Millennial media replaced class solidarity with open wealth aspiration

Evidence

Yet for all its focus on immutable identities like race, gender, and sexual orientation, Glee and its millennial viewers showed little interest in class solidarity. As millennials became strivers and hustlers, open aspirations to wealth replaced collective resistance. Wes Anderson’s films of this era exemplified the sumptuous allure of privilege, while shows like Gossip Girl updated the teen soap opera for the internet age, centering its drama on the lives of Upper East Side prep school elites. Framed around a TMZ-like anonymous blog chronicling their misdeeds, Gossip Girl indulged both schadenfreude and aspiration. — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 352

Categorization

• XREF: Feeds directly the counter-case argument: an era where everyone consumes wealth-spectacle without it signaling aspiration is consistent with ‘omnivore monoculture’ — wealth display became background chatter rather than status signal.