How To Make a Deal With The Devil

good morning I don't know what terrible things you've done in your life up to this point but clearly your Karma's out of balance to get assigned to my class I am your professor the living embodiment of that feeling you get when you realize you left the oven on this is succession video essays 201 or as I prefer to call it how to make a deal unlike my colleagues I will not be teaching you how to enjoy the show or study it for its greater themes and influences but rather how to obsess over it how to draw out landish conclusions based on tangentially related media in order to prove a half-bake point about the moral compass of a white man today we are talking about the business of Cruelty Faustian Bargains ludicrously capacious bags and everything in between this is a 201 class we are not here to play at the Kitty table as far as I am concerned you have already consumed every other piece of succession related media on this god-forsaken website you know how good the show is you've already been told by all of the other creators who put together coherent easily consumable well-constructed video essays you have had your fill of reasonably length quality arguments and you are here to [ __ ] go nut nut and who am I to deny you that today we are going to take two shots down the devil's rabbit hole and we are going to find out what happens on the other side that said if you have managed to sneak into my class without being a registered student without having consumed the prior reading materials please stay while I may not be able to go over every single thing that is fantastic about this show there is one thing that I know for certain Conor Roy was interested in politics from a very young age part zero we open on a fountain we open on a fountain a person sits by said fountain in the woods maybe a spooky graveyard or a backyard graveyard they are lamenting their desires and their predicaments how they have been smited and how they are misunderstood and undervalued in this world and then suddenly a figure appears out of nowhere a very spectacular performance I'm talking Sparkles glitter fire maybe the whole shebang it's mesmerizing and exciting and the figure is like I can give you everything I can fix all of this for you and the person says yes please thank you do that and they say great the only catch is that it all goes away at midnight wait what so we don't consider Cinderella to be a Faustian bargain is that correct she's not making a deal with the devil she's quite literally making a deal with the fairy god mother but that would be far too easy and the video would be over so there are obviously some kind of criteria for a devil's bargain Beyond magical gifts being bestowed upon someone with a serious catch usually that catches their Eternal Soul that's the traditional idea the Faustian bargain is called that because Dr Faustus sells his Eternal Soul to a devil named Mephistopheles in exchange for like hella magical knowledge or Dorian Gray right they say Dorian Gray sold his soul to the devil and that way this painting got really old and gross and he stayed young and hot see I learned what it was about people say that Jimi Hendrix made a deal with the devil a lot of Blues musicians actually are accused of having made these steals Paganini was a violinist that was so good people said he could have only made a deal with the devil Encyclopedia Britannica considers it a Palestinian bargain to be a pact whereby a person trade something of supreme moral or spiritual importance such as personal values or the soul for some other worldly material benefits such as knowledge power or riches the concept of a Faustian bargain shows up in its literal devil magic form at least once in pretty much every episodic sci-fi fantasy show Supernatural has one Futurama has one sometimes it's the backstory for other high concept fantasy villains or the offer of the deal is the climax to some Journey where the protagonist needs to then prove that they've grown as a person and not take the deal in life however and in more realistic and completely 100 historically accurate stories like 1989's newsies starring Christian Veil it's less give me your Eternal Soul and more do this thing and I will give you a bunch of money thus our colloquial understanding of a deal with the devil has basically come to mean any deal made where there is something gained in exchange for a sacrifice of your morality or principles Craig don't be an [ __ ] you don't have principles when we think of succession and we think of deals with the devil we probably think of this scene first will you marry me what the [ __ ] sorry hold on do you want a deal with the Devil there we go sorry but session there are deals everywhere the show is swimming in them big business deals small business deals unspoken deals backroom deals Shady under the table deals [ __ ] deals and then some it's a show about an extremely successful business there is a lot of bargaining happening up in that Ivory Tower I've I've Roy I've a Roy Tower what is it about this deal that makes it a deal with the devil what makes this deal stand out why did the writers highlight this as the deal with the devil why does Greg agree to this deal is it Greg's deal to agree to in the first place is he actually sacrificing anything would season one Greg have agreed to this deal what might the show be trying to tell us about Choice agency power and sacrifice how does the show draw from stories of the past to create something contemporary what kind of bagels did they feed that rabbit what is the Fatal flaw here and why is it money which of the Roy's would be most likely to die in a submarine and why is it Kendall all of these questions and more may or may not be answered over the course of this video but first if we want to understand how entering into such a dangerously compelling dramaturgical pact helps establish succession as a modern romantic tragedy we're first gonna have to understand who or rather what we are dealing with part one the devil and the doctor so Satan the man the myth the ruthless CEO of a media Empire according to religious studies scholar Jeffrey Burton Russell who once wrote like a five-volume history on the damn thing the best way to understand the concept of the devil is through history when we approached the devil historically we avoid the faith-based assumptions and influences that come with theologically approaching it the need for any kind of tangible repeatable evidence that comes with the scientific approach dissipates right if we look at the Devil historically we can address the phenomenon itself with the assistance of everything from mythology to literature to Theology and Beyond the devil as we'll come to understand them comes in many forms the devil exists historically as a long-lived and immensely influential concept aimed at the truth about evil evil that's a big word sure hope we don't completely sidestep that foundationally important definition when we talk about deals with the devil and Faustian Bargains we are more often than not talking about the explicitly Christian idea of Satan or the Devil with a capital D this is really important to know because even though these stories and references to the devil might not be in themselves explicitly Christian or even intentionally religious 99.9 of the time the devil that is being referenced is some form of the Christian one because the Christians did that thing where they took over various countries and all the wiped out their native religions and forced citizens to practice Christianity which we don't approve of just for the record I am not a practicing Christian of any kind and we aren't going to be diving into the devil as much more than like a narrative symbol today because it is so explicitly tied to Christianity and because we talk about Christianity a lot on this channel I like to be kind of open and clear about my biases so for context I was raised Catholic in the United States I I'm not practicing any religion of any kind at the moment but most of my religious and Theological study has been in Christianity specifically Catholicism using the Christian Bible usually the Saint James if you're curious but I also have the internet so on that node I am about to mention the word Hebrew that is strictly because that is the language that the Christian Old Testament was originally written in by Christians as they reinterpreted parts of the Hebrew Bible which is a different thing we're only going to talk about it for like two seconds but I was both unclear and misinformed in my last video to terrible things to be and that hurt people when I was kind of discussing religion and the Christian perspective on those early texts and I am very sorry about that I didn't get to say it in video form yet I I make no claims about Judaism or the Jewish faith or any other Faith really Beyond Christianity and Catholicism and even that I'm not practicing so take everything that I have to say with a grain of salt of the earth and as usual feel free to put your perspectives and enlighten me in the comments because the people who did correct me and bring their experiences forward on the last video were very very kind and respectful and very informative you guys are so smart so that said back to Satan the Christian figure the Fallen Angel whatever you would like to call him back in the Old Testament which is not the Hebrew Bible at all first things first is that he is not intrinsically evil he does not even start out that way he starts out kind of like any other Angel up there in God's you know Heavenly Court just like living his life with you know Michael and Gabriel and azira fail and all that stuff the word Satan is actually the English transliteration of the Hebrew word for adversary transliteration not translation it is the process of transferring a word from the alphabet of one language to the alphabet of another so the sound is relatively similar it is the same word but it's like if you have one black and white picture and one colored picture and you take an element from the colored picture and you move it into the black and white picture desaturated so it Blends in that is translation you have taken something from the colored picture and made it fit in with the form of the black and white picture if you take something from the colored picture and you plop it right on top of the black and white picture and it makes sense in the image but it's the only thing in color that's a transliteration it happens a lot with religious stuff because so many of the religious texts are so old so the transliteration of Satan as we see it in the Bible as far as I could tell for my research includes the definite article making it the adversary or the accuser and it's like the job some of the sources I found use the word accuser some of them use adversary but translation is a very messy thing anything you're reading in Translation you have to take with like 100 pounds of salt either way this Satan is like top prosecuting attorney right the Satan the adversary the accuser shows up in the Book of Job gathers the like sons of God also known as angels to basically accuse job of being Meister cooking up sweaty spaghetti you know and then he just basically roams the Earth right looking for you know bad apples so we're not in like Prince of Darkness territory just yet and it kind of stays that way for a long time storytelling wise right he's not really the main character the drawings vary in degrees of scariness particularly after Dante's Inferno comes out they do get a bit scarier because Dante's Inferno has the devil at the gates of hell eating people that's that's a whole other thing that's the right generally not a great dude but also not particularly interesting yes he's a bit of a bummer but he's still kind of just doing his job burning sinner is alive and like being the antithesis to Christ you know and once we get into to the Renaissance and like the 16th century England specifically Reformation after restoration after reforestation schism's Galore it's basically war between the Catholics and the Protestants combined with all of that Christian mysticism that we talked about last time there was like a lot of debate over basically whether magic was real they will tell you that it was about transmutation and the spiritual ability of man but it's magic they're talking about magic we're burning witches at the stake witches who were admittedly mostly just normal people who were vibing but to each their own all of this is happening though and suddenly the devil becomes very useful the devil now becomes a very powerful tool in this war between like the Catholics and the Protestants the Catholics are doing exorcisms where the demons just so happen to be spouting off specifically Protestant ideas lutherans are disseminating devil books about the devil and all of his various vices like sex and fun and Catholicism anyway amongst all of this madness in about like 1587 Johann spice this guy he publishes so the original German Chapel was actually written anonymously and published by Johannes it's called history of Von D Faustus and Johann species just sort of published it and thus forth aka the history of the damnable life and deserved death of Dr Faustus AKA AKA Faust book here's how it goes down Dr Faustus wants to be smarter than everybody else and so he goes to a Crossroads keep that in your little brain in like the middle of the night and starts like drawing runes magical magical circles and symbols and he's trying to invoke one of these evil spirits in the Bible Beelzebub specifically instead he gets Mephistopheles who has to go and get permission from his boss Lucifer in order to help Faust which he does Faust signs his name in Blood and voila it's done that's how you do it end of video only no no because this story catches like a wildfire becomes like the idea that can't be killed right it is wild how fast this thing spreads it becomes a central cautionary tale and the nature of making Faust like an intellectual Seeker which there are arguments is a bit of a translation thing Vibes really really well with Protestant England punishing someone for their pursuit of knowledge vary in line with the anti-scholastic mission of the Protestants because despite constantly disseminating pamphlets for people to read they were not super big on knowledge God I wish I knew why anyway the damnable history and deserved death of Dr Faustus is a smashing hint everybody loves this book it vilifies knowledge dark magic sex Helen of Troy so it's translated into English very quickly at which point it ends up in the hands of one Christopher Marlowe Christopher Marlowe is Diet Shakespeare he is the almond milk to Shakespeare's oat milk he is the biz Barkley to your CJ the X he is just a room to Shakespeare's Panic Room I don't make the rules a person can fit through there a person can definitely fit through that window a small person an attack child he basically writes his own version of the Faust Tale in the form of a play only he calls it the tragical history of Dr Faustus why is this important what in God's name does this have to do with succession it's important because nobody said that Dr faustus's story was tragic damnable yes deserve it sure but tragic since when is selling your soul for some [ __ ] that you knew you weren't supposed to want in the first place a tragedy part four shibby's choice we can't do the shoes anymore I'm in my own home if we want to know why Marlo may have called Faust a tragedy and we are not satisfied with he wanted to then we are going to need to take a little detour away