HBO’s Succession: The Love, Reality, and Power Theory
I recently recommended HBO’s Succession to my boss. Not long after, I got this group text from her, and realized my great folly:
This same boss, after a training seminar in which the coach explained scene-by-scene why Miranda Priestly actually demonstrates fantastic leadership in The Devil Wears Prada, used to regularly make me cry.
So we’ll see if my inability to shut up about this show is spoiled by a tiny blond tyrant aspiring to be Logan Roy.
I think Succession is the Great American Novel. Just kidding — the Great American Novel is either Mad Men or The Wire. But if Mad Men shows the cultural rot consumerism causes and The Wire shows the institutional rot caused by greed, Succession rounds it out to a nice trilogy by showing the familial rot and reality-warping of American megacapitalism.
Something you hear a lot in Succession is “Is it real?” Shiv asks her father this in season two when he suggests she succeed him as CEO of their media empire. Kendall asks the same thing in the latest episode, after a memo is found in a safe that either underlines or crosses out his name as Logan’s desired successor. “Is it real?” he asks. “Did he love me?”
This season, Shiv delivered one of my favorite insights about Logan when she counters his assertions with, “Just ’cause you say it doesn’t make it true.” She says this in a karaoke booth, a place where people express their feelings sometimes earnestly, sometimes manipulatively, through the words of others — lit in neon magenta, a color that doesn’t exist.
This is on par with some of the great take-downs of Don in later seasons of Mad Men, when his Don Draper persona has crumbled and the characters notice things that seem forbidden to point out — like asking where the non-diegetic music or lighting is coming from, you almost wonder if they’re allowed to actually see that Don is manipulative.
(Oh shit, they really let him say, “You don’t have any character. You’re just handsome.”)
Shiv calls Logan a “human gaslight,” but she’s talking about something more monumental than mere gaslighting. She’s describing the core wound of her and her siblings’ hearts, the existential uncertainty that’s tormented them all their lives, caused by Logan’s supermassive, reality-warping power. Their father is unknowable, because in order to sustain his power and wealth, he’s had to turn himself into a different species.
Brian Cox does a great job of throwing you into the same doubt his character’s children feel when he talks about Logan Roy, who he believes is deeply misunderstood and actually loves his children. I found myself rewatching scenes and trying on sympathy for Logan and, you know, it plays.
When Kendall turns on Logan at the end of season two, for example, I now wonder if that was Logan’s intention all along. You see Logan shush Shiv with near reverence as Kendall begins committing corporate fratricide in a live press conference. You see Logan smile a little. Did he intentionally push Kendall to this point and, if so, did he do it to train his son to be a killer? Or because Logan, who thrives on winning, has so few competitors that he has to create them himself? Or, is Logan’s power so important to him that he convinces himself this was his intention all along, so he can take credit for Kendall’s success?
Logan’s private person who, unlike most real-life billionaires, has a sympathetic backstory. It’s clear that at some point in his life he was powerless and is motivated to never experience that again. But his wealth and power turn his shields against vulnerability into a dark matter no one can access, even himself. I think this is probably what Cox means when he says Logan does love his children — that somewhere, on the other side of an impossible chasm, he feels love that cannot achieve escape velocity from his reality-warping power.
Achieving Logan’s reality — the ability to make so much money that you change yourself, your environment, and all your relationships — is what capitalism’s most devout evangelists really want. You can only make use of so much money. You can only sail so many yachts at once. The amount of money to make you and your whole family the most comfortable people on earth is finite and definitely not in the billions. After that, it’s about power, and after that it’s quantum. You gain the ability to reach into the vibrating particles of your being and place them where you want, like magnets on a fridge.
The natural conclusion of unbidden capitalism is unraveled, configurable reality. It’s found in the sci-fi/fantasy aisle. Is that why superheroes, dungeons, and dragons dominate entertainment this age of advanced capitalism?
Maybe the core trait of America is delusion. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the “post-rational” age. I’ve been terrified that the recognition of lies, propaganda, and gaslighting for what they are won’t be educational, but that they will be normalized and become our language. How can you argue with someone for whom proof is no longer proof, and truth is as loose as a floater in the eye? When someone baldly admits that they don’t care what the truth is, you cannot win unless you put on your VR helmet.
Anyway, wish me luck with my boss.
