The Rich Get Richer and We Love It

In a review of The House of Gucci, Vulture inadvertently has hit on something:

What it’s really about, of course, is rich people being awful to one another, a genre of entertainment that speaks to our era more than superheroes do. We may want to eat the rich, but we also like to watch them, and our appetite for dramas set in the world of the one percent hasn’t decreased, even as the use of guillotine GIFs rises. Shows like Succession and movies like House of Gucci try to square these contradictions by providing a kind of escapist schadenfreude, giving their audiences a chance to peer into the existences of the unfathomably well-off while also reassuring them that to actually be one of the superrich is to be miserable.

I just don't think much of this is true. People like to THINK they nobly wish schadenfreude upon these characters, but in reality they fetishize them and with they were them. Our worship of billionaires today is nothing close to resembling the Jacobins of the French Revolution, who'd finally seen enough of the opulence thrown casual in their faces and started chopping off heads. Americans see the same and only beg for more, foolishly thinking that if we root for these people we'll become these people. They portray themselves as being "miserable" while laughing in our faces. MAGA, indeed.