from the devil and write down tragedy Lane we can Circle back to Faust later maybe I don't know who cares we're all gonna die anyway right because that's how tragedies work they don't end well ever and they're tragic because we know that they're not going to end well ever everyone in Hamlet ends up dead R J dead Antigone dead Agamemnon dead Electro dead dead or at the very least is sad Oedipus you know dead for all intents and purpose and so on and so on and so on there are not many of these plays that get titled tragedy that don't end with a pile of bodies on the stage trust me I paid more money than I would like to admit learning how to how to do tragedies on stage I played Juliet you want to see 17 year old me playing Juliet [Music] back to the point these tragedies right these plays that get labeled tragedy they also share a lot of similar themes right Justice familial ties feudal relations succession see it only took us 25 minutes that's not bad if you were on Tick Tock or Twitter within like 24 hours of the succession finale airing you probably saw or had some kind of interaction with a video like this for a show that is so heavily compared to Shakespeare I was actually kind of surprised to see so many of these Greek tragedies being brought up and a lot of them have these quotes with varying levels of accuracy from a handful of plays a couple from Antigone some Oedipus mostly you'll see though a lot of quotes referencing the orestaya which is a series of three plays by askilus who this time I'm certain wrote plays and they Chronicle like the house of atreus which is like a whole Greek mythology thing but basically basically it's it's it has Elektra in it it's not called Electra Sophocles wrote Electra it's confusing we'll get to it I actually won a bunch of Awards as a teen for doing monologues from the murder at Argos which was a modernized version of the orastaya and morning comes Electro I did a scene with my lovely friend Danae I don't think Danae is watching this but if she is we were fabulous and it was my pride and joy and I peaked I peaked in high school is what I'm telling you peaking in high school is bad but peaking in high school as a theater kid why did Marlo decide that Faust's story was a Greek tragedy he didn't he just decided it was a tragedy I'm putting words in his mouth why did he decide that Faust's story was tragical at the very least what are the elements of tragedy that we see in traditional Greek tragedies and the story of Dr Faustus and his Encounter With the Devil Mephistopheles specifically the encounter as it is told by Christopher Marlowe because I don't want to confuse you too much and also mentioning Garrett's Faust at this moment is antithetical to my point we're cherry-picking data we're gonna get to Gerta I got the whole book I got the physical book we'll get to him but not yet we're dressing up the numbers you talk about the numbers we'll iron that out when we get to it we can fight it out it'll be fun so tragedy etymology etymology is foreign no one super knows I mean I'm sure somebody knows or thinks they know at the very least and they'll definitely comment about it so you can go down to find out but from what I can find it might mean something like song of the goats or seders which would be super fun and convenient for us because seders are the goat human creatures with the boners that Christians will eventually turn into images of the devil but also it might just mean we love beer for a historical context basically Greek plays were kind of done at like a three-day Festival they did a bunch of sad ones and then they did a fun one that they called the Seder play and it was like the comedy and it was a whole thing regardless we just don't really know the origins of Greek tragedy in general because there aren't that many records of it we don't know a lot but we do know that there is stuff that we don't know which is some [ __ ] that sophocally said one time put a pin in that no we know how tragedies are going to end right they are going to end poorly they may have not been titled the tragedy of clitomnastra but it was pretty clear what was going to go down right for a number of reasons many of them being that these were retellings of Mythology and religious stories of the time and things that everybody knew the gist of and we still know the gist right Medea is gonna kill those kids every time every time every time and if she doesn't then some [ __ ] is going down and this is a rewrite and then it's not really in the day is it it's just a woman who got cheated on and is mad about it which is fair but it's not the Daya if you're seeing a retelling of a tragedy and they do change the ending that change still plays explicitly on the shock value of you being surprised that the ending is different which makes the expected intended outcome vital and just as important as the new altered outcome if Juliet wakes up five minutes earlier then it's not a tragedy it's a Triumph it's a successful story they did they did the thing it's it's a Hercules right it's a it's a hero's journey it's suspenseful but it is ultimately 10 out of 10 they can run away it's gonna be great they'll be sick that would be amazing but it wouldn't be Romeo and Juliet and it wouldn't be a tragedy but Christopher Marlow's Faust is a tragedy and succession is a tragedy Kendall Roy plots to take over as CEO of waystar royco four times over the course of four seasons of succession and he fails every single time the first thing that we ever see Kendall do is fail to acquire a business and then it it just keeps happening Chevrolet starts out barely tolerating her wet noodle husband and then ends the show barely tolerating her wet noodle husband Roman Roy starts out as a little weirdo and ends as a little weirdo very little actually changes for any of these characters throughout the show except for the fact that their dad dies and Conor gets married those happen in the same game episode by the way a watching experience that I can only compare to having witnessed the fight scene at the end of Breaking Dawn part two at the midnight premiere of Breaking Dawn part 2 on November 12th in 2012. it was that for an hour I got more wine they filmed this episode or at least like this sequence by the way of all the kids finding out that their dad was dying on an airplane during Conor's wedding like a play right they filmed it consistently they had a bunch of different cameras rolling with different rolls of films it was very complicated you can watch the behind the scenes and they'll tell you how they did it but a lot of really long full takes of that whole thing they did that for like multiple scenes and episodes because even writing the most 2023 show you could possibly write about billionaires running the world a show allegedly based on the LA lives of people who were still alive even then it seems like there's this instinctive understanding that the story leans into the dramatic the classical the performance and structure it was it was necessary to embrace that to tell this story even though it was very much a modern story just like in Hamlet if that happens in Hamilton so Aristotle had some opinions on theater and tragedy and one of those opinions was that the hero of the tragedy would always start in a place of nobility and prosperity and high rank and then he would fall due to a fatal flaw and he would fall into ruin and you know the dumps he worded it better than I did but also he wasn't actually fully right not even in his day were all of the heroes technically fitting that pattern but turns out the man never wrote and he plays himself anyway so [ __ ] him I mean I [ __ ] love it but that's my honest opinion anyway start out in a place of nobility [ __ ] happens there's day new moms and all that other stuff blah blah blah you can Google it we are more than off the tracks enough we're not getting into it we are however gonna get into the most famous watching a train wreck tragedy that there is you and Kendall are thinking of killing your dad yeah that's a little greek tragedy yeah Oedipus Oedipus also known as Oedipus the King or Oedipus Rex whichever the one where he's not at colonis okay that one the only one that anybody cares about so Oedipus is King at the start of the play not many people realize myself included that he is already King when the place starts he's already King because the Old King got murdered somewhere we don't know yeah and now Oedipus came and there is like a plague of both your cities I mean it's just the one but you know there's a plague okay there's a plague and he's trying to figure out how to solve the plague so he's like I'm gonna do the reasonable thing which is go to a prophet and the profit is like if you want to solve your plague you're gonna have to solve the murder of the previous King this seems easy enough so Oedipus goes to like another Prophet I think and he's like who killed the king and the prophets like didn't you do it which is like a super offensive thing to hear if you're Oedipus right because you definitely didn't kill this King but it's not a big deal if you're you know his wife Queen Chasta because she's like babes bad babes don't don't worry about it profits are [ __ ] crypto is a scam they once told us that our baby was going to grow up and kill his father and marry his mother and that definitely didn't happen because we definitely killed that baby and then Leos died like way after like a crossroad somewhere don't worry about it this does not put Oedipus at ease right because before he inch Costa got married and had two children four children a lot of children they have lots of children he like totally killed a guy on a Crossroads one time which on its own is not a big deal except for the fact that he was only on those Crossroads because he was running away from home because he found out that he was prophesized to kill kill his father and marry his mother and this is it's it's not looking good spoiler alert if you don't know it was totally Oedipus who killed the previous King who happened to be his father and married his mother and then had two incest babies who are then gonna go on to have equally terrible lives and Oedipus himself will be so mortified by the whole thing that he will blind himself which definitely gets a pin and we all learn a valuable lesson that day which is that if you want a job done right you better do it yourself and make sure the babies I should have had dogs no the lesson that we learn is about fate and where there is discussion of Fate there is discussion of agency trust me I am on many of their watch lists agency according to the Stanford encyclopedia philosophy is in very general terms that an agent is a being with the capacity to act and agency denotes the exercise or manifestation of this capacity basically an agent is one that can agency is the canning doing kenning when you're telling us stories about fate with your prophecies and your gods and goddesses the question of course comes up is their agency he wouldn't have been on those Crossroads if he wasn't trying to actively avoid ending up on those Crossroads but how is he to know seriously did I say that I was going to [ __ ] Marsha no although I definitely would she's hot but that's you know it's like phase two we put a pin in Crossroads earlier because Crossroads are a very big thing symbolically two roads diver and just in a yellow wood and all of that but they don't just call them Crossroads Sophocles makes it a point to describe this Crossroads as a place where three roads meet and this is important because you can't actually come to a Crossroads to a fork in the road where you have two choices without coming from somewhere else there is in every choice that you think you're making between two options a third option that you can't see because it's behind you because you're not a bird a bird bird's eye view or I guess me right I could I can see all three because I'm not in it the mistake that Oedipus is making when he leaves home to avoid killing his father is thinking that he sees the whole picture believing himself to be fully autonomous to have full agency believing that he has control over his fate he sees himself as being detached from the story that he's told either he only sees two possible options or he thinks that he knows what the third one was he doesn't see himself as ingratiated into and part of a story that is already being told let me get the pointer because the decision that Oedipus was making at the crossroads is the decision that he did not know he was naked this is an important concept because characters in succession do this all the time all the time they assume that they have all of the information that they need they assume that they have full agency they think that they have full control over their lives when they simply do not at the end of season three of succession Siobhan Roy our resident self-destructive Baddie finds herself at her own edible Crossroads because for businessy reasons that don't matter one thing led to another and Kendall Kendall Roy is yet again trying to weasel his way into the head of way star royco waste or royco is their business by the way I don't know if I told you that but you should know it was on the required reading anyway Kendall is trying to take down their father yet again and so Siobhan finds herself how having to decide between supporting her brothers and standing by her father while she is at this Crossroads Crossroads she makes a phone call she makes a phone call to her husband Tom wamp scans there's going to be a lot of what appears to be Tom hate in this video I don't hate Tom We're Playing devil's advocate and she calls Tom and she tells him what is going on that her and the boys are planning to do some business seat things and like overthrow their father she sees herself as making one choice one choice between her brothers and her father what she does not see is where Tom has come from in order to get to those Crossroads she doesn't see that Tom has spent three seasons having his wife who he loves just belittle him turn their marriage into a joke nearly let him go to prison nearly let him drink toilet wine got a dog that she doesn't take care of I don't think she takes care of that [ __ ] dog refuse his shoulder massages and not be mad that he swallowed his own load that's where Tom is coming from not to mention trying to claim the jaw that he has been after that they basically agreed they were both gonna try and get for him because I thought that it was something that we wanted for me we do to have it we did that was I mean that was just the plan but she's Siobhan Roy and she doesn't see [ __ ] any of that because anybody who saw any of that would not have done any of that okay all that she thinks is going on is she's choosing between her brothers and her father because the world revolves around Siobhan Roy only we the audience are aware of what Tom has been up to and we know what Tom chooses at the crossroads we know what Tom decides do you want to come with me explorers can I ask for a little more information no don't think so but shiv doesn't find out until it's too late now why in God's name Tom would choose to show his face at this moment is beyond me but dramaturgically it totally makes sense because like Oedipus is already King when the play starts the whole thing is just us watching him figure out what the hell is going on we don't need to see the murder of the previous king or the marriage to jacosta or the birth of their incest babies we just need to see him figuring it out so Tom needs to come back so that we can see the moment that