Cultural Anarchy

In international political theory, there's an idea I can’t stop thinking about lately—Thomas Hobbes and his Leviathan (1651). He said that without a central authority, a leviathan, life is nasty and brutish, as actors operate in pursuit of power. In this state of nature, he claimed, there is no real right or wrong: profit is the measure of right. 

As a self-proclaimed creative sitting in Introduction to International Politics class, my mind began to apply Hobbes’ classical realism to modern culture. Does culture exist as a kind of anarchy—a state without a central ruler, where no one officially decides what matters or is remembered? Or are there unofficial leviathans lurking on social media, in magazines, or among the mastheads of empires like Condé Nast?

It’s easy to believe culture is more democratic than ever. TikTok influencers pop out of seemingly nowhere, thrifted outfits get just as many likes as couture, and anyone can be critical in the comment section of Instagram. It feels like anyone can participate or set the tone. But is this actually true? Or just a slick illusion of the algorithm?

When I look closer, I still see a specific genre of people making the rules: skinny white women with old money bones. Vogue still defines elegance. Museums elevate some stories while leaving others in archives. For all the supposed decentralization, cultural power still often flows through elite, institutional veins.

This is nothing new, obviously. Culture has always had its gatekeepers. Take the French salons of the 18th and 19th centuries—exclusive gatherings where society women (mostly wealthy, all white) debated literature and art and decided over tea what was “important.” Eventually, the Royal Academy formalized the Salon into an annual art exhibition with work curated, judged, and canonized by a select few. It was never just about taste. It was about access, class, and cultural control. 

Does this sound familiar? It’s mid-April. A few weeks from now is Christmas for creatives: the first Monday of May. Once a fundraiser, now a ritualized spectacle of elite style, held behind literal velvet ropes. The Met Gala is where the fashion industry gathers to decide, consciously or not, who belongs in the room—and by extension, who belongs on the cultural record.  

This year, the gala’s theme is Superfine: Tailoring Black Style. 

Perhaps a step in the right direction, an elite institution is centering Black sartorial innovation, recognizing that so much of American culture has been shaped—defined even—by Black creativity. The gala’s co-chairs are Colman Domingo, Lewis Hamilton, A$AP Rocky, Pharrell Williams, and, of course, Anna Wintour. LeBron James is an honorary chair. The host committee includes a list of influential Black voices in art, fashion, music and more: Ayo Edebiri, Dapper Dan, Kara Walker, Janelle Monae, and André 3000, to name a few. 

The museum exhibition draws from Monica L. Miller’s Slaves to Fashion, which explores how the Black community has used clothing to reimagine identity and navigate structural racism. It is powerful, timely, and deeply necessary in a time when the slashing of DEI initiatives signals not progress, but a retrenchment of the very systems Black creativity has resisted. 

But there’s tension: Can cultural celebration be liberatory if it happens inside an ivory tower? If it’s couture-only and invite-only? And hosted by and in a space that has long been the arbiter of “legitimate” culture?

I keep coming back to this: being a consumer of art, fashion, and culture means being in a relationship with the systems that give our possessions value. Style isn’t neutral. The way we dress is tangled up in class performance, in visibility, in access. A $10,000 suit signals wealth, sure—but also a kind of cultural capital. A sense of knowing. 

So, who really gets to define the “ins” and “outs” of culture?

Is it the museum curator or a Twitter thread? Anna Wintour or the local thrift? Is it Colman Domingo in a bespoke suit or a kid in a hand-me-down tee shirt who gets copied by a Paris runway three seasons from now?

Maybe the better question is: What would true cultural democracy look like? A space where contribution isn’t contingent on wealth or proximity to whiteness? A system where gatekeeping dissolves and style becomes a story (not status)?

I’m not sure we’re there yet. But this year’s Met Gala—glamorous, complicated, well-intentioned, and perhaps still a little bit hollow—shows contradictions of cultural power in 2025. It aims to honor Blackness while staying exclusive. It wants to make a political statement but maintain hierarchy. 

In the end, maybe culture doesn’t exist in anarchy after all. Maybe the Leviathan never left. It just started wearing archival Balenciaga.