Do rich characters deserve pity?

Burnouts3s3

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I watch a lot of TV. Lately, I've been noticing a trend where we follow the lives of rich people. Not simply well-off, but people with millions if not billions of dollars. Lots of times, we're expected to feel sorry for these people because a certain situation arises.

Is it just me in saying that a lot of rich characters don't deserve pity, let alone sympathy? Now, obviously, this doesn't apply to 'all' rich characters. Characters like Tony Stark or Bruce Wayne suffer a great personal tragedy and use their wealth for the betterment of mankind. I also don't mean entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs who came from nothing but made something out of themselves; their wealth came from hard work, brilliance (and a little bit of piracy).

But you get the reality TV shows and soap operas like Gossip Girl and it's a little harder for me to feel sorry for them. 'Oh god. I have so many problems! How will I ever survive with my vast trust fund?'. They sound less like real people and more like Elliot Rodger with their persecution complex.

What do you think?
 

Vegosiux

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Andrew Siribohdi said:
Is it just me in saying that a lot of rich characters don't deserve pity, let alone sympathy? Now, obviously, this doesn't apply to 'all' rich characters. Characters like Tony Stark or Bruce Wayne suffer a great personal tragedy and use their wealth for the betterment of mankind. I also don't mean entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs who came from nothing but made something out of themselves; their wealth came from hard work, brilliance (and a little bit of piracy).
All wealth comes from hard work and brilliance. In most cases, someone else's hard work and brilliance.

As for wealthy people in fiction, I actually don't think there's much to say, as, well, it's fiction. You can always retcon their origins and personalities to whatever's currently socially most acceptable and/or popular. But you know, when "loads and loads of money" is basically what your "superpower" is about, your heroism becomes way less impressive...

...unless there's a reverse psychology trick at play here, saying that people who are filthy rich and sympathetic are indeed quite rare.
 

Elfgore

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Depends on the character and situation.

For example, the anime Toradora was a much easier watch for me than many others. The girl we were meant to fill pity for was a rich girl, with an estranged father. We were meant to feel sad for her and I felt nothing. Her Dad pays for anything she wants and she has no hardships other than "why can't I be honest?" I felt more pity towards the MC who comes from a single-parent home, barely getting by. His mom has to work a hostess job just to get enough money to survive. And a spoiler later in the series doesn't help either. That is a character I feel no pity for.

Now characters like Bruce Wayne I can feel pity for. He has lost a lot in his life. But he doesn't let it slow him down. He still protects the people of Gotham to the best of his ability.
 

Timotei

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For me it depends on the situation and how the individual has been depicted.

If it's a comic book character like Bruce Wayne or Britt Reid where the character has money pouring out their ear, yet uses that money to help others, I can feel sorry for them. Maybe perhaps Adam Sandler's character in Funny People could eek a bit of investment out of me when they're portrayed in a manner where their wealth means nothing to them.

However when they're the modern media "loser" in that their life is hard because they have to deal with some minor issue, yet their wife is Selma Hayek, they own a garage full of Ferrari Enzos, and live in an "apartment" which is really the top floor of some skyscraper with a pool, I couldn't give two shits about them. Worst yet is when you get a situation like Farcray 3 where you get a gaggle of douchefucks on display played to Paper Planes, and I completely lose interest in the "save your friends" parts because none of them are likable with their "Rich people problems".
 

Aetera

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When I saw the title, I was about to mention Tony Stark, but you beat me to it. Characters like that, yeah, I can definitely feel sorry for them. Others that suffer only minor dilemmas while still having piles of cash to fall back on, no. Really, for me, if their problems outweigh their blessings, then I can feel sorry for them. If not, then no.
 

verdant monkai

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Well Yeah money isnt going to bring Bruce Wayne's parents back is it. Rich people in situations where money wont help deserve sympathy as much as the next guy.
 

Fox12

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Andrew Siribohdi said:
I watch a lot of TV. Lately, I've been noticing a trend where we follow the lives of rich people. Not simply well-off, but people with millions if not billions of dollars. Lots of times, we're expected to feel sorry for these people because a certain situation arises.

Is it just me in saying that a lot of rich characters don't deserve pity, let alone sympathy? Now, obviously, this doesn't apply to 'all' rich characters. Characters like Tony Stark or Bruce Wayne suffer a great personal tragedy and use their wealth for the betterment of mankind. I also don't mean entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs who came from nothing but made something out of themselves; their wealth came from hard work, brilliance (and a little bit of piracy).

But you get the reality TV shows and soap operas like Gossip Girl and it's a little harder for me to feel sorry for them. 'Oh god. I have so many problems! How will I ever survive with my vast trust fund?'. They sound less like real people and more like Elliot Rodger with their persecution complex.

