Succession is Glorious Fun, but the Oligarchical Media Empire it Dramatizes is a Harsh Reality

HBO’s ‘Succession’ is a glorious guilty pleasure but the oligarchical family run media empire it dramatizes is actually a horrifying and harsh reality.

Four families control the majority of American media, and the Roy family of ‘Succession’ is an entertaining and clever amalgam of the dysfunction of them all.

Succession, HBO’s deliriously addictive and seductive soap opera that follows the travails of the Roy family dynasty and their media and business empire, is back in full swing for its highly anticipated third season.

The show is obviously a work of fiction, but the blueprint of the story is frighteningly familiar to anyone paying attention to our ever-consolidating media landscape lorded over by an oligarchy of just four families.

If you’ve not seen it, Succession is a sort of Shakespearean stew of palace intrigue set in the uber-wealthy and powerful world of monopolized media’s master class. It’s kind of what you’d get if you tossed King Lear, Richard III, Macbeth and Hamlet into a witch’s brew with the Murdoch, Redstone, Cox and Roberts families that control most of America’s media market.

The Roy family of Succession, with patriarch Logan and sons Kendall, Roman and Connor and daughter Siobhan, is most often likened to the media mogul Murdoch family.

The 80-year-old Logan, played with scowling ferocity by the inimitable Bryan Cox, is reminiscent of Rupert Murdoch’s combative and domineering leadership of NewsCorp. Logan’s sprawling media conglomerate Waystar RoyCo and its conservative cable news channels certainly bear a resemblance to the star-spangled simp-fest of Fox News.

Logan’s dueling sons Kendall, exquisitely portrayed by Jeremy Strong, and Roman, a fantastic Kieran Culkin, also bear some similarities to Murdoch’s sons, James and Lachlan, as does their internecine warfare to find favor with, or advantage over, their powerful father.

The scandal that befalls Waystar RoyCo, with accusations of sexual misconduct and the like, is also eerily familiar to the tawdry accusations that knee-capped Fox News and its leader Roger Ailes and star Bill O’Reilly.

But the Murdochs aren’t the only family dynasty running a media empire for Succession to emulate. Another is the Redstone family, long led by Sumner Redstone, who died in 2020.

Sumner’s media empire of Viacom/CBS/Paramount certainly resembled Waystar, and his personal life is akin to Logan Roy’s too, as it’s littered with adultery, charges of cruelty and failed relationships with women.

The most striking resemblance though between Logan Roy and Sumner Redstone is that they both have/had ambitious daughters. Logan’s daughter, Siobhan, gloriously portrayed by the beguiling Sarah Snook, is making a calculated bid for the family throne, similar to Sumner’s daughter Shari, who battled with her father over control of the family business and ultimately took over his vast empire after his death.

Sumner’s son, Brent, who in Roy-esque fashion sued his father and sister Shari, and was eventually bought out after he was removed from the board of Viacom’s parent company National Amusements.

Besides the Murdochs and the Redstones, the Cox and Roberts families are also Succession-like dynasties whose family business is media empire.

Cox Enterprises, with its major subsidiaries Cox Communications and Cox Media Group, is run by James Cox Kennedy, grandson of the company’s founder, James M. Cox, a two-time Governor of Ohio.

Kennedy’s earthy mother, Barbara Cox Anthony, and his cosmopolitan aunt, Anna Cox Chambers, long had controlling intertest of the family empire in spite of their love/hate, very distant relationship, which seems eerily similar to Logan Roy’s relationship with his estranged brother Ewan Roy.

Kennedy eventually took over the massive company from his aunt at the age of 41, and while the aristocratic Cox family isn’t as prone to paparazzi or media prying as the Redstones and Murdochs, they’re just as powerful.

The same is true of the Roberts family, which founded and runs mammoth telecommunications conglomerate Comcast. Billionaire Brian L. Roberts took over Comcast at the tender young age of 31 from his father Ralph and now runs the media monster that includes NBC/Universal.

Brian’s ascent to corporate power was swift, but despite siblings having no interest in the family business, he still solidified his powerful position as CEO and Chairman by pulling up the drawbridge and literally having his leadership written into Comcast’s articles of incorporation. There will be no sibling coup d’etat at Comcast.

The same is certainly not true on Succession which is why it’s such a fun show to watch. But despite being an eminently compelling and entertaining piece of capitalism porn, the reality it dramatizes is both horrifying and dispiriting.

