“Mountainhead” and the Age of the Pathetic Billionaire

Summary

Critics at Large | The New Yorker
Episode: “Mountainhead” and the Age of the Pathetic Billionaire
Release Date: June 5, 2025

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Introduction to the Episode

In this episode of Critics at Large, hosts Vincent Cunningham, Alex Schwartz, and Nomi Frye delve into the cultural fascination with billionaires, both fictional and real. They explore how contemporary media portray the ultra-wealthy and examine the implications of these depictions in today's society.

Overview of "Mountainhead"

Mountainhead, a newly released film on HBO Max, serves as the centerpiece of this discussion. Written and directed by Jesse Armstrong, renowned for creating Succession, the movie features an ensemble cast including Steve Carell, Jason Schwartzman, Cory Michael Smith, and Rami Youssef.

Vincent Cunningham provides a synopsis:

"[06:00] Mountainhead is about a group of billionaire friends who are holed up in a house on top of a mountain in Utah, beautifully depicted through the lens of a bunker-like structure. The plot centers around the aftermath of a software update released by Cory Michael Smith’s character, which unleashes advanced AI tools leading to rampant false news and global unrest."

Production Insights

The rapid development of Mountainhead is highlighted as a strategic move to capture the immediacy of current events. Nomi Frye remarks:

"[08:40] Armstrong pitched the idea to HBO in November 2024, wrote the script by February, cast the actors, and completed filming by April, releasing the movie on May 31. This swift production was intentional to ensure the film resonated with the present moment, reflecting narratives that were unfolding in real-time."

Panel's Reactions to "Mountainhead"

Nomi Frye shares a personal reaction:

"[14:04] I felt extremely depressed watching it in a way that surprised me. The situation depicted is so contemporary and raw that the humor felt unsettling."

Alex Schwartz offers a contrasting view:

"[15:19] I did not find it particularly great but appreciated its existence. It effectively portrays the disconnect between billionaires and the broader society, though it didn’t provide new insights into our dependency on their whims."

Vincent Cunningham echoes the sentiment of unease:

"[16:58] I was totally bummed out by this. The portrayal of billionaires as detached and irresponsible feels deeply unsettling."

The Archetype of the Billionaire in Art and Culture

The discussion transitions to the long-standing fascination with billionaires in art. Vincent Cunningham explains:

"[21:00] Art mirrors reality, and in a society where wealth dictates much of the societal dynamics, artistic representations of billionaires are inevitable. Historically, figures like the oil tycoon in There Will Be Blood symbolize the relentless pursuit of wealth and power."

Alex Schwartz adds:

"[22:14] Billionaires embody both the allure of immense wealth and the associated power dynamics. Shows like Succession capture this duality by portraying the opulence and the underlying cruelty of the ultra-rich."

The Emergence of the 'Pathetic Billionaire'

A significant portion of the conversation focuses on the concept of the "pathetic billionaire." Alex Schwartz coins the term:

"[34:28] We're 100% in the age of the pathetic billionaire."

Nomi Frye agrees enthusiastically:

"[34:31] And I for one, could not be happier."

This archetype is characterized by overexposure, attempts to appear "cool," and behaviors that undermine their vast influence. Examples include Mark Zuckerberg's public appearances and Elon Musk's antics on platforms like Joe Rogan's podcast.

Impact and Satire in Depictions of Billionaires

The hosts debate the efficacy of satire in portraying billionaires amid their real-life counterparts. Alex Schwartz observes:

"[18:46] Satirizing extreme wealth is challenging because the reality has become so exaggerated that artistic portrayals struggle to add new dimensions. It's akin to how early Trump presidency made comedy about it both necessary and difficult."

Nomi Frye ponders the societal impact:

"[44:28] As awareness of oligarchy deepens through media and political discourse, it fosters a collective consciousness that could influence political movements, even if the immediate impact seems minimal."

Conclusion

The episode concludes with reflections on the persistent and evolving representation of billionaires in culture. The hosts acknowledge that while artistic depictions like Mountainhead effectively highlight the absurdities and dangers of unchecked wealth, they also raise questions about the potential for these narratives to inspire meaningful societal change.

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Notable Quotes:

• Vincent Cunningham [06:00]: "Mountainhead is about a group of billionaire friends who are holed up in a house on top of a mountain in Utah..."

• Nomi Frye [08:40]: "Armstrong pitched the idea to HBO in November 2024, wrote the script by February..."

• Nomi Frye [14:04]: "I felt extremely depressed watching it in a way that surprised me..."

• Alex Schwartz [34:28]: "We're 100% in the age of the pathetic billionaire."

• Nomi Frye [34:31]: "And I for one, could not be happier."

• Alex Schwartz [22:14]: "Billionaires embody both the allure of immense wealth and the associated power dynamics."

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Additional Information:

• Next Episode Teaser: The hosts announce that the following week will celebrate 250 years of Jane Austen, exploring her novels and their various adaptations.

• Listener Engagement: Listeners are encouraged to participate in a poll on Instagram by visiting @newyorkermag to share their favorite Jane Austen work and potentially have their responses featured on the show.

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This comprehensive summary captures the essence of the podcast episode, highlighting the critical examination of billionaires in modern culture through the lens of fictional portrayals like "Mountainhead" and real-life examples. It provides listeners with insightful discussions, notable quotes, and a clear understanding of the hosts' perspectives on the evolving depiction of wealth and power in society.

