When I watch movies, I like to think about the personal finances of the characters or the financial implications of the stories. Unlike sex and violence, movies aren’t explicit about most characters’ money situations. When bad guys beat up the good guys on instruction from someone else, haven’t you ever wondered how much the bad guys were paid to do so? Most bad guys in movies are killed or grievously injured. What kind of medical coverage do they have? Do they have life insurance for their dependents? Do they even have emergency funds to cover the bills while they’re unable to work?
Think about the characters who are dressed and coiffed impeccably from start to finish, without ever wearing the same outfit or accessory twice. Don’t you ever wonder how they can afford that while working in whatever job they have? The exception to this last question is Tony Stark. It’s clear right from the get-go that he’s a multi-billionaire. But what about the other Avengers? How do they afford their lives? Especially Bruce Banner! Does he own lots and lots of stock in clothing companies? What kind of premiums does he pay for liability insurance? Captain America was encased in ice back in 1945. Had he socked away some money before his time in the army? Did he live on its compound growth once he was thawed and back among the living?
Before I get too far off topic, let me get back to what I want to talk about in this post. The ending of Don’t Look Up has stuck with me for a very long time because it was about wealthy people, a group that evokes my latent desire to be an amateur sociologist. As I watched the elderly naked characters emerge from their spaceship, I was struck by the futility of their departure from Earth.
None of them were wealthy anymore. How could they be? They had no money… which struck me as deeply ironic since having more money than anyone else in the world had allowed them to be on the spaceship that took them to the new planet. By the same token, they didn’t exactly need money either. After all, they no longer had any bills or expenses to pay. However, people wealthy enough to book a seat on a spaceship generally aren’t concerned about which streaming service should be cut from their budget in order to make ends meet.
It was quite clear from the movie’s ending that only the very wealthiest of humans had gained passage on the spaceship, and only because they could afford to buy their way on board. On Earth, right up until hours before the comet destroyed the planet, they had been the people with more money than anyone else. They had such disproportionate access to wealth that they could pay to leave the planet when they felt it was time to go.
As those formerly-rich folks emerged from the spaceship and took their first steps on the new planet, I said to myself: “What was the point of leaving? It’s not like they went to a better place. How are they going to adapt to the fact that they no longer have money?” ***
My point with this post is that the movie made me ponder whether someone can be rich if there are no poor people around. If everyone is on an equal footing financially, then can anyone be considered wealthy?
At the end of the movie, all of those naked people were in the exact same financial position as everyone else around them. None of them enjoyed the benefits of intergenerational wealth, networking, or opportunity based on lineage. Every single one of those people had lost all of the privileges associated with being one of Earth’s Financial Elites.
The so-called survivors at the end of Don’t Look Up no longer had access to all of the status symbols associated with uber-wealth on Earth:
- Servants? It was unlikely that any one of them would deign to serve someone else as they had been served in their former lives on Earth.
- Multiple homes? Unlikely… they’d all just gotten off a spaceship and were walking around an utterly alien terrain.
- Family businesses? Also very unlikely. Their families had been abandoned back on Earth and killed by the comet, just like the customers who had patronized those businesses, just like the employees who had worked in those businesses.
- Stock portfolios? Art collections? Expensive jewelry? Nope – nope – nope. The new planet wasn’t tied into the banking system and the stock markets on Earth, so no one person had any ability to access whatever paper assets they had owned. Also, every bank and stock market on the planet had been destroyed by the comet. Every monetary system known to man had been annihilated.
Literally and figuratively, their wealth no longer existed. Would that itsy-bitsy, teeny-tiny realization blow their minds later? The movie ended before I got an answer to my question. In my consideration of what went through their minds, I can only come to the conclusion that the level of cognitive dissonance that would have been experienced by those formerly-wealthy folks would have been breathtaking!
Now, I know that movie was about humanity’s refusal to face the inevitable until it was too late to make any changes. Whether it was a plea to stop our relentless destruction of the environment or a plea to pay attention to the asinine level of incompetence happening in government, the fact remains that the last few minutes of the movie were about those who had left Earth before the comet hit. I’ll never know if the director intended it or not, but my take-away from the end of Don’t Look Up was that the formerly-wealthy people’s departure from Earth had only delayed the final demise of humanity; it didn’t prevent it.
Think about it. Humanity was still going to be extinct for a variety of reasons. Firstly, none of those “survivors” were capable of reproducing themselves, so no new humans at all, ever. Secondly, I harbor great doubt that any of them could feed or shelter themselves for very long once they had exhausted their provisions, if any. Thirdly, the naked, elderly humans seemed utterly un-prepared to face the aggressive, people-munching wildlife on their new planet.
I know it was just a movie. However, that doesn’t stop me from imagining their shock at discovering that having all the money in the world wouldn’t prevent them from dying too. The so-called survivors landed on an unfamiliar planet without any information about it other than that they could breathe the air. For all intents and purposes, they were in nearly the same position as the first humans who had walked the Earth. And I say “nearly” because those early humans had the benefit of their fertility. Whatever lessons one generation learned while struggling to survive were passed down to children. In other words, early humans had a future! The survivors who emerged onto the new planet didn’t even have that. From what I could see in the movie, those survivors were all elderly and well-past their baby-producing years.
Can you imagine how their minds must have been blown?
Without the yardstick of money and without possibility of leaving a legacy, what had they really accomplished by leaving the planet? They got to ride in spaceship before dying on alien soil? Yet, with the destruction of Earth, there was really and truly no one left to mark this event. Whether or not dying off-planet was an accomplishment, their knowledge and record of doing so would die with them.
To my mind, they would have had to find a way to deal with the fact that they were no better off than the people who had died on Earth.
Also, I had to wonder if they had any useful survival skills. Astonishingly enough, their talent for creating wealth was of absolutely no use to them in their new location. Remember, they had been financial Titans on Earth. They had earned bucket and buckets and buckets of money in their former lives. On a new planet and without any kind of mentorship, would any of them have been able to survive the way the earliest humans had? How much food had been packed into the spaceship? Once it ran out, would any of them be to hunt or grow their own food? Would they have splintered off into even smaller groups or would they have found a way to work together? How would they have preserved their sanity in the face of no future???
The way I see it, money is a bit of a scorecard. In a capitalist society like ours, having more money means you’re winning. Money means access to food, shelter, healthcare, transportation, communication, education, and a good deal more stuff. However, there comes a point where a person no longer really has to worry that he or she won’t have enough. These are the people with net worths in the 9-figure range and above. These are the people who got off the spaceship at the end of Don’t Look Up. However, having the best financial scorecard on Earth is less-than-trivial if Earth is the only place that particular scorecard is recognized.
What happened to the so-called survivors’ perceived self-worth once they realized that they were no longer winning? That the game had been changed and their net worth was the exactly same as everyone else’s? That their previous privilege and status was literally meaningless on the new planet?
How did they handle the knowledge that, suddenly, they had no money?
*** And I’m not trying to engender sympathy for the uber-wealthy. That way lies pitchforks and angry mobs.