shiv puts together all of the things that have happened the moment that shiv realizes she made a choice that she didn't know she was making we need to see that moment so that we can pity her and fear that we could become her and have a tharsis because that's what Aristotle said we should do but not every single choice in a tragedy is a sort of back door decision that leads to your inevitable Doom sometimes it's the front door part three what do I know so like shiv might not know all of the details of everything going on at that crossroads but like Tom definitely does he calls this the deal with the devil so evidently he has some understanding of the fact that the choice that he is making is going to greatly impact the rest of his life he knows that he is making a big D decision there's no way that he's stupid enough to think that shiv is never gonna find out right she's Siobhan Roy and he's making a deal with her father who is about to totally [ __ ] her life up there's absolutely no way that he thought he would just get away with this forever so he knows that he's pretty much sacrificing his marriage right her trust at the very least if he ever had it to begin with and he's doing all of this in exchange for Logan's gratitude basically for the chance to kind of be in his good graces and the presumed protection that doing Logan a big ass solid like this will grant him and you know I get it I get where he's coming from because if the kids had succeeded in their big we're gonna business business the [ __ ] out of this business and and win or whatever was going on at the end of season three there's no way that Tom would have been CEO right like there's no way he would have been anything other than shiv's like boot licker she could eat him alive in her sleep if she wanted Poor Tom and we know that he wants to be CEO we know that he's always wanted that and we know that him and shiv talked about it beforehand and that was like a plan of theirs right he says I thought we wanted this for me and she's like well we did until it got offered to me me it's just a modification of the plan no sure that's quite a big modification but so it did which was not something that was ever going to be in the cards and shouldn't have been in the cards but we will get that later point is this is Tom's deal with the devil and he asks Greg to be his sporis right I asked at the beginning if this was even Greg's deal it's not spoiler alert it's not it's Tom's deal he just asks Greg to help him he asks Greg to be his sporis and to kind of come down this this dark path and and go down this road and and be my pal I might need you as my attack dog right like um Greg Weiler he is the one that knows the secret he's the only one with any power in this situation he's the only one who can actually make the deal and unfortunately we don't get to see this we don't get to see Tom like standing at a Crossroads drawing runes in the sand and trying to summon Logan Roy with like used women's underwear we do get to see Faust do it though per the 1590 we get to see Faust be like hey audience I I'm just too smart I've learned all the [ __ ] I know all the things should I magic and all of his scholarly friends are like no and all of his magician friends are like yeah and in case that wasn't clear enough he then gets like a good Angel who comes to visit him and is like don't do this I don't I don't think you should do this the Good Angel is evidently very bad at his job because like two minutes later the bad Angel comes and is like I think you should do it and Faust is like you make a great point and goes off to like learn devil magic he learns how to conjure himself a devil or rather he thinks he does Faust is pretty certain that he used his like super magic ability to call Mephistopheles to him and he's also pretty certain that when Mephistopheles is like I am your slave that he's like telling the truth um no Mephistopheles has just been hanging around like waiting for someone who's dumb enough to do this that said however we're like reasonably sure that Faust was a real person to some extent right there's like reasonable ish evidence to support the idea that he like was a person there like was a dude named Faust running around with like a creepy little friend performing magical Feats and like taking people's money there are some rumors that this person made some deals with the devil which is like a very real concern at the time we talk about musicians today who may or may not have made deals with the devil but it's not the same no one is trying to burn Bob Dylan at the stake at least not hard enough they weren't sending people to The Gallows because they were getting Hogwarts letters okay they did it because well full disclosure they did it because they didn't like you that's the real reason they they didn't like somebody because you were you know a woman or disabled or mentally ill or live in your life okay you would just be existing and then one day they would be like you renounced Jesus for the Antichrist and you'd be like I don't I didn't do that they'd be like that's exactly what you would say if you did do that bottom we're getting to the point where I'm a little too drunk to keep going but you'd probably get a trial first and after this trial they would tell you that you did all kinds of things like rendering people in potential killing cattle or inventing AI race relations kale and certainly God wouldn't give you the power to do those things because those things are evil things also this is not a transaction you you don't get a say when you're dealing with the Christian God this we're not trading candy on Halloween here the terms and conditions for a Christian Miracle are far more complicated than sacrifice your daughter and I'll get your ships to Troy Christian God would never trust me in my personal experience God tends to be a little bit less than supportive when it comes to cursing an ex's bloodline for the next thousand years so we need to think a little bit outside the garden Faustus who wants to understand the metaphysics of the universe so bad so he can figure out how to live forever in his physical body even if it is in hell he goes and he summons himself a devil he thinks he does Jeffrey Russell writes given the anti-scholastic bias of the Protestant Reformation it was natural that the Faust book should make the figure of the man who sells his soul to Satan as a scholar Faust desires to obtain knowledge by his own efforts rather than to receive it by Grace so what are you going to do I don't know I don't know because anyone I asked for advice I make complicit if you know about this stuff you should tell but you can't because you're going to spread the virus so the characters in succession hoard knowledge they hoard knowledge like it is the last box of Twinkies of the Apocalypse they are obsessed with it they Gorge themselves on it they sit on it like it is a dragon's egg it's understood by everyone that that knowledge is a very very powerful tool and that it is also intrinsically dangerous it is a weapon and we're not talking about academic knowledge it's not books or equations it's not knowledge that you get from life experience even it is specifically the knowledge about the movements of other people it's omniscience that they're after that is what they value they want to be omniscient all knowing to know everything that is going on all the time guarantee correct results it's like a bottle of fine wire written on it posted you store it you hoard it while we are saved it for a special occasion you smashed so much [ __ ] face and unresponding so what we they're also particularly interested in knowing how and what someone is going to do how someone is going to vote who someone is going to side with who they are going to betray and who they have on their side at any given moment because if you know everything then you can control everything there are multiple arcs throughout the show where the characters are spending time calculating who is going to vote Which Way in various business votes there's the vote of no confidence in season one where everything hinges on whether or not Kendall and Friends feel they can guarantee certain individuals to vote a certain way they vote to go private in season two they're all running around trying to figure out who can vote for what and who they have on what side and how they can bargain with them obviously there's the big betrayal at the end of season three is only possible puzz Tom Hells Logan the kids plan and he is able to like finagle the votes around on his end and the final vote at the end of season four entirely hinges upon shiv voting the way that the boys want her to and if there is one thing that Siobhan Roy is not going to do it is whatever the men closest to her want her to do who are you I'm sure [ __ ] boy when Tom gets made ahead of cruises in the beginning of season one one of the first things that happened is the previous head of cruises is like hey do you do you want to know the bad stuff and I would say that he like red pill blue pilled him but we can't do that anymore because the manosphere [ __ ] ruined that reference Tom is very smart and so part of him is like I am going to be way better off if I don't know this because this puts me in a place where I am liable for whatever that bad stuff is because now I know about it and now it's my job but Tom also knows the value of knowledge in this world that he is living in and he is greedy and he is prideful and he is ambitious and he decides that he does want to know on the off chance that this will benefit him in the long run which you call Lester McClintock Moe why shiv also doesn't want to know the terrible thing not until she thinks it can benefit her right not until she needs ammunition she needs knowledge then all of the sudden she really does think that she should know what's going on here's the situation I know all about the cruise division horror show and the cover-up Thomas Gould writes in the innocence of Oedipus and the nature of tragedy sometimes it is suggested to not focus on the plot of Oedipus but the self-blinding proved that the tragedy is not about the crimes he committed but rather his achieving excellence and identity and self-realization by choosing to Blind himself as punishment call it the story of a man's Brave pursuit of knowledge or self-knowledge or identity whatever that is under the blows of Misfortune knowledge has always been dangerous and it has always been in the devil's wheelhouse it wasn't a bird and the tree of ignorance that got us into this mess in the first place was it look it is not a explicitly mentioned that the devil with a capital D is the snake in the Garden of Eden but he's the snake in the Garden of Eden at least as that story was interpreted by Christians and at least for our purposes of trying to understand the devil as a broad Concept in the collective consciousness of society in the year of Our Lord 2023. he's the snake but technically speaking Jesus never came out and was like Hey you know that bit with the snake uh yeah that's actually an old co-worker of mine super weird coincidence his name is Satan he was really sad but also kind of hot in like a like a Timothy chalamet meets the Ghost Whisperer kind of way you know who did though part four Dude Where's My Paradise in about 1667 English poet and world-class Christian John Milton publishes his magnum opus Paradise Lost it is a 10 sometimes 12 book epic poem with over 10 000 lines of verse depicting Satan's fall from Heaven and what is essentially an emotional Bender that he goes on spiraling off afterwards there are other bits in there stuff about Adam and Eve and God in heaven and blah blah blah but none of it matters because John Milton made the devil hot that's all that matters nobody cares about anything else I'm sorry anybody who tells you they care about the other parts of Paradise Lost is lying to you John Milton made the devil hot if nothing else in Vibe alone because we won't really really get like sexy sexy Satan until William Blake does the illustrations for Paradise Lost in 1808 and it is all downhill from there but the seeds for that the seeds for sexy Satan are planted here prior to Paradise Lost the devil was tempting sure enticing yeah intriguing maybe but in like a watching a train wreck kind of way you stared at the Devil the same way you stare at a deer that is off to the side of the road like it could kill you you could kill it but like hopefully you'll both just steer clear that was the General Vibe and then John Milton rocks up like this horror will grow mild this Darkness light besides what hope the never-ending Flight Of Future Days may bring what chance what change worth waiting I'm sorry I'm sorry excuse me for writing anything anyway Paradise Lost was very inspired by the Greek tragedies and other epic poems of like Virgil and Homer only John Milton was hella Christian so he kind of set out on like a little Mission and he ends up with what we would call a theodicy The Odyssey The Odyssey The Odyssey theater the Vindication of divine goodness and Providence and the view of the existence of evil evil remember is and this evil is kind of a problem right you might even call it a problem of evil and it's not just a thing that Christians deal with it's actually has its roots in ancient Greece any belief system that has a good and powerful deity is probably going to have this problem epicurus epicurus I don't know was a ancient Greek philosopher and he notices this problem right he notices this problem of evil and he lays it out in the sort of philosopher way which is a logical argument logical arguments are those things that we always talk about in the ethics section this is not the ethics section but we always talk about them in the ethics section they are like if x then NY therefore Z premises if this premise is true then this is the solution and usually there's a third one that's like therefore no contrary to all evidence ever collected in the history of philosophy philosophers do in fact want to make sure we are all on the same page and understanding what we're talking about they're just very bad at it so The Logical argument for the problem of evil that epicurus comes up with is this premise one if an omnipotent which means all-powerful omnibenevolent which just means all good and omniscient which means all-knowing God exists then evil does not because he could like poof it all away premise two there is in fact evil in the world I hate to break it to you the world sucks and it sucked back then too and the conclusion of these two premises is that therefore an omnipotent omnibenevolent and omniscient God does not exist how do you like them apples this problem drives people crazy for the rest of time now there's a couple of things you can do if you want to solve this problem of evil right you can Chuck out premise two if you want to open up that can of worms and let it Eat You Alive be my guest or or you can take the coward's way out and change the lyric to he was a moth to the flame and she's holding the matches sorry I mean you can try and change premise one to explain that a good God could actually allow evil and here is why at which point the devil becomes very handy Russell writes Milton's The Odyssey combines the Free Will argument with soul making God created the world good moral goodness is impossible without free will humans and angels are free to choose evil some do so God's Providence turning all to good makes our fall the occasion for teaching us wisdom through trials and suffering and it really does take ten thousand lines of