Transcript

[Nomi Frye]

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[Vincent Cunningham]

Welcome to critics at Large, a podcast from the New Yorker. I'm Vincent Cunningham.

[Alex Schwartz]

I'm Alex Schwartz.

[Nomi Frye]

And I'm Nomi Frye. Each week on this show, we make sense of what's happening in the culture right now and how we got here. Hey, guys.

[Alex Schwartz]

Hello.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Hello.

[Nomi Frye]

Good week. How's everyone doing?

[Alex Schwartz]

Good week to you.

[Vincent Cunningham]

You know, feeling. Feeling wealthy in spirit.

[Nomi Frye]

Yeah, post. Nick's post.

[Vincent Cunningham]

That's. That's a different matter entirely. Okay, I would like to. Madison Square Garden.

[Nomi Frye]

Let us move on. Let us move on. Okay, so Americans are obsessed with depictions of extreme wealth. This is true for our culture. Right now, I'm thinking most recently of TV shows like White Lotus and Succession and your Friends and Neighbors and. But it goes back. It goes back to characters like Daddy Warbucks and Bruce Wayne, Batman, and of course, you know, late 19th century, early 20th century novelists like Edith Wharton, who depicted kind of robber baron characters.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah. I mean, as far as I can tell, Bruce Wayne is a superhero simply because he could buy his way into that.

[Nomi Frye]

Right.

[Alex Schwartz]

Can someone explain to me what he had going for him other than early trauma and extreme wealth?

[Vincent Cunningham]

And you could say this doubly for, like, Iron man, for example. Sure. He's just a guy with a lot of plans. Oh, I guess he's a scientist or something. He's, like, really brilliant. But then it's the billions that can bring the ideas into fruition. I will say a burning desire for revenge for one's, I don't know, dead parent. I mean, that is kind of a superpower.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah, but you gotta have the box holding onto a Grudge, you gotta have the bucks.

[Vincent Cunningham]

That's right.

[Nomi Frye]

Trauma plot plus a lot of money equals superhero is what you're telling me. Vis a vis Batman.

[Vincent Cunningham]

At least superhero. Or ruinous.

[Nomi Frye]

Or ruinous maniac.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yes.

[Nomi Frye]

Who can tell? This is something we'll probably be talking about today. So we've had a thing for fictional billionaires for many, many decades. And of course, these fictional depictions are also constantly in interaction with what we call real life, you know, where we're constantly inundated with news of what is going on with Billionair like Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk and of course, our favorite billionaire, potentially president Donald J. Trump.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Is he a billionaire?

[Nomi Frye]

You know, I mean, you know, who knows? Who knows? But you know, he certainly has claimed many times to be a billionaire. And so now we have a new addition to this rich guy, ultra wealthy guy movie Cannon Mountainhead.

[Vincent Cunningham]

I hope you rich folks don't mind slumming it in the humble abode of.

[Alex Schwartz]

The poorest billionaire in the gang, but this is exactly why I built Mountain Head.

[Nomi Frye]

Look at this place. Supes. Thank you. No, no, I just said look at it. No compliment implied. Simply look at it.

[Alex Schwartz]

Here we go.

[Nomi Frye]

All right.

[Alex Schwartz]

Four presidents of tech.

[Nomi Frye]

Get yo net worth on 59 63. It's a movie that came out this past weekend on HBO Max and written and directed by Jesse Armstrong, who is probably most known for being the creator of Succession, also on hbo. So today we're talking about Mountainhead and about the figure of the billionaire in our culture more broadly. Right now, our politics and our daily lives are more dominated than ever before by the likes of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. And what I'm wondering is how have our depictions and our understanding of the uber rich changed in response? That's today on Critics at Mountainhead and the Age of of the pathetic Billionaire. Just a quick heads up before we dig into Mountainhead. Next week we're celebrating 250 years of Jane Austen. I can't believe it. By going back and looking at her novels, the many, many, many adaptations of the novels over the years, and so much more.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yes, and what we want to know from you, dear listeners, is what is your favorite Jane Austen work? You can go right now to our Instagram, which is Ewyorkermag, and participate in a poll to tell us your faves.

[Vincent Cunningham]

And for extra credit, if you want to tell us why, send us an email to themailewyorker.com subject line critics. We might read it on the Show.

[Nomi Frye]

Okay, you guys. So as teased, let's start with Mountainhead. For those of our listeners who haven't seen it yet, can someone volunteer perhaps to lay it all out for us? Like, what's it about? Who are the characters?

[Vincent Cunningham]

Absolutely.

[Nomi Frye]

Okay, Vincent, stepping up. I like it.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Mountainhead is about a group of billionaire friends who are holed up in a house which does actually happen to be perhaps on the head of a mountain in Utah. In Utah, in a sort of snowy tableau, beautifully seen through the perfectly washed windows of this weird bunker like structure. It stars Steve Carell, Jason Schwartzman, Cory Michael Smith and Rami Youssef. And they're in the home of the character played by Jason Schwartzman, who actually is an aspiring billionaire. He's close, but he's not there yet. The rest of these guys are mega billionaires and they are doing their kind of what seems like an annual bro trip. But this one is special because it is happening at a time of incredible unrest elsewhere in the world. The billionaire, played by Cory Michael Smith, has just released a kind of software update, it seems, to the social media network that he created. What's it called?

