succession, you will always be famous
masterpost on a masterpiece. an overdue ode to my favorite show ever.
After having finished the finale of one of her favorite TV Shows, Patti Smith asks, "What do we do with those that can be accessed and dismissed by a channel changer, that we love no less than a nineteenth-century poet or an admired stranger or a character from the pen of Emily Bronte? What do we do when one of them commingles with our sense of self, only to be transferred into a finite space within an on-demand portal?"Watching the finale of Succession (2018-2023), this past Monday, I found myself asking the same question. I latched onto three evil capitalist kids, and it felt incredibly hard to let go of them.
One of my favorite parts of the episode was when they reconcile briefly once again at their mother's Barbados house. The sounds of the waves passing through so soothingly felt very distinctive from the usual sound of the show, one of hecticness, accompanied at times by a tragic orchestra. The Roy Kids were acting like children once again. Kendall smiling, at last. Rome being finally honest and at peace with his decision to stop competing for the role. Shiv once and for all accepting that she was not going to become CEO, returning to where she was in season one. The siblings sneaking into their mom's kitchen, making fun of her and her husband in fake British accents, trying to stay quiet between their laughter and singing, the playful Hearts beat playing in the background—all as they finally coronate Kendall as king by making him eat the most disgusting smoothie, which they name “meal fit for a king”. I knew that the worst was yet to come, I knew they were going to betray each other, I knew their poison will never clean, yet I paused my laptop for a second to commemorate what I knew was the last time I would see them bonding, and how much that fucking hurt me.
Susan Sontag says that it “would not be appropriate for us to make a moral response in the same sense that we do to an act in real life. I would undoubtedly be indignant if someone I knew murdered his wife and got away with it (psychologically, legally), but I can hardly become indignant, as many critics seem to be when the hero of Norman Mailer’s An American Dream murders his wife and goes unpunished”. There are a few sanctimonious people on the internet that love to flaunt the fact that they don't feel sympathy for any of the Roy kids. They argue “they are evil capitalists!!!”. With a show that does such a masterful critique of capitalism, I doubt that many people don’t know that. That's an obvious statement. Almost anyone who watches it knows that they are evil capitalists. As a matter of fact, a large number of leftists watch the show. I started watching it because all of the philosophy and political accounts I follow on social media could not shut up about it. Yet the show, like any other piece of media, asks you to enter into a state of suspended disbelief, where for a second, you can allow yourself to feel bad for the worst people in the world. I would feel icky about it if it glamorized the super-rich or if its message was inconsistent. But Succession is executed in such an elegant manner that I rather think it is pointless to get ridiculously mad at the characters when they are vehicles used to transmit a specific message about abuse and capitalism. It would be hard to be entrapped by it if the characters weren’t so tragic. Indeed, I started watching the show because of its politics, but I stayed because I found myself desperately hoping for the kids to escape the cycle of abuse and destroy their father once and for all.
When I first started watching it, I had a hard time passing through the first five episodes. I was impressed by the witty dialogue and enjoyed the digs at capitalism, but it was absolutely hard to continue watching when I felt disdain for all of the characters. That being said, the very first thing that enwrapped me was the absolute hatred I started feeling towards the patriarch, Logan Roy. I wanted anyone, and I emphasize anyone, to take him down. So when Kendall, in season one, episode 6, Which Side Are You On, attempts to usurp the company from him by calling a vote of no confidence, I couldn’t help but root desperately for Kendall. I believe in this episode, Succession caught me completely. I felt utterly destroyed when Kendall was running late in the streets of New York after being delayed by traffic, all to enter the buildings of Waystar Royco and find out he lost the vote. The last scene of the episode shows a devastated Kendall, portrayed by a masterful Jeremy Strong, walking through the streets of New York, with the song Which Side Are You On playing in the background, a song about a union organizer who got caught in a conflict between miners and coal operators. The irony is rich. At the end of the day, they are all J.H. Blair, it does not matter who owns the company. Still, one cannot help but feel emotionally beaten by the show’s brutal battles.
