Quote: (09-28-2014 09:21 AM)Basil Ransom Wrote:
I've known rich kids and disliked many, but Stillman's characters lack the qualities that make people hate rich kids in the first place. His characters are open to strangers; they are very much aware of their own foibles, displaying a self awareness that endears them to us. That vulnerability and modesty is what real life "snotty rich kids" lack, which is what makes us hate them so.
Those haven't been my experiences of wealthy people. I lived at Trinity College for three years. During the time I was there, there were six kids from the top one hundred richest families in Australia also there. There was one girl whose family was supposedly the single largest shareholder in the National Australia Bank. There was some serious money there, some new, some old. Some of the kids were utter cockheads and lived up to the stereotype. Some of them were the nicest, most down to earth people you'll ever meet, and extremely approachable. Most people who dislike rich kids haven't met enough of them, or didn't know they had. That girl whose family were the largest shareholders in the NAB was refined and so on, so people might have guessed that she had come from a somewhat wealthy background, but she was an extremely chilled out person. I would never have guessed that her family was that loaded. She didn't go around rubbing it in everyone's faces. Someone else mentioned it to me one day. Also, some of those people were unbelievably smart, as in topping their entire faculty smart. There were some very interesting people amongst them. A lot of people discount the rich as being basically annoying dicks who are useless to society.