Finale (Episode 8) of "Capote vs The Swans" - The End of High Society, Shift from Purposeless Pleasure to Driven Achievement

 The pacing of the last episode of "Capote vs The Swans" is stagnant, mirroring the dying of the High Society it depicts. 

Essentially the narrator of "The Great Gatsby" summed up that ethos with the phrase "They are careless people." A lost generation of the wealthy they float around the ether, both accidentally and deliberately hurting people and being locked within themselves. Even Jackie and her sister Lee come across as drifters without purpose. 

The year is 1984. During it Truman Capote will die. He has to. There is no place for his kind or the beautiful people he chased. Not any more. The episode opens with Capote's being sprawled across Babe Paley's tombstone. He asks to be let in. That is, to be released from a world that has outgrown an aimless culture of pleasure, which dines on petty spite and and the arrogance of exclusion.

Obviously, those values have been replaced by the ethos of extreme achievement, built up on the altars of innovation and hustle. The settings range from tech to Wall Street to law firms. That is so much a paradigm shift that the new kind of novelist - Tom Wolfe - cartoons those bustling gunners in "Bonfire of the Vanities." 

Instead of the Bill Paley kind there are the financial tycoons like Leon Black, Marc Rowan and Josh Harris who co-found Apollo. 

Instead of the ladies who lunch like Babe Paley there are powerful female entrepreneurs such as Madonna and Oprah Winfrey. 

Instead of the endless sipping of drinks there are the 14- to 18-hour days. every day of work.

Instead of pleasure there is a struggle for Work/Life Balance 

That's where we still are. Or maybe it's just the persona we have to adopt. Myriad lawyers I coach gush about the ordeal of the long long hours. Wall Streeters boast about how little sleep they need. 

In most cases you have only one shot in communications. Jane Genova is a communications coach and content-creator. Complimentary consultation (please text 203-468-8579 or email janegenova374@gmail.com) 


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