The only thing worse than not having money is wanting it.
At least that seems to be the case in certain circles. What we all needed, evidently, were greedy ancestors who could die and leave us without the taint of desire.
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The only thing worse than not having money is wanting it.
At least that seems to be the case in certain circles. What we all needed, evidently, were greedy ancestors who could die and leave us without the taint of desire.
You’ll be called greedy if you work and save obsessively to buy a big house and fill it with antiques, but if you’ve inherited that big house and the antiques are simply identified as Grampy’s set of first editions or Mumsy’s matched Degas, then it’s OK, and you’re not greedy.
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You’re aristocratic.
If you long for the stuff, having been denied it at an early age, however, then you’re lost to avarice. You’re petty bourge, baby. Those better bred than you will tsk-tsk.
We spend a lot of time judging what other people “need.”
Remember in King Lear when his two mean daughters want to strip him of his last remaining trappings of majesty? He has moved in with them, and they don’t think he needs guards. They convince themselves by saying that Lear, used to having everything he has ever wanted, doesn’t need a hundred or even a dozen soldiers around him. When they wish to take the final man away from his side, saying “What needs one?” Lear bellows, terrified and suddenly alone, from his innermost depths, “Reason not the need.”
Lear doesn’t need soldiers any more than Scrooge needed silver or Midas needed gold, but it doesn’t stop them from wanting it because, in fact, their possessions are the only things that define them. If gluttony says you are what you eat (to which the character in Nicole Hollander’s cartoon Sylvia replies “That makes me a taco chip”), then the greedy are what they acquire.
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It makes the driver of a red Porsche first and foremost the driver of a red Porsche if that object is the best, most powerful, most compelling thing about him. (Note: It often is.)
American movies love the greedy tycoon, the miser, the selfish and powerful manipulator out for his own gain. From 1924 and Erich von Stroheim’s Greed (a film version of Frank Norris’ 1899 novel McTeague) to Citizen Kane’s acquisition of the boxed-up treasures of Europe when all he wanted was paint-peeling Rosebud, to Wall Street, we get a sense that the greedy hero is more misguided than anything else. We want to forgive him or, in rare cases, forgive her. These figures are too much like our own dear selves to consider them terminally wicked.
My favorite greedy film hero is less tragic than his classier peers. When Mel Brooks cast Zero Mostel as Max Bialystock in his 1968 classic, The Producers, he created a flawless portrait of the greedy man who nevertheless remains unequivocally heroic throughout. Max, who was once a fabulously successful producer of Broadway hits, is now a gigolo, giving blue-haired ladies one last thrill on their way to the cemetery. He wears a cardboard belt. He is starving for money and what is most compelling about Max is that he is shamelessly willing to get rich without any hungering after success. Malice plays no role in his endeavors; he just wants the money.
He convinces his accountant, Gene Wilder (playing a neurotic Leo Bloom, who would make James Joyce proud) to agree to a scheme where they sell 25,000 percent of the profits to a surefire flop--a show called “Springtime for Hitler"--with plans to leave town with the leftover cash once the show closes.
Listening to Mostel sing the praises of money to thumb-sucking Wilder is a hysterical presage of Gekko’s speech. Mostel sings of “lovely ladies with long legs and lunch at Delmonico’s,” yelling with joyful envy out his dirty office window, “Flaunt it baby, flaunt it,” to a man exiting a Rolls- Royce. Mostel’s appetite is catching. When Zero kisses the piles of money he has conned out of willing fools, fondling the fistfuls of cash, saying, “Hello, boys” to all the presidents on the bills, we have Mostel giving voice to the greedy creature inside all of us. When he screams out in complete abandon, “I Want That Money,” we can cheer in a way that we never would have cheered Gordon Gekko.
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Here is Greed we experienced as kids waiting for birthday presents that might or might not come; here’s greed with a small “g” that comes out of the hard-won experience of uncertainty. We might grab a little too quickly or hold on a little too long or a little too tightly because we’re afraid we’ll never see such pleasure again. Too much, as the country song goes, just ain’t enough.