[Blackhawk]

Whit Stillman, mostly known for his very preppy Metropolitan, is now doing a 6 episode series as a sequel of sorts, The Cosmopolitans, which is about American ex-pats in Paris.

I won't include spoilers, but game (and self-defeating anti-game) is part of the plot. Plus it's free. Go watch it.

[Basil Ransom]

Thanks for the notice. Metropolitan is among my favorite films of all time. It is also pretty red pill. Unfortunately it seems like his later work, the little I've seen of it, lacked the beauty, goodness and warmth of Metropolitan.

Sample line: "Rick Von Slonecker is tall, rich, good-looking, stupid, dishonest, conceited, a bully, liar, drunk and thief, an egomaniac, and probably psychotic. In short, highly attractive to women."

"Our generation is probably the worst since the Protestant Reformation. It's barbaric."

[Sp5]

I liked Barcelona a lot.

[Basil Ransom]

I watched the pilot, and enjoyed it - my viewing was impaired by the fsct that I watched it on a phone with at times mediocre audio.

The show sports heavy similarities to Metropolitan. The main male character is very similar to the bespectacled Charlie of Metropolitan; in both shows, a social circle picks up a stranger and brings them to parties. Multiple playboys appear, both ones close and far from the main characters. Aubrey is a bit similar to Audrey.

Aubrey is cute but nowhere near as endearing and sweet as Audrey of Metropolitan. The show, perhaps due to its forced brevity, lacks the substance of Metropolitan. The serious thoughts and comments have disappeared and only the wry humor remains. He does get a few 'red pill' notions about romance in, via an Italian character, that illustrate modern romance without the feminine mental pretzels that we're used to getting in mainstream fare.

The funniest thing about Stillman's work is just how MAD it makes some people. Some people watch it and get outright angry, presumably because it depicts rich white kids without demonizing them. The haters assume these rich kids would never accept them as a friend in real life, and how dare they? So they despise the show. It must be taxing to carry around such a chip on your shoulder.

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.

[Feisbook Control]

(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.

[lskdfjldsf]

I had a football scholarship at a top-tier pre-law college in PA ($50k per year) combined with military service and an overseas deployment to pay. Grew up lower middle class and was immediately out of place; pretty much all students, especially in my fraternity, were loaded. Different world.

Some received a couple grand per week just as spending cash. One guy I knew was on his dad's company payroll for doing nothing at all. My god, the weekend coke binges

Anyway, never had a single bad experience with rich kids. They have a lot of things handed to them in life and it's easy to take it for granted, but so are we, considering 1/3 of the worlds population wakes up and eats dirt for breakfast. No difference to me between a middle class teenager taking the parents car to the mall or a rich kid taking a flight to Europe. Same principle.

[monster]

My favorite line in Cosmopolitans to paraphrase: "Women make bad decisions all the time - they date the wrong guys, the fall in love with who they shouldnt, etc etc - but their bad decisions are precisely the reason whey WE get laid."

haha

[RexImperator]

At the time I watched this I was rather annoyed by these rich hipsters. Now I want to watch some more.

For fun, I recently borrowed that Audrey Hepburn line to troll a girl I recently met named Aubrey.

"Ah, like Audrey Hepburn!"

"No, AUBREY."

"Like Audrey Hepburn!"

[Basil Ransom]

(09-28-2014 10:44 AM)Feisbook Control Wrote:  

(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.

Yes, I've spent considerable time in similar environments, and largely agree with you. I didn't say rich kids are snotty, just that snotty rich kids as imagined by popular tropes do in fact exist, and are not merely the stuff of film and books.

My point was that the rich kids depicted in Stillman's works are for the most part, not even snotty, but some people are so resentful of rich white kids that they see them all as assholes, when plenty are fine people, just as among any other strata of society.

And Hemingway is gorgeous.