Jeff Bezos as a guest of honor, Amazon workers on the street – the Met Gala 2026 showed: celebrity culture is losing its shine. Paula Irmschler’s column.
It was the Met Gala again. That’s the thing where, if you want to pretend you know American culture, in this country you say: It was the Met Gala again. As a result, you can see photos of people with money and fame standing around on these famous stairs, or in front of them, or next to them. They all paid six figures to be there – and the money is, beware: for a good cause. The good cause is the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. However, this can only be perceived as a good cause if one does not question why art is financed by private donations, why people have so much money and why everything doesn’t actually belong to everyone anyway. So the whole thing is already made up – the problem and the solution are pure invention – and the generosity around it is the narrative that is supposed to make us approve of it.
Beauty as an imposition
There is also the topic of beauty, which will be discussed the following day. Not whether it exists at all, but how much. Who was the most beautiful! Of course it’s all about the outfit, but also about the body, the face, the hair. Defenders of standard beauty and expensive clothes always act as if there were objective evaluation criteria for these things – of course there aren’t really, and everyone suspects that if they think about it for a few minutes longer. But somehow it must not have been in vain how hard it was hammered into people’s minds that expensive is synonymous with beautiful and that the robes and faces presented here should therefore be particularly beautiful. Here they are from this year:
The people commenting on these photos by Landon Nordeman were very happy – quite maliciously – because he showed people the way they look for a change: with their real skin made up, pressed into their clothes, with their visible operations and relaxed facial expressions, without filters, without “flattering” lighting that norms beauty. But these people have always looked the way they do here. It’s just that we’ve been sold for too long that adults can have the skin and hair of children, as well as pornographic bodies, and that we’re okay with that. But the number seems to have been exhausted. This form of celebrity culture is no longer as popular. People have different problems, thanks to the Internet they are more knowledgeable about the diversity of beauty and what it looks like behind the scenes of celebrities. There was #MeToo, the constant lying to the Kardashians, everything about Epstein, now the ingratiation of some stars to Trump. Distorted faces and diamonds always look particularly good on fascists.
The invisible become visible
The people who actually create this wealth are no longer invisible enough – especially in the USA. With Jeff Bezos as honorary chairman of this year’s Met Gala, they probably bought the wrong person. Because HIS workers were immediately there and – once again – staged a big protest. Among other things, an Anti-Met Gala:
The workers are taking over the streets! And it seems to me, now that even the mayor hasn’t come to this damned gala, that maybe it’s just over – or could be over soon. That the cities could slowly belong to the people again if they continue like this. Or as the absolute coolest person in the world, Mary Hill (who still has to work at Amazon at 72!) says: “If we built it, we can tear it down!”
(By the way, you can donate using the link under the post so that she can finally retire…)
In this podcast, co-founder of the “Amazon Labor Union” Derrick Palmer explains how the Amazon workforce organized itself.
It’s really worth listening to – also because he gives lots of tips on how to organize yourself in your own workplace.
The machine continues to run
Meanwhile, the RICH AND BEAUTIFUL are of course not giving up. Protesters were arrested and removed by police and the event was able to take place undisturbed.
Culturally, too, the machine continues to run. More and more AI photos of celebrities appeared at the Met Gala – in some cases we no longer knew which photo was actually real, which is just another argument against the aesthetics of these people. Somehow it doesn’t matter. And if you look at the footage from the Anti-Gala again, you’ll see why. Why good art and culture CANNOT take place at the Met Gala. The rich are alone and stoic, and no one is really having fun. They don’t know how to party, their bodies never wobble, they’re not allowed to fall down, sweat, spread out – and can’t influence anything with it. Nothing about it is pretty. People make culture, not wealth or power.
“Melania” vs. “The Devil Wears Prada”
And: they are trying way too hard. This became clearer than ever in the two cultural products that I watched over the days, which were related to the same topic. Namely the documentary “Melania” (Amazon!) and the old “The Devil Wears Prada” film from 2006. The first because I wanted to know why not enough right-wingers initially wanted to see the thing in the cinema (on the day of its release you could see empty cinemas on social networks, after which it became quite successful after all…) – and the second because someone might want to pull you into the cinema to watch the recently released sequel.
And I don’t like to say it. I really hate to say it. But I have to say it: “Melania” is the better “The Devil Wears Prada.”
BECAUSE, and now hear me out: “The Devil Wears Prada” is simply not a good film at all. He’s totally boring. It doesn’t work as a satire because it’s not blatant enough, it’s not a parody because it’s not funny, the love story is boring, the attempt at moralizing is completely lost because you actually want to maintain this idea of the rich and beautiful. The film wants to sell something every second – shoes, bags, apartments, stocks, magazines, the whole New York thing – and that’s what makes it so incredibly dull. So if someone doesn’t invite me to the Cinedom for a fee, with popcorn and 2 liters of cola on top, then I’ll probably watch the sequel on stream at some point by chance on a Sunday afternoon.
“Melania”, on the other hand, is of course right-wing and fascist and wrong and made by pigs for pigs. BUT it is shockingly entertaining.
It accidentally became a satire – of this whole supposed women’s reality world, of the Kardashians, the Real Housewives, Selling Sunset, all that stuff. These women who are supposedly authentic and again, exactly: rich and beautiful. Who lead their boring lives that consist of moving furniture back and forth, being lit, trying on costumes, drinking something, sitting around somewhere, planning some event, being driven from A to B – while you never really see who builds it all, who sews the things, who drives them, who the people in front and behind the houses are and where all the money (and power) actually comes from. In Melania Trump’s case, of course, this is particularly perfidious: you basically see her hopping from one building to the next like a doll, and you suspect that there are demonstrators and poor people in front of all of these buildings – but you just don’t see them. I read the comparison to “Zone of Interest” somewhere, and that’s pretty accurate. Except it’s as American as it gets. Including music from the Rolling Stones, Michael Jackson and Tears for Fears. Because nothing really matters.
All the easier to finally tear it down once and for all, right?
What happened so far? Here is an overview of all the pop column texts.
