Billionaires, Why Can’t We Quit You?
This time of year, chances are high that if you can’t find me, I’m at the movies. While Hollywood’s offerings take us everywhere from Wakanda to a road trip with cannibals, it’s hard to miss the two motifs dominating the cinematic landscape this year: artists and the scourge of the rich (and, in at least one case, the scourge of the rich upon artists).
From to to , the current cinema is awash in metaphorical blood and bile from skewering the wealthy—specifically, the private-jet-flying, luxury-yacht-chartering, $1250-a-plate-dinner variety. The trend arguably began with , the 2019 South Korean class-war hit that became the first non-English-language film to win a Best Picture Oscar. Fast-forward to earlier this year, when Americans delighted in watching the aspirational family be tormented in their McMansion and officially turned the scammer Anna Delvey into a heroine of our time as she conned the 1 percent time and again. A month into its release, the second season of HBO’s is already proving as popular as the first.
