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
Then again the rich are just as trapped by the logic of capitalism as the poor, perhaps there is a somewhat realistic idea presented there? However the fact we only see one side of this depicted makes shows like this almost the reverse of the rich forcing the poor to dance for their amusement. Except of course it isn’t the real ultra wealthy on display, just their stand-ins.
I watched the whole first season and it doesn’t get any better (probably should have quit earlier but loads of people were telling me it was the best thing since sliced Sopranos so I tried to stick it out), and it’s not even like the characters fall into the “love to hate” catagory, they’re just annoying as shit.
This is not uncommon for Iannuchian characters though, everyone vile and completely self-interested. Do you like Veep or The Thick of It? My mother has a similar objection to all three shows. No likability anywhere
Strangely I do quite like The Thick of It and Veep (although I haven’t seen as much of Veep tbh), as well as other shows about rich arseholes like Mad Men, I just felt that Succession’s characters weren’t engaging (or funny) enough to hold my interest, I suppose.
At least in House of the Dragon they have dragons and by the end of the show almost every character will have been killed or imprisoned.
great post op, it’s especially grating when ‘leftists’ were out there promoting how good this show was. ‘leftists’ such as the brooklyn podcasters who were connected to some of the people in the show. It seems like everything is a farce.
Sorry I still like Succession. I’m not sure how pirating a TV show makes me less of a leftist but whatever. I know who I am and I can watch TV shows and be against capitalism.
Everyone in Succession is wrong. Kendall is entitled and tries to be hip, he’s entirely selfish and power-hungry but can’t pull off any big business move. He adopts a woke thing because he can’t get his way and then it backfires on him when he realizes it doesn’t work. Shiv is terrible to her partner and also pretends to be a good liberal democrat while dropping it instantly when she has a chance at power. Tom is just marrying into the family for power and wealth. Greg is a hanger-on. Logan is a right wing psycho. Roman is a sex pest and is cool with courting fascism if it means his company sticks around longer.
Everytime the show shows the rich people out doing rich things, they also show all the workers in the background. Like in S2 when the workers throw away thousands of dollars in high-end seafood and steak while the character squabble. They show how the yacht personnel are in the background and even used for sex by the family. In the first episode Roman shits on the little kid by teasing him with money. They treat the doctors like shit who are trying to save their father’s life. It goes on and on.
What the show doesn’t do is make them comically bad or show graphic abuse. The wealthy people never murder anyone or do graphic on-screen sexual assault. The rich people win and get their way because that’s what happens in real life.
It’s fine to not like a show because the plot doesn’t go the way you want, but that doesn’t mean it’s a morally bad show or that people who like it aren’t on the level.
If you really want to see a show that sides with the wealthy family, watch Yellowstone. I like Yellowstone because it’s ridiculous. The first season has the largest land owner in Montana, played by Kevin Costner, wave a shotgun at Chinese tourists and exclaim that we don’t share land in the US. The only criticism of them is that they stole land from indigenous people 200 years ago. But that’s ok because other people are trying to take Costner’s land. A native American character tells him that “you’re the Indian now”. That show takes the worldview of the wealthy land owning slavers to be correct. Succession doesn’t.