[Nomi Frye]

It's called Tram with a double.

[Vincent Cunningham]

A Tram.

[Alex Schwartz]

Right. Okay.

[Nomi Frye]

Yeah.

[Vincent Cunningham]

But it seems that this has given to the public a whole new tranche of AI tools with which people are creating false news reports and other simulacra which have created all kinds of sectarian, religious, political unrest and conflict. And against that backdrop, watching these notifications as they ping on their phones, the billionaires are holed away having conversations and soon conflicts about what to do about this issue.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah.

[Nomi Frye]

Yes.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah. The only thing I would add to it or change slightly from your magnificent description, I would describe these guys as frenemies rather than friends because there's a bunch of conflict going on with them. They are money conscious, to say the very least. There's a scene in which the Jason Schwartzman anoints each of their bared chests out in the snow with red lipstick. He writes the number of the billions and that is the most up to date so that they can rank themselves. And the character Jeff, played by Remy Youssef, is allegedly wanting to create good with his technology and to put kind of guardrails on these deep fakes that have gotten totally out of control. I also love how the Cory Michael Smith character's name is Venice, which seems like the place, but is spelled like penis with a V. Yeah, that's right, it's Venus.

[Nomi Frye]

Yeah. No, it's Venice. Yeah. No, totally. And as we've said this Was written and directed by Jesse Armstrong of Succession fame. And one interesting thing that we should note about this movie is that it was created. I don't even know how this was humanly possible.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Humanely or humanely?

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah, possibly also humanely.

[Nomi Frye]

Humanely or humanely? Actors are people too fast tracked into production extremely quickly. I believe Armstrong, just from reading about this, pitched the idea of the movie to HBO in November 2024, wrote it in January and February, cast it and shot it in March and April, and it was released May 31. And part of the reason I believe he did this was that, I mean, ripped from the headlines, it wouldn't be an overstatement to say how ripped from the headlines this is. So I think Armstrong, what he said is that it had to be so quick because it is actually describing a narrative that can only happen now. Right. Like a year ago, it would have felt like we wouldn't really totally know what he's talking about. It would be kind of a little bit too far ahead in the future. And who knows how it's gonna look in three months.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah, absolutely. Which is, of course, as you say, very unusual. Yeah. He wanted the movie to speak to the moment. And it's a moment when billionaires are running rampant across this globe and trampling the rest of us underfoot willy nilly.

[Vincent Cunningham]

That's right. The movie opens on Venice in a car, sort of surrounded by sycophants. He's about to release these updates, these eventually fatal updates, and he's wondering whether he should release it by like, sort of posting on whatever social media.

[Nomi Frye]

Oh, shit.

[Alex Schwartz]

I typed.

[Vincent Cunningham]

For the launch announce. So dumb fuck. Over two years.

[Alex Schwartz]

Oops.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Fuck.

[Nomi Frye]

That's funny, right?

[Vincent Cunningham]

That's fucking funny.

[Nomi Frye]

Shall I put that.

[Alex Schwartz]

Launch the full fat product globally and.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Just be like, fuck, with two U's?

[Nomi Frye]

What about with like three U's?

[Vincent Cunningham]

I don't know.

[Alex Schwartz]

I like two.

[Nomi Frye]

Yeah. No, two. Two is genius.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Like, the sort of flippantness of the decision and the kind of total aloofness from everyday concerns is sort of, as you say, hammered home from like image one of the film. This character, specifically Venice, he seems very musky. He's got a very Elani, like, oh, this guy's potentially on drugs.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah. Well, it's interesting to me that you guys immediately are like, that's. Cause I definitely see in Venice. Cause I see, of course, aspects of that megalomaniacal carelessness there. And there's also a bit where apparently he has to jerk off every two hours. That's not as far as I know directly an Elon thing, but you can imagine kind of an equivalent Elon thing. But I think they're all pretty much a mix of certain characteristics that we've come to know from our. From our tech overlords.

[Nomi Frye]

Yeah.

[Alex Schwartz]

Zuckerberg is just the obvious reference for me, also for the Venice character, because it's a social network that is creating enormous harm around the world, as Facebook has, of course, done that has no proper guardrails in place to make sure that people don't, say, murder each other because they've seen a bunch of deep fakes that are plunging the world into chaos. And at this point, we know a great deal about what Facebook has declined to do in terms of protecting users around the world from fake information that can have great consequence for their lives in politics. So there's that too, a kind of total abstractedness from reality, a sense that. And actually, there's a great scene in the movie, possibly my favorite scene. I have to think about that. All the guys have just been snow skiing around. I know there's a term for this, but they're walking. These guys are walking. They're pairing off. And Venice, the young billionaire who is the richest of them all, is walking with Steve Carell's character, Randall. And the thing about Steve Carell's character is he. He is an older guy. He likes to fashion himself as philosophical. He loves Plato. He gets very upset when it's implied that his interpretation of Kant might be incorrect.

[Nomi Frye]

They call him Papa Bear.

[Alex Schwartz]

Exactly.

