In a scene from the series YellowstoneBeth Dutton (Kelly Reilly), daughter of the rancher who gives her name to the television production, explains to the young Carter that “at all times and everywhere”, according to “a universal truth”, there are only four ways to become rich: to inherit, to steal, to work or (how to translate?) to pull on the bamboo, and by putting there a maximum of enthusiasm.
The teenager that the young woman will end up adopting immediately asks if it is in this last way that she herself has enriched herself. Beth doesn’t answer. In truth, she operated the four levers.
His family owns the largest ranch in the United States, a paradise land stolen by his ancestors from the Natives of Montana (the story is told in the series prequel titled 1883). She works as a banker and plays her charms when necessary. Money begets money in this neowestern noir (or rather republican red) as in real life.
We meet other überfortunés in this portrait of contemporary America. The mega real estate developer Market Equities wants Yellowstone to develop a ski resort, a village and an airport. Its greedy leaders, mean as moths, put maximum Machiavellian efforts into it, including delegating a schemer capable of putting her mouth to the task…
More or less similar plutocrats, there are everywhere on the screens. So much so, in fact, that their exhibition becomes a sort of subgenre in itself at the start of the 21st century.e century. The 1% of the 1% is at the center of the series Billions, Succession, Loot, Arrested Development, The White Lotus Or Squid Games like movies Don’t Look Up, Triangle of Sadness Or Glass Onion.
Quebec gives a little, more or less directly. Before the crash draws a black portrait of the business world around the firm Stratégie Investissement. The film norbourg is inspired by the biggest financial scandal in the history of Quebec. Ptarmigan Hunting Dad follows a tie crook on the run in the Far North.
The people above
Quebec sociologist Julia Posca adds to the list The Menu. In this brand new American horror comedy, the restaurant chef takes revenge on his customers who do not recognize the value of his work and despise his employees.
“In another era, the social class of the very wealthy was admired, envied, looked up to as a model and a source of emulation,” says Ms.me Posca, researcher at the Institute for Socioeconomic Research and Information (IRIS), think tank progressive. This is definitely no longer the case, and instead we end up with a fairly significant social criticism. »
Only there is the way. Mme Posca has not seen all the series or films in the niche, but has frequented enough to offer some observations from his professional point of view as specialists in inequality and financial economics.
She points out that the characters in these productions are often presented in their excesses and vices. Glass Onion Or Squid Games darken the line as much as possible and make the billionaires look like comic book villains.
“We point out their flaws,” she says. I therefore see a criticism situated on the moral plane. We do not necessarily criticize capitalism, which generates wealth gaps. We expose an idle life in luxury, without conscience or morals. »
The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) already offered this cynical way to perfection. The critic of variety summed up the film’s script by saying that it repeated in a loop, for three hours, “scenes of money, drugs and prostitution”. The dialogues also hold the Guinness World Record for the most swear words. The word in fy claps more than 500 times.
We do not necessarily criticize capitalism, which generates wealth gaps. We expose an idle life in luxury, without conscience or morals.
“We are in the outlet,” said M.me Posca. We laugh yellow. It feels good for an hour or two and after that you go back to the same problems. You can’t ask too much of movies and TV either. It is on the terrain of political and social struggles that change can take place. »
The people below
Every affirmation is at the same time a negation according to an old rule of rhetoric. These group portraits with moguls, cynics and caricatures ultimately say almost nothing about the system of discrimination that engenders them and keeps them at the top. In addition, movies and TVs feature stars living themselves like the upper high class globalized. Leonardo DiCaprio lectures on the environment in Don’t Look Up while traveling by private jet and yacht.
“Yes, there is a form of hypocrisy there, comments the sociologist, all the same indulgent. Wealth is one thing and power is another. Artists can be rich without having the leverage of a CEO or a banker. »
Another way of doing things does not necessarily lead to agit-prop type propaganda nonsense. Mme Posca quote series TheWire (2002-2008), as a strong counter-example on contemporary inequalities. This quasi-documentary production around drug dealers in Baltimore dissects the social dynamics generated by structural and institutional failures (police, politics, education, media, etc.) of a fractured America, in deep crisis. The sociologist adds the example of Parasite (2019), “which succeeds in showing the unequal class relations between rich and poor, how some in society benefit from the work of others, poorly paid and devalued”.
She quotes again Can you hear me, from Quebec, which shows lost people in their daily lives for a rare time. “The poor, we hardly ever see them, and the dynamics that keep them in poverty even less,” summarizes Julia Posca, mediologist despite herself.
Middle class
Those most often seen on screens actually come from the upper middle class. A 2019 count by the Observatory of Inequalities in France identified only 4% of workers, almost no retirees and 60% of senior executives on television (in fiction and information).
“We see people who work, live in their homes, have cars and raise children, sums up the sociologist, speaking of Quebec television. This is not surprising insofar as Quebec is a less unequal society compared to the United States. But super-rich and even billionaire families, the Desmarais, the Péladeaus, which clearly show the hereditary nature of wealth, there are some here too. »
You bet, Beth would say. Montreal billionaire Robert Miller is making headlines right now for some very, very heinous allegations. Two groups of wealthy businesspeople (including heir to the Bic pencil empire, another from the family owning Biochem Pharma and an ex-Google No. 2) argued in court last year over the purchase of the Kenauk wildlife reserve: 260 km270 lakes, 13 luxury chalets, a real estate bigger than Yellowstone…