CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
If you’ve just returned from an enjoyable Christmas break with your family and friends, then you might not be aware of the most recent development in internet identity politics.
It seems that millennials may only have just discovered what the word ‘nepotism’ means.
Only five years since the all-consuming US Presidential election between Hilary CLINTON and Donald TRUMP, the generation that was raised on Drew Barrymore movies and Norah Jones albums, are now obsessed with pointing out the privilege held by the family members of high-profile people.
With the push to mandate racial and LGBTI diversity on screen now a thing of the past thanks to HBO’s Euphoria, it seems the next greatest injustice in the hollow world of Hollywood celebrity culture is this new thing called ‘family’.
Nepotism babies, “nepo babies” for short, are being grilled online for having far easier time entering the industries that their families were already stars of.
Names like the Beckhams, Jaggers, Downeys, Apatows, Cyrus – they all keep popping in the IMDB credits – and quite frankly, it’s unfair to the 6 million restaurant staff in Los Angeles who weren’t raised by freak thespians and didn’t have the advantage of having Harvey Weinstein as a guest at their Bar Mitzvah.
Zoe Kravitz, daughter of Lenny Kravitz and Lisa Bonet, recently confessed that she feels insecure about the fact that her parent’s names helped propel her into stardom, but said “It’s completely normal for people to be in the family business”
Unfortunately, the tradition of family business is not a good enough excuse for the internet, who demand these stunning performers – who we love – give back all the money they’ve made and find themselves a job cleaning three-star motel rooms.
With Maude Apatow now facing backlash from the less-important theatre crowd for accepting a role in a Broadway show, it is not clear when this hysteria will end, and how it could ever be corrected.
However, one thing that is clear is, if we didn’t know most of these nepo babies were nepo babies until they were exposed by bitter entertainment journalists and Twitter mean girls… and we had previously assumed they were just good at their jobs… Then maybe their jobs aren’t actually that difficult?