[Nomi Frye]

Because he's the patriarchal figure. He's kind of like, there they grew up, seemingly kind of like learning from him, understanding his philosophy of the world. It's a kind of like Peter Thiel.

[Alex Schwartz]

Like, I think that's right.

[Nomi Frye]

Mark Andreessen, he's more of a silver.

[Alex Schwartz]

Fox, and he likes to play the role of the intellectual with these guys. And they're walking together and one of them says to the other, do you think other people are real? I think Venice says it to Randall. Do you think other people. Do you believe in other people? Thanks. Do you believe in other people? And Randall says, well, I think one has to. Which is not a yes. It's clear the answer is no, they don't. And that, to me, is the essence of our contemporary billionaire situation. I think Zuckerberg exemplifies it. I certainly think Elon Musk exemplifies it. But that, to me, sums up the movie's attitude towards billionaires without saying it.

[Vincent Cunningham]

They're invoking the trope of the NPC the non player character. Like somebody who's just sort of an automaton who doesn't matter. But speaking of you having a favorite scene, how do you feel about this movie?

[Nomi Frye]

I mean, should I go first?

[Alex Schwartz]

Go first.

[Nomi Frye]

I can go first. Okay. I liked it. I felt extremely depressed watching it in a way that surprised me. I think maybe because the situation depicted in it is so contemporary and so close to the bone. I felt the laughter stick in my throat.

[Alex Schwartz]

That's really interesting because that, to me means the movie was very successful.

[Nomi Frye]

Yeah. No, I.

[Alex Schwartz]

That it worked in the way it should.

[Nomi Frye]

Yeah. I don't think that undermines what the movie was trying to do. I'm just saying.

[Alex Schwartz]

No, the opposite.

[Nomi Frye]

Yeah. I'm just saying that as entertainment, let's say it was painful, like, I often was, like, oh, my God. Like, I don't know how much more I can take. There was a bit of relief. The second half of the movie goes a little bit more slapstick when the tensions within the group itself kind of reach new heights because of their skirmishes for power within the group. And I think that kind of was a bit of a relief for me because it kind of like, I was like, okay, let these idiots, like, murder each other. You know what I mean? That was a little bit of a relief on the level of plot. But other than that, this was kind of weirdly a hard watch for me.

[Alex Schwartz]

Interesting.

[Nomi Frye]

Yeah.

[Alex Schwartz]

I am glad this movie exists and I think it should be watched. That said, I did not think it was particularly great, and I thought it was fine. And why did I think that? I mean, I felt like I really got what Jesse Armstrong was saying right out of the gate. I agree with him 100%. I'm the one in the front row being like, I think these dudes are evil too. Like.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah.

[Alex Schwartz]

And after that, I didn't have many more places to go. And the humor, which is so reminiscent of Succession, it struck me. And I gotta credit this to my husband who made this observation. He's totally right. This is really like a play. You're in a one environment. Yeah.

[Nomi Frye]

It's a chamber piece.

[Alex Schwartz]

It's a chamber. Which is good. I mean, I like the theater. That's good. It's not that that's bad. It's more that. I don't know. I'm looking for. I don't want to get picky and, like, you know, but I'm looking for stuff that's a little bit more visual interest and, you know, more of a cinema experience. And I did feel this Was a very message movie. Deliver these characters to us in a way that is going to entertain us. But to make the bigger point that these guys are trampling us all underfoot, and the only possible way to stop one of them is if another one of them tries to take one of them out, which, you know, probably not gonna happen. So I thought it was okay. I mean, it's really interesting to think about and to discuss. I just didn't think it left me with a new understanding of our situation as subject to the whims of billionaires.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah, I agree with you both. I 100% was totally bummed out by this.

[Nomi Frye]

Oh, my God, it's such a bummer.

[Vincent Cunningham]

In a deep way. I mean, just as it goes on, just like, their sort of casual philosophies, you know, one of them, at a certain point, you know, Venice is like, as if we need more Africans or whatever. And it turns out that the Steve Carell character has written a book, part of which involves some, like. Sort of like race science. These are like, you know, it's just.

[Nomi Frye]

Like, yeah, the character says, like, I've read all your books. I love you. I love what you have to say. I've read all your books. Even the one about race science.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Just like, there's a slapstick to it. But this is not far from the condition of these people who.

[Nomi Frye]

That's the thing. That's the thing. The thing is that reality is so littered right now with the garbage, hell, people like Elon Musk. Idiots, you know, Idiots. Dangerous megalomaniacs. But, yeah, incredibly dangerous, that watching a satire on it. I was like, oh, this is literally. I mean, this is gonna happen in, like, two months. I mean, which is not a moot point. I do think that it's important and well made, but it's just on the level of viewing experience. Let's say I was just like, oh, my God, I want to kill myself.

[Alex Schwartz]

Offensive. Did you like it?

[Vincent Cunningham]

I like the model of the sort of ripped from the headlines. It reminds me of this thing that used to happen, the Federal Theater Project in the middle of the New Deal, like, where they would do these sort of newspaper plays that would sort of summarize current events and satirize and put a political spin on them for local communities. But it's not something that I'm gonna revisit. Like, I'm not gonna watch it again. But at the same time, I was glad to watch it.

[Nomi Frye]

So the ripped from the headlines aspect we've talked about, do we think this works as a satire Yes.

