Propaganda Isn't Poetry
Succession's Logan Roy Sees Through Your Silly Allusions
You’re reading a guest post on PopPoetry by Mary Kay McBrayer is the author of America’s First Female Serial Killer: Jane Toppan and the Making of a Monster. You can find her short works at Oxford American, Narratively, Mental Floss, and FANGORIA, among other publications. Follow Mary Kay McBrayer on Instagram and Twitter, or check out her author site here.
If you’ve ever seen Succession, you know that two things motivate Logan Roy (Brian Cox), money and power.
If you haven’t seen the show, that summation probably sounds like Shakespeare.
And I don’t mean that figuratively, either. Many of Shakespeare’s tragedies (and even some of his histories) focus on a power-hungry protagonist, whether it’s Othello, Titus Andronicus, or the most obvious, Macbeth.
No episode goes as meta-narrative as Season 2, Episode 5, “Tern Haven,” in which Logan Roy has grown determined to buy out his nemesis news company, Pierce. He develops a plan of attack before they arrive, which is, essentially, to appear like a normal, loving family who wouldn’t easily each step on the other’s faces to have Logan “hand over the keys” of their conglomerate to them, as Nan, Pierce’s matriarch (Cherry Jones) states over dinner.
It’s weird enough, right, that the Roys are so cutthroat. Every viewer can watch and agree that they’re terrible people, even if they have a few arguably good qualities like ambition, intelligence, or foresight. What’s weirder still is the Pierce family.
The Pierces are American bluebloods coming from generational wealth whose family motto is “I triumph in the truth.” In direct contrast, Roman Roy (Kieran Culkin) tries to translate this from Latin to English as, “This wine is triumphant? Your vagina trumpets?” Roman immediately sees the Pierces and their motto for the joke that they are.
The Pierces are family of journalists who are allegedly apolitical in their reportage. Siobhan (Sarah Snook), the lone liberal of the Roy clan, even dissociates from the Pierces herself, allowing that, “(Pierce) just follow(s) the truth, wherever it leads, right?”
The answer is no. Like Roman intuits immediately, the Pierces don’t follow the truth. They want everyone to believe their truest pride is in integrity and virtuosity (as would anyone whose livelihood was reporting), but what they really tout the most is their ability to quote literature and especially poetry without its context, thereby using part of a truth to support whatever they want to say.
Our first example comes when both helicopters land in the field by the Tern Haven house. Nan embraces the Roys’ confidant and Vice-Chairman of Waystar Royco, Frank (Peter Friedman), and greets him as “St. Francis of Assissi!” Why? Frank has exactly nothing in common with the saint who some consider the first Italian poet. She’s merely name-dropping.
The thing is, they’re not even deep cuts! In her very next line, Nan calls the estate their “city on a hill” which, while not necessarily literary, evokes the famous sermon from John Winthrop which references the 17th century Massachusetts Bay colony… which is not where they’re located.
Right afterward, when the Pierce cousin with two PhDs, the current one in literature, urges Nan to get moving, she misquotes a line from the famous Robert Frost poem, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.”
The final stanza of the actual poem reads like this;
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
In extremely broad strokes, something weighs on this narrator enough to make him want to give up living. The final stanza is the narrator’s resolution to continue on because they have given their word to do so. It has no relevance at all to what is happening on Succession in this scene.
All this to say that Nan Pierce’s three successive allusions label her a fraud: anyone versed in poetry or literature will notice at least one of them, remember its context, and frown at its misappropriation… which is the whole point of including them.
Succession’s audience is a smart one. The writers undoubtedly expect us to pick up on the Pierce’s bullshitting—I mean, when cousin Maxim says he likes to read three works of fiction and one nonfiction at the same time because it’s “natural selection.” My dude. That is hot nonsense. And your mama named you “Maxim?” Wow, the Pierces are really committed to appearing literary without having any substance behind that façade… like, did no one tell them in any of their myriad PhDs that “maxim” is one step away from “cliché?” In a normal show, without the near-impeccable dialogue like that of Succession, I would have thought this was just lazy writing and turned it off. Long before cousin Mark says he’s “no learned astronomer,” hyuk hyuk hyuk. Not only is it insufferable, but it’s also wrong. It has a point, though.
The crowning glory of the whole “Tern Haven” episode is perhaps the moment when Nan brings in the roast from the kitchen to full applause, despite having done none of the preparations herself. She sits behind the entrée and says, “Grace! I’m afraid we’ve gone so Unitarian out here that we’ve given up on poor Jesus and started worshipping Shakespeare.” I must confess: this scene was so ludicrous that I watched with my mouth wide open.
What happens next is that cousin Naomi (Annabelle Dexter-Jones), who claims that she’s a recovering addict recites the following monologue from Shakespeare’s Richard II… and by that, I mean, she recites SOME of it. Here’s the full stanza, with its full couplets, and the part Naomi recites is highlighted:
Yea, but not change his spots: take but my shame.
And I resign my gage. My dear dear lord,
The purest treasure mortal times afford
Is spotless reputation: that away,
Men are but gilded loam or painted clay.
A jewel in a ten-times-barr'd-up chest
Is a bold spirit in a loyal breast.
Mine honour is my life; both grow in one:
Take honour from me, and my life is done:
Then, dear my liege, mine honour let me try;
In that I live and for that will I die.
It’s just as much a performance as any allusion so far, even though this quote is the one that makes the most sense in its context within Succession’s zeitgeist: they’re all thinking about the distinction between the “barbaric” Roys versus the civilized, poetic Pierces. It makes sense that Naomi, the one who’s the most honest about her two-facedness, would cherry-pick this part from Act I scene i. It’s what they all do: quote, name drop, and allude credible, notable texts out of context, which is the essence of propaganda.
The Roys are clearly no poets, nor do they claim to be. This guise of literariness is one that the Pierce family assumes to cultivate their image. By the end of the weekend, though, everyone has seen straight through their ruse. When Siobhan asks her husband Tom (Matthew Macfadyen) if there’s booze in the room, he says, “Are you kidding? It’s just Emily Dickinson and low thread-count sheets.” That line did make me laugh aloud. This family may “worship Shakespeare,” but they do love their Romantics.
Logan Roy goes along with it because it’s all part of the plan. He’s an expert at keeping his focus on his ultimate goal, and if he has to go along with some bullshit Shakespearean monologuing for a weekend to get it, well, that’s the cost of doing this kind of business.
That is, until Nan blows the deal.
In their final talk, Nan squeezes Logan, which according to his own daughter, he hates. Nan says, “That’s the offer.”
It’s here that Logan finally pulls their coat. He went along with their little play until it interfered with his goal. He says back, “You don’t have an offer. I have an offer.”
She says, “You can’t put a value on what we do.”
“Funny,” he says, “I have put a value on what you do.”
He ultimately walks away from the table, but not before twisting the knife. He turns back to Nan and says, “Would you like to hear my favorite passage from Shakespeare? ‘Take the fucking money.’”
It’s so satisfying to see him take the wind out of their sails because yes, he might be an awful mogul with no virtue or integrity, but like recognizes like, and the only thing worse than a terrible person is a terrible person who thinks they’re a good person. Logan calls their bluff, and as they land back on their home helipad, he gets the all saying they have a deal. When the situation involves awful people like this, Logan is right: “Money wins.”
My favorite show-boating of the entire episode, though, is when cousin Greg (Nicholas Joseph Braun) shows up and congratulates Logan: “Congratulations! You won!”
And Logan says, in a final “fuck you” to the Pierces and a detached allusion to Washington Irving, “Greg! Have a drink, you beautiful Ichabod Crane!”
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