Four seasons later, and the show’s finale takes us back to that season 1 episode, Kendall defeated once again—this time for good—with a margin of one vote to win it all. Once again, the show leaves us with a sour taste, who wins is irrelevant yet we get caught in the eternal yearning for more that the characters possess, one that originates from their ever-expanding hollowness. Perhaps one gets caught in that ambition because that chasm is inside all of us—a darkness that can only originate in an alienated and superfluous society. The grimness of the show and its psychological induction can only compare to the execution of novels like Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov—a novel that follows the morality of three brothers that plot a patricide. But above all, if there is one writer that the show reminds me of is the one and only Shakespeare. Succession often reads as a retelling of King Lear, with allusions to Hamlet, Titus Andronicus, and Richard III. Just like Shakespeare's plays, Succession provides an incredibly rich critique of modern society. Although so many centuries have passed, Succession shows how we still live in a society governed by despotic kings and the tragedy in it. I always envy the audiences that must have had the honor to go to a Shakespeare play in his lifetime, but I feel in gratitude and awe to have witnessed the majesty of Succession in real-time. Having finished the show, I am left with an immense void that can only be filled by writing and analyzing what exactly made this show the immense masterpiece it was. So as Tom Wambsgans would say: BUCKLE UP, FUCKLEHEADS!
CAPITALIST GAMES AND ILLUSIONS
Succession follows the life of the most powerful media mogul in the United States, Logan Roy, and his actual favorite child: Waystar Royco. The company is heavily based on the U.S. most conservative and controversial media conglomerate, Fox News. Aside from its news division (ATN), Waystar Royco has a cruise, parks, and entertainment department, respectively. As if that wasn't enough, Logan is constantly on the lookout for more companies to absorb: one of the examples being Vaulter, the equivalent of Vice, and Pierce Media, the equivalent of The New York Times. This monopoly of the media landscape puts into question how real the values of freedom and democracy that capitalists love to chant are. How free really is the market when one single company owns the majority of it? How real is democracy when the press is shaped by the ideologies of the few that control it? Shiv says at some point: “Yeah, but if we own all the news I do actually wonder, where I’ll get my fucking news? Because, at some point, someone needs to kind of actually keep track of what’s going on in the world, who went where, and who wore a hat? (…) the shape of the American Republic is not in great shape as it is. You've got the Times, the Post, editors at Pierce, and a couple of hundred angry women on Twitter and that's about it.”
Of course, Shiv's values, alike the ones of the owners of Pierce, are simple liberal aesthetics. Shiv says she cares, but the moment her father makes her play the game, she does not give a fuck about the values of the great republic, she just wants the power and does not mind eating fucking Pierce in the process. Similarly, the Pierce family, who is supposedly presented as a family of integrity, does not care to sell their company to one of the most conservative men in America as long as it is for the right amount of money. Of course, they back up the moment the cruise scandal blows (yet, they try to sell it to Logan again in season 4) but they already knew who Logan Roy was, they just pretended not to, as many liberals do.
Yet I think that that’s one of the greatest points the show makes about morality. After Kendall's huge moral dilemma where he had to decide to put a fascist president in office or not, many people who were #TeamKendall claimed on Twitter that, unlike Roman, Kendall legitimately wants to be a good person, and that's what hurts about seeing him lose the little decency he has left in him. Aside from the fact that I absolutely hate the discourse of “which of the siblings is worse" (I hate all of them, I love all of them), I think that the show has demonstrated that it doesn't matter if they want to have morals, it doesn't matter what your “political” or “personal” beliefs are when you are a capitalist (Shiv’s a liberal, and Kendall tries to be one in season three), because you will always choose greed and capital over anything else (or else you would start by paying your workers what they are producing instead of making surplus value but alas). As long, as the siblings are in the game, it doesn’t matter if they want to be good people, they will always act in their self-interests. Kendall was torn, but he choose to put a literal Nazi in the presidential seat because it was what benefited him. Similarly, Shiv, who swore she didn’t want Mencken to win, talks with him in the next episode, telling him that she won't interfere with ATN’s politics (meaning that she will allow ATN to spread more propaganda and hate speech) just to seal her deal.
