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there’s something deeply, viscerally satisfying about Kendall’s “woke” rebrand in Succession season 3, because we start out knowing that Kendall, like everyone else in entire show, is a pretty fuckin’ reprehensible human being
so it’s obvious that his whole schtick is simultaneously egregiously cynical and appallingly unselfaware; every single time he opens his mouth, he’s talking about righting injustices and empowering women and yada yada, but all we hear is “fuck you dad,” and “mememe i want mineminemine,” and endless, desperate, deeply pathetic delusions of grandeur.
and the meetings Kendall has with the new staff he hires… oh boy. it’s not that he’s out here actively thinking of women as lesser, in the boorish-old-school-misogynist sort of way; it’s that they simply do not enter into his calculus; to think of them as lesser he would have to think of them at all, and the entire moral calculus of his world is him, dad, and the few people with enough political power to be used to that end. no one else even exists, not really.
the feeling of being in a room with someone, and talking to them, and realizing that they are not hearing you at all? will never hear you? are constitutionally incapable of hearing you, no matter how loudly you raise your voice? god, what a modern horror story. what a mood.
(and, augh! even with all the awfulness, there’s real human feeling beneath it; this all comes from Kendall’s desperate bid to be Not His Dad, and his dad is Evil so he must be Good, and therefore everything he does is Good Person Things, and the boy is too fucked up to realize how much that is not how it works!)
also, it’s fascinating to watch how Gerri positions herself in all this. i don’t want this show to ever become About Gender, and it’s not, it’s just that it’s About Power, and all the other stuff flows out naturally from there. and Gerri’s such a fascinating, persistent, understated presence in all of this.
like, there's critiques i could make, but mostly it's just refreshing to have a narrative that's so ruthlessly call-it-like-it-is cut-the-bullshit. "everyone sucks" isn't a very complete or satisfying answer to the nature & challenges of power, but at least it's not the tepid, mealy-mouthed both-sides messaging you get from something like, i dunno, The Chair.
anyway, anyone else watching the rich asshole show, xoxo lua
so it’s obvious that his whole schtick is simultaneously egregiously cynical and appallingly unselfaware; every single time he opens his mouth, he’s talking about righting injustices and empowering women and yada yada, but all we hear is “fuck you dad,” and “mememe i want mineminemine,” and endless, desperate, deeply pathetic delusions of grandeur.
and the meetings Kendall has with the new staff he hires… oh boy. it’s not that he’s out here actively thinking of women as lesser, in the boorish-old-school-misogynist sort of way; it’s that they simply do not enter into his calculus; to think of them as lesser he would have to think of them at all, and the entire moral calculus of his world is him, dad, and the few people with enough political power to be used to that end. no one else even exists, not really.
the feeling of being in a room with someone, and talking to them, and realizing that they are not hearing you at all? will never hear you? are constitutionally incapable of hearing you, no matter how loudly you raise your voice? god, what a modern horror story. what a mood.
(and, augh! even with all the awfulness, there’s real human feeling beneath it; this all comes from Kendall’s desperate bid to be Not His Dad, and his dad is Evil so he must be Good, and therefore everything he does is Good Person Things, and the boy is too fucked up to realize how much that is not how it works!)
also, it’s fascinating to watch how Gerri positions herself in all this. i don’t want this show to ever become About Gender, and it’s not, it’s just that it’s About Power, and all the other stuff flows out naturally from there. and Gerri’s such a fascinating, persistent, understated presence in all of this.
like, there's critiques i could make, but mostly it's just refreshing to have a narrative that's so ruthlessly call-it-like-it-is cut-the-bullshit. "everyone sucks" isn't a very complete or satisfying answer to the nature & challenges of power, but at least it's not the tepid, mealy-mouthed both-sides messaging you get from something like, i dunno, The Chair.
anyway, anyone else watching the rich asshole show, xoxo lua