What do you think?
Do rich people deserve pity because they're rich? Of course not. But that doesn't mean they're immune to it if it's deserved. When bad things happen to another human being, I feel bad for them, because I have the ability to feel empathy. Do I feel bad for Hannah montannah, whose only complaint is that she's rich and famous? Uh. No. Would I feel bad for a billionaire whose child died of cancer? He'll yes. We all deal with tragedy at some point in our lives, and while the rich may have certain leg ups in life, they're not immune to pain.
 

V da Mighty Taco

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It really does depend on the character and scenario. Money can't solve everything, after all.

Take Frozen, for example. Both of the main protagonists are pretty fucking loaded, with countless servants and a giant-ass castle to their name. Elsa in particular even becomes the absolute ruler of her own nation early on in the movie. However, that doesn't stop us from feeling empathy for them and wanting to see them overcome their problems, especially for the aforementioned Queen Elsa. As movies like this show, even thing like the relationship issues (familial and otherwise) of filthy rich people can be made incredibly sympathetic given the right context.
 

IceStar100

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I'll put it simply

Money does not solve your promblems it simply hands you a new set.
 

Majinash

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verdant monkai said:
Well Yeah money isnt going to bring Bruce Wayne's parents back is it. Rich people in situations where money wont help deserve sympathy as much as the next guy.
Glad someone else feels this way. I feel sad when a pet dies, and I'd feel sad if a pet died and I had millions of dollars. Money doesn't remove someone's soul/

People who refuse to empathize with the rich always came across as jealous to me. Yeah we all want to have money, but no need to treat people who actually have it as less than human.

That said, anyone who bases their view of rich people on any kind of reality show is just... I don't know where to go there. It's reality TV, it's more fake than fiction.
 

Vault101

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all encompassing vauge questions like thease are kind of useless....it depends on how the work is handled and the veiwer

I can't really get behined the british reality show "escapse to the country" where youve got a bunch of older british people buying fancy ass houses in the country....now granted its not for me

in the movie "Her" I wasn't that moved by the protagonists struggles....yeah he's lonley, but he also has a cool job and a cool aparentment, a cool freind and he lives in a world with intelligent videogames
 

DementedSheep

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Well yeah, having money doesn't solve all problems or make all problems less impact-full. It doesn't mean you can't have a hard time sometimes or need support. If your gong to start with the 'you don't deserve sympathy because your well off' thing keep in mind that you are definitely far better off than a lot of people to. That doesn't mean you deserve to have all your problems just dismissed without sympathy.

If its a minor problem or they moping in general about life being unfair to them then you're not likely to be sympathetic although that really applies to most people.
 

sabercrusader

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Of course rich characters deserve pity. Some of them anyways.

For example, without spoiling anything, I pitied Harry Osborn in The Amazing Spider-Man 2. He had a pretty shitty life to be honest, and he was in a horrible situation in the movie too. Of course there are some rich characters that don't deserve to be pitied, but there are plenty of characters who aren't rich that don't deserve to be pitied.
 

Worgen

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IceStar100 said:
I'll put it simply

Money does not solve your promblems it simply hands you a new set.
True, but it gives you much much more leeway with your problems than if you didn't have money.
 

The Apple BOOM

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To be blunt, compared to the entire world, we are the 10%, if not the 1%. Does that make us not deserving of pity? I feel like this question is part of a greater cultural feeling that I am disturbed by. Rich people are getting blamed for the worlds ills a lot more than usual. Yes, the great ills of the world are the fault of rich people, for the most part, but only certain ones. I hate it when someone who has a million dollars is treated like Madoff because of their money. People tend to forget that Warren Buffett exists as well.
 

Asita

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Really the wealth should be inconsequential to our sympathy. If a kid's parents are murdered then the degree of sympathy we have for that kid shouldn't be filtered based on whether or not the kid's family belonged to the top 10% or even 1%.

By a similar token, however, superficial issues shouldn't warrant more sympathy than they'd deserve in any other circumstance. "I act out because I want people to think I'm cool" is not a problem that gains empathy because of the speaker's economic class. If you change nothing about a character outside of whether or not they have a good credit score, it's not a compelling confession. What can make it compelling is why the character wanted to seem cool. If the character was isolated and only started gaining acceptance amongst peers by acting out, that's grounds for sympathy. If it's revealed that the character's parents only pay attention to him/her when they get a note from the principal, that's grounds for sympathy. If the character believes that's the only way to make a parent feel proud, that's grounds for sympathy.

The Breakfast Club, I think, does a wonderful job along these lines. The brain, the athlete, the basket case, the princess, and the criminal are all easy enough for the audience to empathize with, especially during their confessions. Their socioeconomic status informs their characters, but it doesn't take the bite out of their respective problems. Their problems garner sympathy, their monetary worth does not.

