“Succession”… or… Lifestyles of the Rich and Sexually Deviant

“There’s no such thing as a sexual relationship.” ~ Jacques Lacan

On Season 1 of “Succession” viewers witnessed…

• the sado-masochistic whip-mark welts on Logan Roy’s back
• Roman masturbate into a glass window overlooking the city
• Connor convert his prostitute into a girlfriend
• Shiv cheat on her husband
• Tom attend a drug-fueled, sex-positive bachelor party/rave somewhere deep in the bowels of Manhattan
• Logan lying semi-conscious in a hospital bed gently moving his compassionate daughter Shiv’s hand down to his crotch
• and Kendall… well, Kendall is evidently too concerned with other forms of power to waste time on something so mundane as sex

On Season 2 of “Succession” viewers learned that…

• Shiv is still cheating on Tom but with other men
• Roman — the Shakespearean fool — can only get hard while being berated and degraded by his mother-figure Gerri
• Kendall got so high with Naomi that he literally shit the bed

But really, the best scene of last week’s “Tern Haven” episode was Logan walking up the stairs with “come hither” eyes as he looked down and back on his daughter, Shiv.

So how far will “Succession” go? Will Logan actually coerce his own daughter into (more) sexual favors in exchange for bequeathing his empire to her? And will she succumb?

In the era of Jeffrey Epstein, Harvey Weinstein, Michael Jackson, Louis C.K., and Berlusconi’s Bunga Bunga parties, lifestyles of the rich and famous are becoming exposed for the prurient exercises in egregious and salacious power that they exert.

The underlying subconscious reason for this, I believe, is that we are growing more and more disgusted by rich people and the privileges that they apparently enjoy. The 99% is taking pleasure in watching the 1% portrayed as decadent perverts, as we saw in the first scene of “Billions,” and now as power-hungry buffoons as we see throughout “Succession.”

“Y’see, everything is sex, except sex, which is power, You know power is just sex, You screw me and I’ll screw you too, Everything is sex, Except sex, which is power, You know power is just sex, Now ask yourself who’s screwing you” ~ Janelle Monae

F. Scott Fitzgerald supposedly once said to Ernest Hemingway, “You know, the rich are different from you and me.” Hemingway replied, “Yes. They have more money.” Today one could imagine Hemingway retorting, “Yes, they fuck their daughters.”

With growing economic disparity, our country is inching towards a violent revolution not unlike the French Revolution. If our love to hate the rich on television presages the future, we should expect to see random assassinations of rich people by disenfranchised workers grow exponentially if something is not done.

The myth of meritocracy — that if you work hard God will reward you — has been unveiled as a fiction and people are beginning to realize that they are slaving away 90–100 hours per week to make already wealthy people wealthier. This is why we love to watch the 1% psychologically disintegrate before our very eyes.

As I wrote in on page 94 of “How to Survive Your Childhood Now That You’re an Adult,” “Plato thought that art and entertainment were mimetic; Aristotle thought art and entertainment were cathartic. Plato believed that if people saw violence they would imitate it; Aristotle believed that viewers would vicariously live that violence or sadness and, just by observing it, be less prone to act it out. The jury is still out on this.”

Yes, the jury is still out, but we already know by the smiles hanging on their lips what the verdict will be.