Having just four families be the movers, shakers and opinion makers controlling so much of America’s media, controlling discourse, manufacturing consent and silencing dissent, is detrimental to democracy if not terminal to the republic.

These aristocrats and oligarchs, despite their pretentious and vacuous displays of philanthropy, are populated by spoiled and sadistic monsters who only care about preserving the status quo in order to secure and ensure their egregious wealth and power.

These monopolist corporate tyrants use their wealth and propaganda power to influence politicians tasked with regulating them to get further expansion of their family businesses, so that they can then use their expanded wealth and propaganda power to further pressure politicians to allow further expansion of their wealth and propaganda power. This endless cycle of corruption is corroding the core foundations of American democracy as it allows these family run media misinformation manufacturers to keep the public perpetually disinformed and deceived.

Ultimately, we can turn off Succession and walk away from its spectacle of egregious privilege and dramatic display of family intrigue, but unfortunately reality is just a less entertaining but more depressing version of the same insidious disease.

I love Succession, I just wish it was total fantasy and not a terrifyingly real glimpse of the four oligarchical families manipulating our minds through their mendacious media machines.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Is TV Too Woke?

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 12 seconds

Is TV too woke?

As someone who works with a lot of producers, writers and directors who all privately tell me that if their TV project isn’t woke in conception and rigidly diverse in execution, then it won’t ever move forward, the answer is eye-rollingly obvious.

Unsurprisingly, the epidemic of wokeness is just as virulent across the pond in the UK TV world as it is in Hollywood and New York.

Proof of this was evident at the Edinburgh TV Festival panel discussion of TV professionals unironically titled “Diversity of Thought: Is TV Too Woke?”

At the discussion, Ash Atella, the producer of The Office and The IT Crowd, admitted, “I’m in a lot of meetings now where people tell me, ‘This will never get on because it’s not woke enough.”

The reality is that any sentient being with eyes to see, ears to hear and a brain to think, can tell you that TV is so awash in wokeness as to be hysterical.

Whether it be ideologically biased, identity-obsessed news coverage, or entertainment featuring the performative absurdity of a black Anne Boleyn, the obscenity of white male erasure in Marvel’s What If?, or incessant LGBTQ cheerleading, the trend is clear, the woke revolution is most certainly being televised.

What’s interesting about TV’s woke affliction is that while it’s obvious to regular people, many industry insiders are either afraid to speak publicly about it or blind to it.

A specially commissioned Ipsos Mori survey supports this notion, and shows that the TV industry in the UK is wildly out of step regarding wokeness compared to the viewing public. The survey found that 62% of British TV viewers believe political correctness on TV has gone too far, while only 19% of TV industry professionals agreed. It also revealed that 40% of viewers were proud of the UK, as opposed to 20% of TV professionals, and that 23% of viewers were ashamed of the British Empire while 63% of TV insiders shared that sentiment.

Obviously, TV professionals live in an alternate universe to audience members, and that is reflected in the lack of ideological diversity we see on our screens. But TV doesn’t care about ideological diversity, only in the surface diversity of identity.

The Egyptian-born Atella, who is a big proponent of diversity in TV, gave voice to the reality of the pro-diversity agenda and its effect when he told the panel, “I’m amazed how fast the white people have thought, ‘We can’t get on television’, that’s come in hard and fast in the last two years, and it’s a bewildering experience to be in those meetings after 15 years of the opposite. Now white people think there’s no place for them.”

Well, “the white people” think there’s no place for them in the culture because news channels consistently label them evil and entertainment endlessly denigrates them.

The corporate behemoths that run Hollywood have made it very clear too that white people, straight white men in particular, are not welcome in the industry.

For example, Disney and Amazon have made their worship of all things “diverse and inclusive” official company doctrine with insidiously specific identity quotas that above all target reducing straight white males from the creative and production process.

The same is true of the Academy Awards, which have made racial, ethnic, gender and sexual orientation box-ticking, as well as straight white male exclusion, mandatory, in order to be eligible for awards contention.

The woke bias of other panelists in Edinburgh, such as Louisa Compton, Head of News, Current Affairs and Sport at Channel 4, was also exposed, as was a shocking level of contempt for the audience.

Compton first claimed that being woke is benign as it literally means, “being alert to injustice and not wanting to offend anyone, which seem like fairly important principles.”

Compton heads a news division and the fact that her fidelity is to the subjective principles of “being alert to injustice and not wanting to offend anyone” as opposed to searching for the objective truth, is alarming but illuminating.

