Olympics. Seinen was said to be so dirty that planned swimming competitions could not be held there at all.

Particularly challenging was the coliform bacteria spreading from feces into the water, which could take the Olympic swimmers to the bathroom instead of the finish line or, at worst, to the hospital.

The news sounded quite familiar, until I remembered that in the movie Seine and the seas, the pollutants take center stage along with sharks.

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The Olympics have become a spectacle where real life imitates a movie inspired by real life.

Then life began to imitate a horror movie even more ruthlessly. Its central character is the female mayor of Paris (Anne Marivin), who adamantly refuses to listen to warnings that would prevent the organization of the Olympic Games.

With his PR teams, he repeats the billions invested in the Olympics and praises the PR benefits of the Games.

“It’s our job to turn it into a positive,” he says, admiring his miniature model of the city.

Contributions are also tough in real life. In the Paris Olympics, open water swimming and the swimming leg of the triathlon will be swum in the Seine, and France has spent about 1.4 billion euros to clean the river.

In addition, the mayor Anne Hidalgo has promised that public swimming beaches will be opened along the Seine next year. The promise is unique, as swimming has been prohibited in the river for over a hundred years.

So the news of coliform bacteria was the last thing Hidalgo’s office wanted to hear during the Games.

The mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, markets the cleanliness of the Seine by taking a dip in the river. Picture: Abdul Saboor / Reuters

For everything luckily, the mayor’s PR team seems to have talent that surpasses the ingenuity of even the film’s colleagues. A week ago, Hidalgo took a dip in the Seine for a swim while the townspeople and the international media admired it.

“A little cool but clean,” the mayor was reported to have said.

Little by little, the swimming part of the Olympics has become a media spectacle, where real life imitates a movie inspired by real life.

Little it’s terrible. Movies and TV series have predicted Trump’s rise to the presidency, terrorist attacks and the corona pandemic.

When life starts imitating a dystopian horror movie, we are in dangerous waters.

We’ll see what else emerges from Seine’s competition pool.