The Met Gala 2022,"Inclusion" DEI & Americana
On May 2nd, 2022, celebrities graced us with their majestic presence while the masked untermensch took pictures. Well, except for this badass off to the right, full on mask down. Love you bleached haired man, whoever you are!
But while we’re talking about masks, they have never been proven to be effective, even in surgical theater.
Statistical analysis of the extracted data revealed no statistically significant association between mask usage and the incidence of surgical site infection. The study concluded that ‘it is unclear whether the wearing of surgical facemasks by members of the surgical team has any impact on surgical wound infection rates for patients undergoing clean surgery’.
This is all a farce, but the show must go on! Just like “Transwomen are women”, amiright? In 2021 Kim Kardashian went full burka, I mean mask. This dehumanizing look brought to you by Balenciaga. Disconnection is an ongoing theme in the imagery of popular culture. But that was so last year!
This year the theme is, “In America: An Anthology of Fashion” and of course inclusivity!!
From Vogue:
The theme for part two is In America: An Anthology of Fashion, and the exhibition will see Andrew Bolton, head curator of the Museum of Modern Art’s Costume Institute, focus on inclusivity in fashion. “Who gets to be American?” was a question posed at Prabal Gurung’s spring/summer 2020 show, and it will be addressed at the Met Gala 2022, as well.
I looked at Gurung’s 2020 Show done in 2019.
The pieces are a mix of gowns, streetwear, and lots of feathers. Red, black, blue and white. Gurung’s vision of Americana. He is a Nepalese Immigrant. So, who gets to be American? To me a more interesting question is, “what is America”? When observed through the lens of the postmodern “other” America is alienating. Gurung, like his models, are tokenized, an American tradition as old colonizing.
But Gurung’s question is “Who gets to be an American?” and my answer is, “Which America?” What I mean by this, is that there are many Americas, and many ways to be an American. In this way the original idea of inclusivity and intersectionality make sense. America is a place with many different kinds of people just trying to live. However, just like identity, the words inclusivity and diversity have been colonized and hollowed out by corporate and governmental entities.
This is why we can never seem to get away from the word inclusivity these days. It is because every business is doing DEI. Last time I wrote about it, I focused on Disney. But it’s a set of policies, spanning both the corporate and non profit sectors, focused on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.
According to the website Inclusion Hub, inclusion is “about diversity in practice. It’s the act of welcoming, supporting, respecting, and valuing all individuals and groups.”
All groups is a little vague. So let’s see what Ford thinks it is.
Inclusion builds a culture of belonging by actively inviting the contribution and participation of all people. We believe every person’s voice adds value, and we strive to create balance in the face of power differences. We believe that no one person can or should be called upon to represent an entire community.
Ok. Here is the ever present all. Does everyone’s voice really add value? Doesn’t Inclusion now come with the idea that I have to accept “Gender Identity” as real and not a belief in someone’s head?
How will Ford strive to create balance in the face of power differences when it is a monolith of corporate power and control?
The last sentence in the Ford quote is interesting because it is hinting that, though they say everyone’s voice adds value, these voices still can not represent a community. The individual’s voice doesn’t really matter to them, and why should it when they can dictate who you are as a consumerist individual?
But back to The Met Gala 2022.
What does inclusivity mean in the fashion world? To the Met it means featuring 5 Native American designers. If you’re a famous activist like Quannah Chasinghorse you wear a stunning blue gown made by Prabal Gurung.
At best it is a cynical tokenism. But, though there were 5 featured Native American designers, the Met also included many big name directors and designers for “In America: A Fashion Anthology”.
It is interesting that Vogue did not report on why the celebrity class were dressed like they were going to a 1920’s party…
Or a spaceship that seems to be designed and directed by Tim Burton. One thing is clear, you can’t afford this party and neither can I.
There was a lot of duality imagery, including Sarah Jessica Parker and NBA star Russell Westbrook.
Even Pete Davidson and Kim Kardashian are doing a subtle duality. She is wearing “Marilyn Monroe's iconic dress -- the one she famously sang "Happy Birthday, Mr. President" in at John F. Kennedy's birthday fundraiser in 1962.” Kris Kardashian went in a dress inspired by Jackie Kennedy.