Compton did admit that wokeness can “alienate some audiences who feel that the world is moving on faster and leaving them behind” and also claimed, “I don’t think anyone in TV would be surprised to hear that a lot of the people who work [in the industry] think differently to the audiences we’re making progress for.”

Broadcast journalist Mobeen Azhar shared a similar holier-than-thou attitude when speaking of the type of shows needed to “move forward the people who think PC’s gone mad, because it hasn’t.”

To Compton, Azhar and their ilk, wokeness is the proper religion populated by the evolved and the pious, and they and their fellow TV professionals are working hard to make “progress for” and “move forward” those knuckle-dragging barbarians in the audience who feel left ”behind”.

Wokeness is now the state religion and entertainment and news its propaganda wings, brimming with missionaries like Compton and Azhar, filled with self-righteous superiority and evangelical zeal.

To these people TV is just an indoctrination machine used to do the public service of spreading the good news of the woke gospel to help spur evolution among the filthy, backwards proles.

So, is TV too woke? If you don’t think so then either you don’t watch TV or you’re a self-involved, delusional TV executive suffering from a severe case of stage 5 wokeness. Hopefully it’s the former and not the latter, as that’s the decidedly healthier and more enlightened choice.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Nightcrawler : A Review

****WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SOME SPOILERS!! CONSIDER THIS YOUR OFFICIAL SPOILER ALERT!!****

Nightcrawler, written and directed by Dan Gilroy, is the story of Lou Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal), a socially awkward, morally challenged and fiercely ambitious man who stumbles into a career as a freelance videographer in the seedy world of local television news in Los Angeles.

I had not heard much about Nightcrawler prior to seeing it. I had seen some commercials for it, but hadn't heard very much word of mouth about it. In fact, I thought the film had already come and gone by the time I indifferently sat down to watch it. After seeing it, I am baffled as to why this film hasn't made more of a splash and gotten more buzz around it. I thought it was among the best films of the year.

Jake Gyllenhaal stars as Lou Bloom, and gives one of the performances of the year and undoubtedly one of the best of his career. Gyllenhaal makes Lou Bloom a distinct and exact character, from his unblinking, owl-like eyes, to his unique speech patterns and his disturbingly persistent optimism. Lou Bloom has an uncomfortably intense focus, and will overcome any and all obstacles to achieve his goal, whether that be to get the best video footage, the best story, the most money or sex with the woman he wants. Lou is as bereft of a moral compass as he is of a social one, making him both repulsive yet almost hypnotically irresistible. Gyllenhaal has constructed a gripping character, one that is consistently specific in intention and precise in detail. Gyllenhaal has always done much better in roles that would be defined as 'character roles' as opposed to movie star roles. I hope his excellent work in Nightcrawler is an indication that Gyllenhaal will decide to do more character work in the future and less movie star work.

When we first see Lou Bloom, he is a two-bit thief, stealing metal from construction sights and wristwatches from the guard he overpowers who is protecting that construction sight, an early indication that while he may not look like the typical predator, he most definitely is one, and an audacious one at that. But when, by happenstance, Lou comes across freelance videographers covering a car crash on the freeway, he gets hooked by the intrigue and excitement of that business and decides to dive into it headfirst. His greatest assets as a freelance videographer are his astonishing lack of any ethics, scruples or human compassion, his audacious ambition and his unabashed zeal for the job. Due to these characteristics, Bloom excels in his work and quickly climbs the ladder all the way to the top of the local television freelance videographer world. 

Renee Russo and Riz Ahmed do exemplary work in supporting roles. Russo plays Nina Romina, a producer of a late night local news program who, night after night, Lou Bloom pitches to buy his work. She tells him that "if it bleeds, it leads", so Bloom quickly sets out to shoot the most gruesome footage he can, and builds a professional, and uneasily forced unprofessional, relationship with Romina. Russo brings a world weary savvy and desperation to her character. Romina is, in her own way, a predator as well, feeding on and manipulating the misery in the world to her advantage. She, like many, underestimates Lou Bloom, and her shock when she realizes that she is not the hunter in regards to Bloom, but they prey, is subtly and effectively played.

