Counter-Currents
The Gilded Age
Social Climbing, Class Sniping, & Showdowns in the Wild, Wild East
Steven Clark
2,771 words
I’ve often said that to most Americans history begins with Elvis Presley. TV especially is the land of the magic kingdom; not of Disney, but ephemera. It’s noteworthy that in 2022 HBO presented The Gilded Age, a series set in 1880 when America, having been massively industrialized during the Civil War, now projected that technological and economic power in both politics and culture.
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Tonight I had another one of those inescapable exemplary nightmares, an absolute horror trip of humiliation. Although its symbolism is easy to decipher, it has nothing in common with my actual life situation. In the dream, I was with the woman who is the mother of my child (who did not appear in the dream at all) in real life on a kind of country estate, a kind of modest but spacious and well-kept finca in the idyllic countryside, it could also have been one of those new-fangled organic farms that I ran together with this woman in the dream.
The two of us were initially the only people for miles around who appeared in the dream. I have to say that in my waking state I don’t waste the slightest thought on this woman, who was actually one of these eco-fanatics, but on the contrary, I am more than happy to have “escaped” from her, even if I had to give up contact with my child, which was the “price” for it, so to speak. But in my dreams she regularly “pursues” me, haunts me, humiliates and picks on me as a loser who comes away empty-handed and encounters her total rejection.
Anyway, suddenly Elon Musk appeared in the dream as a kind of visitor and third person and the three of us were sitting at a table in a kind of eat-in kitchen, doing some kind of learning course that we had to practise together. A constellation of three in which there was obviously one too many, and that was of course me. The ex-“partner” said to me: “You have to understand that this is my only chance to become wealthy, we can meet again afterwards, once I’ve married him and then get divorced with a million-dollar settlement.”
I could see that economically, but not as a man. Gritting my teeth, I accepted it as a one-off opportunity. I could have been a professor myself with a generous pension and I wouldn’t have been able to compete with that, I would have remained a low earner. My modest income was obviously not enough for her. She took an increasing liking to him and he didn’t seem to have any problem with pinching my wife. He didn’t even talk to me, but acted as if I was completely superfluous and non-existent. Self-confident and good-humored, just as we know him from the media in “reality”.
Then I ended up having to listen to them moaning from the next room every night and “interesting conversations with the world-famous billionaire” during the day. In the end, I made a defiant act of liberation that thwarted the two “love birdies” and restored my independence, but which I no longer remember specifically because I woke up shortly afterwards, as tortured, whacked and drained as always. It can’t have anything to do with alcohol consumption, because I hadn’t drunk any.
The theme of the dream was apparently pronounced inferiority complexes due to a lack of status. Why can’t I be the winner that everyone adores and worships at least for once? I wonder who sends me such diabolical dreams. Sometimes I think it might be some kind of psychotropic reaction to my excessive use of e-cigarettes, which I started about two years ago instead of smoking tobacco, but I couldn’t find any connection between nightmares and the use of e-cigarettes on the internet.
I’m disappointed no one comments on this series. You guys all moan about lousy TV. Here is an interesting drama dealing with American history, and nothing. Shame David Lynch wasn’t around to direct an episode, then the comments would flow, nicht wahr?
As it is, I’m watching the second season, and have no more to add except a nice scene where Russell is talking with his fellow plutocrats about union troubles. One says that the rich should simply pay one half of the working class to kill the other half…which they did say, and weren’t shy about giving it a try. Then back to Bertha plotting to get into the opera society.
Now, Uncle Franky: why are on this thread? You have nothing to say about my review or the series, just griping about God knows what. You use words to flail your arms and roll your eyes. There is no purpose to you being on this thread.
Get thee hence.
Maybe noone has seen it yet.
I love all things Julian Fellowes and have seen every episode of both The Gilded Age and Downton Abbey. My biggest criticism of the former is that I desperately wanted to see the Russells, loosely based on the Vanderbilts, portrayed in a darker, colder, and more sociopathic way. And I wanted that to contrast harder with the old money maternalism of the Van Rhijns as a comment on the emergent industrial and imperial scales of individualist wealth divorcing itself from any heartfelt concern for people and place. The Van Rhijns are suitably haughty and stuck-up, but they still have a warm heartbeat that cares about family, their staff, and most importantly, old Dutch-Anglo New York City. The Van Rhijns in the Gilded Age compare favorably with the Crawley family in Downton Abbey in these respects. But I wanted something more and darker from Fellowes for the Russells as plutocrats, not aristocrats, on the rise. I even wanted their teenage daughter to not be so pleasant and bubbly in demeanor either.
I know Fellowes is capable of this greater darkness because of his script for Gosford Park, which portrays Michael Gambon’s character, an industrialist, as a real nasty piece of work who took liberties with sister factory girls, impregnating them both, and every bit deserves what comes to him, literally twice over. William McCordle is only a minor industrialist compared to the titan of industry that George Russell is supposed to represent and frankly I demand to see more of the evil and nastiness that comes with a titan. Ned Beatty as Arthur Jensen in Network is played for farce, but even his portrayal of a plutocrat is suitably more disturbing and chilling.
The Gilded Age falls into the same old trap that portrays the wealthy elite as admirably ambitious instead of commonly sociopathic, because it serves contemporary narratives that one can be astronomically rich and not have to be an awful and contemptible human being, and it just doesn’t work that way in real life. We’ll see what season three brings, but it better get colder and darker.
I think a lot of the darkness must be read between the lines. I think the series, like most of this kind, are very concentrated on the rich and their personal problems. it is a bourgeois network and so these issues predominate. In the second season, I note the labor/management issue comes to the fore, and Russell is certainly of the mind that labor must be crushed. He’s not crude, but “civilized,” which may be more tragic. Remember the allusion I made to the Russells being like the Macbeths. Also, I liked seeing a snatch of the union organizers, so we see a bit more perspective. The union and their followers is more like us than we are like the upper class, although we’re trained to be upper class.
Perhaps the best remedy is, after watching some of The Gilded Age, check out a film like The Molly McGuires, showing how the upper class dealt with labor violence, from actually killing workers to infiltrating their ranks. It was all good training for WWI and beyond, when you had people like Teddy Roosevelt pose as great peacemakers while aggressively pursuing a militarist policy, or Woodrow Wilson, while calling for an end to all war and wanting a League of Nations, actually planned a way for American values to dominate the world. As I wrote, the series is a good way to see how the empire grew.
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