first to do this in Milton's defense luckily for you that is not why we're here however we are here to talk about the legacy of Paradise Lost so that maybe we can start talking about succession again which means we can do the cliff notes we meet our main man Satan on media Reyes which means in the middle of [ __ ] right after he and his Pals have lost that war that they waged against heaven and now they are kind of banished to Hell together forever Satan is like hey it's fine we're gonna get really into DIY architecture we're gonna build cities we're gonna we're gonna change the World okay not to be deterred from his original Mission however Satan decides that he is going to [ __ ] with God's New Creation man he's going to do this by bribing a cherub which is like a baby angel to let him into the Garden of Eden so that he can convince Eve to eat the apple and give Humanity sin forever it's a tragedy about Satan we all know what's going down we're not going to get a new ending to the story what we are going to get is possibly an explanation which turns out is daddy issues I guess Kendall Roy yup we need Kendall Roy and media Reyes which means in the middle of [ __ ] that might be a bit of a stretch but we're going for it in the first episode he is on his way to this big business meeting that he is going to lose because he is fooling himself but we will get there as the pilot progresses we find out a bunch of things about Kendall Roy we find out about his family the central players of this story we learn who his father is we learn who his siblings are we find out he's divorced and we find out that he was supposed to be announced but then he wasn't I'm what you're you're not what which would have been a huge bummer luckily for him however his dad has like a brain hemorrhage or something so he gets to be in charge briefly just long enough to [ __ ] it all up be pushed immediately back out as soon as his father is back to operating capacity he spirals into drug abuse tries to push his father out of the company fails spirals into much sad or drug abuse tries to push his father out of the company fails continues with his drug abuse in a less obnoxious way tries to push his father out of the company briefly succeeds and then I'm the youngest boy oh Kendall Roy is not the eldest boy if you are one of the people who who did not watch the show he is he is literally not he's just not he's the second eldest boy also there's only one not boy and she's younger than him so it's very weird that he even specified but for some reason this idea of being the eldest boy is very very important to him so important to him that it doesn't matter if it's even true or relevant and it's important to him because of something called feudal rights waystar royco the Roy family they operate under a very feudal structure feudal just means like kings and queens and [ __ ] when we are talking about feudal rights we are talking about succession with a lowercase s who deserves what under that system who takes over when the King dies who has a right to the throne to the Troops to the lands to the power the money all of that what Kendall is upset about here is the same thing that Satan is upset about when he started that war it is a violation of his feudal rights something that he should have gotten but didn't and these feudal rights are eternally at odds with familial passions the harsh control of the court or the state whatever you want to call it fighting against the constant wild card that is the bloodline and it is the bloodline right even in 2023 succession it is the bloodline Tom is willing to be a Roy because he wants to be more closely associated with that bloodline that is how rich their blood is literally Greg's blood gets him further than any business degree ever could have and he doesn't even have the last name one of the reasons that there's so much tragedy in these Greek tragedies is that they're all just so [ __ ] related they're so related they're so related and unfortunately unlike succession edifice is edible pieces is Oedipus Oedipus two sons atiaccles and polynesis were twins so there was no eldest boy to take over when Oedipus blinded himself and like hobbled off into the woods in the middle of the night so they did the only thing that they could do which was fight to the death and kill each other they both died this prompts oedipus's brother Creon brother-in-law I think brother-in-law Creon to take the throne and start Antigone which is one of oedipus's incest babies a whole story she's got a whole she's got a whole play to to her own name and it's a nightmare all on its own all that to say that this also happens in Paradise Lost Angels and Satan might not be explicitly family in the human Earthly sense but they were made by God the almighty as Milton calls them and one of them does get called sun with a o and a capital S Satan starts a war with God because God promoted his son to a station above him that's the reason that's why he did it nepotism caused the fall of Man Jesus really is just a nepo baby there are no [ __ ] daughter Angels out there what say you to that Lord so like I get why he's mad but technically speaking the naming of the sun to be the sun doesn't really affect Satan's life at all doesn't affect his job it doesn't affect his station it doesn't affect the structure of the Heavenly Court whatever is going on up there it really doesn't matter but he feels slighted and hurt and like something that should have rightfully been his was taken from him now the things are getting shaken up did you come inside Dad I'm not just playing with the politics oh no of course shiv was never really involved in the company she was never really in the running to be the CEO she wasn't even working for the company when her father offered her the CEO spot in Season Two And yet when it doesn't work out even though her life stays exactly the same structurally she feels betrayed emotionally that is the dichotomy structure of the court and the state and the world whatever and the passion the families the emotions all of that stuff it's not rational for her to be this upset over this turn of events because it's family right family instinctively and conceptually resists rationality it's so emotional it's so uncontrollable family gets under your skin like nothing else because it is your skin and that's For Better or Worse whether you know and love your family or not that knife is gonna twist different because we get to choose what we do with our bodies but we don't get to choose who makes our bodies and because of that tension everything is awful all the time the collateral damage of that time that my sister punched me in the face because she wanted to use the car minimal if anything you laughed the collateral damage however of Creon favoring one of his nephews in death over the other different story The collateral damage of Logan Roy letting his horribly unqualified children work at the company that runs the news cycle of the world in the first place different story think about all of the people that got fired from valter as a result of Kendall and Roman and Logan being in a power play the woman that shiv convinces not to come forward with her assault story at the at their company probably everyone Roman Roy has ever spoken to these tragedies are about families and people that live in highly High really constructed worlds Kingdom of Heaven the city of Thieves right political State structures the company of waystar royco these are tightly controlled power structures right these are the people that are making the world literally politically financially whichever way you want to twist it these are the people who are used to having complete control over absolutely everything and because of that they think that they have absolute control over literally everything if tragedy is all about our failure to control the uncontrollable then it makes sense to be telling stories about the most high contrast versions of these choices and situations right the times where the stakes are the highest tragedies are about people trying to wrap a glass bottle or around an atom bomb if God doesn't have control over the thing that he literally created then we have absolutely no business trying to control our children we have no business pretending we can control our children no matter how powerful Logan Roy is no matter how hard he tries to twist and mold and beat his children into the shape of a good successor it's never going to happen he will never be able to kill that part of them that makes them individual that lets them choose to disobey and his attempts to do so will ruin them and they will ruin his legacy and that is tragic part 5 Roman tick John Milton told the story of creation from Satan's perspective not because he was trying to make Satan cool but because he was trying to make Satan human unfortunately for him however it's not going to be 1667 forever baby oh no no no no it's not and Milton's vision of the devil emphasizing his initial role in the Kingdom of Heaven how he started out like all the other angels and then was kind of smited and jilted and upset about his feudal rights being violated and how he chose to then go up against the greatest power that there is well that lends itself to a reinterpretation or several because that Satan when I say it like that Satan like embodies autonomy Satan is an individual he is a person who declares that evil shall be his good and who would rather reign in Hell than serve in heaven whether he likes it or not John Milton gave Satan a voice and people listened and after a while Satan's a little stunt stops looking like a a terrifying mistake and starts to look a lot like an active agency and the whole thing starts to feel a lot less cautionary and a lot more romantic with a capital r in a piece called bringing on the devil on the Romantic Cult of radical individualism berlin-based critic and writer on Contemporary Art and cultural Theory Jan verwert writes Milton's interpretation of Satan as the Fallen but heroic Rebel made the devil the idol of all Outlaws as such the devil has become a prime source of identification for many different performers on the social stage of culture a romantic model for poets artists actors Vamps divas dandies and disintegrated teenagers and all who like to be known as mad bad and dangerous wait wait mad bad and dangerous I'm sorry who does that sound like [Music] Lord Byron it's the only thing she wants to do in the 19th century romantic writer lady Caroline lamb famously dubbed our resident bisexual disaster Lord Byron mad bad and dangerous to know Byron whose full name is Lord George Gordon Byron VI the baron was a prolific writer sad boy and serial homewrecker he was also both the creator of and Central inspiration for the literary Trope now known as the byronic hero by Byron Byron byronic hero the effects that Lord Byron had on the people around him cannot be understated I talked about him for so long in my snapewives video that people forgot what the video was about and I cut six minutes from that section before you ask yes I'm gonna do that I am gonna do that thing and yes I am gonna if someone does it first the byronic hero is a character marked by traits of supreme loneliness self-loathing angst accompanied by bursts of more redeemable traits like exceptional talent in the Arts or big brain with lots of stuff in it a soft spot for children and animals a desire for justice and fairness they're often Martyrs because they're so desperate for death anyway that they'll easily give their life up for you Roman Roy is a really good example of a byronic hero character all of the Roy kids have their byronic traits but Roman really fits the bill because he's awful but he's also very witty he also has like a soft spot for his family and he genuinely wants love and connection did somebody better give it to him damn it what have I got I don't know [ __ ] love and we're not even going to talk about the funeral he doesn't care about the failed rocket launch so long as it doesn't hurt his career but he also advocates for Jerry to get the top spot and he feels bad for having to fire her the first time and the second time Kendall is too pathetic to be a byronic hero I'm sorry he is too pathetic he's the gold standard of pathetic everything he does is either cringe well here we are my boy squiggle cooked up this beat for me check it or just completely heartbreaking right oh you know it could be what it should be nothing at all he is not intoxicating he's not spellbinding in any way the hottest thing about Kendall Roy is his bank account shiv is to mean she's mean she's cruel and she knows that she's being cruel when she does it looks logical what cruises document destruction what I'm not saying that it should be I mean I'm saying you're like family which is good but also not family which is kind of good we love her but girl he's a [ __ ] unironically and on purpose Siobhan Roy's redeeming qualities are that she votes left and has a vagina both fabulous things but a byronic hero they do not make even if you love shiv or Kendall you kind of want to punch them in the face sometimes and you don't usually want to punch byronic heroes in the face even if you don't like them unless you're Caroline lamb or Robert Southey Robert Southey who was Poet Laureate which just means head poet in 1821 publicly announces that Lord Byron and other Poets of his Vibe were members of a satanic school because of their monstrous combinations of Horrors and mockery their lewdness and satanic Spirit of Pride and audacious impiety impiety just means not giving enough shits about the Lord The Romantics were a lot of things Pious is not one of them so this really worked out very well for everyone involved so for selfie whose reputation never really recovered once Byron got his hands on it but that is a story for another day Jeffrey Burton Russell writes the devil and radical evil were not subjects that the Romantic philosophers and theologians were particularly concerned with materialism pragmatism and skepticism of religion were far more important an enemy of the church is a friend to them basically their tendency was to transpose the Christian God into a symbol of evil the Christian idea of humanity into God in the sense that Humanity became the ultimate concern and the Christian Satan into a hero Don Milton made Satan a hero he just didn't realize that he made him a byronic hero it's called the Romantic Era for a reason baby everything gets a sexy little makeover narcissism death murder tuberculosis and this includes the Faust tail yes that is still what this video is about because up until now Marlo's version of Faust was sort of the most well-known version of The Myth at least in the English-speaking world and it wasn't really done too much with any amount of seriousness it was parodied a lot it wasn't hot on the presses that is until the romantics got a hold of it specifically German romantic poet and Lord Byron Enthusiast Johann Wolfgang von guerta part of those six minutes that were cut from the Byron section of my snake Vibes video were about guerta and they were cut because I pronounced his name goth guerta decides to take a swing in the Faust myth and obliterates it destroys it like it's a pinata filled with literal gold knocks it so far out of the park the Stars themselves tremble and he doesn't even finish he doesn't even finish it he drops Faust part one in 1808 and part two doesn't get published until after his death in the year 1832. you thought the Sherlock Hiatus of 2014 was bad you might be thinking that this probably isn't that big of