Succession demonstrated so poignantly that America is an oligarchy. I always knew that the U.S. government is ridiculously lobbied by corporate organizations, but I could never fully picture the meetings in hotel rooms and the dirty deals. In Season 3, Episode 6, the Roys (with the exception of Kendall) embark on a trip to Virginia’s conservative political conference to choose the next president of the country. Although Republican voters will think that they are the ones that choose the next president, ATN (or Fox News) already makes that decision for them when they decide which president to give all their propaganda to. In the previous episode, the current Republican president, which they refer to as “the raisin”, calls the Roys and tells them that he is not going to run again because ATN has spread lies about his wife’s health in order to pressure him to hold FBI investigations. What's worse is seeing that for the Roys, who becomes the next president is merely one more of their games. Roman picks Mencken, a literal nazi that echoes more of Ron De Santis than of Donald Trump1, just to piss off his sister. Alike De Santis, the scary thing about Mencken is that “he actually believes the bad stuff” (like Shiv says), it's not mere populism—he actually says to Roman that Franco and Hitler had some good ideas. At last, they endorse Mencken and even announce a false and premature victory for him in the presidential election. When Roman and Kendall argue whether to declare victory for Mencken or not, Roman complains that they always have to do what Kendall wants:“like when, you know, if you wanted roast chicken, and I wanted steak, we always had chicken”. Kendall replies, “so because we had so much chicken when we were kids, I have to like the fascist?” It is so obvious that for them something as huge as a presidential election is just another game to gain their daddy's love, and it is nauseating to watch.
The desire to win is born from the biggest fucking hole they have inside of them, and it is representative of the endless void that capitalism creates. Logan is on the lookout for endless absorption, he wants to do infinite mergers and acquisitions. Yet, at the same time, he is spiraling into debt. This is the biggest contradiction of late-stage capitalism. The immense acceleration of the production process annihilates space, as David Harvey argues. In the show, we see Waystar Royco becoming obsolete in the media landscape with the emergence of social media and technology, to the point where they end up selling the company to the CEO of GoJo, Lukas Mattson (an equivalent of Elon Musk). In the end, Kendall is left with an unfillable void, everything he fought for his entire life turned into nothing. It echoes Marx’s “all that is solid turns into air”. 2
To a certain extent seeing the Roys lose the company is satisfying, it demonstrates that anyone can lose the game. Perhaps one of the most gratifying things about Succession is that it is obvious that none of these rich people are geniuses or hard-working people. One of my favorite burns of the show is Kendall's “Rome, you couldn’t get a job in a burger joint, let alone a fortune five hundred without some nepotism”. Or Marcia telling Shiv: “He made you a playground and you think it’s the whole world. Well, va te faire foutre. Go out and see how you like it. Fuck off.” Within the game of the family and the company, it is obvious that Logan is the only capable player, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t make misfires or terrible moves, the only reason he wins is that he is Logan Roy, he created the game.
One of the best examples of this is the “Boar On The Floor” episode. Logan takes his executive board on a hunting trip after announcing his decision to buy Pierce Media, a decision that could probably leave the company in million dollars of debt. When he finds out that some of the members of the board have doubts about the acquisition, he terrifyingly asserts his power by making them play Boar On The Floor: a despotic game that forces the players to fight for a sausage while oinking and scuffling. Before being sent to tussle, Logan asks each of his soldiers if they support the acquisition. When Greg answers honestly to Logan after seeing Gerri being saved, he protests: "the rules are that you are spared if you tell the truth”. Logan goes “Oh, there are rules? Do you know something, Greg? There are no fucking rules.” Logan creates and bends the rules however he pleases. Whatever Logan Roy wants, happens, whatever he says turns into reality, because, bottom line, he is Logan Fucking Roy. At the karaoke scene, an exhausted Shiv tells her father:
“Just cause you say it, doesn’t make it true, everyone just fucking agrees with you, and believes you, so it becomes true, and then you can turn around and say like ‘Oh, you see? See. I was right.’ But that’s not how it is. You're a human fucking gaslight”
One of the most Shakespearean things about Succession is its approach to language. Shakespeare's plays frequently questioned the role language had with power, performativity, and truth. In his plays, there was a distinction in speech between low-class characters, and high-class ones, the latter spoke in iambic pentameter. Quite literally the same happens in Succession, Logan’s insults have the cadency of poetry: “Drive your fucking whirly bird”. Kendall can only speak with a powerful cadence when he is on a power trip— most distinctively, near the end of the show, at his father’s funeral when he is almost a reincarnated version of Logan, while Roman’s fall of power is marked by his complete breakdown and inability to deliver the eulogy. Nevertheless, in most of the show, Kendall's speech is full of fillers like “uh” “yeah” and “um”. While Roman is another character that has killer insults, his eloquence is not the same when he confronts his dad. The same dynamic happens with most of the characters— e.g. Tom's speech when he is around the Roys vs. when he is around Greg.
