THE AGE OF EMPTY SPECTACLE Rosalía, Grolet, and the New Culture of Surface

There are eras in which art moves slowly, like a tide. Others in which it moves in ruptures, in events, in shocks. And then there is ours: a time defined not by depth or rupture, but by velocity—a cultural regime where the value of a work is determined less by what it is than by how efficiently it circulates. Where conversation becomes currency, and virality its highest form of validation. Where objects—songs, pastries, performances—are not judged by the experience they produce, but by the image they project.

In this new landscape, let's delve into two recent phenomena stand like mirrors held up to our collective appetite: Rosalía’s “LUX”, and the now-inescapable Cédric Grolet pastries, engineered to conquer TikTok and Instagram before they ever conquer the palate. At first glance they appear unrelated: one a pop star experimenting with liturgical imagery, the other a pastry chef sculpting hyperrealistic fruits. But they share a deeper structure—one that reveals more about us than about them. “LUX” presents itself as a gesture of high artistry: sacred iconography, cinematic shadows, a tension between mysticism and pop.

It is meticulously constructed to look like a revelation. And many people, primed by years of media coronations, immediately read it as such: “radical, disruptive, experimental.” But when the gloss fades and the ear takes over, the music is strikingly cautious. Familiar chords, simple melodic gestures, an aesthetic atmosphere standing in for composition. And here, with as much respect as honesty requires, one must acknowledge what the cultural machinery often obscures: Rosalía does not possess the technical foundation required for operatic singing. Her talents—real and numerous—belong to another domain: pop, conceptual styling, and that's is perfectly ok.

Opera is not a vibe. It is architecture built from breath, projection, resonance, anatomical discipline. To present “LUX” as an operatic gesture is to misread both opera and the work itself. What passes for boldness is in truth a carefully managed aesthetic—a moodboard elevated to sacrament by the momentum of hype.

Cédric Grolet inhabits a parallel universe, one made of butter, sugar, and light—mostly light. No pastries photograph more perfectly; none are more finely calibrated for the lens. Slow-motion cuts, glossy surfaces, the seductive reveal of an illusion: a lemon that is not a lemon, an apple that is not an apple. It is hypnotic, and it is no accident. Grolet’s creations are designed to conquer the algorithm: symmetrical, colorful, seductive within three seconds.

They win on screen long before they reach a mouth. But once they do—once the knife goes through the spectacle and flavor finally becomes the judge—the experience deflates. The tastes are polite, predictable, technically neat but rarely daring. They lack the layered surprise, the temperature intelligence, the quiet depth that defines true high pâtisserie. Grolet’s work is extraordinary as content; as food, it is often restrained to the point of timidity.

These are pastries built for the camera, not for the palate. What unites “LUX” and Grolet is not their medium but their function. Both thrive in the same economy: the economy of empty spectacle, where circulation replaces craft, and where the image of innovation substitutes for innovation itself. The public no longer demands to be moved, challenged, or changed—only to be entertained with the illusion of significance. A dessert becomes an event, a song becomes a conversation, a gesture becomes a claim to genius.

In this world, the bar for “transgression” has collapsed into something almost infantilizing: a new haircut, a new silhouette, a new filter, a new editing style. And once the machinery of virality takes over, criticism becomes almost impossible. The hype around “LUX” operates like fog: dense, luminous, obscuring the object it claims to illuminate. Grolet’s lines, stretching around blocks in cities across the world, become proof of quality simply because lines exist—never mind the flavor. We no longer reward substance. We reward circulation. We reward conversation. We reward what can be replicated, remixed, and reposted.

This shift is not neutral. It impoverishes our senses in subtle but profound ways. We begin to listen less and scroll more. We taste with our eyes, not our mouths. We confuse aesthetics for depth, narrative for technique, novelty for courage. We lose the ability to discriminate between what is memorable and what is merely visible. And here lies the quiet tragedy: in rewarding spectacle, we starve the very qualities that make art and craft endure—rigor, patience, mastery, and the humility of creation that does not announce itself. The greatest pâtissiers in history did not design for the camera; the greatest vocalists did not design for the algorithm; the greatest works endure because they spoke in the silence after applause, not in the noise of constant conversation.

Perhaps the most radical gesture left today is not to shock, but to refuse to perform for the feed. To make something slowly, honestly, without choreography for virality. To return flavor to pâtisserie and structure to music. To insist that beauty is more than visual seduction, and that innovation is more than styling. In a world built to be watched, not experienced, the true avant-garde may simply be this: substance without spectacle; depth without hype; art that survives the camera, even when the camera looks away. Because in the age of empty spectacle, substance has become not only rare, but quietly revolutionary.