The Met Gala: Gilded Illusions
To critique the Met Gala is not to reject art or creativity, It’s to ask: at what cost, and for whom? Whose bodies are being adored, and whose are being ignored? Whose lives are affirmed, and whose are deemed expendable? The Gala invites us to look, to desire, to envy. But the ethical question is not how beautiful the spectacle is, it’s how violently the world must be arranged for such beauty to exist unchallenged.
The Black elite have mistaken visibility for liberation. Draped in designer cloth, framed by cameras, they believe themselves free. But beneath the silk and spectacle lies the old architecture of captivity—the afterlife of slavery, dressed in couture. They have forgotten that they are still slaves.
They shine under the same lights that once illuminated auction blocks and perform liberation for cameras, forgetting that their stage is still a plantation—only gilded, perfumed, and televised. The spectacle feeds on them too. Their freedom is conditional, their belonging provisional, their joy monitored and monetised.
Meanwhile, beyond the velvet rope, Black bodies remain under siege. In Congo, in Sudan, in Haiti, the language of empire continues: extraction, erasure, extermination. The same global order that applauds the spectacle ensures that millions remain unseen, unheard, and unfree. We must refuse to perform freedom for those who profit from our captivity. We must refuse to forget the dead, the displaced, the disappeared.