Prior to one of our discussions of Anisha Lakani's novel, Schooled, we as a class listened to a number of songs, one of which was The Beatles' song "Money". The song, while catchy, is an important and revealing anthem for the warping of material values and perspectives in society--a theme also resonant throughout Schooled.
In "Money," the lyrics of the first three verses are as follows:
The best things in life are free
But you can keep 'em for the birds and bees.
Now gimme money (that's what I want)
That's what I want (that's what I want)
That's what I want (that's what I want), oh-yeh,
That's what I want.
Your lovin' give me a thrill
But your lovin' don't pay my bills.
Now gimme money (that's what I want)
That's what I want (that's what I want)
That's what I want (that's what I want), oh-yeh,
That's what I want.
Money don't get everything it's true.
What it don't get I can't use.
Now gimme money (that's what I want)
That's what I want (that's what I want)
That's what I want (that's what I want), oh yeh,
That's what I want.
Like I said, the song and its tune are catchy and fun, but the lyrics, especially when written down, are dark and objectively troubling. The idea that money can be more important than love, or happiness, or any other intangible facet of life I often think of as being beyond economization, is tragic, and in my opinion, represents a warped set of values and perspectives on money.
In Lakani's Schooled, main character Anna takes on this sort of mindset as she becomes sucked into the vortex of elite society, extreme wealth, and consuming greed. Interestingly enough for me, it was the combination of both hearing the song and reading the novel that sort of helped me extract this sense of value mutation as transcendent and transformative.
I was actually prompted to analyze this notion further after watching a documentary in my Anthropology class called "Born Rich," a film made by Jamie Johnson, an heir to the Johnson and Johnson fortune. In the film, Jamie interviews his friends who happen to all be heirs to private fortunes and live in New York City. In essence, he and his friends, boys and girls who attended private academies like Chapin, Collegiate, Choate, St. Paul's, and Nightingale-Bamford to name a few, eerily mimic the world Lakani captures in her novel. At one point, Luke Weil, an heir to a billion dollar gaming fortune states, "the thought of losing my money is really like trying to imagine a parent or sibling dying. You just cant." While frighteningly shallow, Weil's allocation of money as a part of the family, as part of his identity from birth, speaks in an organic and powerful way to the transformative power of money in the novel, the song, and in real life.
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