The Kardashian version of Americana is very creepy, if you ask me. But a lot of the outfits were an homage to Americana, like Blake Lively evoking The Statue of Liberty, or some wearing vintage pieces. Sarah Jessica Parker said her look was inspired by Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley, “a seamstress, civil rights activist, and author, who made history as the first female Black fashion designer to work in the White House”.
However the fashion theme of the night was “Gilded Glamour”. The 1920s and 2020s have a lot of parallels and one of these is the class divide. This all reminds me of an F Scott Fitzgerald story called “A Diamond As Big as The Ritz”. It is a told from the perspective of John T Unger. He is from a place called Hades, MS. Here he meets a young man who tells him that his father is “the richest man in the world”. John travels west to meet Percy Washington’s family and discovers a terrible secret.
Washington’s father has convinced his slaves that the South won, and has moved them all to a diamond mine. He has found the biggest resource of diamonds in the world. However he can’t devalue the market with using all of his diamonds, so he uses the slaves and lies to them for years. He also kills outsiders or keeps them trapped so that the family secret won’t be revealed.
Everyone is trapped with them in a gulch between two mountains. Washington says that this is where America Stops.
"The worst is over," said Percy, squinting out the window. "It's only five miles from here, and our own roadtapestry brickall the way. This belongs to us. This is where the United States ends, father says."
In a way the past two years of policy have shown us many different Americas. Mainly that the rich and powerful truly do believe in rules for thee and not for me. The masked untermensch are there to serve the fantasy and the rift between classes could not be more apparent.
This ties neatly into the Americana Gilded Age theme that the Met is going for. Despite the tokenism of the inclusion of 5 Native American designers, they relied on some big names to design entire rooms.
The sets range from a creepy Martin Scorsese cocktail party in which “a faintly menacing male figure looking in from outside”. To Tom Ford’s mirrored room depicting the fashion Battle of Versailles.
Not to be missed is Tom Ford’s take of “The Battle of Versailles,” the 1973 fashion showdown between American and European designers at Versailles. Ford reimagined airborne chrome mannequins fencing and midair martial arts-like with a Stephen Burrows dress and other designs that were shown in The Battle of Versailles in the gallery with John Vanderlyn’s 1819 panoramic view of Versailles.
I am struck by how fashion is one of the easiest ways to observe “Gender” in our society. As much as these big institutions want to pay lip service to “inclusion”, the fact remains that when Gender is observed as a sex role stereotype, mutable throughout space and time, we can see what that society expects the sexes to look and act like.
The exhibit and the stars on the carpet show us this perfectly. We still see mainly gowns or tuxes. Some women wore pantsuits and some men kilts, skirts or capes. That is about as groundbreaking as one can get within the confines of fashion. All of this is of course documented by the masked underclass there to take pictures and interview the so called Stars to send a specific message.
That THEY are the true voices that matter in the new golden age of a stellar materialism, not out of this world, but very much of it. This is all to produce false want and need. It is also a signal to remember where you are on the totem pole.
Gender is just one way to keep the sexes in line. As much as the Met wants to tout inclusivity, there is only a hollow tokenism. Why not let the same 5 Native American designers do the sets too? Because the power imbalance will always be there no matter how far you climb up the ladder of fame. These people are just false idols that are meant to subdue us into a spectacle induced slumber.
Chris Hedges explored this topic in “Empire of Illusion” quite well.
“Sadism dominates the culture … Corporatism is about crushing the capacity for moral choice and diminishing the individual to force him or her into an ostensibly harmonious collective ... We retreat into the narrow, confined ghettos created for us and shut our eyes to the deadly superstructure of the corporate state.”
The Met Gala 2022 is meant to remind us that this farce must go on until it no longer rings true to the underclass. That we must listen to them and follow their politics and programs because if we didn’t there would be a true revolution. In the Fitzgerald story, Washington can only keep his slaves as long as they don’t know that others are free. DEI programs are just lip service and hot air to perpetuate the lie that big industry cares while the machine turns its wheels and people continue to buy the lie. There is nothing more American than that!