When the previous government was removed from power, the transition seemed to be going fine until it was revealed that the outgoing treasury were less than scrupulous in their handling of the crown’s purse. Faced with a sort of fiscal black hole, the new regime is forced into a position where they must raise more revenue (and quickly), or an increasingly impoverished public are likely to resort to more and more civil unrest.
Anyway, that’s enough about HBO’s House of The Dragon. It’s not real life, is it? After all, in that show Westeros’s problems are exacerbated by a blockade which is preventing goods coming in from mainland Essos, causing high levels of inflation and making the government a less dependable lending partner for the banking sector. Also, in that show with dragons and stuff, the rich people are hoarding vast amounts of resources, taking advantage of the high price point to leverage their money into the ability to secure food and agricultural necessities as well as housing. House of The Dragon is a fantasy show, which is why the final scenes of Season 3 Episode 3 show Queen Rhaenyra implementing a wealth tax. I mean, I can suspend my disbelief but that’s just insulting. They’d all just move to Qarth wouldn’t they? I mean, what’s the point?
It was into this cultural moment that we were treated to the first feature film from Gary Stevenson. I’ll do a quick explainer on him before we get to the film itself. Gary is from a very poor background, was some kind of a mathematical savant, worked his way into and through LSE, and became a top (or the top) trader at Citibank in his mid-twenties, before quitting and eventually writing a top selling book about his experiences and transitioning into becoming a campaigner against inequality. His YouTube channel is sitting at 1.6 million subscribers, which is pretty good.
More colloquially, I think a lot of people find this guy kind of hard to pin down, but I know a preacher when I see one. It’s totally not insane for people with a lot of money and privilege to go into the clergy. In feudal times, non-inheriting sons regularly joined the priesthood; we just happen to live in a more cynical time now. In reality, it’s quite easy to make the conservative argument that inequality is ripping apart the fabric of family life before families even come into being. Life is just too expensive, prices are outstripping wage growth, and climate change and war threaten to darken the outlook even further.
For many, the inability to connect their work to an ability to raise a family is a source of intense psycho-sexual frustration. To suggest that this will cause problems isn’t a left-wing communist argument, it’s barely even liberal. The preacher means only to profess his vision of doom.
Much like Daenys ‘The Dreamer’ Targaryen.
ANYWAY.
How to Get Filthy Rich is trying to be a few things at once, being a treatise about the importance of equality in the stability of our societies while ostensibly being disguised as some kind of satire of self-help motivational content. The actual idea proposed in the film is a 2% annual tax on wealth over £10 million, although the wider concept is about taking inequality seriously as a negative condition.
In a sense, it’s very easy to see how the project would become so confused. Coming from Louis Theroux’s production company, the thing was set up to put Gary in a sort of Theroux-esque position of the passive interviewer patiently coaxing people into revealing their most honest and direct selves. The result is effectively a series of short films, with some big hits, some weird misses and a tone of condensed and unconcealable emotion.
I knew the documentary was coming, so rather than watch it as if I knew I was going to write about it I just watched it straight up to see what would stick with me. What remains in my memory feels like a sort of collection of anxiety dreams. A headmaster talks about 48% of pupils needing help with food; a horrible American man casts empathy as a weakness; a dog craps on a multi-millionaire’s castle floor before a man – who is so purple he looks how you might imagine a racist depiction of a Ribena carton – screams “WE WILL FIGHT ‘TIL THE END.”
Later, an NHS doctor reads off a list of public services which have been shut down and Gary lets at least one tear drop down his cheek, effectively ruining his chances at ever becoming chancellor. Not that he’d want to. A tax lawyer resembling some form of human shark scared me into never talking to anyone who handles money for a living ever again. There was a really nice shot of a train going through the countryside on a lovely day.
I wish I could say I was inspired. I wish I felt hope. I didn’t though, I felt the crushing realisation that this is the feeling of being in a declining part of the world as others stay strong and even grow. Ultimately the sheer strength in energy of the never ending clown car of naysayers hijack the emotional core of the piece. I see a preacher trying his best, but I know in my heart that others will see weakness.
At least we can escape into fantasy.
In House of The Dragon, Queen Rhaenyra calls in all the lords and high merchants who hoarded food, forcibly robs their storehouses and feeds them all rats. ‘This is what the common folk have been eating’, she says. Perhaps, to paraphrase Mark Fisher, it really is easier to imagine dragons and winged men than a small increase in taxation of the very wealthy.