[Alex Schwartz]

I think you guys have gotten to the meat of it, I think, which is that the real situation is already so extreme that to satirize it, as usual is difficult. This is something. It does remind me of the phenomenon of the first Trump presidency, where everyone kept saying, it's so outrageous, it's so crazy. How do you make comedy from this? You can't send up this thing that's already comedy but deadly serious. And I think maybe we're in that situation with the tech billionaires. I mean, the thing that the only little glimpse of solace here is the idea that Zuck flipping through his screening options is like, huh, turns this on and watches 10 minutes of it before, you know, getting ruffled and turning it off. That's my fantasy. It's obviously not going to come true.

[Nomi Frye]

When we're back. The role of the billionaire in both life and art is changing. Can today's fictional depiction compete with the ones we're dealing with in real life? This is critics at large from the New Yorker.

[Vincent Cunningham]

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[Nomi Frye]

Okay, you guys, so we've been talking about Mountainhead. Can't emphasize enough how very much of the moment it is, but as we discussed, the billionaire is a figure that's been around for a very long time. Why do you think artists are drawn to the figure of the tycoon or the mogul? Like, what is it about that figure that makes artists return to it again and again?

[Vincent Cunningham]

I think it's a reflection of one of the duties of art, which is to reflect reality. And especially in a society like ours, which even if the number billion wasn't always attached to mega wealth, where so much of the locomotion belongs to the wealthy. Right? So much of what happens, so much of the phenomena that are apparent to our eyes on street level are some sort of trickle down from some place that we can barely see. Right? As long as that's true art has the Responsibility to try to incorporate that. Sometimes, like, if art is at least in part about how the world occurs, then you're always going to, in a very sort of economically hierarchical society, end up that way. It's like F. Scott Fitzgerald was always interested in Hollywood, for example. And you can represent a writer, you can represent a director, but at the end of the day, he has to try to write the Love of the Last Tycoon. Because Monroe star, you work your way up and up and up. And where is the real, as we say, juice? And usually it's somewhere at the top of this ladder.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah, I think that's true. And I also think these are figures of fascination, pure and simple. Because there's a fantasy, a fun fantasy element. Like, you know, oh, this is what I wish I had. Especially in a deeply acquisitive society. Don't know if you guys have heard, we live in a capitalist society. So, yeah, I'm sorry to be the one to break it to you, but obviously, what money can buy you is a big thing. And also because money aligns with power. So we're dealing with power, which is another subject of fascination long before billionaires existed. Why are there plays about kings? You know, if we talk about a show like Succession, and I'm sure we will, I think many people compared it to a Shakespearean tragedy because it's about the burdens of power and the deformities that come with power. So those are interesting things to look at with this new power class.

[Nomi Frye]

Absolutely. And I also think there's a kind of, like, interesting parallel between the figure of the artist depicting the mogul and the mogul himself or herself themselves.

[Alex Schwartz]

We see you girl bosses.

[Nomi Frye]

Yeah. I mean, just even thinking about the quickness that we talked about of this movie, Mountainhead coming into being, I think there is a sense of. Not in any. I'm not implying in any way that someone, you know, sensitive creator, writer, director, like Jesse Armstrong is anything like Elon Musk or, you know, one of the characters that are Musk, like in this movie. But there is, I think, for artists, a kind of awe or fascination with the ability to just mow down and create, quote, unquote, or just act with no consideration for anything else, no restrictions, which is, of course, a very different. Even under the best of circumstances, to be an artist is a very different experience of dominating reality, let's say. Right. And I think there is something in that parallel that is kind of productive. There is a kind of like, whoa, look at them go. Kind of totally.

[Alex Schwartz]

That's so interesting. Cause I was reading an interview with Jesse Armstrong where he did say, like, do I think this movie is going to move the dial? Not really, but I need to, you know, I think I have something to say about this. And the world needs to know that someone is watching.

[Nomi Frye]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely.

[Alex Schwartz]

Someone is seeing what these guys are up to.

[Nomi Frye]

Yeah. Do you guys think that what culture was trying to say about very, very rich people earlier, like in the earlier 20th century versus today? Has it changed? Like, are the depictions different in any kind of interesting way that can tell us something?

[Alex Schwartz]

Well, one thing I'm thinking about is the novel Oil, the Upton Sinclair novel from. I think it was serially published at the start. So like 1926, 1927. And it became the basis for Paul Thomas Anderson's wonderful movie, There Will Be Blood. Great movie. And the thing that occurs to me about that is, so the book is about the son of an oil tycoon, and the son has sympathy for the oil workers. He has political sympathy for socialists. And so there are a lot of arguments with his father. It's very, very obviously coming from a political viewpoint. I mean, Upton Sinclair did want to move the dial and he wanted to present counter arguments and a kind of resistance in his work. So it's a satire, but it's also a form of literary resistance to what is going on. And I think now that job is more important and also harder to do for artists simply because the culture is so enraptured with wealth. Like, yes, American culture has always been completely enraptured with wealth, but now more than ever, because again, I don't know if you guys know that we're living in late stage capitalism, but here we are. And so you kind of have to do both. I think in contemporary depictions, you have to show this stuff as object of desire and fantasy while skewering it at the same time. Or maybe you guys can think of counterexample, where it's just. But I think that's part of it. I think that's what this movie is trying to do. I think that's what Succession is trying to do. Like succession you are. And of course, I'm speaking about the HBO show Succession, which ran for a number of seasons and showed a Murdoch like family in the midst of a long tussle over who would take over. Otherwise known as Succession. Succession, you know, succession. You're being bombarded with wealth with the jets, the planes, the crassness of it, the cruelty of it. And it's all the things like it's appealing. It's also obviously, like, horrifying because it really insulates these people from the world, from themselves, from their feelings. And it's so effective, I think, because you see them trying to, like, break out of the chrysalis of wealth every so often to be real people and just not being able to do that at all.

