Your response relies on narrowing responsibility so much that it avoids the actual critique.
No, my response contends that the Met Gala is headed by lead chairperson Anna Wintour, and that the responsibility of the Gala is ultimately hers and the Costume Institute's. This isn't a narrowing of responsibility, it's literally their responsibility.
The argument isn’t that she personally directs wars it’s that elite networks media, finance, politics, and culture overlap. People at events like the Met Gala often include individuals and institutions that do hold political and economic power. Influence doesn’t require holding office.
Okay, and? Rich, powerful people run in overlapping circles with one another. Sometimes they donate to charity. No one here is saying we should personally like Jeff Bezos just because he gave the met a lot of money this year.
You're framing this as a criticism of the Gala, but "charity takes money from rich people and many rich people may also be doing shitty things and vastly underpay taxes," is just a statement of reality. If rich people paid proportionate taxes and billionaires didn't exist, maybe the Met would be fully publicly funded, and that would be great. Since that isn't reality, they take money from rich people willing to give them money.
> Second, framing it as “just celebrating art” strips away context.
Strips away the context of what? The celebration of fashion and costume art IS the context of the gala you are claiming to criticize.
My critique isn’t that art is meaningless it’s that the scale and setting of that celebration (extreme wealth, exclusivity, spectacle) can reflect and reinforce inequality.
It can, but how do you propose a massive charity event which funds the continued preservation/conservation of a massive costume arts collection for the benefit of the public is ultimately reinforcing inequality, specifically? The design of a gala fundraiser is to put the burden of the majority of the expenses and fundraising on the most wealthy, for the benefit of everyone else.
You can value art and still question the environment in which it’s being showcased.
Sure and if you were criticizing the fact that the Met Museum is no longer completely Pay What You Want admissions despite the massive city benefits it has, I would agree with you! And if you were more broadly interested in criticizing the museum-as-ivory-tower in general and re: the met specifically, i would get that, but it wouldn't be specific to the Met Gala. (Not a new argument, either! I have a whole museum studies degree about learning about these things!)
Third, the “so we should cancel the arts?” line is a strawman. No one is arguing that art funding should stop. The point is that charity and cultural preservation don’t automatically offset or excuse broader systems of inequality. Both things can be true at once.
Absolutely no one argued that the met gala means that broader systems of inequality stopped existing. So counterpoint: you started with a straw man here (also check the tags on your post of people literally arguing that yeah, we shouldn't be funding this when people in other countries are dying. I didn't invent this argument, but the people agreeing with you are making it). You're continuing with the straw man by arguing that the gala is a version of the hunger games entirely about the elite playing dress up and "spectacle and detachment."
the Costume Institute does valuable work, and the event that funds it can still symbolize excess and promote systematic inequality. Genuinely disgusting people with genuine blood on their hands are involved every year in the name of "the arts" and "charity". I frankly don’t care that you donate to an artistic cause when your system of powerful elite friends are killing children every other day overseas.
Again, no one is saying you need to personally like any of the rich people donating money, or think that this absolves them of all their sins. No one made this argument. Even if people were making this argument that's a critique of how rich people view being charitable donors and not the charities or fundraisers themselves.
They're not buying indulgences, for Christ's sake. I can still think Bezos is a shit stain upon humanity even if he donated a lot of money. Those aren't mutually exclusive things, and the gala existing also isn't why Bezos exists. It isn't the cause, and no one needs to like Bezos or literally anyone else personally just because they donated money to this event.
Also just saying it outright: I find myself very unimpressed by people whose knowledge is mostly limited to pop culture news headlines and/or who make repeated vague and non-specific claims of responsibility. You mentioned Gaza and Iran but not the largest humanitarian crisis and genocide currently ongoing in the world, which feels like a massive oversight.
And on Hunger Games the comparison isn’t literal. It’s about spectacle and detachment how entertainment and display can coexist with, and distract from, real suffering elsewhere. You don’t need death matches for the analogy to hold at a symbolic level.
Again, WILD misunderstanding of the purpose of the hunger games being televised state terror/brutality with a side of competition to keep people in line by sowing fear of the government and distrust of their fellow citizens by way of orchestrated animosity.
The hunger games being televised wasn't detachment from real suffering happening elsewhere, because literal children were dying in the arena on screen televised to the whole nation.
The use of the games was to create complacency and expectation/acceptance around state enacted violence against the state's citizens.
Making it entertainment made it something that a) the citizens could bond over culturally b) gave citizens a sense of ownership/competition and "patriotism" towards their tribute and made them less likely to unite with other districts against the state/capitol in rebellion, (and gave participation and victory a sense of prestige among the more privileged districts who could pay to be more competitive) c) made it harder to escape being aware of the brutal violence and intimidation of the state since it was everywhere, which was a tool to keep people complacent and obedient, and d) made the suffering of children a norm and expectation for the public to witness, experience, and personally participate in upholding.
True, the capitol doesn't send their own children, but their orchestration of the spectacle is entirely about causing fear among the districts and demonstrating their own power via very direct state violence:
Taking the kids from our districts, forcing them to kill one another while we watch—this is the Capitol’s way of reminding us how totally we are at their mercy. How little chance we would stand of surviving another rebellion.
This doesn't hold up as a metaphor for the met gala. It's a bad analogy. The met gala is not about violence against citizens to preemptively suppress rebellion. And also the hunger games were not about distracting people from distant violence. The capitol didn't participate, and so didn't need distraction from the violence they enacted, and the violence was intentionally targeted to be literally people's own children. It was viscerally immediate propaganda and violence.
janainaart
snowghoul
origamiaround
yousharknotpass
annaxmalina
jacobvanloon
dailybridgerton
germansingergirl
