A show about fake ultrarich people played by less rich people watched by poor people. A show that has pretensions about flagellating the rich while still somehow revelling in their debauchery and parasitism, a sort of recursive self-awareness that is supposed to somehow absolve the characters (and the irl rich?). Somehow it is both the sale of anti capitalism back to the anti capitalists whilst also scratching a Keeping Up With the Kardashians itch for watching the inter-familial spats of our feudal overlords.

A contemporary Game of Thrones where everyone is bad and there is no good and it’s just a TV show so it doesn’t matter, which handily conceals the fact that our everyday reality is literally this show, and that the stakes in real life are actually weighty and have moral and material value and can easily be viewed as right and wrong.

Along with a healthy dose of “their daddy was mean to them so it’s not their fault they’re all disgusting bourgeois pigs”.

What the fuck. We desperately need prolekult. I’m so sick of this two faced culture that sells our own hatred back to us and pokes the reward centres in our brain - “hey you just watched a pithy comment that could KIND SORTA be construed as anti capitalist on a million dollar show on a billion dollar network, you’ve done your leftism for the day!”

What stage of capitalism is it when everyone is so widely aware capitalism sucks that the most successful business model is pretending you agree that capitalism sucks?

AAAAAA

  • came_apart_at_Kmart [he/him, comrade/them]
    ·
    2 years ago

    i watched all of it. and this other show called "Industry" on HBO, which is all about like the people who manage rich people's money to make them more money. they're all assholes. certainly, it gives backstory and nuance to their assholishness, and how the broader social relation that created them perpetuates itself.

    with Succession, the only character i sort of appreciate as a human is dumbass Greg. mostly because he is new to the inner circle of parasitic fuck ups. his ambition is clumsy, naked, and incompetent. i like to laugh at greg trying to get rich and i like to laugh at him fucking up by trying to get too rich. i hate the rest of the family. i hate the rest of the hangers on, the sycophants, the company people. they're all swine. Tom Wamsgams is the most openly sociopathic, which is amusing because he's played empathic heroes in other roles. incredible range on this guy as an actor. i can't wait to learn what the story is behind Tom, because the shit he says and ultimately does in the most recent season is more dark-hearted and self-loathing than any character i can think of.

    i think an important thing to recognize is that just because someone had trauma doesn't make them reasonable or acceptable. traumatized people traumatize others, but not all traumatized people turn into assholes. is it sad that roman got locked in a dog cage and tormented until he pissed himself during a mental breakdown as a child? sure. is that kind of abuse why he's a complete shit now? probably. but roman isn't a child anymore. he and every one of these fucks is accountable for who they become. he's a grade A fucking asshole and if he were drowning in front of me, i would throw him a barbell.

    i too am watching this show, rooting for everyone to die in agony. and frankly, they are all in agony mostly anyway, so lmao. i think the simple analysis of the show that makes it watchable to me is that it's a story of the succession of an evil empire during the sunset of an evil king and every candidate/heir is a piece of garbage that will cruelly betray any of the others for a chance at power. so, i root for the messy, embarrassing collapse of the empire.

    • 4zi [he/him, comrade/them]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Industry isn’t really a finance show though. It’s just Love Island set in London finance.

      Succession, at the very least, is structured in Hamlet/Macbeth but (correctly) equating monarchy to corporations.