[Nomi Frye]

I mean, I think the question of glamour is a really interesting one because I do think this is something that, like, in our country has gone. Was. Was kind of, like taken to the next level in the Reagan 80s. Robin Leach's lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, you know, just. Just the. The idea that absolute wealth delights. Absolutely. You know, and that we, as we obviously don't have the wealth these people have, at least we can enjoy it. And I think with the Jesse Armstrong oeuvre, succession to some extent, and Mountainhead to an even greater extent, of course, there's like, comfort and luxury and the ability to buy and sell. Almost everyone else in the world several times over is always there and made present. But it's bare bones and ugly. Like, it doesn't kind of, like lovingly glide a finger on the kind of velvety surfaces of affluence. It's an ugly world.

[Vincent Cunningham]

It's a strange thing. I think part of this issue of, like, glamour versus this other sort of spiritual barrenness does have something to do with the fact that whether the depictions are or were critical or not, one big difference, I would say, in these depictions is that in earlier American literature and other forms of art, right, wealth was partially used to highlight the difference in sort of class society between America and Europe, where class was this fixed, sclerotic, sort of just foreordained thing. In Europe, the class system, America, the class system is this highly mobile. You can move, you can skyrocket from one class to another. And so part of the reason to depict wealth was to show this relative dynamism in American culture, political economy, whatever, such that. Maybe this is why the totemic figure at a time was the oil man or the person that builds the railroads, because it's almost an extension of this older American archetype, the frontiersman. It's someone who goes and makes and sort of affects change through sheer dogged will with a sort of, like, trickster's impertinence, whatever, right? Like that becoming wealthy was a part of this pre existing American thing. Whereas it seems like depictions of wealth now are about. And I guess I think this is the corollary to this, the issue of no taste. It's like suddenly wealth is about what can't happen. Everything's already been built, the country's already been peopled, and the new inventions are these invisible things that all they can do is take people's jobs and sow chaos. It seems that the imaginary that accompanied the old sort of at least dynamic, mega rich, it's like it's exhausted itself.

[Alex Schwartz]

You're reminding me of a piece by our colleague John Cassidy. I don't know if you guys read this piece, but I thought it was really interesting. It was online, it was published in May, and it's called Three Faces of American Buffett, Musk and Trump. And he's talking about Warren Buffett, Elon Musk, and of course, Donald Trump. And what you're making me think of specifically is Cassidy is talking about Thorstein Veblen, who he calls the eccentric but brilliant social theorist. And Veblen's idea that there were two kinds of capitalists. There were the industrial class who were hands on, like the railroad men, the guys who were out there making the stuff out there in the field with the workers, looking at what was going on, figuring out a better way to do it, building up wealth. And then what he called the pecuniary class, which are basically people who are making money for money. They're managing factories in absentia, they're investors, they're financiers. And of course, Veblen has this real scorn for the pecuniary class, the guys who are not there rolling up their shirt sleeves and getting down with it. And what Cassidy is saying is these things have now totally merged in a lot of ways.

[Nomi Frye]

Absolutely.

[Alex Schwartz]

Like people who admire Elon Musk like to talk about, he was actually there on the island, shooting the rockets into the sky. He's out there with the guys, he's doing the stuff. But in fact, as John Cassidy is saying, I'll just quote from him for a second. He says Musk is a highly successful entrepreneur, but he has also profited enormously from investors bidding Tesla stock into the stratosphere. Moreover, his companies have benefited from tens of billions of dollars in federal contracts. So I think the reason I'm bringing this up is when I see the way that people, a lot of people do treat Elon Musk like a character. I mean, they treat him as a form of superhero, as a kind of like Bruce Wayne fighting for their cause, whether it's with the Doge stuff or whether it's with the shitposting or whatever it might be. And I think that goes hand in hand with this idea of he built his stuff for himself and no, he didn't. You know, it's hard to have that pure billionaire. It's hard to make a billionaire into a hero, basically.

[Nomi Frye]

Okay, the billionaire has long been an archetype in culture, but is the pathetic billionaire a new phenomenon? We'll discuss in a minute on critics at Large. You come to the New Yorker Radio Hour for conversations that go deeper with people you really want to hear from, whether it's Bruce Springsteen or Questlove or Olivia Rodrigo, Liz Cheney or the godfather of artificial intelligence, Geoffrey Hinton, or some of my extraordinarily well informed colleagues at the New Yorker. So join us every week on the New Yorker Radio Hour wherever you listen to podcasts. Okay, guys, so we've been talking about the billionaire. Alex asked, can the billionaire be a hero or is it, you know, the billionaire can't be a hero? And one of the things we might want to think about is is there kind of an emergent figure of kind of like the pathetic billionaire, Something that I think would have been impossible to envision with someone like, I don't know, Rockefeller, you know, or like, hardly. Maybe because these people were much less knowable to us. And now, much like celebrities or just even regular people in our day to day lives, we know too much about these people to even like superficially kind of think, oh, they're really smart or they're really respectable or they're really kind of like, can act as figures to mimic in some way.