Although Succession masterfully shows that language can help build power, most importantly it is concerned with who said what, and around whom. Language has the ability to turn something into “truth” (e.g. “I pronounce you husband and wife", “I assign you female at birth”), but that depends on the person saying it, only a priest can declare a couple married, and in some cases (and most definitely the case of King Lear and Succession) only a king can name his successor. One of the biggest philosophers of language, J.L. Austin, calls these utterances, speech acts. In his theory, he argues that what gives an utterance the power to transform into a speech act is its felicity conditions—i.e. the power to speaker has to make the utterance, the speaker’s intentions, and the context of the utterance. The bastard known as Logan Roy knows the weight of his words. At an ice cream parlor, Logan promises a seven-year-old Kendall that he will be the successor—a level of grooming that twirls my stomach. He promises Roman that he will be the successor so that he falls out with his siblings. He promises Shiv the throne to make her drop her political campaign with Gil Eavis, Succession’s Bernie Sanders. Deep down, they know they are being played like fucking flutes, but they decide to ignore it because continuing to participate in the game is less crushing than coming to terms with the realization that their father abused them. As long as they are playing the game, they keep secrets from each other and become fighting dogs—-precisely what Logan wants.
This complacency to play the game is similar to what so many do under systems of domination. This is why so many people lack class consciousness. They rather compete than ever acknowledge they are playing a doomed game. The theorist bell hooks argues that our passive acceptance of lies in public life, particularly via the mass media, upholds and perpetuates lying in our private lives. Part of setting ourselves free from capitalism, the patriarchy, heteronormativity, racism, you name it, is becoming aware of the structures themselves. In one of my essays, I write about the inherent power dynamic between men and women and how that leads to abuse. I don’t believe that necessarily means all men are going to abuse women. Men who are honest and conscious about the patriarchy can be responsible with their power and use their privilege to help women fight it. No such thing happens in Succession, but the closest thing we have to a healthy relationship is Connor and Willa, who near the end of the show are completely honest about their power dynamics and what each one is looking for in the other (in no way I am saying they’re healthy, they're just the least unhealthy couple in this shitshow of a family). Compare that to Shiv and Tom’s relationship which is marked by their resistance to ever talk about the power dynamics present in their marriage—hugely due to Shiv's fear of vulnerability. If there ever was a possibility of love for Shiv and Tom was after they tear apart their sham of a marriage and begin to clear the air. As bell hooks says, “lies make people feel better, but they do not help them to know love”.
One of my favorite scenes of the entire show has to be when the siblings bond for the first time in Italy. An all apart Kendall finally spills the secret that has been eating his heart out. By revealing himself, Kendall is giving a huge amount of power to Shiv and Roman (this is why vulnerability always feels so scary). Rome and Shiv show a quiet tenderness towards their brother. They finally understand him. In the midst of a tornado full of destruction, they decide to stop playing the game against each other. In the car, when they plot the “murder” of their father, Shiv says that they need to start saying things to each other: “Rome, you know dad is never going to choose you because he thinks there’s something wrong with you. I’m sorry, but maybe it’s time we said these things”. Their awareness of the illusion of the game is what allows them to connect. Heartbreakingly, that connection becomes broken when their father dies in Season 4, and they start competing for their dead daddy's approval again. At the end of the show, that bond is wholly destroyed when Kendall retracts very assuredly that he never killed anyone. Roman didn't care that much about Shiv’s vote before that admittance, but the moment Kendall lies to them, he repeats “absolutely not.”