Or to borrow from a scene in Arkham Asylum for illustrative purposes:


Now, that's easily one of the more powerful moments in the game, and almost perfectly reflects on the callous nature of this question. A tragic situation is a tragic situation, money will not lessen the emotional blow, and the idea that it should in some way only adds another layer to it.
 

Holythirteen

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Ah well, we want to watch people who are different from us, and lead interesting lives. Who you hate and who you like don't really matter much, as long as you keep watching. Morbid fascination has an edge over endearing characters any day. And the reality show people definitely don't want you to pity their characters! They show the worst of whatever footage they get.

Come to think of it, how many hours of footage do they have to go through? Ok, whoever has that job, deserves my pity, even if they are rich from it.
 

Ieyke

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Money doesn't really factor into deserving pity. At all.
Same shit sucks whether you have money or not.

Unless you just mean on sort of a generic default level of comparing a guy whose "normal" is living in a mansion compared to a guy whose normal is living under a bridge.
Then the "normal" can be pitied, I guess.
But when shit goes wrong, shit goes wrong. If it's not their own stupid fault and they're not terrible people, they probably deserve pity.

A rich dude starving in the desert and a poor dude starving in the desert have it equally bad.
All being rich does is shield you from certain types of suck in a lot of situations.
Poor and rich people can do equally moronic things and not deserve pity when shit goes wrong.
 

MeChaNiZ3D

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Said it in the OP. Depends on the character. If it's a rich character who suffers great personal tragedy or other things, then yes, if they're just fucking around with all the mountains of money they have and the actual conflict is them not having the perfect wedding or some shit then no.
 

Tono Makt

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Andrew Siribohdi said:
I watch a lot of TV. Lately, I've been noticing a trend where we follow the lives of rich people. Not simply well-off, but people with millions if not billions of dollars. Lots of times, we're expected to feel sorry for these people because a certain situation arises.

Is it just me in saying that a lot of rich characters don't deserve pity, let alone sympathy? Now, obviously, this doesn't apply to 'all' rich characters. Characters like Tony Stark or Bruce Wayne suffer a great personal tragedy and use their wealth for the betterment of mankind. I also don't mean entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs who came from nothing but made something out of themselves; their wealth came from hard work, brilliance (and a little bit of piracy).

But you get the reality TV shows and soap operas like Gossip Girl and it's a little harder for me to feel sorry for them. 'Oh god. I have so many problems! How will I ever survive with my vast trust fund?'. They sound less like real people and more like Elliot Rodger with their persecution complex.

What do you think?
Any character can deserve pity, regardless of whether they're rich or not. It all depends on the reason we're supposed to feel pity for them.

For example, if you have a rich woman who is trying to find someone to love her and she's having a hard time of it, it might be possible to feel pity for her if every person she falls for simply wants her money, power and influence yet don't really care about her. Or a rich celebrity who just wants to go out and have a meal with his girlfriend without being hounded by people wanting his autograph, or their picture taken with them, or for the celebrity to answer questions, etc. The ones that really get me are celebrities who are trying to protect the privacy of their children - money and fame can't stop paparazzi from using telephoto lenses to take pictures of your 7 year old daughter playing around your backyard pool in a bikini, and that same money and power can't stop unscrupulous websites, TV shows and magazines from publishing those photographs and having talking heads make comments about the potential "body issues" your 7 year old might have due to some slightly out of focus photographs. Money can't buy love, fame doesn't bring as much power as people might think, so watching the rich and famous be hamstrung by the very things that make them rich and famous can be legitimate situations where people should feel pity for them.

But most of the time when we're being asked to feel pity for rich characters, particularly on Reality TV, it's not clear if we're being asked to pity them or we're being given an opportunity to laugh at them. There are examples in real life where the rich and famous are trying to elicit pity (the Koch brothers, Lindsey Lohan, Justin Bieber all come to mind) but it's something they all brought upon themselves. Sometimes it's powerful groups of people who are trying to make themselves seem oppressed in order to elicit the "pity" they think other groups are getting ("Oh no, she said "Happy Holidays" to me - I'M BEING OPPRESSED! It's Christmas, say "Merry Christmas"! Stop oppressing me!"), not just someone who is rich or famous, and it's the same general idea.

On the flip side simply being poor isn't a good reason to feel pity for someones problems. I'm dirt poor right now and for the most part it's entirely my fault. I could explain why my life has gone to the dumps over the past few years, how a bunch of it isn't my fault, but most of it is under my power and my control, and I simply made poor choices which has led to me being in a crappy position. I don't deserve pity or sympathy, I probably wouldn't accept pity or sympathy for myself, and if I saw someone in the same position I am now, with similar circumstances to myself, I wouldn't feel pity or sympathy. I'd feel empathy and if I could I'd do what I could to help out, but it would be a "Dude, you done fucked up. Let's see if we can't unfuck this mess you've made."