The Met Gala , which means nothing to most of us, is very important to the cultural glitterati, the people who make culture.
The Met Gala is the Marie Antoinette of the modern American landscape. Every year, a bunch of very rich and very famous people get enormous attention for wearing some of the most bizarre and expensive garbage imaginable while the rest of the country tries to pay its bills.
And then we are told that those rich people are brave and groundbreaking for doing so.
Ironically, the theme of this year’s Met Gala was “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style.” Clearly, when this year’s event was originally considered, people thought Kamala Harris was going to be president of the United States. It was designed as a celebration party for the nation’s second black president, Kamala Harris.
And then she lost.
And so now we are in this weird nether region in which the Left continues to whine that Kamala Harris should have won the election, even though she lost.
The New York Times reported:
Last October, when the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute announced its next fashion show, “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style,” the political landscape looked very different.
Kamala Harris, the first female vice president and the first Black woman ever to top a major-party ticket, was in the final weeks of her campaign for the White House. The show, the culmination of five years of work by Andrew Bolton, the Costume Institute’s curator in charge, to diversify the department’s holdings and shows in the wake of the racial reckoning brought about by George Floyd’s murder, seemed long overdue.
Right. There was nothing that was longer overdue than a fashion show about black fashion. That is why George Floyd died, so the Met Gala could have extraordinarily rich and famous people wear bizarre outfits worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Clearly, that was necessary.
The Times continued:
On Monday, however, when it finally opens to the starry guests at its signature gala, the splashiest party of the year, it will do so in a very different world. One in which the federal government has functionally declared war on diversity, equity and inclusion, as well as programming related to race — especially in cultural institutions.
The theme of this year’s Met Gala was based on an exhibit at the Met Museum that:
explores the importance of style to the formation of Black identities in the Atlantic diaspora, particularly in the United States and Europe. Through a presentation of garments and accessories, paintings, photographs, decorative arts, and more, from the 18th century to today, the exhibition interprets the concept of dandyism as both an aesthetic and a strategy that allowed for new social and political possibilities.
The apparent goal was to recreate the mood of outfits that were worn by black people in resistance to white supremacy. The Metropolitan Museum wrote:
Together, these characteristics demonstrate how one’s self-presentation is a mode of distinction and resistance—within a society impacted by race, gender, class, and sexuality. Together, these characteristics demonstrate how one’s self-presentation is a mode of distinction and resistance within a society impacted by race, gender, class, and sexuality.
You might notice that this is not the sartorial splendor for black people of the past; in fact, if you watch movies and shows that are made about the early 20th century, there was a form of black fashion and it was actually quite cool.
But that is not what this was, because the Gala had to be used to prop up the ideology that suggests that being black is equivalent to being gay, is equivalent to being transgender, is equivalent to being transgressive in virtually all of its forms.
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This Gala was race-directed. The Left is going to have to confront a backlash because the American people are tired of DEI; it was one of the main reasons why Democrats lost in the last election cycle. Americans are extraordinarily tired of thinking tribally along racial lines.
So many of the DEI traps about race are Catch-22s; on the one hand, there can be a suggestion that if a historically black area has a lot of investment and white people drive up the real estate prices, this is “gentrification” and “wrecking the neighborhood.” But if white people move out of that area, then that is called “white flight.”
The same thing holds true when it comes to things such as fashion. If white people pay tribute to black people through fashion, then that is cultural appropriation. And if they don’t, then that is neglecting the impact of black fashion on America and the West.
Let’s put it this way: If the future of the Democratic Party is re-embracing DEI through an effete fashionista sensibility, good luck to the Democrats. This is precisely the kind of crap that most Americans are ready to end. This is not a reversion to normality. It’s a reversion to Bizarre World.
The class differentiation at the Met Gala is what sets it apart, but the attempt to cut the class differentiation by reference to race is a giant failure.
The Democrats wonder why blue-collar voters of every stripe moved away from them? It’s because the actual morality that drives the Democratic Party is a snooty elitism that sneers at people who don’t have the same aesthetic tastes that they do.
I don’t have the same aesthetic taste as many Americans; I listen to classical music; I’m an Orthodox Jew, and my aesthetic and cultural tastes might not necessarily be the same as a blue-collar worker from Wisconsin. But that doesn’t mean that my aesthetic and cultural tastes are better than the blue-collar workers from Wisconsin.
What reeks from all of the pictures of the people at the Gala is a disdain for normal Americans.
And that is why Donald Trump is president.