Riz Ahmed plays Lou Bloom's aptly named videographer 'intern' Rick Carey, a down on his luck, sometimes homeless guy trying to make his way in a rough world. We see Carey be a victim of Bloom's overpowering confidence at first, but then he learns from watching Bloom, and by the time he turns the tables on Bloom we see that he believes he is no longer the fledgling, but is ready to leave the nest. Carey though, as his name suggests, "cares", and proves he doesn't have the heart, or rather, he has too much heart, to be able to beat Lou at his own ruthless game. Ahmed brings a tangible, genuine sensitivity to his character, and his work brings to life a character that could have really been an afterthought in the hands of a less thoughtful actor.

Director Dan Gilroy has been a working screenwriter for years, and Nightcrawler is his first time directing. It is a dynamic debut to say the least. What Gilroy does best is let Gyllenhaal's work drive the narrative, and to neither rush, nor weigh down the story. Gilroy's pacing is pitch-perfect, and there is never a feeling of distraction or wandering in the storytelling. 

Another artist of note working on Nightcrawler is cinematographer Robert Elswit. Elswit's work is simply stellar. The film looks absolutely spectacular. The visuals are striking, and tell a great deal of the story of Lou Bloom, and in turn Los Angeles, all on their own. I am willing to bet that if you watched Nightcrawler with the sound off, you would get just as impressively compelling a film as you did with the sound on. Elswit gives the Los Angeles night a texture and vibrancy that is an essential part of the storytelling, and is as indispensable as Gyllenhaal's performance to the success of the film.

Another pivotal character in Nightcrawler is the city of Los Angeles itself. Gilroy and Elswit shoot from locations in the least cinematically seen parts of the city. They find hidden and mundane little corners of Los Angeles and give them life in an optically striking and dramatically forceful way. In the real world, Los Angeles is a strange city. During the day it is the land of milk and honey, filled with beautiful people and sunshine and brightness. But then the sun falls, and darkness rises. Nighttime in Los Angeles is a dark and uneasy place. The L.A. night is the place where Jim Morrison's The Lizard King reigned supreme, and the Charles Manson's and Richard Ramirez's of the world plied their trade. The L.A. night is the shadow world and it is as dark as the day is light. Gilroy and Elswit perfectly capture and bring this palpable, looming sense of menace to life in Nightcrawler, better than any films in recent memory.

Finally, Nightcrawler is also about the the insidious world of television news. To watch Lou 'bloom' from an amoral low-life thief into an amoral local news freelance video kingpin is as entertaining as it is insightful. Bloom is a fringe character in the world. He is from the most northern outskirts of the San Fernando valley, as far away from Los Angeles as you can be and still say you are from Los Angeles. He has no education but has studied self improvement from the farthest edge of the internet. Thanks to this makeshift schooling, and his predatory instincts, Lou learns the L.A. appearance game quickly, and goes from driving a run down clunker to driving a souped up Mustang in no time. Lou Bloom is symbolic of the charlatan at the heart of all television news personalities, in that he is an empty vessel, comprised of all style and no substance. The real trick in the television news business is to have your style make you appear to have substance, and to have your lack of substance become your trademark style. Bloom, like all top predators, quickly adapts to this. Television news is as far out on the periphery to serious substantial journalism as Lou Bloom's hometown on the northern most reaches of the San Fernando valley is to Los Angeles. The film shows how manufactured and contrived the news is in order to manipulate the public, if for no other reason than to keep them watching and the advertising revenues coming in. Spend even a few minutes watching the empty-headed toxicity on CNN, MSNBC or Fox News and you will quickly realize that national news is just as corrosive and corrupt as the version of local news presented in Nightcrawler. The pernicious and noxious nature of television news is obvious and undeniable to anyone paying even the remotest bit of attention, and Nightcrawler skillfully does us a service in bringing that reality of the newsroom to life.

In conclusion, Nightcrawler is a very layered, riveting and original debut film from writer/director Dan Gilroy, boasting a great performance from Jake Gyllenhaal and stunning visuals from cinematographer Robert Elswit. It is, in my opinion, one of the most finely crafted and most entertaining films of the year, and it is most certainly worth your time.

© 2015

FOR REVIEWS OF OTHER FILMS RELEASED DURING THE HOLIDAY SEASON, PLEASE CLICK ON THESE LINKS TO THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING , WHIPLASH , BIRDMAN OR (THE UNEXPECTED VIRTUE OF IGNORANCE) , FOXCATCHER , WILD , AMERICAN SNIPER , A MOST VIOLENT YEAR , THE IMITATION GAME , STILL ALICE , INHERENT VICE , SELMA , MR. TURNER , CAKE .