Rough Cut: 'The prettiest sight in this fine pretty world is the privileged class enjoying its privileges.'
As any fan of classic Hollywood will tell you, that is from Macaulay Connor, played by the incomparable Jimmy Stewart in The Philadelphia Story. That was in 1940, and America's relationship with the rich was less complicated.
Cut to now when 'eat the rich' has become the mantra, epitomised by the entertainment of the day. So no surprises then that some of the most exciting shows on streaming currently have to do with either the one per centers or people trying very hard to become them.
Take the second season of Lee Sung Jin's anthology series, Beef, on Netflix, which follows a couple who run a country club for the super-wealthy in California being blackmailed by another, younger couple trying hard to make it big in a country with a broken education system, no affordable healthcare, and barely any job security. The rot of late-stage capitalism runs deep, and unlike in the past, no one is content to merely be an observer of the privileged like Connor, a journalist in The Philadelphia Story. Everyone wants to be in the game. no matter what it takes. As one of the characters in the show says about comparison being the thief of joy, "You get the job, you get the promotion, and you get the house. But your Achilles heel chips away, and you know one day you will be going down." No money is never enough. Love is seen as the only way to redeem oneself, but not everyone is smart enough to grasp that.
Margo's Got Money Troubles, currently on Apple TV. looks at life from the bottom up. What happens when a bright young woman gets accidentally pregnant thanks to a spineless professor in her college? Her entire life plan goes awry, and she seems to be repeating her mother's cycle of losing out on life by having a baby too early. So she can't afford college or child care, and turns to OnlyFans, an online site that exploits sexual perversions. Is that all she can expect, being the child of a saleswoman at Bloomingdale's and a WWE wrestler? Is she doomed to repeat the cycle of almost-poverty even in a country where you can be anything you want?
The second season of Friends & Neighbours, also on Apple TV, also has long dissertations on forgotten wealth lying in forgotten drawers while following the rich and powerful living it up at house parties, on tennis courts, and in country clubs not dissimilar to the one in Beef 2. A major plotline in the season is a teenager rejecting admission to Yale despite being a legacy student. Her parents know it is important for her to have an education if she has to continue the wealth cycle they have been riding, despite the emotional and intellectual costs of it. The daughter doesn't necessarily want to be her parents – privileged people enjoying their privileges.
America and the world have changed since The Philadelphia Story. The American Dream has soured as much for the moneyed as for those without.
Entertainment often reflects the world, as much as it shapes it. Series such as Succession and The White Lotus, which critique the world of the extremely rich, have instilled in viewers a sense of the inequality of the world, while simultaneously giving us the vicarious pleasure of seeing how the high and mighty live. No one embodied the world of the ruthless rich better than the Succession patriarch Logan Roy, based loosely on the media mogul Rupert Murdoch, no stranger to succession battles, even going to the extent of downsizing his empire to spite the inheritors.
But as one of the characters in Beef 2 puts it, "Life will always reveal itself. No amount of money and power will mask it." And yes, death and taxes are the only two certainties in life. Even Logan Roy couldn't outlive that.