a deal right because didn't I just spend like two and a half sections talking about how we all know the ending of tragedies and we all know the ending of the Faust tale it doesn't really matter unless he decided to I don't know change the ending yeah so Gerta Waits 24 years and then he saves Faust 24 years which if you remember is the same amount of time that the original Faustus sold his soul for that is almost definitely a coincidence though because Garrett's Faust does not make the same deal with his version of Mephistopheles who we will call Mephisto he doesn't really make a deal at all technically he makes more of a wager a bet if you will he bets Mephisto that he could endlessly strive and search for Truth for all of eternity and never be satisfied and if he ever says that he is satisfied Mephisto can have his soul it's not the only thing that guerta changes about the Faust tale though he also adds in this now sort of Infamous episode about a woman named Gretchen who don't worry guys is well past her 14th year in case you were concerned fast is like I would like to get laid and Mephisto was like why but he does this he's told and he helps Faust land the woman of his Dreams by providing him with all kinds of jewels and gifts to woo her with he gives her a sleeping potion so that she can drug her mother so they can have pre-marital sex don't worry guys she's well past her 14th year they do all of that the Faust gets bored and leaves little does he know however that he has left her with child and also her mother is dead and also I think Faust killed her brother so she's like alone with this baby and she goes cray cray kills the baby and ends up in jail Faust finds out and is like we gotta save her he goes to save her and she is like too far gone refuses to go with him because Mephisto is creepy and she is crazy and so he has to just like leave her to like rot in jail or be executed or something like that it's a big old bummer what does any of this have to do with succession I'm glad you asked I am a detective and my job here is to notice patterns so that I can desperately try to justify making this video which means that I I just can't ignore the fact that we have two men who make deals with the devil who are involved with women who end up pregnant and alone whilst said man is off reaping the benefits of said deal it would be an abuse of my privilege as an immortal video essayists to not point this out to you I I will not gate keep Galaxy brain connections man to be perfectly honest however I do feel that I need to preface this I am not a person who thinks that Tom loved shiv more than shiv loved Tom I am really not um I'm not saying that it was the other way around but I am saying that she wasn't willing to sacrifice Tom at the end of season two even though it made her look weak to Logan to do so but he was in fact willing to sacrifice her when it came down to it but you know that is a problem for another section so remember when I said earlier that Tom makes that absolutely batshit decision to show up at the end of season three after he has outed Shivan the Roy sibling's secret plan and betrayed his wife and ruined everything for everyone ever remember when I said that if I was married to Siobhan Roy and I pulled that [ __ ] I would be in a bunker but I said earlier that we needed to see that moment because that's how shiv put the pieces together we needed to see how she felt so that we could feel for her the catharsis so we didn't necessarily need that moment and there wasn't really a storytelling justification for it there's no reason that Tom would have done that if the writers didn't need for him to be there for dramaturgical effect right wrong Tom shows up in that moment for the same reason that Faust found out what happened to Gretchen and was like we must go save her because Mephisto is like why you did this awful thing to her why and he's like oh I need to go I need to go I need to go do this Faust shows up to try and save Gretchen like he is not the one who put her in that prison in the first place Tom shows up to comfort shiv in that room like he is not the reason she is [ __ ] crying in the first place and believable he's believable he doesn't look remotely sneaky he looks more resolved in that moment than he did in his Hearing in any of his business presentations in any of his business meetings that are his literal job thank you very much thank you he looks like he feels bad probably because he does because that's why he's there he is there because he feels bad Faust didn't give a [ __ ] about Gretchen's well-being until he felt guilty about it he wouldn't have been anywhere near her if she wasn't in that jail cell Faust is there for Faust and Tom is there for Tom this is about his feelings he's there because he wants to see the pain that he's caused or because he like Faust actually thinks he can do something about it and like help her emotionally right whether he thinks it's the least he can do or if he really thinks that he can get away with it I don't know but whatever the reason it's not for shiv in season four we find out that they haven't talked about it she did not confront him about this because she doesn't care about his feelings there was nothing that he could have said or done to make this hurt less and I bring all this up because there is something here that is in these two Faustian bargain Devil's deal stories that is eerily similar to what is arguably the second most famous Faustian bargain The Picture of Dorian excuse me are you this Barkley yes okay and uh this your video essay oh yeah right right right and you just mentioned what novel The Picture of Dorian Gray right right right and what is the section called this this part of the video essay what did you call that the Romantic Era uh see yeah that's actually a pretty serious I'm actually violation under subsection six paragraph 25 of the YouTube laws of video essays and unfortunately I am gonna have to take you downtown because Dora and Bray was written in 1890 making you part of the decadent movement so uh if you could just get okay fine new section I wanted to go on a tangent about the ladies anyway The Picture of Dorian Gray which is technically speaking from the year 1890 and part of the decadent movement or maybe the late Romantic Period or the Victorian Gothic or gothic horror or gothic realism I don't know and I don't care Charles baudelaire said that Romanticism is precisely situated neither in the choice of subject nor exact truth but in the way of feeling so it might not be from the officially trademarked Romantic Era but it is still in my opinion a romantic novel lowercase r now there is like a surprising amount of plot in this novel beyond the whole like picture gets old Dorian does not thing so we don't have time to get into all of it but here is everything that you need to know for this video hi me from the edit two things one minor content warning there is a character in Dorian Gray who takes their own life we mention it briefly I think two times in the next section I will put a little flash on the screen beforehand but it is very much brief and in passing absolutely no details or anything like that and two um Oscar Wilde was like super anti-semitic and I had other problems we touch on it later but nobody waits to the end of the video to comment so for the record bad dude we don't like love him Dorian Gray like any good byronic hero is hot boy with mommy issues okay he is Sad Little Orphan who is also spectacularly beautiful he was apparently the child of like the most beautiful woman in the land and some poor guy that she was in love with and then her father had the poor guy killed in a bar fight and then she died of sadness like a year later so Dorian got raised by like his mean grandfather but his mean grandfather Super Rich so he has like a a sad hot Rich orphan which is the best kind of Orphan we meet Dorian Gray under like a cloud of homoerotic tension because Dorian Gray is also a model and so he regularly sits for paintings for this artist basil Howard it's probably basil but it's much funnier to say basil so basil Howard and basil is so in love with Dorian Gray that's not important to what we're doing but it is important to know so he crosses paths with a lord Henry Wootton who has the energy of like a high school theater teacher who has just come across like a really talented student he comes in waxes poetic about the value of Youth and beauty and what a bummer it is that Dorian Gray is going to get old and gross and become worthless one day and then he takes Dorian now on the town this is what I mean guys there is so much plot some time passes I guess and eventually we find out that our main mandorian is super [ __ ] in love with this woman named Sybil Vane which is not subtle at all Oscar she's an actress and he loves like watching her act and then immediately decides that he must marry her because that is what you do and all of the men in his life for no reason at all are suspiciously like no Dorian don't get married but he's Dorian Gray and panties fall in the man's presence So eventually he gets her to agree to marry him problem is she is so happy about this right she's so ecstatic that according to Dorian Gray she can't act anymore in his opinion so he cruelly dumps her right dumps her cruelly other [ __ ] up [ __ ] happens and eventually she takes her own life now there isn't really a deal-making scene in Dorian Gray the way there is in Faust or succession or whatever so we don't technically know when things with his deal were set into motion but it is implied that this is kind of where it starts because this all happens right after Dorian not so subtly was like God if only that painting could get old and I could stay young and some God was [ __ ] listening much to all of our Chagrin so we have these three men right these three stories Faust Tom and Dorian who all make Faustian Bargains right then immediately immediately have a problem where they have created versions of these women in their heads they have fallen for them reeled them in and then immediately they are sort of disillusioned and Chuck them by the wayside to go reap the rewards of their deal Dorian Gray literally says out loud that he wanted to put Sybil vain on a pedestal of gold I love simple vein I want to place her on a pedestal of gold and to see the world worship the woman who is mine What is marriage an irrevocable vow you mock at it for that ah don't mock it is an irrevocable vow that I want to take her trust makes me faithful her belief makes me good which no no it doesn't evidently so civil vain dies and Dorian Gray is like a little bummed about it but luckily his friends are all like don't worry about it man because and I quote she never really lived the girl never really lived so she never really died is what they say they encourage him to see it as an experience right they're kind of jealous that someone would love Dorian Gray that much and that they'll never be loved that much and they basically come to the conclusion that sybilvane never really lived outside of Dorian Gray's experience of her and what is interesting about this whole section is that it feels like it would be absolutely insane for me to suggest that either of these stories Dorian and fausts are anything like shiv and Tom's relationship to suggest that Tom Wong scamscams this man I'm carrying a case on my wedding Eve was even capable of treating Siobhan Roy like a prop feels a bit blasphemous but I'm gonna do it because while there is a very strong argument to be made that she deserved it because shivroy absolutely used Tom for all that he could give her and Logan was absolutely right when he said you are marrying a man fathoms beneath you because you are afraid to be left or whatever we're talking about a woman who cheated on him and then waited till after they said their vows to tell him about it and then ask for an open marriage pardon the angle change but she's mean right shiv is mean she's selfish she's kind of cruel and she is hard as [ __ ] Nails she is not weak by any definition of the word and yet she still gets [ __ ] over by this man we are for you so that might be like we we here for you man because you don't need to hear wheat here yeah we also also we're here for you I wanted to highlight this element of the story because Tom's Choice here his selfish Choice Justified or not is what ends up leading him to being CEO of way star royco a choice he didn't know he was making telling you it's all going to come together because if he didn't do that if the company stayed in sort of Roy country even if Logan still dies the kids had a whole plan and Tom was not part of that plan he was shiv's husband and maybe head of ATN still but honestly it's only because of him that Logan is able to go through with the deal with Matson meaning that there is this third party who comes in who is then there waiting when shiv feeling like her feudal rights had been violated it can now Sidle up to Matson only for him to use her and squeeze her for everything that she's worth then chuck her to the side when she's no longer useful to him and give shiv's idea of an American CEO spot Tom shiv's idea of an American CEO goes to Tom because Tom [ __ ] her figuratively and because Tom also [ __ ] her literally she is pregnant and he is officially ingratiated into that oh so uncontrollable bloodline the point that I want to make here is that Tom doesn't have to try and be a monster to [ __ ] shiv over it takes three seasons for us to believe that Tom would ever do this because he has to be pushed to it Tom in his relationship with shiv chooses selfishness one time one time he chooses to be selfish and it wins him the whole game he barely has to try he makes one phone call Shiv tries for three seasons to get into that room and Tom does it in a breath because the world that they exist in is built for him he's an empty suit shiv has to deal with the woman thing and that's a [ __ ] minus Charlotte Bronte writes in Jane Eyre women feel just as men feel they need exercise for their faculties and a field for their effort as much as their brothers do they suffer from too rigid a restraint to Absolute a stagnation precisely as men would suffer and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings to playing on the piano and embroidering bags saw the women that they were pursuing for what they were which is deep complex individuals who exist outside of their relationship with them is civil vain taking her own life because of Dorian Gray the best representation of women maybe not but at the end of the day that's not her [ __ ] fault and what succession does so well with shiv's story and How It Ends specifically is show us that you can be the strongest most independent complicated nuanced woman in the world and still get trapped in a world that was not built for you which sounds like a huge bummer that sounds like the opposite of feminism coming from me right but I want to defend that thesis because I know that there is a lot of criticism of Oscar Wilde's work for misogyny and to be honest I haven't read enough of it to say this is the only thing that I've read but I never got the impression that the way that these women were treated by these men was right the whole thing feels a lot like succession in that these are awful people doing awful things and maybe it's because I read the book with the intention of doing this video so I was reading it through the succession lens which is the lens of oh yeah these are terrible people we're not supposed to agree with the things that these characters say I don't know