My mother had a friend who was such a kleptomaniac that, when she came home, she would take things that she herself had given us before. I couldn't help it. It was in his nature. “Children, Nuri is coming to eat today, be careful,” he warned us. And, no matter how careful we were, something was always missing. Nuri arrived at the Corte Inglés and put the shop assistants in his pockets in such a way that not only did he leave with a bag full of things without them knowing, but they asked him to come back soon and continue making them laugh.
She was the first cousin of a Nova Cançó singer who, she was surprised, never wanted to meet with her. He once robbed his own daughter-in-law to go to bingo. When she died, I still owed my mother 15,000 pesetas, which today would be great for me to go to dinner tonight, little more than a tortilla at Flash Flash.
I remembered Nuri when watching the first season of the series Hidden Vices (Apple TV), whose original title is Your Friends & Neighbors, starring Jon Hamm. Yes, the unforgettable and irresistible Don Draper, today a mature alpha male, who continues to create a stir on social networks with the photographs in which he marks a package until reaching the following headline: “Jon Hamm's penis takes its owner for a walk.” Following the series, I read a stinging article in The New York Times titled “Are You a Jerk or a Sucker?” Jerk means asshole, idiot or bastard and sucker, fool, deluded or gullible), signed by Robin Givhan.
The series tells the story of Andrew Cooper—Coop to his friends—a guy who worked in high-risk investment funds. His clients trusted him to increase their capital, until one night he gives in to temptation with an employee and loses his job, marriage and status and, instead of accepting that he can no longer maintain the rich life, he begins to steal from his own neighbors: he steals Patek Philippe watches, a Birkin bag, a priceless bottle of wine, jewelry and works of art that he then resells at prices that allow him to maintain his socioeconomic status.
According to Robin Givhan, contemporary life is divided between two types of people: the idiots and the idiots. We could include the defeated, those who had a perfect plan like Johnny Clay in that brilliant Kubrick film, Perfect Heist, who discovers too late that between a masterstroke and a ridiculous failure there can be just a suitcase and a bad gust of wind.
Givhan suggests how we can avoid becoming cretins or naive. Detecting the assholes is not difficult: they abuse, humiliate, need to constantly prove their position and strictly follow Gore Vidal's teaching: “Succeeding is not enough, others must fail!” And the losers are those who want to be liked, those who swallow, those who don't know how to say no, those who wait for a call, those who do favors that no one returns, those who lack excessive ambitions... Which of the two do we prefer to be?
You're either a bastard or you're a loser. The article raises the moral dilemma: is it better to be the asshole who takes advantage of others or the loser who everyone takes advantage of? Robin Givhan, who won a Pulitzer Prize as a fashion critic, says that Coop's wealth "lacks the aura of the Gilded Age, the sweat stains of the Industrial Revolution, or the futuristic, carefree optimism of technology moguls. Coop didn't invent or improve anything; he's simply very well paid and lives surrounded by other high-income people who spend their money competing to accumulate assets. Being rich is expensive: you have to keep up." Seneca had seen it coming: “No one can have enough of what he considers insufficient.”
For a time, Coop seems delighted with his new job: the relative ease with which he strikes, the financial benefit, the pleasure of taking revenge against that conceited community that, on the one hand, he detests and, on the other, he admires. According to Givhan, Coop is like many of us, regardless of our income, because the financial success of others generates emotional dissonance.
The idiot's difficulty in rejoicing at a friend's success is extraordinary because that success will always point to his failure. We often think that if we were rich, we wouldn't have any of those problems, we would be super generous, we would dress better and behave with more class than those who really are. For the author, Coop rises to the surface thanks to his audacity, but also thanks to the insecurities of his neighbors to manage his own version of a “toxic monster,” and that “monster” lives in each of us because, even if we don't steal, we are constantly looking for something that enhances the character we feel obliged to play in our lives. “We all aspire to an image that recedes out of reach as we approach it.”
Whether for one thing or another, the goal is never reached. The creator of the series, yet another series about rich people fighting to complicate their lives, Jonathan Tropper, told The New York Times: “We are criticizing a system of values, but, at the same time, we are making the show aspirational.” How to avoid becoming a cretin or naive? That's the question. The most decisive thing is, without a doubt, to surround ourselves with people who see us as we are, “not because of our successes, but in spite of them.”
Not everyone is fascinated. In The New Yorker, Inkoo Kang draws parallels between this series and the series Succession and says that Hamm and the rest of the cast “serve up luxury porn disguised as social criticism.” Lucy Mangan pointed out in The Guardian that she seems to be halfway between criticizing the rich and being in love with their trappings. So much so that, at one point, Coop's financial advisor, Barney Choi, says their marriage consists of this: "We eat and drink and buy all this crap. Then we talk about the crap we've bought and the crap we're going to buy, and then we're going to buy it."
Givhan also poses this question: "Does anyone really achieve enormous financial success on their own merit? Are the only people who believe in the American capitalist dream some sinister, gullible types? It's not exactly an uplifting plot, but it's a very timely one." After all, we live in the era of unbridled self-profit in which, as the author of the article recalls, “the president of the United States earned $2.2 billion last year, mainly thanks to cryptocurrency-related businesses.”
We could add that the idiot has understood that the world is not fair and has decided to take advantage of it, while the idiot, who has also understood it, continues to behave as if the rules were different. You think: if I don't do it, they will do it to me. The other: I don't want to become someone like that. But when does being a good person stop being a virtue and start being stupid?
In another article about the series, journalist Ross Douthat states that the characters in Hidden Vices have money, houses, cars, careers, families, relationships... and yet they continue to behave as if they were competing for something that is always a little further away. And it's true: its atmosphere is completely lacking in style. They live in a world of bland decor, bland fashion, and pretentious mansions empty of emotional or intellectual content. You're glad you're not as rich as them because the rich in Hidden Vices have much more to lose than the poor. Wealth as a permanent state of insecurity. Then he gives an example that we all know: “Imagining that you enjoy the hotels in The White Lotus is part of the series' appeal, even when you are sincerely glad that you are not one of its characters.”
The loser still believes in concepts that others have abandoned: loyalty, friendship, reciprocity, word, generosity. That's why he loses. The asshole has a competitive advantage: he never feels like he is breaking the rules because he considers that rules are precisely for losers. The asshole knows the rules and knows when to break them. We deal with them every day: there are people whose heritage, origin and salary legitimizes them to despise you as much as they want without being aware that time passes for them too. The loser follows the rules even when no one else does and he loses because he thought it was a good idea to play fair.
Maybe that's why the defeated are so interesting. Because there is something moving about someone who has lost and no longer has anything to prove. Johnny Clay loses the loot from the robbery. Coop loses his job, his marriage and his status. And Nuri dedicated herself to stealing small things that she herself had given us, as if she had discovered a way of living outside of any logic of accumulation, prestige or competition. Maybe that's the real luxury: not having to compete. Or, at least, compete only with yourself. Nuri had understood it in his own way. I didn't want to be richer than anyone else, or more important, or even better. He just wanted to get his way. Something that, depending on how you look at it, can be accepted as a victory.
