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AOC at the Met Gala: How much does a politician make herself an advertising body for her own political content?
Photo:
Kevin Mazur / MG21 / Getty Images For The Met Museum / Vogue
“The medium is the message” - “The medium is the message”, with this famous slogan by the media theorist Marshall McLuhan, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez arranged her appearance at this year's Met Gala, the annual fundraising gala of the Metropolitan Museum of Art Sentence that is correct on many levels - or maybe not.
On Monday evening, the exclusive exhibition of prominent and wealthy people in New York took place again. Most of all, the Democrat Ocasio-Cortez caused a stir. In her strapless, white satin dress she was reminiscent of a bride, the red carpet here the glamorous way to the altar.
But her robe in no way symbolized a marriage to the New York upper class, to which she has long been part due to her political rise.
Because on the white wall of the dress was written in big red letters over the back, bottom and legs: "Tax the Rich" - Taxes the rich.
At an event where tickets cost around $ 35,000 per person, with $ 200,000 to $ 300,000 still to be deposited for a table reservation, communicating to everyone with your own dress that you specifically want to ask them to pay is a declaration of war.
The fashion statement was also statement fashion.
There are at least three ways to evaluate such a performative act: as an embarrassing pose, as a political punk or as a professional protest.
Ocasio-Cortez had previously tried herself - after all, she is an internet professional - to refute expected criticism. On social media, she announced that, on the one hand, she did not have to pay for the ticket herself, as politicians were invited to the Met, and on the other hand, the dress was borrowed, not bought. So here one cannot accuse her of a bigoted contradiction between demand and action.
But still it seemed a little too pleasant, too harmless about this textile "Tax the Rich" kick in the host's face. In her Instagram post, she announced that she would "open the doors of the MET" because the time was ripe for childcare, health care and climate action for everyone. But with the form of her message she only ran into doors that were already wide open. Doors that were opened enthusiastically for her in gratitude for presentable social criticism in satin. Everyone present, including themselves, knew that their imperative has no real consequences for the guests - otherwise they would never be invited. With a real threat, the rich and the Met don't take selfies.
It was the tailor-made non-provocation for this evening: a luxury protest at a luxury event against luxury people for whom activism is also an accessory suitable for Instagram.
In this respect, Ocasio-Cortez did everything absolutely right, as she completely understood the Met Gala, which is both a medium and a message, and used it for herself according to the rules of attention economy.
"Don't hate the player, hate the game," they say.
Don't hate the player, hate the game or the rules.
So is my criticism of the pure performativity of your political appearance in the context of an otherwise succinct event unfair and fashionably petty?
One statement made me sit up and take notice. "We started a conversation about what it means to be a working-class woman of color at the Met Gala," the congresswoman said on the Vogue red carpet, and she went on to explain, "and we said that we cannot just play along, but have to break the fourth wall and question some of the institutions. And while the MET is known for its spectacle, we have to have an argument about it. "
Ocasio-Cortez is well aware of her own appropriation and, with this awareness, tried to play her own with the rules of the game - and that's exactly how he played the Met's.
It's not about resolving performative contradictions and finding the consistently coherent super-activist, that would, to be honest, also be creepy.
We remember Greta Thunberg's crossing of the Atlantic on a sailing boat, which was quite problematic for the environment due to the complicated logistics that were necessary to transport her team - but that wasn't what it was about, it was about the pictures.
Is Attitude The New Handbag?
Perhaps I am sobering about the more symptomatic problem with social commitment, which is integrated into a logic of exploitation in order to be able to have an effect. Protesters not only have to be convinced of their cause, they have to become self-promoters of their cause in order to convince precisely those people of their content who do not want to be bothered with politics. This relationship works well for both sides, as long as the addressees believe that nothing will change for them for the better. But now that business has discovered sociopolitical engagement as a resource, committed, public figures are in the distinction dilemma:
How much does an activist, a politician, a protester make himself an advertising body for his own political content when politics is advertised as a lifestyle product? Is Attitude The New Handbag? AOC's appearance was the perfect demonstration of this development, the leveraging of political protests through its sell-out. We remember the fast fashion T-shirts produced by underpaid seamstresses with "feminist" emblazoned on them. The US broadcaster CBS will present a new reality show,
The Activist
, in
October
, in which activists can fight for money for their commitment. Market giants like Amazon and Netflix are discovering social politics in their occupation logic, German private broadcasters are discovering their social awareness in the form of critical educational formats and new political talk shows.
The provisional high point of the industrial protest complex is now an elitist, form-fixated spectacle event like the Met Gala, at which model Cara Delevingne calls for “Peg the Patriarchy” on her top, “lever out the patriarchy”, and the editor-in-chief of “Teen Vogue”, Versha Sharma, presented her clutch with the imperative »Kill the Filibuster«.
The performative politicization is the must-have of this season, beautiful but not subversive, public but not effective, and maintaining the status quo by only supposedly questioning the status quo.
So everything is more of a message without a message.