Thursday, May 10, 2018

On The Stupid Met Gala

Never really was aware of the Met Gala before this one with the theme "The Catholic Imagination."  It looked really stupid, looking back at previous themes and the costumes it inspired it's generally stupid and numb.   I thought I'd mention it because I've written about music so much this week.  NOT that it had much of anything to do with music.  

I daresay the Catholic church will survive, as will the Met.  It had nothing much to do with the church or musical drama.  I haven't heard anything about any of the acting singers who perform at the Met being involved.  I would guess that wearing ridiculous clothes and makeup would count as a working meal for them.   

It contrasts to something I read a while back about one of the rare, early liturgical orders in one of the early churches that forbade the person conducting the liturgy to interrupt it if a rich person came in as it was going on but required the celebrant to not only greet any destitute or poor people but to give up his seat to one who came in.   I should carry a notebook with me so I can write down citations when I read those kinds of things. 

The only interesting thing about it was how those secular if not profane celebrities have a shockingly similar view of the Catholic Church as so many of the conservative integralists (Catholic fundamentalists) and so many of the reactionary enemies of Pope Francis, as close to Franciscan simplicity as any pope since the classical period.  I heard the organizers were disappointed that the conservative Cardinal Dolan who aided the Gala committee didn't wear his full, red cardinal drag.  I'll bet Raymond Burke would have loved to wear the full version including the antiquated, almost never now seen cappa mangna with a really awful saturno hat.  


Image result for raymond burke cappa magna

Just in case anyone is wondering where the Met Gala attendees got their idea of what Catholicism was all about.  It reminds me of the story a member of the chorus told me, when the City Opera hired Charles Nelson Reilly to design a production of Tales of Hoffmann but when the director saw his design plan he fired him because it was way, way over the top.  You've got to be really over the top to be too much for opera, especially in a place like New York.  

Which only goes to show how stupid you get from only getting what you mistakenly believe you know from show-biz.  

Oh, and some of those people who are getting the most worked up over the Met Gala are also hoping and praying that the really terrible Cardinal Burke will be the next pope.  If that happens don't count on anything good coming of it. 

Update: Oops, sorry, I didn't notice the silly decorations on Burke's hat, that would make it an even more antiquated galero, not the more modest saturno style.  Please.  I'd disqualify him as papabile on that get-up, alone. 

7 comments:

  1. I love the liturgy, which is a heretical statement for a child of the Reformed tradition as I am. I love it more for things like this:

    "It contrasts to something I read a while back about one of the rare, early liturgical orders in one of the early churches that forbade the person conducting the liturgy to interrupt it if a rich person came in as it was going on but required the celebrant to not only greet any destitute or poor people but to give up his seat to one who came in."

    Back in the day when the church was a power itself, and understood that power as demanding service to the poor. Maybe at the time when kings washed the feet of the destitute on Holy Thursday.

    I can do without the silly costumes (my seminary liturgy professor insisted we should wear the simple robe with a rope belt (dammit, I've forgotten the name! It's hell getting old!) which was the worker's garment back when it was first worn in the liturgy. Today's equivalent would be blue jeans and a t-shirt, with sneakers. Imagine it in a formal church setting. I couldn't give up the black academic robe I'd grown up with in the Reformed tradition, but I loved the colored stoles for the church year.

    The elaborate robes of the Catholics and Episcopalians I could do without; but as the Pope said, "Who am I to judge?" (that hat, though; it HAS to go!)

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    1. On such costume and decoration issues I'm in sympathy to the Reform tradition.

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  2. I think you have the wrong Met (the "Met Gala" is for the benefit of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, not the Metropolitan Opera), otherwise, well observed.

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    1. Really, that's even worse, then. What excuse do they have?

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    2. It relates to a specific exhibition, this year it's: https://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2018/heavenly-bodies

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    3. It looks like an opera costume designer's wet dream. I think some of those few pictures they posted online of the exhibition are a bit far-fetched as "THE Catholic Imagination. I know lots of Catholics who would gag on it. It makes me value Francis getting away from a lot of that all the more.

      I'm old enough to remember when high art was the major concentration of major art museums.

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  3. Mmm...so, did they exit through the gift shop?

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