TRAGIC CHILDREN AND POWERFUL FAMILIES
One of the funniest things about the internet’s reaction to the show has been the “babygirlfication” of the characters. In his New Yorker article, Michael Schulman claimed that the interpretation many Gen Z’s have of the characters is a misreading of the show. First of all, it’s a joke, we know they are awful people. Even Jeremy Strong claimed in a recent interview that he is okay with the babygirlfication of Kendall: “there's something about this character, about this kind of boy-man—there is a lot of male vulnerability”. Most importantly, I think that the show has been very intentional about the “babygirlfication” of the siblings (although I highly doubt Jesse Armstrong would use those words). Everyone in the show, from the executive board to their own father, refers to them as kids. When Kendall is absolutely broken in Too Much Birthday, he lays down in the arms of Naomi and is covered in a basketball blanket. When Roman is emotionally and physically injured in the last episode of the show, we see him wearing a $13 baby blue Walmart kid's T-Shirt. Roman’s mom calls him by his childhood name Roro, Logan refers to Shiv as Pinky. Their body language resembles that of children. Roman is always unable to sit, or if he does, it’s in the weirdest positions, he is always shrinking himself. Shiv and Rome are always fighting as if they were 13. Glimpses of their childhood are so often mentioned in the most important moments. When they decide to confront their father in Italy, Roman says: “As long as you guys don’t go water pistols in Bali (…) when we were all gonna squirt Dad under the canopy? I went in and you fucks left me for dead?” Obviously, the infantilization of grown billionaires would be absolutely disgusting in real life, but in the show, it fucking works. The point that it is making about abuse and power wouldn't feel as painful if we wouldn’t sympathize with the siblings.
I do not have sympathy for billionaires, but I do have a spiraling amount of pain and anger for the way this society treats children. The intro credit of Succession shows a country haunted house that seems completely distant from society. As the top 1%, those kids grew completely alienated from the world. Yet, that alienation is present in almost every family of our current society, most don’t even know the name of their neighbors. Just like Logan alienates his kids from each other to prevent an uprising from them, capitalism divides people into small units (the nuclear family) in order to prevent them from organizing. This division is also harmful to children because it leaves them unprotected from abuse. If a neighbor hears a child or a woman being beaten, they will most likely claim that it is none of their fucking business. There’s something obscure about the amount of power the state grants parents, and although I am sure that there are parents who are doing their absolute best and trying to give their children as much love and freedom as they can, I think the structure of it ultimately gives space to abuse. In Succession, the abusive games of the family work as a metaphor for capitalism, but I also think that it says something about the institution of the family itself. One of my mutuals, Lee Shevek wrote an excellent article explaining why the abolition of the family (not kinship) is necessary for the path to liberation. The mirrorings in real life between parent-children, capitalists-workers, state-citizens, etc. are purposeful. As Deleuze and Guattari argue that each power center is also molecular and exercises its power on a micrological fabric. The ownership and power parents have in a family are not coincidental. One of my favorite songs of the show is the remix Pusha T made for Season 2, Puppets, because I think it captures the proprietary Logan has over his children. The song starts with “If you love me, please don’t judge me, got my hands tied the power's above me, don’t shoot the messenger, I’m just a puppet here if you wanna place blame, then look to the puppeteer”. That line perhaps is the reason why I wrongly justify so much of the siblings’ actions. Technically, they are free to do whatever they want because they are adults and have all the money in the world, but Logan entrapped them with psychological abuse, so how free are they really?
