Met Gala: American Independence.
A critique of boutique liberalism.
The Met Gala is the epitome of class in America. An annual fundraising event held at the Metropolitan Museum in New York City, which normally charges from $14–25 admissions for the general public. On admissions alone, the MET makes over $42M. Their fundraising events however are only accessible to a curated, elite list, with the annual Costume Institute Gala becoming a night as big as the Academy Awards with tickets costing $35,000.
The festivities scream party at DISTRICT 1 (from ficticious Panem, in the Hunger Games, this, the Northernmost district to the Capitol primarily focuses on manufacturing luxury) Designers and their guest celebrities spend the evening luxuriating in fantastic gowns and jewels while we watch. Each year a different theme and for this year the theme presented by curator Andrew Bolton was American Independence and it coincides with the opening of the museums newest exhibition on American Fashion. To his credit Bolton chose designers that are often overlooked in the industry. But Ironically, or rather, due to the inescapable reality of the capitalist dystopia we are living through, an exhibit which the curator stated to The Guardian ‘very much came out of the BLM movement’ saw its opening with corrupt, racist NYPD violently harrassing and arresting peaceful young Black Lives Matter protesters, exercising their first amendment rights to call out the hypocrisy and overindulgence of these festivities while people continue to die. For an entire exhibition to be inspired by a movement for Black Lives and then look the other way when cops are beating that same movement on your front door is reprehensible to say the least.
Limousine liberalism does this. They take our struggles, critiques and rhetoric and repackage them for mass consumption and personal gain, which equates to dollar signs. Boltons pandering is not the most obnoxious of the night though. That goes to Alexandria Ocasio- Cortez and her dress.
First. What does tax the rich even mean? You cannot plea with the rich to tax themselves, when the reality is that corporations and individuals with enough dough can and do donate towards politicos campaigns as well as pay people to lobby in their best interests, which include tax breaks, bailouts and more. So for what is worth that dress could have been at most an annoyance to the elites present but more likely, it was probably just a source of amusement. And to what end? if we tax the rich but not address systemic racism and neocolonialism all we will have is more money to go toward the military, police and politicos salaries.
No one is more guilty than Boutique Liberalism than AOC because AOC and her team know a good meme opportunity when presented to them. She is a politico but more than that, she is a brand, with a whole team of Millenials and Gen Zers strategizing ways to keep her relevant, which include cosplaying Socialist Revolutionary to the chagrin of the right and the left.
She stated that she and the designer discussed ‘what it means to be working-class women of color at the Met’ in preparation for this, without thinking that there are actual working class women of color, at the Met, serving them, cleaning after them. Invisible. Alexandria is far away from her bartending days, she now has actual power, enough to affect real change yet chooses to hide behind twitter feuds and cool pop culture references that have little to do with politics but much to do with having an appealing and approachable brand. She is a celebrity. A safe way to consume anti capitalist ideas without fighting against the ideas of capital and the neocolonial state, (if she wasnt her dress would have read FREE PR.)
AOC is the result of post Obama-Bernie Sanders fever that swept the Democrats over, something which began with good intentioned intersectionalismo, but quickly turned into a chimera of identity politics, personal charisma-cult personality and bare minimum cloutivism that yields lukewarm legislators. She has given us such classic performances as ‘wears all white to spite Trump’, makes fun of the same alt right trolls we love to hate on social media and mira mamita! You wear those hoops on the floor and make us all proud to be professional Latinas./s It is just enough to virtue signal to the Poor who elected her that she is still just like us, to give the liberals the BossBabe-Queen vibes they so want while giving Republicans an adversary. She can switch it up from Trumps Child Concentration Camps to Joes Overflow Fascilities for Unaccompanied Minors and then hit us (the left) with this in response to “critique‘ (April of this year)
Well, I think it’s a really privileged critique. We’re gonna have to focus on solidarity with one another, developing our senses for good faith critique and bad faith critique. Because bad faith critique can destroy everything that we have built so swiftly. And we know this because it has in the past, and it’s taken us so many decades to get to this point. We do not have the time or the luxury to entertain bad faith actors in our movement.
For once, I agree with AOC, we do not have the luxury to entertain bad faith actors yet here I am entertaining her liberal bullshit again because there is nothing more priviledged than calling the most marginalized, desperate for justice among us and our demands a critique… Well, there is something more privileged: An elected official performing revolutionary in a ball gown while her own constituents, real revolutionaries are beaten and hauled to jail, because god forbid these young folks ruin the elites costume party.
Reverend Leonina Arismendi Zarkovic is part of the Prophetic Council for the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival and Co-Leader at Iglesia del Pueblo. They are an award winning writer and artist from Uruguay living in the US.
Keep my writing Free: Become a Patreon.
