I forgot to tell you about this Netflix documentary that I recommend. The Queen of Versailles is a tragic film about the pitiable owner of a time share corporation and his beauty-queen wife who set out to build the biggest home in America. The financial crisis intervened and the documentary-maker got a lot more than she bargained for.
With seemingly endless income, the Seigels, David and Jackie, focus on consumption in the most ostentatious of ways. They have 8 children, countless staff and pets and parties. And begin to build an American Versailles. When the financial crash reveals that their credit was massively overextended, they have to cut back. David's tone of cocky confidence switches quickly to morose introversion. Jackie becomes a bit more human and pitiable--she plastic surgeries herself to the nines in order to stave off her husband's threatened trading her in at 40 for two 20-year-olds. Jackie seems nice, but clueless--their home becomes a mess of dirty and dying pets, because there aren't enough staff to clean it and care for the living things inside. And the Seigels have to put their Versailles building project on hold; the bank eventually takes the house.
The most horrifying moment of the film conveys the complexity of Jackie's character. She says of her 8 children, "I wouldn't have had so many if I had known that I wouldn't have had help." On the one hand, it's generous of her to have lots of kids and to love animals like she does. On the other hand, she has no connection to reality at all and loves her kids and animals as possessions and luxury items that she gathers and other people care for.
1 comment:
And the part when they decide to have a family dinner and they all eat on plastic plates and drink out of their own diet pepsi bottles! That's probably not the worst thing in the world, but it made me sad.
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