The Federalist IS NOT HAVING YOUR ANTI-CHRISTIAN HATE, RIHANNA AND CARDI B!
The Met Gala was last night, and there were so many fabulous celebrities!
We are just kidding, Garry Shandling is dead : (
ANYWAY. Everybody freaked out because the gala's theme was "Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination," which is SO ANTI-CATHOLIC! And cultural appropriation! And anti-Catholic again! The fact that for centuries the Catholic Church was Western Civilization, and that for centuries basically all Western art was focused on Mother Church's icons, seems to have been lost by stupid people looking to be offended about nothing. We know: SURPRISE!
Lots of people wrote many very stupid things about it, but none so stupid as Bre Payton, at The Federalist.
The website with unknown backers has never met a snowflake it didn't scorn, until Payton explained shit was HERETICAL Y'ALL. Let us copy-paste and laugh and laugh!
Payton helpfully includes subheadings explaining "why each look is offensive." Let's start with Rihanna, as seen above, looking SMOKIN FUCKIN HOT as Young (Black Female) Pope.
Why this look is offensive: As the head of the Catholic Church, the pope retains authority over the church. Through apostolic succession, Catholics believe this authority has been handed down to him from Saint Peter, who Catholics say was ordained as the first head of the church by Jesus Christ himself. Turning the pope into a sexy look for a night out says that the position Jesus created to lead the church is just a club dress.
Or you could get delve a little deeper, Payton, and ascribe meaning to it beyond "just a club dress." You could ponder the politics of the Church -- our Church, Payton -- and its refusal to ordain women, and its civilizational foundation as the literal patriarchy. What art does, Payton, is interrogate assumptions and deconstruct social mores. [Bre Payton barges into our draft and adds, "Excuse me, what art does isinspire and instruct.Heathen."] And here, with an amount of bejeweling that the Roman Catholic Church and Donald Trump himself could love, "fashion" does just that! Let's move on!
Lana Del Ray dressed as Our Lady of Sorrows — a Marian devotion and iconographic depiction of Mary in which she has daggers in her heart, each representing a difficulty Mary experienced as the mother of Jesus.
Cardi B went as a pregnant Madonna.
Why these looks are offensive: The Catholic Church teaches that Mary was born without the stain of original sin and lived a life of chastity. She conceived and bore Jesus miraculously and was assumed into heaven. Her role as the bearer of Christ makes it possible that men and women might be saved by her son’s blood. While Jesus was scourged, stripped, and crucified on Good Friday, Mary watched. The pains she endured throughout her son’s birth, life, and death are part of what makes salvation possible. These sufferings are not a costume.
What I am getting from this is you think Cardi B is a whore, and if you're taking offense to Lana del Rey dressed up as a painting, you sound like one of those fanatics who think it's a sin to draw Allah. Maybe you are a car bomber RIGHT NOW.
HOW DARE CARDI *BE* PREGNANT.
The Met Gala’s official Twitter account tweeted a photo of Lana with Jered Leto, who dressed as Jesus (if Jesus were a Saudi prince) and Gucci designer Alessandro Michele, who dressed as Jesus (if Jesus were an Elvis impersonator). The text alongside the photo reads “Holy Tynity.” Yes for real. [Ed note: Payton's typo. She doesn't even get it right when she's calling them out for their "ironic" typo, because no one in the photo is named "Ty" or even collects Beanie Babies]
Holy Trynity #MetGala @LanaDelRey @JaredLeto #MetHeavenlyBodies pic.twitter.com/FqHNISLDnK
— MET GALA (@themetgala) May 7, 2018
Why this is offensive: Where to start? The real Trinity consists of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit guides us to eternal salvation through Christ’s death and resurrection, which substituted his perfection for human sin and thus allowed us access to God and eternal life instead of eternal damnation. Heretical teachings about the Trinity have led Christians astray from the faith for millennia, which is why they are very important to Christianity. The Trinity is not something to mess around with — especially not by an intern running the Met Gala’s Twitter account and misspelling “Trinity” ironically.
Well, no, it wasn't an OFFENSIVE IRONIC misspelling of "trinity"; it was presumably a typo. But it is telling that you're running around with your hair on fire accusing people of HERESY and MESSING AROUND WITH THE TRINITY. Like, just saying, you sound fucking nuts. Were your parents weird? Like "Carrie's mom" weird? Because it sounds like that.
Blah blah blah Katy Perry is bad.
Elided. You're welcome.
Treating Christianity like it’s comparable to a rosary or a velvet cape, which can be put on and taken off, reduces the religion to a fashion accessory. Lucky for these celebrities, Christians are a tough bunch who are used to scorn and mockery, particularly from Hollywood.
I have absolutely nothing to add to that. Next we have a screenshot instead of a blockquote, in case anybody fixes it, not that you could "fix" perfection.
At first I read that as "kegel." OBVIOUSLY. Second thing, one of those links goes to a splainer about how The Left is Handmaid's Tale-ing Christians, which is such a perfect Federalist post there is no need to click on it at all.
I've written regularly on art exhibits featuring a souring on or a searching for faith, littered with symbols and iconography almost all of which were cribbed from the Catholic Church. I once got really mad at Patssi Valdez (who as a member of ASCO was AWESOME) because she painted herself as a madonna, she said, because she "really liked the clothes"; I thought it was shallow and trite and treating herself as a BVM Barbie instead of, say, exploring what it means to have an entire half of a globe insist upon your chastity even when you're pregnant , and worship your pain as a sacrificial lamb. Oh shit, I just messed with the trinity again : (
Then Bre Payton whines some more about how Christians are persecuted in the very same paragraph where she explains that Christians are the vast majority of Americans, so lol whatever Bre Payton so dumb.
[ Federalist ]
Most art before the modern era was meant for the nobility. Still, Bosch's work has a populist feel, with a further anti materialist edge which might have kept him out of trouble with the church.
Woah, my memory sucks.