Odds & ends #10: eat the rich edition
The last execution using the guillotine took place in Paris on September 10th, 1977.
I don’t know if three makes it a trend, but I enjoyed the spate of movies last year–namely Triangle of Sadness, The Menu, and Glass Onion–that centered around the humiliation and destruction of rich people. Not all of them involved death, but there was at least an embarrassing comeuppance, something few of the rich will ever see, not even those who cause active harm.
While I mostly like to think of myself as a good person, I must be honest: these kinds of movies cause me a great deal of sadistic pleasure. Some may say that the class satire in them, particularly Triangle of Sadness, is too broad, but I for one say that there need to be more movies in which the idle rich end up covered in human shit (if not horrifically killed), because we’ll never see that in real life. It’s satisfying after reading one too many stories about investors who knowingly bilk their clients out of their life savings and get off with a slap on the wrist, or another millionaire being exposed as an unrepentant tax cheat.
I grew up in a household that often relied on welfare, and was on the free lunch program from kindergarten all the way through the end of high school. Back then, we didn’t use discreet debit-style cards. Tickets were issued, blue for the kids paying full price, green for those on the discounted lunch program, and red (of course) for those of us who got it for free. Looking back I’m sure it was done simply to keep track of how many of each kind were being used, and not draw attention to anyone, but of course it did, and everyone knew what the red tickets meant, that your parents couldn’t scrape together a buck a day so you could get a crappy hamburger and some milk. It created division lines nice and early, and it was hard to shake them off.
Later, when I entered my teen years, the yuppie era taught us that success (if not your entire value as a person) was measured in possessions. A popular phrase from that time was “He who has the most toys wins,” and I’m not entirely sure it’s a mindset we’ve ever moved past. One of the most successful TV shows was Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, which profiled millionaires and their ostentatious displays of wealth, including everything from fully staffed private planes to solid gold toilets to Aaron Spelling’s notoriously huge house, which had so many rooms that one was dedicated solely to wrapping gifts. Defenders of the show claimed that it was just fantasy, even aspirational for future millionaires. But the message of the show, and its fans was clear: these people are better than you. They’re better because they have more stuff.
As the Republican Party seems ever more openly determined to walk us into Hell as long as it means servicing the desires of the wealthy, my class rage has metastasized into hatred. If you’re wealthy and wondering “Does she mean me?”, well, only you can answer that. When was the last time you spent any extended time with someone below your current tax bracket? Are you able to have a conversation for more than five minutes about anything that doesn’t involve money and earning or spending it? Does it regularly occur to you that most people don’t live like you? How does that make you feel? Lucky? Embarrassed? Smug? Do you feel anything at all? Maybe I do mean you, and I’m not sorry.
I live in New York City, and though there is an expectation that most people who live in New York are rich, I am not. Don’t get me wrong, I pay my bills and am able to keep a roof over my head, with a little bit left over for fun and hobbies. But I’ve never done “experience dining” (unless you count Medieval Times, which I do not). I’ve never been to Europe, or Hawaii, or on a cruise. I have been to both Disney World and Disneyland, and that alone puts me in a better place than a lot of people. I’m always keenly aware (often to the point of anxiety) that financial ruin is more likely for people like me than idly traipsing off to Bali for two weeks. I don’t have that kind of time, or money, to burn.
There are those (bootlickers) who would say that my class rage is based in jealousy. Sure, I suppose. I wouldn’t mind the money. I wouldn’t even mind a gold toilet, though I can’t really see what the purpose of it is except to prove that you have gold toilet money. I definitely don’t want the pathological need to be liked, which drove Elon Musk’s decision to buy Twitter and then run it into the ground. It drove Donald Trump’s desire to run for President — no, really, look it up, as much as he claimed he was going to run over the years, he didn’t start seriously pursuing it until after Barack Obama made a few lightweight digs at him a White House Press Corps dinner. His fee-fees got hurt, and instead of just going home and quietly crying into the money he often bragged about having, he ran for a public office he was woefully unqualified for, improbably won, and we’ve been paying for it ever since. He couldn’t just be happy with his wealth and shut up about it, he had to run the entire goddamn country. Musk couldn’t just be happy with his wealth and shut up about it, he had to buy a whole social media site and declare himself a champion of free speech, which evidently means openly siding with Nazis, transphobes and pedophiles.
The Menu wonderfully points out this aspect of wealthy people: somehow, inexplicably, they’re miserable, and incapable of being satisfied. The only thing that brings them pleasure is throwing their weight around, and letting the people they view as beneath them know it. This is illustrated in the finance bros who, displeased that their demand for bread is denied, immediately pull the “do you know who we work for” card (which, happily, does not get the response they’ve come to expect). A food critic who, it’s later learned, closed down multiple restaurants with a negative review, loudly complains to her dining companion that a sauce on her plate is separating, something normal people would likely not even notice. Imagine that: you’re dining in a restaurant at $1,250 a pop, on a private island, and your immediate instinct is to complain about something, to openly express displeasure instead of overwhelmed, weeping gratitude.
So yeah, these people deserve to suffer, and I deserve to enjoy every minute of it. My maternal grandfather’s family emigrated from France, and I like to think our ancestors were in the crowd during the French Revolution, cheering as aristocrats met the blade, over and over. Probably not, the family tree was traced to an area far from Paris, though it’s a nice thought. Watching the modern aristocratic class as their cushy surroundings are leveled all around them is deeply satisfying, even if the scales are rarely that balanced in the real world. But a former free lunch kid can dream.