[Alex Schwartz]

We're 100% in the age of the pathetic billionaire.

[Nomi Frye]

And I for one, could not be happier.

[Alex Schwartz]

Well, I could be happier. I would like them all to, you know, go off into space and not return. But I think it's Nomi. I think that's part of the reason what you just posited, that there is an overexposure to the degree that, you know, no one had to know John D. Rockefeller's thoughts via tweet because that was one invention that didn't exist in his day. But I think it's something else as well. I think that our class of billionaires, not all of them, and this is significant, but some of them, the ones who you are more likely to know and to name, care very much about how the public sees them. And they like to pretend they don't, but they do. And to win certain kinds of public approval, they try to pass themselves off as cool. I think the yearning to be seen as cool, which is itself a fundamentally pathetic quality, is only more pathetic when you are one of the richest people in the world. And I think that's what's going on with Mark Zuckerberg. I mean, he has obviously rebranded like.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Teased head of hair.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yes. But he wants to seem cool. There's an increasing. I mean, there's always been a huge overlap between politics and wealth, of course, and now it takes the form where we both have like an unelected Elon Musk doing stuff of great political consequence in the White House. But also I feel like there's an attempt to curry public favor through image that is fundamentally lame.

[Nomi Frye]

Let's talk about some examples of this. Give me. It's giving wedgie. I agree with you. It's giving like, I'm gonna break your glasses, nerd. But what have we seen? What are some of the favorite moments of like, patheticness in the billionaire class?

[Alex Schwartz]

I'm thinking of like Zuckerberg going from a guy who wears suits to appear in front of Congress to be interrogated yet again. And like, as his kind of close cropped Marcus Aurelius statue hair. And then shows up with his like, I'm just a surfer bro thing and whatever big chunky jewelry he's been wearing in an oversized black T shirt and goes on to Joe Rogan to say, I'm sorry, the dumbest things in the world. That is what I'm talking about as a guy who can hang out.

[Nomi Frye]

Yeah, yeah.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Speaking of a guy who can hang. And we've talked about Joe Rogan on this podcast. You can go and listen to our episode about that podcast and the phenomenon that floats around it. But again, Elon Musk smoking a huge blunt or whatever on Joe Rogan, trying to seem cool, trying to be down with the guys. Very, very uncool. I do think that this figure of the pathetic billionaire is confluent with the. This has been roiling under our conversation. So far we haven't totally named it. Just like the fact that the figure of the billionaire is now totally coincident with tech.

[Nomi Frye]

Yeah.

[Vincent Cunningham]

And that tech is coding and math and stuff that just a generation hence was coded nerd.

[Nomi Frye]

And rightly so.

[Vincent Cunningham]

And the new, speaking of Batman, the new origin story for the billionaire is kid of some already existing privilege, holed up in his room, not especially popular with whatever subset of people that he wants to attract and rising to fame through his sort of mental exertion. So it is like there seems to be this psychodrama where they're still trying to prove to their sort of 8th grade prom queen that it always should have been me and not the football player or whatever.

[Nomi Frye]

Oh, yeah.

[Vincent Cunningham]

So there's some of that happening. There's no. I don't wanna say no. I guess Jay Z is supposedly a billionaire. He's cool. If you talk about hip hop, this started being a whole thing of authenticity. Jay Z, Kanye west, before he went totally crazy. But outside of that, there's not many cool billionaires happening.

[Alex Schwartz]

I actually think the hip hop connection is very significant because when I think of the phrase pathetic billionaire, what I immediately, in my mind is one of the opening scenes of Succession, where Kendall Roy, scion of the Roy family, is in his black car getting chauffeured about and has his headphones on and is rapping very loudly. And as the music plays, it sounds like he's right there. The music is so loud. He's right with it.

[Nomi Frye]

Middle Eastern and black and black white New York. You make it happen. Brownstones, water towers, trees, skyscrapers, firefighters and Wall street traders.

[Alex Schwartz]

And then in this fantastic kind of cutaway, you see that, of course, he's just shouting into the quiet void of his car. And that scene sums it all up. The kind of quote unquote realness of the world of hip hop goes into the world of great wealth and the world of great wealth tries to subsume it. And it's very much a mutual relationship, I would say.

[Nomi Frye]

Yeah, yeah.

[Alex Schwartz]

The other thing that succession makes me think of, and I should just state, for the record, I think succession is like, the more I think about it, the more admiration I have for it.

[Nomi Frye]

Oh, it's so good.

[Vincent Cunningham]

It's beautiful.

[Alex Schwartz]

But I think Succession is like. It's a Pinocchio story in a lot of ways. It's so much about trying to become real and being insulated from realness by wealth, and so much about trying to grow up not just to be a real boy, but to be a real man. In the case of the two Roy sons and a real woman in the case of the Roy daughter. And that is the quality that we have in our billionaires today. There is this boyishness, and I don't mean that in a good way. There's like an inability to be an adult and assume adult responsibilities. Like, think of the image of Elon jumping in Glee at the back of that Trump rally. So it's a fundamental childishness that is both absolutely pathetic and deeply terrifying.

