In a scene from The White Lotus, Nicole (Connie Britton) tells the naïve and self-doubting Rachel, "Your power is your independence." In a show that trims and rearranges the details of elite American life, with all its jagged inner scars in full view, it is a quietly revealing moment about how even liberal ideas are caught up in the self-serving mire of chauvinistic elitism.
Nicole’s ideals are feministic and upright, but are they a product of her status or her belief system alone – the agency that Rachel (a freelancer) does not have. This past year’s most loved and talked-about shows asked similar questions and many more about the several layers of conflict that are hidden within the outer, glossy sheen of the urban elite. The White Lotus, Only Murders in the Building, and Succession Season 3 are all wildly different genres that coincide on one thing – the depravity of the well-heeled.
Succession is a barnstorming, foul-mouthed gurgling exercise in elite meltdowns and sinister pullbacks that cannot really be compared to anything that has preceded it. Nothing is subtle about the show except its eloquent dressing down of high-brow ineptness, of the dysfunction and loneliness even on the side where grass is undeniably greener. People on this side of the pond do not usually have their ineptitude checked, and contemplation does not come as easily as conviction in the untried, or even, the untrue.
In Only Murders in the Building, two of our old protagonists are has-beens, but there is a sense of entitlement that they carry within themselves. It is the one thing that pushes them to take the selfish decisions over the humane ones. It is why a cynical goose chase continues against logic, and at times, even intimately sourced rationale.
Entitlement translates into many things, most often the rejection of the poor as unworthy of possessing the quality of etiquette. But in each of these shows, the elite are also, quite incredibly, the carriers of victimhood. In The White Lotus, Shane pesters Armond to upgrade him to a room that eventually becomes the source of his malaise. In Only Murders in the Building, Martin Short embodies elite degradation with the grace of a unicorn hunting for flesh. It is playful yet wildly affecting just how consumed Oliver is by his own world, the idea that everything he does next, will be the next great thing. In Succession, each of the Roy children, despite a chockful of crony inheritance, they have not sweat a bead to earn, feels wronged by the other’s voyeuristic aspirations. To a bunch of undeserving lot, this game of make-believe antagonism suits as a metaphorical comment on the immortality of capitalism – the rich can only get richer. Competence has nothing to do with it.
In a world growing more and more unequal by the day – vaccine disparity only the latest number to highlight this fact – it is fruitful to see creators unpeeling layers of depravity that the rich wash off by randomised acts of philanthropy or planned conventions in Geneva or anything equally heavenly and inaccessible. Generosity squeaks and lands an appearance or two once in a while, but it is a cut-throat world punctuated by ceiling-aimed manoeuvres that do not concern themselves with basic last-steps like survival. It is only hilarious that most characters under the umbrella of this troika of shows assume it is indeed about life and death. Maybe it is rewarding on some level to witness the provisionally ‘ahead-of-their-time’ scramble for solutions to problems that may put them back by a day or two. You could argue that Only Murders in The Building is a tad more grounded, but even in the blissful ignorance of its belated strugglers, it manages to portray a form of elitism that thrives on denying the obvious, that their time has ended.
It is difficult to argue that these are, on some level, anti-capitalist works of art because they, after all, mine drama and dread out of rich inheritances.
The shows themselves believe these stories would not work if they were threaded through the kitchens and bedrooms of the underprivileged. A corporate crossfire of puss-filled verbal volleys just does not carry the same cache if billions are not at stake. Similarly, the many ironies that the Mossbachers represent in The White Lotus come together encased within the arms of unhindered, almost unrealised, privilege. The idea that liberality is easy to spew if you are rich and entitled enough to afford any and all disagreements that they might inspire.
The dysfunctional family, the has-been artists are all types we have seen countless times before. But in 2021, they seemed to take to the stage of depravity, with a renewed sense of aimless purpose. On this new stage, they came across as victims of their own stories, but not the stories being told about them. This new, counterintuitive layer of storytelling has guided us through 2021 to a port from where you can witness elite culture with a clearer view of the horizon; but more importantly, with a clearer view of the sea beneath, that threatens to swallow it whole. It is a welcome view, and one can only hope 2022 continues to dock more ships on its shore.
Manik Sharma writes on art and culture, cinema, books, and everything in between.
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