There is something rotten in the kingdom… of the ultra-rich. When it comes to succession, going through an inheritance often ends up looking like a Shakespearean tragedy. The more colossal the stake, the more terrible and picrocholinous are its springs. Yet these stories seem to haunt us: dallas to the remake of Dynasty, the stories of fratricidal wars of billionaires prance at the top of the audience. Series Succession, broadcast on the pay channel HBO, which will reach its end in a few weeks, is one of the latest avatars. Its screenplay describes the difficult transmission of Waystar Royco, the media empire of billionaire Logan Roy, to his four spoiled rotten children. It’s about manipulation, big money, corrupt filial love. Politics, too, while the Roys were clearly very inspired by the Murdoch family, the clan owning the conservative Fox News channel in the United States.
Driven by string writing and an impeccable cast, the heart of the success of Succession is probably found here: the series is a concentrate of the spirit of the times, a mirror held up to the qualities and failings of today’s money powers. She is not the only one to have grasped the interest in this recipe. In France, a work with the same title – except for one letter – also piqued the interest of the public: Estates. Money, blood and tears (Albin Michel), by Vanessa Schneider and Raphaëlle Bacqué, sold nearly 50,000 copies, according to Edistat. The journalists of World tell the story of the difficult transmissions of the dynasties of French capitalism. Whether they are called Roy, Murdoch, Pinault or Bolloré, their great dramas and their petty pettiness never cease to fascinate us.
keep the empire intact
This passion has been going on for a long time. In literature, family sagas very quickly made the salt of romantic soap operas, Father Goriot, of Honoré de Balzac, to Buddenbrook, by Thomas Mann, who, published in 1901, precisely describes the decline of a wealthy merchant family in Lübeck at the end of the 19th century. On television, the successes of dallas, in the 1980s, then Dynasty, a decade later confirmed the television appeal of the genre. “Family capitalism is the most widespread form of capitalism, notes Jean-Claude Daumas, professor emeritus of contemporary economic history at the University of Franche-Comté, co-author of Historical dictionary of French patterns (Flammarion). It is therefore not surprising that we are interested in it. This model makes up a large part of our economic fabric.”
Worldwide, family businesses represent the majority of companies, constituting in the 2010s between 60 and 95% of the economy depending on the country. We like what we know. “Families seek to perpetuate the business they have created, but very few succeed, continues Jean-Claude Daumas. Those who do are so rare that they are often synonymous with exceptional success.” By wishing to penetrate the intimacy of JR, Logan Roy or, more prosaically, the Bettencourts, we seek to understand their origin – real or fictional. But not only. “The family is a factor of strength but also of weakness for the company. On the weak side, there is something fascinating in the figure of the founder who clings to his armchair, like Marcel Dassault, who died at 94 years without having prepared his succession, or in the wars which tear families apart, such as that between mother and daughter at the Bettencourts, or even that of the seven branches of the Taittingers which led to the disappearance of the family empire built on the champagne and luxury hotels”, list Jean-Claude Daumas. After erecting it, you must keep the empire intact.
Collective psychoanalysis
Some spend decades wondering about the subject, refusing to let go of their chairs. Others have planned their succession down to the comma, leaving no detail to chance. Raphaëlle Bacqué thus remembers having had the idea of writing a story on the transmission of the Arnault family, after seeing her youngest son doing his homework in the office of the patriarch. “I went to see Bernard Arnault a few years ago, when I was directing for The world a series on Karl Lagerfeld. I was struck by the scene, because the bosses of the CAC 40 usually leave their children to tutors or private teachers. But he was precisely keeping an eye on his son, and I wanted to know how he was raising him to take over.” A few years later, inspired by the title and content of the series Succession, it will be done.
How do you make an heir? The fierce battle within an existing empire seems far more favored by the authors than the self-made. Here, it is a question of transmission, and therefore often necessarily of tension. By telling the story of a legacy, these sagas probe the feelings and rivalries at the heart of the unit we know best: our family. “When we became interested in the different families that make up Estates, In the end, we talked very little about money, remarks Raphaëlle Bacqué. It was the family stories that captured our attention and their psychological springs.” Tales of upset heirs, of refused love, of loneliness… To examine the misfortunes of these dynasties is to engage in a collective psychoanalysis. one exception: it is unlikely that hundreds or even thousands of jobs will depend on the execution of your next door neighbor’s will.
The influence of neoliberalism
“These dynastic histories emerged at a very particular moment in the history of capitalism. dallas could be a banal family story, very similar to what we have seen for years on British television,” observes Janet McCabe, lecturer in television and film studies at Birkbeck, University of London. Although hatreds and the loves of billionaires touch on the universal, they are also difficult to extract from their context. “This type of series arrives in the 1980s, because we are entering a new stage of capitalism, marked by the neoliberalism of the Reagan years. Interest in the history of these families grew along with their power. We seek to see and understand the motivations of these people who are not necessarily elected, but who hold enormous power.”
In Succession, the series written by Jesse Armstrong, a British screenwriter specializing in satire, the media empire of Logan Roy, for example, is accused of regularly pushing conspiracy theories on the air. It’s hard not to think of Fox News, when the conservative channel has just signed a financial agreement to avoid a defamation lawsuit. During the previous presidential election, the channel’s presenters had accused – without proof – the Dominion company’s voting machines of being responsible for vote rigging. From season 2 of Succession, one of the subsidiary plots is political. In the middle of the Republican primary, the conservative candidates parade in front of the patriarch, eager to obtain his good graces. Again, how not to think of the relationship between Donald Trump and Rupert Murdoch? “The great talent of HBO is to know how to perfectly grasp the spirit of the times, and to describe the end of a world, sometimes in an almost premonitory way”, continues Janet McCabe. In 2001, the first episodes of the series Six Feet Under examined death and trauma. “A few months later, 9/11 happened, and the show only became more relevant. In a way, that’s what Succession, but in the era of post-truth”, completes the teacher.
Interviewed last October on the set of Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Jeremy Strong, the interpreter of Kendall, one of the sons of Logan Roy, did not describe the series otherwise. “[Succession] dissects what happens when a family trauma becomes societal, he explained, comparing the internal dramas of the Roys to a poisoned water table. Their toxicity and their problems reflect on their media empire, and we all suffer the consequences.” Forced to drink the cup to the dregs. “We are faced with questions from these families and their patriarchs: to correctly transmit the work of a lifetime, its offspring must be balanced. His family, functional, analyzes Raphaëlle Bacqué. It is a colossal task, which concerns us all.” Reaching the universal through the particular.