[Nomi Frye]

It's dangerous because it's like. It's something that you might excuse as, let's say, delayed in some ways. Or if you see it just, you know, you see a man yelling like Fuck you, bitch. In a video game or something. You're like, okay, he's like an idiot. But when that man is a billionaire, it's, you know, it's really amazing how on the nose things are, you know, like Jeff Bezos sending a rocket to space with his busty fiance and Katy Perry in it for like an 11 minute flight. Everybody makes a huge deal out of this thing. You know, it costs like millions and millions and millions of dollars. There was a beautiful moment when the rocket returned safely. And it was. This was like streamed on social media. And there was a moment where Bezos ran to be the first one to open the door, both as the man of the, of the first captain of this flight, you know, Lauren Sanchez, and also as the man who obviously financed it and created the rocket and so on. And as he ran to be the first to open the door, he stumbled and he face planted on the ground. And the glee that arose on social media in response to this was completely understandable. And I shared in it, by God, because it was just like, look at this asshole, you know, like trampling so many underfoot, you know, horrible working conditions on Amazon, Anti Union, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. All these things that have allowed him beyond his own ambition and gumption and you know, and know how and et cetera, et cetera, to become so incredibly wealthy, right. And so incredibly dominant. And there he is, you know, scampering to open the door of the little rocket he made and face planning like, how. How great is that?

[Alex Schwartz]

It's great. It's his let them eat cake moment, I guess. I mean, or the equivalent of like. But my concern, I guess I would say is that moments like that, we need them. We cathartically, we need them so much. But are we misinterpreting moments like that and dare I say, memes like that for cake, do you know what I mean? Are we getting these scraps dropped to us and thinking, ah, well, there's my release valve and ha ha, we can laugh at. And this substitutes for actual revolution. Yeah, rebellion to the state of things.

[Nomi Frye]

Yeah, I mean, I think that's a question too, about depiction. These, you know, artistic depictions of what you said about Jesse Armstrong, Alex, in the interview you read saying, do I think this is gonna move the dial? No. But I do feel that it's better than doing nothing, than depicting Nothing, which is 100%, which is totally fine and correct, I think. But the question is, what next? Right? I mean, it's like, do these moments of release, whether artistic or kind of like for laughs in real life or in creative depictions? Are they helping us kind of mobilize in any meaningful political way, or are they just keeping us, I don't want to say sedate, but kind of like impotent, I guess.

[Vincent Cunningham]

It's interesting in my lifetime of observing politics, the existence of billionaires and what they symbolically mean, which is an ever widening gap in the fortunes of people who live in the same, who reputedly live in the same nation. Right. This has never been more overt as a message. They're being depicted in shows like Succession and movies like Mountainhead. Recently, Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez were on a nationwide tour whose whole point was oligarchy, which is something that Sanders talks about. You can hear it now. Millionaires and billionaires, right? This became the subject of a momentary fracas within the Democratic caucus. People like Elisa Slotkin being like, nobody knows what oligarchy means. And I would say absolutely wrong. Everybody knows what it means now because it is such an ingrained feature of our world, not only in reality, but in depictions. So to crib the language of feminism for a second, I think consciousness raising is a thing. And the more that people understand that this is a sort of feature of our reality, I think that that can only redound to some political effect, even if it's not toward fixing it. Our knowledge of this sorry state of affairs is, I think, one of the great narratives of our moment, whether it's tech panic. I think what this movie does really well is capture this kind of cresting moment of panic about technology, Whether it is concerns about who gets what in a society. I think it's good that people talk about it more.

[Nomi Frye]

Yeah, I mean, I do. Absolutely. Right, Vincent. I think it's like out of like a million candles, beams a great light or whatever you want to call it. Like, it's the idea of a kind of like, this is what public opinion becomes thanks to the way things are depicted, you know, is, I think, very, very important. This has been Critics at Large. This week's episode was produced by Danielle Hewitt with help from Michelle o' Brien. Our senior producer is Rhiannon Corby. And Alex Barish is our consulting editor. Our executive producer is Stephen Valentino. Conde Nast's head of Global Audio is Chris Bannon. Alexis Quadrato composed our theme music, and we had engineering help today from James Yost with mixing by Brendan James Dalton. You can find every episode of Critics at [e-mail] critics. Hi, I'm Deborah Treisman, fiction editor of the New Yorker Each week on the Writer's Voice podcast, New Yorker fiction writers read their newly published stories from the magazine. You can hear from authors like Colson Whitehead.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Turner nudged Elwood, who had a look of horror on his face. They saw it. Griff wasn't going down.

[Nomi Frye]

He was going to go for it.

[Vincent Cunningham]

No matter what happened after.

[Nomi Frye]

Or Joy Williams, her father, was silent. Slowly, he passed his hand over his hair. This usually meant that he was traveling to a place immune to her presence, a place that indeed, contradicted her presence. She might as well go to lunch, listen to news stories, or dive into our archive of great fiction. You can find the work of your favorite fiction writers and discover new ones. Listen and follow the Writer's Voice wherever you get your podcasts from PRX.