Logan sees his children as puppets because the amount of power he has, allowed him to objectify those around him. He is alienated from society, and so his connection to people is purely financial. He constantly refers to humans as “markets” and “economic units”, and to those who he has harmed as NRPIs (no-real-person-involved). That is what the crown transformed him into. The edit I linked at the beginning emphasizes the lyrics “No one man should have all that power”. Power is the poison that drips through this family. Remembering Logan’s and Kendall’s “last supper” under a starry night sky in Tuscany, I feel ache for how close Kendall was to being out. I think that when Kendall is depressed (in opposition to when he is manic), he is the most capable of seeing through the lies of capitalism. In Italy, when he is at his lowest, he is totally aware of the poisonous nature of his family. He says to his father “I don’t wanna be you”, “you won because you are corrupt and so is the world”. He begs his dad to be out of the company, with no inheritance. In the last season of Succession, part of the pain comes from that Italy episode, from knowing that the children have never been closer to freedom, and yet they completely falter when their father dies. The different variations of the chords of the Main Title felt like reliving a tragedy that you know all too well— every time it plays, you know exactly what happens— that does not make it any less painful. Their fall from grace was bound to happen. As the Roy siblings are fighting for power, they transform into their father, especially Kendall. His downfall is marked the moment he refers to the kid he killed as a non-real person. The scene parallels that season two moment where Logan refers to that kid as an NRPI, and Kendall is revolted by his father's dehumanizing abilities. Hence why Kendall feeling zero guilt for the accident is absolutely chilling. Seconds after that, Kendall abuses Roman, one of the darkest scenes I have seen in the show. He has spent his whole life defending Roman from the abuse of his father, and now that he knows that Roman succumbs to physical violence, he is not afraid of using that power over him.
Watching characters descend into horror has got to be one of the highest expressions of tragedy. Indeed, Plato believed that a perfect tragedy should excite fear and pity. I never wanted Kendall to be the successor. I was completely aware that if he won, he would decay into an abyss of darkness, yet just like in Which Side Are You On, my heart anguished when I saw him lose the company. I wrote in my diary: “I felt Kendall's defeat in my bones, I hated him, I loved him. I felt the sourness of not getting the thing you always wanted. And, perhaps, I would be lying if I said I don't know what that ambition feels like. The manic and depressive sides of Kendall are in me. He’s universal, the universal man in a neoliberal era.”
When I remember that kitchen scene, I feel instant grief. Succession, to me, at its core, has been about the love, or the lack of it, between the siblings. From the outside, I felt desperation at their inability to rely on each other, but if I think about it, I know that most of us choose love over power most days of our lives. I have a weird inability to be vulnerable, and had comphet (compulsory heterosexuality) my entire life because I rathered attempt to have power over men than admit to myself that maybe I do not like them—quoting bell hooks once again: “on this planet, nobody really has the opportunity to know love since it is power and not love that is the order of the day”. This is the tragedy of the modern society we live in. Succession demonstrated that there really isn’t an escape from that in this system, it’s inescapable, it’s asphyxiating, it's fated. After watching the finale, I felt a real sense of loss in my body. I wondered if it was deprivation of sleep or if it was an actual catharsis coming out from unsolved emotions I had. I now hear the langsams, lamentosos, andantes, etc. and flashes of Kendall, Shiv, and Roman (and Connor, I love Connor, sorry for the Connor erasure) pass through my mind, and then again, I also think about my own life. I think that's why Succession fucking works so perfectly, it is so political yet it appeals to the deepest of human emotions to make its point a thousand times more effective. The last frame of Succession shows a crushed Kendall staring at a river. Part of me wanted him to reenact the scene he has at the end of S4 06, I wanted to see him rebirth, but realistically I knew that Kendall has passed the point of ever being fixed. I somewhat hope a large number of us though can ever see past the darkness of our current society. At least for me, watching Succession has felt like being washed by a wave, one in which I felt the highest level of sublimation, one that made me feel restored and drowned at the same time. Only 40 hours of the highest quality TV could do that to you.
By this, I don't mean to say that Trump isn’t a fascist, but unlike De Santis, he's merely a guy that wanted to be fucking president for his ego boost and because he wanted to make more money for his businesses. He surely is a racist and misogynist piece of shit, but I doubt he gives those thoughts a lot of time, unlike De Santis, who is an actual Christian conservative. Aside from this, Trump lacks the efficiency that De Santis holds. Just as a governor of Florida, De Santis has managed to pass more genocidal and fascist laws than Trump did in his whole presidency.
De Grazia's article, “The Ideology of Superflous Things”, talks about how King Lear is concerned with the loss of materiality in an Early Modern England that was entering its capitalist era. She uses as an example, Lear’s attachment to his soldiers, and Tom’s blanket.