Businessman Rupert Murdoch has lost an epic legal battle against three of his children: He wanted to wrest control of his media empire back from them, settle it solely upon his son Lachlan in the event of his death, and thereby... Well, who knows his true motivation? Most likely to destroy, but who and in what order, is now lost in a sealed court decision in Nevada.
Everyone is calling it the “Succession trial,” partly because it is about succession, partly because it sounds like an episode of the TV program Succession and partly because it was also inspired by one.
After the death of Logan Roy (who, for readers who live in a cave, is fictional), Elisabeth Murdoch’s representative, Mark Devereux, penned the “Succession memo,” which aimed to prevent turmoil following the mogul’s death. Instead, it just brought that turmoil forward so it could happen while he was still alive.
Illustration: Constance Chou
I am just going to share with the family my own Succession memo: Guys, good job for watching, it is a great show, but if the fact of mortality was your only take home, then you really were not paying attention.
Ten years ago, if you met the super-rich on TV, it was wealth porn (we called it that in the UK; in the US, they called it “lifestyle porn”). Shows from Big Little Lies to Billions, and films from Fifty Shades to the Twilight franchise dramatized shiny, marque-sport utility vehicle lives, in which the awesomely wealthy did fabulous, terrible things. It was escapism, and part of the escape was from the everyday reality that we were all already getting poorer.
However, as sociologist Rowland Atkinson said, it “seemed to be different from what we’ve seen in the past. You look at a very opulent production such as Brideshead Revisited and that Edwardian-era excess had a strong sense of social investment. But [shows like Big Little Lies] present a life that has almost removed itself from society. Staggering wealth now represents the ability to escape, rather than be noticed.”
There has been a volte-face. The super rich in today’s dramas are not removed from society, hermetically sealed, with our piggy viewer noses pressed up against the glass. They mean us ill; they mean each other ill; they spell disaster; they are in society and making it worse. The composer of the Succession theme tune described his mission as he understood it: “How can I make it feel as though something’s wrong?”
The love of money corrodes those people. Their greed destroys their human connections, their luxury stupefies them. And they are all, from Succession to The White Lotus, incredibly unhappy — flattered and coddled by a rolling cast of servants that represents society as a whole, they do not notice us and they hate each other. The physics of love — that money cannot buy it, match it or compensate for the lack of it — is reversed among the billionaire class. Love cannot match the cupidity they need to always be maximizing. It is just not strong enough.
That is the main lesson I would take from Succession if I were Rupert Murdoch: Balkanize your empire and give it all away. Give it to a cat’s home, to Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors without Borders), to anyone. Is there anything sadder to imagine than spending the rest of your life fighting your loved ones over money you can never spend?
The likely cause of Rupert’s bias towards Lachlan, which has become more and more pronounced, is that he is the closest to his father politically. The other heirs, particularly James, have become more and more vocal in their opposition to climate change denial, Trump support and the whole toxic sludge of “alt-right” talking points spewing out of Fox News.
Succession can help there, too, with what might be its clearest lesson: Do not get involved with politics. Maintain decent standards of impartiality in your media, and keep your distance from political parties and candidates. Not because it is a tricky tiger that might go in an unpredictable direction and would be difficult to dismount, but because it is morally wrong.
The young Murdochs might want to reflect on inequality. They look like winners, the great “haves” in a divided society, but then why are the younger Roys so catastrophically unhappy? Why are they beset by anxiety, poleaxed by addiction, crushed by self-doubt, coarsened by sociopathy and incapable of intimacy? It has been pretty well known since authors Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett’s seminal The Spirit Level — realistically, probably since the Bible — that unequal societies do not just make those at the bottom less happy, but corrode well-being in every decile.
Is it because it destroys your sense of purpose and challenge, to be born into wealth in the first place? Does hoarding money demand a learned callousness to the plight of others, which gets to you in the end? Is there some other factor that only fellow billionaires would be aware of? It does not really matter why. That is settled social science.
Other lessons, in no particular order: Do not underestimate your sister, or your stepmother or your mother; do not underestimate the fathomlessness of human malice; and do not listen to music too loud on your headphones, even rich people can get tinnitus. Far more importantly, choose happiness; give your wealth away; start today. The sooner the Murdochs fall in love with redistribution, the sooner they would learn to love themselves.
Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist.
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