There’s no denying that the world is going to hell in a handbasket, and everyone has their opinion on why that is. Well, I’m here to tell you the real reason: they stopped making rich people the bad guys in kids’ movies.
Remember in movies like Newsies when the kids were trying to unionize and to get their fair share of the child labor economy? That movie would never get made today, as A) unionizing would never be shown in a positive light, and B) rich capitalist media moguls would never greenlight a movie about rich capitalist media moguls screwing over everyone.
Then there was the Little Rascals. Adorable scamp Alfalfa was trying to woo Darla, whose attention turned to Waldo, a preppy new rich kid who came from big oil money. Granted, Alfalfa’s membership in the He-Man Woman Haters Club probably didn’t help things.
But even so, if that movie were made today, it would be about “poor” kids whose parents only made $100,000 per year, and the bad guy would be a vulnerable immigrant kid or something.
Nowadays rich people are never the bad guys in kids movies. Because in movies, as in real life, the only metric of success people comprehend is wealth. So by default, if you’re not wealthy, you’re a failure in life and unworthy of love and happiness.
As a matter of fact, you don’t see poor — or even middle-class people — in movies anymore. Unless it’s weird poverty porn like Shameless or Hillbilly Elegy. While those aren’t kids’ movies, or even movies at all, you still get the idea.
Some people would point to Richie Rich as being an example of rich people being the good guys in a kids’ movie. On the surface, they’d be right. However, a closer look reveals that Richie Rich wanted to share his privilege with his working class friends, including that girl whose mom looked like Rosie O’Donnell.
Plus his parents’ vault contained treasured keepsakes from Richie’s childhood and not jewels, diamonds, and other spoils of rampant capitalist domination. This facet of the movie is highly unrealistic, as it proved that Mr. and Mrs. Rich actually had a heart, unlike real rich people.
So if we’re going to get the world back on track, the only way to do it is to start teaching kids that rich people are inherently evil and should be ridiculed and humiliated at every opportunity.