Why is Everything About Rich People and Murder?
Rich people keep killing or getting killed in pop culture. Why is that?
By Peter Nomeland with art by Alex Kozak
Two movies from last year, "Glass Onion" and "The Menu," end in, more or less, the same way. A female protagonist, who has just survived a night of outwitting a bunch of crazed rich people, watches from afar as the building where most of the story has taken place burns to the ground. They are so similar you would think someone copied and told the other to change a few things so no one would notice like it's a math exam. The similarities don't just end there, though. Both projects are just two of the latest entries in recent class critiques that have pitted the ultra-wealthy vs. the working class, often with deadly results. From films like these to Emmy-winning HBO dramas like "Succession" or the "The White Lotus," a trend has emerged in the last few years of satirical looks at the rich and powerful thrown together with a murder of some kind. Rich people killing each other, rich people killing someone and getting away with it, or rich people getting killed by a weird group of vengeful chefs (spoilers for The Menu).
The concept of rich vs. poor depicted in media is not a new tactic. Some of the most popular and influential books and films of all time, like "The Great Gatsby'' or "Chinatown," revolve around the dark side of the ruling class. But as the 21st century has moved along, events such as the stock market crash of 2008, the Occupy Wall Street movement, and the recent worldwide pandemic have revealed even further economic gaps between the top to the bottom of society. And out of that pandemic, as well as the Trump culture war years, has emerged an explosion of a specific satire of the rich, showing off their extreme wealth and ridiculous behavior in contrast to the rest of the world which probably includes most of the viewers. A lot has been made about how many of these projects can be seen as "wealth porn" and that a lot of the popularity has to do with audiences liking seeing beautiful rich people in exotic places, sort of how you watch Architectural Digest Youtube videos. But that's where the murder comes in.
Two filmmakers who have been using rich people murder mysteries to some of their biggest success are Rian Johnson and Mike White for the "Knives Out" movies and "The White Lotus" anthology series, respectively. In Johnson's case, both “Knives Out” and “Glass Onion” show Daniel Craig's detective, Benoit Blanc, investigating a murder within a group of extremely wealthy people. Using the basic mystery format, Johnson investigates the potential fraud of these so-called "elites," whether it be rich kids holding onto the success of their father or a group of so-called "disruptors" led by an Elon Musk-like figure played by Edward Norton who all end up being frauds in the end, earning none of the success and riches they've achieved. In both movies, the murder is revealed to be in service of preserving the wealth and power they have already undeservedly earned.
In "The White Lotus," White "explores the class anxieties that can burst forth, ‘alien-like,’ when we shell out thousands of dollars to unwind," as Inkoo Kang puts it in The New Yorker. Each season begins with the reveal that someone at a hotel has been murdered and flashes back to the beginning of the week, showing us basically every genre of a rich asshole you could think of, as well as the service workers that they take advantage of, from hotel staff to sex workers.
At the end of the first season of “The White Lotus,” a feud between Shane, a rich fratty guest, and Armond, the manager of the hotel, ends with the accidental murder of Armond. Shane gets off completely free from the incident, and the hotel immediately finds a new manager. This might be the most clear-cut and obvious example of what these projects are trying to say: that all this wealth and power given to these select people will always have dangerous consequences. Maybe the phrase, "eat the rich," isn't so out of the question, especially in "The Menu" (spoilers again).