Luxury in the Neoliberal Era

A prominent theme of discussion of the Bond novels and films--the more critical kind that rises above a poptimist denigration of earlier works to better promote the new--is the ways in which the original conception has dated. One of the more interesting but less talked-about aspects of this is the earlier Bond novels and films' presentation of what may be called "lifestyle fantasy"--their image of what was luxurious and glamorous. As has been noted time and again, much of what seemed so in the '50s and early '60s--getting on a jet plane, staying in a Carribbean resort--has come to seem commonplace to "middle-class people," and even for those not affluent enough to afford such vacations (often confusing the "lifestyles" they see on TV with how they live), less wildly fantastic than they seemed back in the series' heyday. Much else has simply come to seem old-fashioned--like nightclubs as places where one wears black tie and evening gowns. (Certainly the opening sequence of the first XXX movie offered what a young person of even twenty years ago was apt to think of that.)

I have little to add to my earlier remarks about the Bond series here, but these days I find myself leaving on reruns of older television, and being struck by how, rather than some peculiarity of the James Bond series, this is generally the case. Looking at Hart to Hart's images of luxury, for instance, I find myself thinking about the house in which the Harts live. They have what can only be considered a very large and beautiful home. The vast majority of us, even those of us in the "First World," are unlikely to ever live in anything nearly so spacious or attractive. But today it does not give the impression of opulence that I suspect it was meant to; the grandeur one might associate with people who fly about in private jet planes.

This is most likely a matter of how the past few decades went. An era of spectacular economic growth they have not been for America, or the world. But the richest have got much, much richer. J. Paul Getty, in 1976 the world's richest man with a fortune of $6 billion, would, even with his fortune's size adjusted for inflation (to $27 billion in today's money), not make the list of the 25 wealthiest today. As will probably surprise no one, that list is now headed by Jeff Bezos, whose fortune (recently estimated at $146 billion) is more than five times as large as Getty's was then. And contrary to the drivel some "moralists" still spout about the Puritan virtues as the source of great fortunes, the billionaires have not hesitated to lavish the money on themselves, raising the stakes with regard to luxury--this age now seeing them take billion-dollar compounds as their personal homes.

In short, when it comes to houses, yachts and just about everything else where the expenditure of more money translates to more obvious opulence, the standard has changed, and changed profoundly.