that's a tangent you know I think there's misogyny and I think there's reality and I think that succession the tragedy of it is that it's a reality and that we're not out of the woods right like we're not done not fixed right everyone in succession is white right everyone in succession is white that's not because they don't think black people can be CEOs that's because the reality of awful business people like that is that they're usually white oh [ __ ] I'm Against Racism everybody's Against Racism what else [ __ ] the patriarchy esophagus Electra which by the way I have a bone to pick but we'll get to that Sophocles Electra takes a small side character from escalis orestaya and gives her the whole play Elektra is the sister of orestes in case you forgot Agamemnon Kane sacrificed his daughter ifajanaya to win a war his wife Claire nestra not happy about that killed him for that they have two children orestes and Elektra oresties and Elektra kill Clayton nestra because of that Furies which are like Fates then come after arrestes Athena comes back and is like cut it out that's the whole thing a lectures like barely in the libation bearers which is the sceless version of this story and basically Elektra has been miserable since the murder of her father she is childless and unmarried and constantly being verbally abused by Clyde temnestra and she can't do anything about it until that is orestes comes along and is like hey we could kill her in a piece called Elektra Glory bathed in tears Thomas van Norwick writes Thomas van Norwick writes everything that has happened is in the world created by her powerful emotions Beyond remedy her miserable childless condition the disgraceful behavior of her mother time is measured out in Endless repetition of suffering from which she sees No Escape only orestes can break this cycle for her acting from the outside by the sheer fact of him being her father Logan Roy has created a world where shiv can't escape anything without him because at the end of the day she's got his name his blood his wealth she was born into this cage and a cage is still a cage regardless of what century it's in I have this thing with with her um which is like what is it a bit too much you know okay Electra is a problem for those on stage because she will not be quiet and wait for release from her suffering she also challenges our perception of the logic of the traditional Revenge story can such a shattered figure wracked by competing emotions of Rage resentment and shame ever be restored in a way that would be true to the probing portrait Sophocles creates what would justice mean to a woman like her arrestes is doing this because he was told that he was gonna get ugly boils all over his skin if he didn't right he's doing this for a revenge in like the name of his father but he's also been gone for like 10 years Elektra has been living under collectomnestra's thumb since the murder of her father and before that so she is bringing with her into this mess like a whirlwind of emotion and eat challenges the very strict plan that orestes has for carrying out this murder because it's unpredictable there's too much going on she is unpredictable every time we watch shiv act on her impulses and self-sabotage it hurts because she is so close She's So Close sometimes but close is not enough dorian's Whirlwind of self-indulgence and Hedonism which we'll get to it his his world of self-indulgence and Hedonism is not built for the complex reality of a woman like civil vane the the complicated nature of who siblane is cannot thrive in the fantasy that he has built around himself oust's endless fantasy of striving for Discovery is not compatible with Gretchen's genuine desire for love and a family and her genuine commitment to her faith the world that Logan Roy created was built for people like Tom Logan Roy built a world where his daughter can have anything she wants so long as she asks for it and she knows this she understands the rules of the game Conor has no problem asking his father for money or support right Roman definitely asks for things Kendall definitely asks for things as far as I can tell over the course of Four Seasons Siobhan Roy does not ask her father for anything except one time she asks him not to sacrifice Tom part 7 wealth and debauchery F Scott Fitzgerald writes in his 1926 short story the rich boy let me tell you about the very rich they are different from you and me they possess and enjoy early and it does something to them makes them soft where we are hard and cynical where we are trustful in a way that unless you were born rich it is very difficult to understand they think deep in their hearts that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us they still think that they are better than we are they are different if you haven't picked up on this metaphor yet the closest thing that we have in the real world to demon wielding world-ending eternal life potion creating magic is money buckets and buckets of money we're talking extreme wealth just like Cinderella is very God mother definitely doesn't spend a lot of time in CVS looking for the cheapest brand of toothpaste the Roy's don't spend a lot of time in dive bars they don't wear coats because they go directly from their cars to their Jets to their doors Kendall doesn't have to do Park Coke ew dude where did you get this uh that is it's from a connection in the park they have effectively alienated themselves from the rest of the world from The Real World and alienation is a big problem for the romantics alienation is a byproduct of individualism because if you keep breaking apart from the crowd eventually you're not gonna recognize the crowd anymore they grow up and become a real little boy and learn the price of an egg and do phone sex with my girlfriend like a normal Tom is the one who makes the deal with the devil in the most literal sense at the end of season three but he also functions as a sort of devil Mephistopheles character in his relationship with Greg who he takes under his wing and sort of guides down the path to moral depravity their word rights at stake in the dark romantic conception of the Devil is a utopian vision of radical individuality an individuality radicalized through the extraordinary experience and knowledge provided by the Devil Himself The Devil in a lot of these stories where he is interacting with humans tends to take on a sort of mentor-esque role just as Tom teaches Greg how to be rich by showing him what to eat and drink Lord Henry wooden teaches Dorian Gray about Hedonism by a never shutting the [ __ ] up and B giving him a poisonous yellow book which is almost definitely this book by French writer and civil servant JK it is an 1884 novel it's called aurables the title is translated as against nature or against the grain and refers to the central process in the book in which an aristocat aristocrat completely withdraws himself from society in order to immerse himself in concentrated Sensations in private the book became a central work in the decadent movement which we know is where Dorian Gray is from so the decadent movement is all about Indulgence and art and literature sexual depravity and hedonism Hedonism from the Greek word Hedon I don't know if that's how it's pronounced meaning pleasure which side note this guy wrote a [ __ ] ton about granted his was a lot more about like inner peace and uh self-contentment whereas Dorian Gray's is more like [ __ ] [ __ ] hide their bodies in the woods point is this book that Dorian Gray gets gifted by Lord Henry Wootton is the Eat Pray Love of decadent gay literature and he is described as being addicted to it in the psychopathy of everyday narcissism Richard J Walker writes in effect the poisonous book becomes an addictive narcotic something that he returns to over and over again and which has poisoned him this aesthetic intoxication through excessive consumption has its parallel in the alternative world that Dorian Gray inhabits within London he is consuming this book the way that he is consuming alcohol sex food emotion basil at one point goes on and on about all the rumors that he's been hearing about Dorian Gray leaving like a tree trail of dead Boys in his wake and not because he murdered them because they are themselves which for the record should surprise no one because Oscar Wilde himself is the one who ruined it for gay victorians everywhere I highly recommend this video Oscar Wilde not a great dude and this is something that we see the characters in succession do as well not only with Kendall's drug use paralleling his absolutely plummeting mental health but with Tom who we find out in the beginning of season four after his deal with the devil but pre-logan's death has gotten himself a bit of a reputation for being one of the disgusting felons don't cause that and yet I can't say that he looks particularly happy in this moment in fact none of the Roys who find themselves in these beautiful places eating fabulous food or enjoying lavish parties ever seem particularly pleased with any of it the trouble with this constant pursuit of pleasure this new Hedonism decadent aesthetic Hedonism that is characterized by excessive consumption is that it's more concerned with the satisfaction of Desire than it is any kind of genuine happiness and sometimes the thing that you want is not necessarily the thing that you need Dorian Gray has to detach from reality in order to engage in this kind of behavior he has to believe that sibling never really lived Beyond his experience of her that none of his actions had any effect on anyone he encountered that it is in the brain only that the great sins of the world take place because the only other option is for him to confront his own guilt about the reality of his own existence being something that impacts other people this is not a feeling that is unique to Dorian Gray or the Roy's or any of these characters who make these deals the only thing that is unique to these characters is the resources that they have to escape it throughout the fourth season of succession we get two sort of paralleling storylines going on amidst all of the Dead dad drama one of them being finalizing the sale of waystar royco to sexy Swiss Army knives Lucas matson's Gojo GoPro GoPro and the other being the election of the president of the United States so two very low stakes situations and this presidential election is more or less the 2020 election so at this point in the story Logan is dead Thomas head of ATN the Fox news esque station that is way Stars pride and joy and he and shiv are separated with aggression she is pregnant with his child but he does not know that Roman is no longer involved with Jerry because he fired Jerry and has sort of been on a firing Rampage since he stepped in as CEO since his dad died and Kendall is going to pee on the floor if someone doesn't tell him that he's a good boy real soon things are a mess and it's the night of the election U.S elections are stupid and complicated trust me I vote in them so I am not going to get into it but basically eight TN is trying to decide whether or not they can announce on TV that the Neo-Nazi won the election and Roman is all in on wanting to do this because it will help him get what he wants which is to keep the company under family control and the others are like it'll be really really bad if we get this wrong because there's a reason to doubt the legitimacy of the boats but he is pushing for it and they end up doing it if we don't call it early and he wins anyway which is perfectly possible but without us tonight think about that we push it yeah maybe it happens yeah we give it to Megan making blocks a deal he's not [ __ ] wishy-washy he's a guy I don't know dude I mean my kids the whole thing Miracle Victor Hugo's 1886 religious epic lafinder Satan or the end of Satan includes the following he represents the lack of equilibrium peace and balance in the cosmos and the alienation of humanity from its proper repos in love and Liberty like Satan we are so wrapped up in our interior world that we cannot see the reality around us we isolate ourselves from it though it speaks to us in every tree bird and human voice Roman does not care what happens to the state of the country because he doesn't have to there is no situation in which he is going to end up in prison or impacted by the laws that are made whatsoever he can already do all of the drugs that he wants buy whatever and whoever he wants treat people however he wants he doesn't even recognize impact that this will have on other people as being anything real or tangible it's all just Toy Soldiers but obviously this is extremely alienating and ultimately disappointing because he is pushing hard for this specific outcome but has no tangible grasp on the results and thus he can't conceptualize it or actualize it there's no way that it's gonna be satisfying because his life is not going to change at all nothing matters okay nothing [ __ ] matters dad's dead and the country is the big [ __ ] waiting to get [ __ ] action okay we can pay for any damages let's just Jam our [ __ ] heads in the bosom of history and just we call it for him that gives him legitimacy to declare I mean we're in bed with him I think yeah yeah I I mean it'll get ground out in the courts whatever we say the only thing that this is about for him is making sure that menkin will block the deal that is the only outcome that matters because that's the only one that affects him the guy that's going to answer our calls the [ __ ] guy printing US Dollars this is all upside apart from the matter of him smashing the country to Pieces oh God and so after the funeral when he is speaking to menkin and it starts to seem like maybe he's not actually going to follow through on his promise and he's not actually going to block the deal and when that little sliver of impact that that he can process is taken away the whole night the whole election nightmare is absolutely meaningless and pointless the only way that he is able to process and feel this is by throwing himself into a crowd of protesters to be trampled onto a pulp interesting right this is why Roman is so interesting because he is like a textbook byronic hero and he has such like a fascinating relationship with pain because he doesn't just like pain he needs it both physical and emotional in both sexual and non-sexual situations it's not just that he can't get off without being degraded but like when his dad dies he has these AI guys cut together a tape of his dad saying how disappointed he was in him so he can listen to it and when he does he smiles I don't think that there is necessarily an answer to why is Roman Roy like that capital L capital T but I also don't think it matters I do however think that there is something to be explored in that idea that someone born into the heightened unreality that is wealth and and an insane unfathomable privilege that someone born into that develops a sort of apathy and Detachment from the world that is only broken up by experiences of pain and suffering we're talking about wealth that is practically magic where all they have to do is put out a hand and whatever they want will all but float into their open palm and as a result they don't know how to want they only know how to need and because they have everything they only know how to need more Dorian Gray had everything he had money he had looks he had high status what he didn't have was a mommy who loved him he didn't have a sense of self Marlo's Faust equated his soul being separated from his body to being like wiped out of existence Tom had everything a high