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’s about succession, partly because it sounds like an episode of the TV programme 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 that it could happen while he was still alive.
I am just going to share with the family my own Succession memo: guys, good job for watching, it’s a great show, but if the fact of mortality was your only take home, then you really weren’t 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 dramatised shiny, marque-SUV 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.
But as the sociologist Rowland Atkinson commented, it “seemed to be different from what we’ve seen in the past. You look at a very opulent production like 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’s 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 both 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 these 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 don’t notice us and they hate each other. The physics of love – that money can’t buy it, or 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 maximising. It’s just not strong enough.
That’s the main lesson I’d take from Succession, if I were Rupert Murdoch: balkanise your empire and give it all away. Give it to a cat’s home, to Médecins Sans Frontières, 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 here, too, with what may be its clearest lesson: don’t get involved with politics. Maintain decent standards of impartiality in your media, keep your distance from political parties and candidates. Not because it’s a tricky tiger that may go in an unpredictable direction and will be difficult to dismount, but because it’s morally wrong.
The young Murdochs may 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, incapable of intimacy? It’s been pretty well known since Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett’s seminal The Spirit Level – realistically, probably since the Bible – that unequal societies don’t just make those at the bottom less happy, but corrode wellbeing 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 will be aware of? It doesn’t really matter why. This is settled social science.
Other lessons, in no particular order: don’t underestimate your sister, or your stepmother, or your mother; don’t underestimate the fathomlessness of human malice; don’t listen to music too loud on your headphones, even rich people can get tinnitus. But far more importantly, choose happiness; give your wealth away; start today. The sooner the Murdochs fall in love with redistribution, the sooner they will learn to love themselves.
Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist
