Latest news with #SaloniGajjar
CBC
08-07-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
After years of 'eat the rich' television, are we finally full?
Social Sharing Over the last few years, TV audiences have seen a boom of class commentaries on screen. From award season darlings like Succession, The White Lotus and Squid Game to newer entries like Your Friends & Neighbours and Nine Perfect Strangers, the "eat the rich" genre of TV has never been more popular. But in today's world, where economic disparities and concerns about a modern-day oligarchy seem to grow by the day, the appetite for these shows appears to be waning. Have we officially moved past the desire for a show that tells us rich people are flawed, amoral and out of touch with the common man? And if so, then what sort of series might gain popularity in the near future? Today on Commotion, TV critic Saloni Gajjar and culture critic Nicole Froio join guest host Rad Simonpillai to talk about why this year's spate of "eat the rich" television is falling short of our expectations. We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player. WATCH | Today's episode on YouTube: Rad: Saloni, you wrote that the terrible rich people have worn out their welcome. Why are you feeling that way? Saloni: To me, Succession was at a peak when it aired.… It capitalized on this phenomenon, but also it thoughtfully portrayed the twisted and toxic family. But I think in the past few years — even just this year alone, especially after January — we're seeing so much in real life about how the wealthy, usually white, usually male, tend to get away with a lot of things. I mean, just turn on the news. And so I think to make TV like this work, it's going to take a lot more than just the obvious satire and surface-level humor. We've been talking about empathy, you know, we really do lack that in real life sometimes when we're watching the news. And so when we turn on the TV, you want to see people you care about, instead of a commentary that's really just too on-the-nose and too harrowing, and too flashy, and just lacking substance. Rad: Well, it's interesting because, Nicole, we have all this satire about capitalism favouring the wealthy and then disenfranchising everyone else. And then in the real world, nothing has really changed. These shows haven't moved the needle culturally in any way. So what do you think should come after satire? Nicole: I think that we are living in a reality where it's not even like every month or every year — like every day, things get more expensive. And so watching the rich enjoy caviar, trips to Italy or to wherever, even if they get something coming for them, it's not satisfying because we're still living in this reality. And I think that it really shows … the limitations of an industry that is controlled by profit and capitalism, right? Like we're not doing these films, TV and art to change the world; we're doing it to profit. And so I think that it requires a really huge shift in what we think about in terms of culture, and why we do it. So after satire, I think we have to maybe rethink why we're doing these shows — and if it's to make people more rich, then we're basically just replaying a cycle forever.
The Guardian
27-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Money problems: have we had enough of TV shows about rich people?
As fun as it was, Mountainhead seems to have broken something in quite a lot of people. For some, it was simply too timely. After all, it's one thing to release a film about tech billionaires fighting over the remnants of a world ravaged by war and AI, but quite another to do it while that exact thing was really happening. For others, Mountainhead marked the point where ultra-rich antiheroes reached full saturation. Writing in the AV Club last week, Saloni Gajjar made the argument that – between Mountainhead, Your Friends & Neighbors, The White Lotus and Nine Perfect Strangers – we have now arrived at a moment where television seems unable to tell stories that are about anything but the badly behaved rich. Gajjar's point is well made, but I think the truth might be a little bit more insidious than that. Yes, we do appear to be in the middle of an unceasing wealth glut on television, but the problem isn't just rich antiheroes. It's the rich, full stop. If you watch enough TV, you might have noticed a slow creep of aspiration. Houses are getting bigger. Clothes are becoming more stylish. Home furnishings have become so universally luxe that no matter what I'm watching – Shrinking, maybe, or The Four Seasons – I'll almost always find myself detaching from the plot to wonder where the characters bought their nice lamps. And once you start to notice it, you'll see it everywhere. The Better Sister is a generic murder mystery that is impossible to engage with because everyone lives their lives in a heightened state of monied comfort. Sirens is a whirlwind of impeccable interiors and not much else. Nobody on And Just Like That has spent even a second worrying about money, even though Carrie Bradshaw has basically got the exact same job as me and I can barely make it halfway around Lidl without having a panic attack about exceeding my overdraft. When I watched Good American Family, my first thought wasn't 'How awful that these people abandoned their infant daughter alone in an apartment while they moved to Canada,' but 'How the hell did these people afford an entire separate apartment for their infant daughter?' And this is the problem. At least when the rich people are the baddies you can argue that the shows are attempting to make a point about them. Succession essentially trapped its characters within the confines of their wealth. They might have it all, the show said, but only because they had to cash in their souls. And while The White Lotus has to return to the same well too many times by dint of its format, it still has plenty to say about the wealthy. This year, especially, it was the newly wealthy. Watch how quickly Belinda, a lowly spa manager in season one, traded in all of her defining traits the moment a windfall hit her account. I'd even argue that Mountainhead didn't qualify as wealth porn, because every single character was caught up in a frantic, exhausting status game to the exclusion of everything else in their lives. True, it featured a massive house but, as Variety's recent group interview revealed, they only chose it because it made the cinematographer want to kill himself. I'm no expert, but I don't think that the appeal of porn is how many suicidal tendencies it triggers. In other words, depictions of extreme wealth on TV are OK if they have a point. All these shows had a point. Billions had a point. Even Schitt's Creek managed to say something about money. The problem is when this wears away and characters are only rich because producers want to give the viewer something nice to look at. Sometimes this shift even happens on the same series. The Morning Show might have started as a glossy satire about Reese Witherspoon's plucky reporter being thrust into the well-to-do world of New York media, but it lost that bite long ago. Now it exists as a weird kind of internal competition to see which character can have the shiniest hair. And it's this Selling Sunset-ification of television that needs to stop. When we're confronted with such an unyielding parade of upscale comfort, the effect isn't as aspirational as producers probably think. We aren't left with a growling envy of how the other half lives; we're instead left worrying that they wouldn't know what real life was like if you bonked them over the head with a Poundland flipflop. Although if anyone from The Four Seasons does want to get in touch to tell me where all their nice lamps came from (and, where possible, some acceptable Temu dupes) I'd appreciate it.
The Guardian
25-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Money problems: have we had enough of TV shows about rich people?
As fun as it was, Mountainhead seems to have broken something in quite a lot of people. For some, it was simply too timely. After all, it's one thing to release a film about tech billionaires fighting over the remnants of a world ravaged by war and AI, but quite another to do it while that exact thing was really happening. For others, Mountainhead marked the point where ultra-rich antiheroes reached full saturation. Writing in the AV Club last week, Saloni Gajjar made the argument that – between Mountainhead, Your Friends & Neighbors, The White Lotus and Nine Perfect Strangers – we have now arrived at a moment where television seems unable to tell stories that are about anything but the badly behaved rich. Gajjar's point is well made, but I think the truth might be a little bit more insidious than that. Yes, we do appear to be in the middle of an unceasing wealth glut on television, but the problem isn't just rich antiheroes. It's the rich, full stop. If you watch enough TV, you might have noticed a slow creep of aspiration. Houses are getting bigger. Clothes are becoming more stylish. Home furnishings have become so universally luxe that no matter what I'm watching – Shrinking, maybe, or The Four Seasons – I'll almost always find myself detaching from the plot to wonder where the characters bought their nice lamps. And once you start to notice it, you'll see it everywhere. The Better Sister is a generic murder mystery that is impossible to engage with because everyone lives their lives in a heightened state of monied comfort. Sirens is a whirlwind of impeccable interiors and not much else. Nobody on And Just Like That has spent even a second worrying about money, even though Carrie Bradshaw has basically got the exact same job as me and I can barely make it halfway around Lidl without having a panic attack about exceeding my overdraft. When I watched Good American Family, my first thought wasn't 'How awful that these people abandoned their infant daughter alone in an apartment while they moved to Canada,' but 'How the hell did these people afford an entire separate apartment for their infant daughter?' And this is the problem. At least when the rich people are the baddies you can argue that the shows are attempting to make a point about them. Succession essentially trapped its characters within the confines of their wealth. They might have it all, the show said, but only because they had to cash in their souls. And while The White Lotus has to return to the same well too many times by dint of its format, it still has plenty to say about the wealthy. This year, especially, it was the newly wealthy. Watch how quickly Belinda, a lowly spa manager in season one, traded in all of her defining traits the moment a windfall hit her account. I'd even argue that Mountainhead didn't qualify as wealth porn, because every single character was caught up in a frantic, exhausting status game to the exclusion of everything else in their lives. True, it featured a massive house but, as Variety's recent group interview revealed, they only chose it because it made the cinematographer want to kill himself. I'm no expert, but I don't think that the appeal of porn is how many suicidal tendencies it triggers. In other words, depictions of extreme wealth on TV are OK if they have a point. All these shows had a point. Billions had a point. Even Schitt's Creek managed to say something about money. The problem is when this wears away and characters are only rich because producers want to give the viewer something nice to look at. Sometimes this shift even happens on the same series. The Morning Show might have started as a glossy satire about Reese Witherspoon's plucky reporter being thrust into the well-to-do world of New York media, but it lost that bite long ago. Now it exists as a weird kind of internal competition to see which character can have the shiniest hair. And it's this Selling Sunset-ification of television that needs to stop. When we're confronted with such an unyielding parade of upscale comfort, the effect isn't as aspirational as producers probably think. We aren't left with a growling envy of how the other half lives; we're instead left worrying that they wouldn't know what real life was like if you bonked them over the head with a Poundland flipflop. Although if anyone from The Four Seasons does want to get in touch to tell me where all their nice lamps came from (and, where possible, some acceptable Temu dupes) I'd appreciate it.