paying job where he gets to use humans as footstools a beautiful wife who may or may not actually love him but he didn't need to throw her under the bus to get out of that one Tom had everything except for self-confidence right except for a sense of self in the company are you Hands-On or more of an overview guy um interesting I I guess well let me ask you this what would you value more highly really what is crucial to the Romantic infatuation with the Devil is his relation to excess the devil not only promises excess but he also embodies what he promises because I've seen you get [ __ ] a lot and I've never seen Logan get [ __ ] once Logan wrote reeks of power is drenched in it it drips off of him ever you are his kids raised underneath that and your father loved that power more than he ever loved you then it must be worth going after it has to be because what's the alternative the alternative is that maybe he didn't ever love you very much at all part eight time for the blood sacrifice we mentioned this cruises Scandal basically the way Star cruise Branch was like killing women and paying people off and it was a big problem a big poison pill that Tom couldn't help but swallow in season one he and Greg work to cover it up and Greg keeps evidence to Blackmail his way to the top eventually and all seems fine which is a very bad sign in a tragedy inevitably it starts to come out as all good Secrets do and there is the infamous court hearing which is basically like that time that they put the CEO of tick tock at like a table in front of a bunch of government people so they could ask stupid questions the only face data that you'll get that we collect is when you use the filters to have sunglasses on your face we need to know where your eyes are why do you need to know what the odds are if you're not seeing if they're dilated and Kendall does a decent job you know the the accusations but things get worse right and Logan comes to the conclusion for some businessy reason somebody's got to get fired and instead of Logan stepping down like you know he should have Logan gathers everyone on his boat an isolated location and is like who's it gonna be I mean who cares I'm more than a Sprinkle unbeknownst to them however in a galaxy far far away another supremely powerful being was gathering all of his little minions to have the same conversation re-enter Paradise Lost because after Satan's little stunt with the Apple God is like humanity is just forked forever what am I gonna do and basically holds court because somebody's got to go down with this ship now both of these situations involve two things Justice and mercy Justice is an eye for an eye Mercy is you can keep your eye so God tells his little friends that he is planning to act primarily out of love and mercy which is good because that's his thing but at the same time this is still a court it's still a kingdom of heaven and Justice must still be served he told them there would be consequences for eating the apples they did it anyway if he lets them get away with it what are the rest of the kids gonna think next thing you know they'll be committing fratricide also if this is all starting to sound familiar yes now I wasn't there because I was very busy at the time so I don't know what God was expecting to happen when he told them not to eat the apple but evidently he did not think it was going to go the way that it went because they were in literal paradise and had everything they could ever want to need perhaps he just thought they would be satisfied and not fall for another raw vegan influencer scam couldn't tell you but unfortunately he did not consult me beforehand and so now he's in a pickle because Justice just doesn't jive with love and mercy Justice is a structural thing Justice is enacted love is emotional it is felt the constructed versus the familial I'm telling you I I'm telling you so in both succession and Paradise Lost Top Dog tells the crew that in order to fix the problem a suitable sacrifice must be made and in both cases it is the son who becomes that sacrifice Logan chooses to sacrifice Kendall which is wrong because for contacts Kendall killed a kid at shiv's wedding by accident well by negligence but regardless he killed a kid and Logan kind of made it all go away and so then he spent the entirety of season two being Logan's like dead-eyed robot puppy slave which is a Faustian bargain all its own Logan sacrifices Kendall which he shouldn't because it should be himself and if it can't be him it should be Tom but he won't pick himself because he's a narcissist and he won't pick Tom because shiv asked him not to why does she do this why does she not want it to be Tom because to be perfectly honest she didn't really care whether or not Tom went to prison for like most of the Season no Tom looks logical what I think part of it is because she is pretty sure she lost the CEO spot when she you know had her Outburst but mostly because Tom is honest with her for like five minutes I wonder if the sad I'd be without you would be less than the sad I get from being with you and so she has a choice to make because she is the only person who can save Tom no one else at that table would do it and no one else has that kind of pull with Logan besides maybe Kendall or Roman and Kendall can't have anything he wants because he killed a kid and Roman doesn't give a [ __ ] and Logan's weakness is that he loves his children and he will give them what they ask for even if not especially when it is bad for them shiv knows how to play the game shiv knows that she can have anything she wants if she asks for it which is why she was outside of the company not because she didn't want it but because she was trying to prove something and she is acutely aware because of her position as a woman in this world that asking for something is not the same as earning it and she knows that this is not the best decision she knows it should be Tom and if she really wanted to prove to her father in that moment that she she is a killer and she can do this job then she would have to prove that love and family will not get in the way of what is best for the business it saw a tough choice people need to be able to make I can't choose that just not please for me there's a moment in Antigone where Creon is you know crayoning and his son is like why should I obey you and support you in your decision to let political power and structure outweigh familial ties and you know kill Antigone and Creon responds with because I'm your father crayon tells him to support his choice of structure over family because of family this exists because it's a family we are a family so Logan chooses Kendall and God chooses Jesus right wrong God didn't choose Jesus he volunteered which further record so did Conor Roy but someone else can make the Conor Roy is the Jesus that never could video essay this one's already too long but this is an important distinction it's an important distinction that Milton made up because it tells us that it could have been anyone just like in succession how you know they're trying to pair together people that have enough weight to make this sacrifice work the idea is that any and all of the Angels were capable of going down being mortal dying on the cross saving Humanity the whole true bad any of those angels could have been Greg sprinkles but the sun chooses to be the one to do it what's really interesting about this is what it means for God Milton gives us a world where redeeming all of humanity is not in anyone's job description which means if no one volunteers then he's gonna have to pick someone he says a suitable sacrifice must be made man's Disobedience not only introduces Discord into human history but it also alienates the father and threatens to set him at odds with himself what the sons offer does is let's God off the hook because God was a businessman he could forgive the dead right if he was like a creditor he could just say ah you know we understand forgive the loan but he's not he's a sovereign leader he's a king in the kingdom of heaven and so he can't let crimes go unpunished and what the son's offer does is one emphasize that the son and Satan both have free will and can do whatever they want with it two it makes Satan's accusation that God is a tyrant false right it doesn't work because he's not a tyrant he didn't just pick someone the son volunteered I will for man's sake leave thy bosom and freely put off Glory next to thee which is the complete opposite of what happens in succession which is Logan picks Kendall and that choice emphasizes Logan's role as a tyrant emphasizes his selfishness and his control it makes what Kendall does at the end of the season finale of season two ring true Kendall has spent the last year months season whatever being on the receiving end of Logan's greatest Mercies and his harshest punishments so he knows better than anyone what it means to be a killer when Logan appoints him he is able to go and do exactly what Logan would have done which is Slaughter his father on the pyre the truth is that my father is a malignant presence a bully and a liar my father keeps a watchful eye over every inch of his whole empire this is the day his Reign ends so this should feel better than it does this should feel significantly more vindicating more like a milestone has been hit more like a growth point right character development good for Kendall but like it doesn't if this were any other show or any other kind of Storytelling it would feel that way even if they were still awful people this would be the I'll Make a Man Out of You moment where she climbs the the Pole right this would be Rocky on the steps this would be a moment where we are proud of Kendall and then the whole third season would be him finally coming out on top and finally earning his father's Respect by going toe-to-toe with him and proving that he's his own man and they would make up and have like a I understand you moment on Logan's death bed and Logan would die and Kendall would ride off into the sunset a powerful and better man but this is succession and succession is a tragedy part nine is Logan Roy the devil yes part 10 the devil is really just Vibes anyway because Logan Roy certainly functions like a devil in you know the world of succession that's not a secret he is the one that everyone is making all of these deals with at least the deals that work out in their favor he is a dissenter right he definitely created his own world he does not adhere to traditional Christian morality he is cruel and powerful and lustful and indulgent and smart but has a soft spot for himself I mean his kids but I did also compare him to God for like most of the last section so what is going on why doesn't this video make any sense let's go back to Russell's book and remember that the devil is inextricably linked to that fundamental problem of evil evil being [Music] welcome to the ethics section what is evil for Milton and Paradise Lost keeping in line with the kind of Christian moral values evil is empty it's mad unreal focused on unreality and self-defeating Terry Eagleton wrote a whole book on it and he writes that evil is destruction right the opposite of creation Webster says things like morally reprehensible sinful Wicked arising from actual or imputed bad character or conduct there are also a few things that come up consistently when you are looking into what in God's name evil is things like nuclear weapons concentration camps the Holocaust war in general slavery genocides these like massive large scale kind of in incomprehensible evils and then you also have things like the murder of Gabriel Fernandez is the first thing that comes up in my mind when I think about evil right the torture of junka fruta Eric Tillman Mike Brown right Matthew Shepard violence that feels pointed you also have things like cancer and illnesses right tsunamis and earthquakes and wild fires right these natural uncontrollable evils that don't feel necessarily attributed to Human Action climate change is real but you know what I mean human cause planetary destruction and corporate planetary destruction definitely human in the human caused evil category but also there have always been tsunamis I guess our climate denier the problem is that Logan Roy does not fit into any of those categories very neatly what he builds however does pave the way or at least open the doors for some of those more easily recognizable evils I mean they wield billions of dollars they pick the president of the United States they run the news which you know it's new it's new that said he did also make his employees get down on their hands and knees and oink like literal pigs which feels kind of Senseless and cruel for cruelty's sake I got it feels without justification too effort and slow I'll get you a booby price but is it evil oh God we should talk about can't oh okay Emmanuel Kant was born in 1724 and died in 1804 and the thing you need to know about Kant is that he really thought Universal morality was a thing he was big on these things called categorical imperatives you don't need to know this they're basically super laws that make so much sense we have to do them or else the island will explode I wrote like a bunch of paragraphs on this but I don't feel like reading them it is late and this video is long basically kant's whole thing is that radical evil comes when you decide to rewire your brain so that you can do the selfish thing and whatever's best for you instead of the right thing whatever Kant said the right thing was you flip it you you re you restructure the moral hierarchy in your brain that's why it's radical because you're like no I'm doing the right thing you declare evil to be your good assuming that Elon Musk knows that he could give me a hundred thousand dollars and it would be the morally right thing to do great and he does not do that that is him making a morally bad choice per con every day that Elon Musk convinces himself that he is going to find a better way to redistribute his wealth every day that he tells himself that not giving me a hundred thousand dollars is the right thing that's radical evil lying to yourself is radical evil believing that you are doing the right just thing when you're really just being selfish is radical evil because you don't even know the difference anymore in Catherine Gillen Martin's the reason of radical evil she talks about how these characters like Milton Satan activate Evil by believing that they can become god-like from a Christian perspective God understands evil in a way that Humanity cannot because God allows evil and what Martin is arguing in this piece is that in part evil comes from the desire to play God and the illusion right lying to yourself and telling yourself that you can do what God does when you can't I'm a great revolutionary Remember When ever when tragedies and how one of the Fatal mistakes that our characters make is believing that they have omniscience believing that they know everything they need to know they [ __ ] know things about the world or I wouldn't turn a book not necessarily nice things the same way that you can't drop into a Crossroads without coming from somewhere when we're talking about evil as it pertains to the devil and deals with the devil evil had to be created from something it had to come from somewhere I I had to say this because I love you but you're kind of evil Terry Eagleton writes that evil believes that it is entirely self-dependent Conjuring itself up out of nothing but the truth is that it is not its own origin something has always come before it and this is one reason why