Why does everyone want to "eat the rich"?

If uber-wealth was a protected characteristic the same way sex, race, religion, sexual orientation and the like are, individuals of the monied kind would have a legitimate claim of discrimination. In the world of entertainment, we are witnessing a burgeoning trend of self-cannibalisation. Film and television are replete with anti-rich/anti-capitalist "satire". What can explain this act of self-sabotage? Multi-millionaires patting themselves on the back by producing glitzy, fatuous entertainment instructing us common folk on the banality and evil of untold riches and the rigged system which procures such riches (the big C-word; no, not that one, obviously). I shall, for purposes of brevity, steer clear of the razor-sharp satire Harry & Meghan - a Netflix product that bagged its eponymous couple a lavish fortune - because that amounts to a masterclass in meta-satire. I'm only gunning for perfunctory so-called "satirical" entertainment, which makes H&M exempt. 

In its purest form, satire is one of the most cathartic and vitalising forms of expression. With a wink, a smile and a scalpel, the pugnacious satirist can take down any figure or institution from their high horse. A true virtuoso inflates reality (and the subject of their ire), then bursts that balloon in all our faces. The best satirical films are often subversive; they paint their targets as complicated and messed-up human beings (there are rare exceptions for certain masterclasses in comedy: Dr. Strangelove, Life of Brian and Borat). It's easy to paint one-dimensional caricatures and look down on them; much more challenging to fully realise the subject of obloquy and even turn the tables: are we much different than those assholes? How would you act if you were in their shoes? An astute filmmaker (with the aid of a ferocious screenplay) can do that (e.g., Buñuel in Viridiana, Kubrick in A Clockwork Orange, Lumet in Network, Solondz in Happiness and Joon-ho in Parasite). 

In less able hands, a satire can feel utterly facile. An able social commentator uses a surgeon's scalpel to eviscerate his target and peel back the layers; the not-so-able bludgeons the audience with a sledgehammer, effectively hollering at us to acknowledge how "smart" and "funny" they are. This brings us to all the heavy-handed satirical pictures released in 2022. They all effectively have one message: wealthy people are vapid, unidimensional, self-serving assholes. In an era of vexing global economic challenges, with aggressive inflation corroding ordinary people's purchasing power, you can see why the super-rich are such an obviously easy target. 

The most competent entry in our "eat the rich" trinity is The Menu. A super-chef (played by an always-superb Ralph Fiennes) decides to burn down his pretentious restaurant, including all his stuck-up, cardboard-character wealthy guests (except a hired escort accompanying an insufferable foodie). The moral of the story: ultra-fine dining is an unsustainable industry, and everyone who attends such restaurants deserves to go to hell. Okay, but the problem is that every single of these fine-dining snobs and wannabes is utterly dull to the point that not even their untimely demise provides any sort of catharsis or comeuppance. Sure, unbearable food critics, idiotic actors and insufferable hedge-fund managers often go to restaurants where they pay through the nose to basically eat repurposed air and foam. That in-and-of-itself is not a nourishing concept to rely on for nearly two hours. 

The middle entry in 2022's toothless satires is Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery. The film is the second entry in the Knives Out franchise. The original movie was a breezy, entertaining whodunnit. Netflix bought the rights to the property for a reported eye-watering $450 million, with the proviso of two sequels. Glass Onion is superficially a whodunnit, though it is quite disappointing. Its characters are uniquely uninteresting - a cardinal sin in whodunnit films - and the story gets bogged down in the mire of its identity politics. The picture's core message is that tech billionaires are self-absorbed, delusional and craven individuals. Okay. Thanks for the insight. With a lavish budget and exotic summer locations, we only get glitzy artifice, but it is all ultimately an empty viewing experience. Thanks to the "evils" of capitalism, the director (Rian Johnson) and his protagonist (Daniel Craig) were each reportedly paid $100 million (how's that for biting the hand that feeds you?). They could have told us something more interesting than how all uber-rich people are monsters hiding in plain sight. 

Triangle of Sadness is the most aggressively bad in this triad, the Palme d'Or winner at last year's Cannes film festival and triple Oscar nominee (picture, director, screenplay). A film so heavy-handed and on the nose you just want to throw the television set out of the window. It is a derivative picture and wholly devoid of any laughs. The film is replete with self-congratulation for inflicting pain and misery on an utterly pallid group of mega-wealthy individuals. Amongst the targets are an octogenarian arms-dealing British couple, a Russian fertiliser magnate and his witch of a wife, and a mind-numbingly dull couple of models/influencers. None of these deplorable subjects has an iota of redeeming qualities or nuance, making their inexorable punishment truly of no consequence; we don't even feel enough animus to care for their suffering. A specific sequence sums up the laziness of the film. A Russian mogul - who is an unabashed capitalist; get it, a Russian capitalist? - and a Captain of a luxury yacht - a lapsed Marxist (see a great irony, again?) - sit across from each other and proceed to read notable quotes (from Reagan, Thatcher and Lenin, amongst others) regarding capitalism, socialism and communism. Is that what biting award-worthy social commentary has come to? Applauding a filmmaker's ability to collect quotations from Wikipedia? Give me a break...

The lesson is this: if multi-millionaires are going to get on the bandwagon of shitting on rich people, then, at the very least, they owe audiences (you know, the poor people who made those "satirists" wealthy) an incisive and/or sharply funny experience. Virtue signalling should not fill a two-hour cinematic experience. We get enough of that in our everyday lives.