“I think it’s unsexy to talk about money.”
“I think it’s unsexy to talk about money.”
Carl: "Okay, but then why is that?" Yaya: "I don't know. It's just not sexy."
Rest in peace to Charlbi Dean, co-star of Ruben Östlund’s Triangle of Sadness. I had no idea she passed away until after I finished the movie and had begun reading reviews on Letterboxd. I can’t tell if that says something profound about art and media and the 21st century, or if it’s completely mundane.
Triangle of Sadness is the latest in a slew of hit media properties about rich people. Rich people, not richness. Rich quirks and sensibilities, not Rich misery or Rich convolution. Post-post-Parasite and Sub-Sorry to Bother You, which I must excuse because they’ve each had long running spots on my Letterboxd Top 4. This means I have to convince myself they’re positive affiliations for my character, and if popular culture decides otherwise, I will have a taste of hysteria.
I downloaded Letterboxd during sophomore year of college, and the first movie I logged was the sequel to It. It being It, not Triangle of Sadness. It, like the movie, It. The movie with the clown. Not the first one though, the second one. There was an It a few decades ago. Not that It, the new It. The sequel to the second It, not the first It. It like the movie. Not Triangle of Sadness.
At that point, after watching the sequel to the second It while going to theatre school during the Trump presidency, I learned that The Point Of Art was to speak truth to power. So I wrote plays about care bears running for congress and delinquent kids spreading LSD in the school Cafeteria, a few years after Northwestern University took us to see Hamilton on “Broadway in Chicago.”
Today, when I watch the super elite satirized on Succession, then later featured in the credits, I wonder if The Point Of Art is just for power to speak to power, and for everyone else to write about it on Letterboxd.
I feel like I should clarify this post is not sponsored by Letterboxd.
I have to remember that money is an inevitability of our society; and media, ultimately, is just another product. Money is a genuine source of tension, and conflict, and whether it’s named or not, it doesn’t really go away. Scathing takes on billionaires and technocrats and queens and kings and private schools and Michelin stars are put on screen and beaten to death online and yet, the price of eggs just keeps going up.
I desperately wish to imagine a better world. But as the future ahead of me shrinks, the past grows, and the objects in my field of vision suddenly seem sharper. My imagination, on the other hand, gets blurry. And I wonder what it can achieve at all. It like my imagination and art and stuff, not like It the movie.
As embarrassing as it sounds, I’ve always felt destined to have some elusive, phenomenal, and incredible impact on the world. And like anyone delusion enough to go to art school in America in the 21st century, I have always thought that impact would come via “my art.” Some combination of interest and talent and training, of compassion and critique and execution and heart would lead to some huge reckoning for society, and thus a sense of fulfillment. Like when Parasite won Best Picture and then capitalism was over, and Bong Joon-ho was granted nirvana.
Is the end of even that long and incredible road to be eulogized on Letterboxd?