it is eternally miserable we know that Logan was not born into wealth and comes from a violent household with a history of abuse we hear a story from Ewan about the guilt that he felt surrounding his sister's death these are all harsh realities that definitely explain you know why Logan might be the way that he is but at the end of the day Logan didn't build an Empire and use the proceeds to fund medical research did he he gave away a few million of his billions but he was not a generous man he was mean he didn't come from his abusive home and have children that he showered with love and affection and understanding not with your father he never saw anything he loved that he didn't want to kick it just to see if it would still come back love you come for me with love calling your daughter a coward till she cries the act of evil Martin suggests becomes a way of relieving pain characters who are already on the road to evil who have already subverted their morality and are actively ruling their own little universes not only derive pleasure from the physical and psychological pain of others but use it to compensate for their deep feelings of anxiety Envy or shame you're so [ __ ] jealous of what you've given your own kids you can't handle it you can you you can't work it out the final stage of true degradation Martin suggests is reached once all material political or other social gains becomes pretext for radically evil acts Logan makes Roman go back and offer a guy less money for a deal that was a good deal because he wants to be cruel about it Logan's Behavior doesn't have justification right not a real one anyway barbecue them live with me no don't [ __ ] touch being cruel to his kids he might argue is his way of making them tough are you gonna [ __ ] cry candle are you [ __ ] crying trying to prepare them to take over the company but we already know that that's not possible we learned from Paradise Lost that you can't control people even if you made them you are a [ __ ] nobody it's a false narrative it's a willful illusion of omnipotence coupled with a big old scoop of Free Will supercharged with literal devil Satan magic or extreme wealth there is a fly I'm so sorry about it but if Logan Roy has chosen evil he has decided to become the god of his own little false reality the question is what does that mean for the children that he raises there besides the fact that wanting for nothing means needing for everything what kind of poisonous world does a man like Logan Roy create when he declares evil to be his good what kind of cyclical recursive hell does he build and does the poison drip through all right ladies and gentlemen we have exactly one hour to finish this part 11 poison drips through so in a world where Logan Roy is God and his children start behaving like Monsters start choosing evil who is really to blame for that is it these kids or is it the man who planted the tree I told you earlier that I had a bone to pick with Elektra this is that bone Elektra does not want to kill her mother because she was in love with her father the Electra complex as it is colloquially understood is girls who are in love with their fathers who are jealous of their father's partners because they get their father's attention [ __ ] off [ __ ] off Elektra did not want to kill her mother because she was in love with her father she wanted to kill her mother because her mother killed her father and was sleeping in his bed with another man Clyde's nestra is is her mother and is cruel to her is so mean to her she taunts her arrestes is gone if Janaya dead and she is an unmarried woman with no children in a world where that's not ideal to be so what is the point of her living piously in good graces with the gods when everything around her is dog [ __ ] she knows that she is behaving badly she's ashamed of it she says I know that I act wrongly for one my age and against my nature she says that she feels forced to act this way because of her mother's hostility and worst of all she sees herself as being like her mother for doing it she says when surrounded by evil one must practice evil in birthright's Freedom responsibility and Democratic comportment in esculus's orestaya Elizabeth markovitz writes escalus presents for the audience the intergenerational tensions that characterize life setting up the drama and resolution in terms of conflicts between those who have held power in the past and those who have arrived to demand their share of it succession is centered around the Roy kids coming to demand their share I'm the youngest boy they're feudal right Elektra is about Justice right and the character of Elektra is not a simple or easily digestible character she is one in a long chain of violence and Justice and violence and Justice and violence and Justice and that's the point at the end of the orastaya right at the end of the third play the humanities orestes is losing his mind and on the run because he killed his mother and Athena comes back from the beginning Athena comes back and she spares oresties and basically is like cut it out cut it out with the blood feuds cut it out with the Revenge killings enough but we don't have that in succession we don't have Gods we just have Logan Roy and when Logan Roy dies there is no one to come in and put an end to the blood feuds and put an end to the violence there is also however no longer anyone there to hold up the edges of this illusion because the rich live in a different world it's an unreality they live in a bubble a detached insane bubble and when Logan Roy dies that bubble bursts and reality is there and there is just no way that shiv Roy was ever going to vote to hand over waystar royco to either of her brothers in the light of day even if it is the better option there was no way that was going to happen she was never gonna do that because it wouldn't have been fair this is a tragedy and Kendall Roy is not the eldest boy they were all promised this they all did their time under the thumb of Logan Roy and whether she is valid or not in her being upset about this she thinks that it is her Birthright she feels just as entitled to that CEO spot as either of them do she was never going to give it up shiv shiv voting no at the end of succession is probably the greatest active agency that we see in the entire series and to prove it to you we have to go back to the crossroads because at the end of Oedipus Oedipus blinds himself but he's not the only one Gerta is Faust also blinds himself Faust blinds himself after he tells Mephisto to do what he's got to do to get him the land that this old couple are living on um and so Mephisto kills the old couple and then Faust is like what I didn't tell you to do that and mephisto's like I'm the devil what did you think I was gonna do and Faust tries to renounce magic blah blah blah blah he blinds himself or is blinded by like a ghost or care or something like that they do this because the bubble has burst reality has set in and they have been put face to face with the consequences of their actions I said earlier that we can control our bodies but we cannot control who makes our bodies and the act of blinding themselves is an active agency is a way of taking control over your being taking responsibility for the choices that you made and the choices you didn't know you were making shiv's choice at the end of season four can definitely be seen as she knew it would be Tom so she wanted to stay close to the action but I disagree I think that she gave up any chance of like pushing Kendall out or taking over or just like keeping the business in the family alone she gave up her family right like how long do you think it's gonna be before the three of them talk again she gave up the last shot that she had at ever running the thing and resigned herself to what I think we can agree is her worst nightmare being the wife she needs power over Tom right the girl does not play second fiddle she knows how women are treated in this world when was the last time the wife took over for the CEO but she's in that boardroom and she can't stomach Kendall and she sees the kind of people that they are that they are awful people and maybe it's better to just cut the tumor out and go with the empty suit hey we are [ __ ] we are not [ __ ] we are [ __ ] you are [ __ ] you're [ __ ] [ __ ] man I'm [ __ ] [ __ ] she's [ __ ] it's all [ __ ] nothing man I'm telling you this because I I know it okay we're nothing Oedipus effectively sort of Martyrs himself by blinding himself and then going off into the dark or whatever and because of that arguably his daughter Antigone is then capable of that same martyrdom she witnessed it so she can now do it Clayton nestra was a woman who was capable of murdering her husband and so she raised children who were capable of murdering her the devil is going to raise devilish children I love you man but you're not a serious person I love you but you are not serious people Logan Roy is a bad man he chose to do bad things he may have had his reasons but when you are a person like that a devilish person filled with shame and self-loathing when you are a person who chooses evil a person with holes inside of themself and you raise children with holes inside of themselves then yeah the poison is going to drip through stay with me I'm not done come on you didn't think I was going to leave it there did you no no no no part 12. you can definitely suck poison out [ __ ] up people raise [ __ ] up children end of there's nothing we can do is not the message instead we're going to end this by talking about what it is I think we are supposed to learn from succession which is nothing I think that if succession had a singular message or lesson to be learned from it then there wouldn't be half as many video essays on it okay there wouldn't be I saw a video essay on how it's about climate change I don't think we're supposed to learn anything from succession I think we're just supposed to feel to to pity and fear have catharsis all of these things that come with tragedies if succession is trying to do anything it's tell a true story show us what the world looks like what family looks like in its most high contrast form where every physical and financial need is taken care of and there are no excuses or explanations or justifications in a perfectly constructed world what does family look like then the same I think the answer is that it looks the same it looks [ __ ] up and mean it's that thing that gets under your skin like nothing else in the world and it's also the only thing that you might be willing to fight for fight with and fight over Logan Roy was the devil and he was also God and he was also their dad succession is impactful and will last I think for the same reason that Paradise Lost has lasted and been as impactful as it has for the same reason that these Faustian Bargains are getting told over and over again according to Russell whether the devil exists depends upon one's definition of the devil and the conceptual framework within which one is operating but the ideas presented in the Faustian bargain are Universal because I think we all have the capacity for evil within us and we want to know what happens when we choose it this whole thing started this whole video started because I was trying to figure out why I felt like if I was offered a million dollars to keep my mouth shut about some [ __ ] that the Roy's did to me I can't say with full confidence that I wouldn't take it and I wanted to know why why is the list of things that I wouldn't do for a large amount of money significantly smaller than I feel comfortable telling you what is it about these worlds that are created by the wealthy that is so tempting morality seems like chunk change why do I feel so ready to make a Faustian bargain to sell my soul to choose evil Mary D Harris writes all men have wished for more than they had and every crime committed has involved selling one soul to the devil indeed what is sin but giving in to the powers of evil the Royce have everything but they don't have everything people are always saying that there is no one to root for in succession or everyone is unlikable and I disagree with that completely I think that they are very likable and also awful I think both of those things are true Elizabeth markovitz writes individuals always come from somewhere a fact that often limits their range of choices and freedom but they also train an ability to act and ability that can only make sense through an admission of agency in spite of the seeming compulsions of inheritance in my last video I said that being a billionaire was a selfish choice and I stand by that it's it's a choice made by a person who can in fact make another Choice whether they are admitting it or not these aren't different kinds of people these aren't people with any special skills or superhuman ability they're not different people in our world they are our people in a different world one that is not real man come on it's [ __ ] nothing it's bits of glue and broken shows [ __ ] phony news [ __ ] come on when we talk about how someone behaves morally in the real world we talk about their character who are you on paper what would your actions look like if we had all of the information if we were looking at the crossroads from the bird's eye view our character is a result of sustained attention to the world and coherence to our intent functionality how we behave morally is a product of how we are treated morally how we exist in the world how much attention we can pay to the things around us the people around us and how much effort are we putting into the choices that we are making every single day this has been very convoluted to say the least trying to tie together Greek tragedies Faustian Bargains and succession didn't work there is no unique like perfect little bow thesis for this video maybe there will never be a thesis again I don't know but I think that what we can take away from this is if the devil literal metaphoric religious secular ideological whatever you want to call it if the devil is one of the many ways that we collectively deal with and process evil in our world and if we all have free will and thus the capacity for evil and we use metaphor and storytelling to explore morality then when we are making these deals with the devil who are we really making a deal with ourselves yup that's it brilliant well done class you're free to go I have to leave the house in five minutes but thank you for watching thank you to all of my patrons you guys are wonderful thank you to the patrons who helped me edit some of this script as usual leave a comment with your perspectives there's probably already a pinned comment down there of all the things that I got wrong I will see you next time and the next one is going to make a lot more sense I promise [Music] [Music] times [Music] how to forgive all the people people who lived in these hallowed Halls time is swept there the shades of warmth and so so with all that I know I was never break at all

Channel: biz

Views: 57,972

Keywords: Biz barclay, Christopher Marlowe, Kendall roy, Oscar wilde, Succession essay, critical analysis, critical theory, deal with the devil, devil, doctor Faustus, faustian bargain, funny succession moments, greek theatre, greek tragedy, hbo succession, literature analysis, media criticism, shiv roy, succession, succession I'm the eldest boy, succession explained, succession season 4, video essay, succession analysis, History of literary criticism, literary criticism

Id: i6sGOJZVDpg

Length: 155min 23sec (9323 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 17 2023