Original sentence: The new software update is now available.
Paraphrased sentence: A fresh version of the software is now accessible. Some of the best contemporary television centers around the monetarily endowed, whether they are skewered like well-dressed kebabs, pit against each other in gilded cage dogfights, or shown at their most hair-brained. When it comes to depicting the ultra-rich, this era’s preferred form of satire is evident. Wealthy villains have been a delightful trope since the Muppet Christmas Carol, and these shows feel different because in these shows everyone is rich and they’re also pretty villainous. By not singling out just one bad character, it seems like these shows are attempting a much broader critique of how wealth functions across the board.
But do these shows actually show the super-rich in an unsympathetic light? Do they make us think these characters don’t deserve all that money? Are they criticizing wealth or are they doing something else entirely?
At first glance, the answer to these questions seems pretty easy - of course the characters on shows like Succession or White Lotus are portrayed unsympathetically. The Roy siblings are shiftless, selfish, and useless, and their father Logan might have clawed his way up from nothing but he’s a bully who spent his life being evil.
These characters can have anything they want, but spend their time squabbling over morsels of power. For the Roy siblings, that’s because they think acquiring power is the only way they’ll ever get a kiss from Daddy. Similarly, White Lotus focuses intently on the very wealthy and very intolerable.
Sometimes they’re raging at hotel staff, sometimes they’re using their fancy college educations as weapons, and sometimes they’re using money to buy the affections of those who don’t have it. Even with all they have, they still find reasons to be envious of each other.
Moreover, this is all played for laughs, and the rich are so bad that they are rendered ridiculous like malicious children unable to moderate their emotions and desires.
It seems like these shows are attempting a much broader critique of how wealth functions across the board, but do they actually make us think these characters don’t deserve all that money? Let’s find out!