After completing a new degree this past
spring, I’ve ended up taking a bit of a break before beginning a new job.
While my husband keeps telling me that MoviePass
isn’t sustainable (and he’s probably correct), it has been a great boon to me
with this extra free time, seeing movies I might not have seen otherwise. One
such film I saw this week was Crazy Rich
Asians, a romantic comedy that I thought I might have become too old to
fully enjoy, but enjoy it I did.
I’m not Asian, nor did I feel I had anything
in common with the characters, but the film (and the previous bestselling book)
showed that a good story, with interesting and entertaining characters, could
cross the cultural divide. If I’d seen this film as a teenager, I would have
fallen for the handsome wealthy main character and his family’s lifestyle (and
that incredible emerald engagement ring). His willingness to walk away from his
family for the woman he loves adds to that fairy tale element that Hollywood films
love to employ. What’s not to like about that scenario, especially with the
less-than-noble wealthy elite we see in the White House and surrounding them?
I don’t want to denigrate the film, as it
was an enjoyable rom-com on the surface, with interesting class and nationality
divisions. However, for me, the films brought up issues that I still have
problems with, and that have nothing to do with its story.
I was born not crazy rich in Singapore, but
moderately poor in Tampa, Florida. I say moderate, as all things are relative. I
know there are and were people worse off than us – we always had food to eat,
running water, and I don’t remember our power going out from lack of payment,
but do remember the TV disappearing at one time when I was young and, as I got
older, the constant reverberation that we didn’t have much money. College was
never talked about, with only an older sister going to a community college
after a failed marriage. My mother had been adopted into a very dysfunction
affluent family when she was young, which colored her views on money, causing
her to cling to our poverty as if it was something to strive for rather than
fear.
So much of my childhood memories are either
fuzzy or nonexistent, but I do clearly remember not realizing we were poor for
quite a while. With kids you take for granted your situation. It wasn’t until I
started school that I began to slowly understand we were “different.” Not
surprisingly, my anxiety issues started appearing around that same time.
As a teenager I discovered a TV show,
probably not meant for me – Lifestyles of
the Rich and Famous. It opened up a whole other world that I didn’t know
existed. After all, this was pre-internet. I’d already grown to envy and covet
the cars, clothes, and travels of some of the wealthier kids in my high school
that I knew from afar. They were poor compared to what Robin Leach showed week
after week. I’m almost too embarrassed to say it, but I actually took notes
watching the show, as if it were some sort of tutorial. Of course so much of it
was dealing with was the nouveau riche, royalty, or the .01%, so it didn’t
always provide a full and encompassing knowledge of schools and brands. Those
nuances and niches I would have to learn much later, and the hard way. I still
remember the look a trustee gave me early on in my career as a non-profit
fundraiser when I showed myself ignorant about Williams College.
I don’t want to indulge in a daytime talk show
moment, but if things had been different in my family, I might not have lost
myself so much in my worship of the rich at a young age. I didn’t see anything
honorable about my family’s poverty, nor did I feel it gave me any kind of
moral compass. That also took a while to develop.
Being shy and dreamy, without the grades to
get into an Ivy League or close-to-it school, I ended up in a private liberal
arts school a thousand miles away. I also didn’t have the discipline at that time to make it in
business or law, nor the looks and tolerance to gain that wealthy prince, so I
ended up for a longtime in a profession that was coupled with the wealthy –
non-profit fundraising. This gave me a front row seat to a social class that
I’d put on a pedestal for so long, and, as is often the case in this situation,
I ended up being deeply disappointed by them and my profession. A recent New Yorker article focuses on the less
than noble ways some donations end up being used.
It took me awhile to register my
disenchantment, and like other borderline hangers-on, I ended up accruing a
fair bit of debt trying to emulate them (thankfully much less than Paul
Manafort). Many more years and other crises, both personally and in the
broader world, were needed for me to finally comprehend that there are some
awful rich people and some awful poor people, but that neither class as a whole
deserves to be held up as a model. That may seem like a cop out, but it’s true.
I won’t say that money doesn’t matter, because it does. I’ve experienced not
being able to afford to go to a doctor when ill and the stress that dilemmas
like that cause for an individual. But I also see, even in my daily life, the
complete lack of awareness many wealthy (and some not wealthy) have of people
around them. It’s not just Trump and the oligarchs who lack this consciousness
of the struggles of so many people these days and how it may not be their fault
they’re in the situation they’re in.
We all get stuck in our own bubble of
existence and start to forget that $6.00 gluten free bread is beyond a luxury
to a great deal of people in this country. I don’t know what the answer is,
although staying out of malls and turning off “reality” TV shows is a start.
It’s hard to know whom to blame – TV, Facebook, etc. In the end we each need to
find a way to understand each other, without either glorification or
demonization, as painful as that may be.