Series – “White Lotus” and Co.: Expensive produced moral club?

When Devon Dewitt (Meghann Fahy) runs about the property of the billionaire family Kell in her torn down clothes after a night in jail in search of her sister Simone (Milly Alcock), she could not feel more out of place. There is a perfect lawn in front of the high-ranking villa, expensive sculptures stand next to the pool, an entire army of employees is on the go to maintain the garden, prepare food and all visitors who arrive for a gala dinner are plastered out.

The Netflix series “Sirens” tells of class barriers, working hierarchies, family trauma and care work. So far, screenwriter Molly Smeth Metzler had made a name for herself primarily to illuminate the social abysses of the American lower class in series format. Sometimes ironically in “Shameless” about a Chicago White Trash family or rather socially realistic serious in the celebrated series “Maid” about a homeless, single mother. In “Sirens” she tells no less pointed difference, but targets the upper ten thousand. The two sisters Devon and Simone come from the proletarian Buffalo and after a long time meet again on the property off the coast of New York, where the beautiful and rich spend their summer.

The noble backdrops of large properties and luxurious holiday resorts are currently booming in series format. The “White Lotus” series, which is talking about sex and crime in the holiday locations of the upper class, is implemented most successful in the umpteen -awarded series “White Lotus”. The third season, which started in spring, which started on the Thai holiday island of Koh Samui, even triggered a real Thailand trip boom, which is celebrated on Instagram, where holidaymakers film and photograph themselves in front of the series backdrop.

The stories about the rich tourists or the billionaires who live on the island of Nantucket as in the mini series or, as in “Sirens” in the holiday paradise of the East Coast Aristocracy, are anything but worthwhile. The impression often comes up with the entertaining rich bashing, the cultural industry is working on the idea of ​​the idea of ​​the one percent that is against the 99 percent and whose representative is sometimes a bit clumsy.

The cinema comedy “Triangle of Sadness” also surfs on this wave with which Ruben Östlund won the Golden Palm in Cannes in 2022. Like the series mentioned, the film offers a real scary factor for spectators who, as immediate onlookers, can attend the bizarre social behavior of the rich and beautiful. What does the appeal make up to watch rich people, how they are supposed to go well and experience one tragedy after another? For example, when Östlund lets the Gala-Diner vomit, the dysfunctional family of a financial juggler flies apart in “White Lotus” or billionaires to investigating police authorities such as nobles may only happen in the country, which they can happen, as in “a new summer”?

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These fictional explorations of the upper class lifelines almost always lead to fatal and murderous abysses. In »White Lotus« it is rather idioty and impertinence of the rich that lead to people who are killed. But in “A New Summer” it is about a murder that falls victim to a woman who comes from the lower middle class and looks as if she had gone, and which is also embodied by Meghann Fahy, the same actress, who plays the role of the proletarian sister in “Sirens”, the uninvited into the department of the rich.

On the one hand, it is probably a simple human fascination for luxurious estates, villas and holiday resorts that constitutes the attraction of these cinematic stories and that pretends the viewer an intimate look into the innermost of an otherwise closed world, regardless of whether it is realistic or not. On the other hand, the spectators experience a comfortable catharsis when they watch the rich, powerful and beautiful as representatives of the supposed capitalist subjekt to go morally and, despite all the class deceit, to show social neglect and limitless ignorance. It worked in a similar way in the 1980s, when in the course of the neoliberal change with “Dallas” and “Denver Clan” suddenly the stories of the super -rich people via TV flickered into the living rooms and all JR Ewing and his clan were able to watch in dirty shops. Does that today have tightened political explosiveness against the background of the tech billionaires who cuddle with Donald Trump? Is there substantial criticism in this alleged navel show of the rich and rulers? Or is that just a bourgeois-moral indignation?

It is important to look closely. Series such as “White Lotus” and “A new summer” naturally have socially critical potential because they caricaturing the absurdity of authoritarian and steep social orders based on a ultimately bourgeois super-rich everyday life. Like also Liev Schreiber (in “A New Summer”) like Kevin Bacon (in “White Lotus”) as billionaires are sitting around the lovely day of smoking sex on their estate and say sentences such as: “I donate more money a month than others in their whole life.”

The new Netflix series “Sirens” stands out here. Because it also tells a lot about work hierarchies and dependency relationships that go hand in hand with these class contrasts. In the history of the two sisters Devon and Simone, she also shows how much longing and desire is in these dependency relationships and social hierarchies.

The exploitation of Simones, who spends the night in her bed in an emotional crisis situation of her rich boss like a cuddly toy with the billionaire, is not critically questioned by herself. Her sister Devon is there, but who ultimately fails to free Simone from this relationship. What she has to offer instead is only the rocked row house in the proletarian Buffalo, where the demented father lives to take care of. It is precisely this misery that Simone has escaped through her new dependency relationship. But Simones’s super -rich boss is ultimately just a kind of employee of her exaggerated self -confident man. These series do not really offer an empowering resolution of these dependencies.

But maybe this is exactly the real charm of this genre: it shows and manifests the dilemma of insurmountable class barriers that enjoy great popularity as a pop cultural creepy fashion. At the same time, as a viewer you can dream a bit, you would be immensely wealthy yourself, and feel good, because your own existence at least does not seem to be as poor as that of the rich.