some have already pointed out hypocrisy willing to chart celebrity nepotism, Tweet: “this [article] That’s excellent. Now someone does it for journalists. ” Direct parent-to-child nepotism plagues many industries. including this (As a New York magazine briefly stated). But it’s worth exploring the more subtle stages of nepotism.
Hiring practices can be nepotistic because they are efficient. In his 1995 report by James Ledbetter,The excruciating whiteness of publishing, the editor of WW Norton’s original book wrote about the ease of filling an editorial assistant position: They come from a network of agents, writers and academics. … It’s not an open process. It’s not consciously closed, but it doesn’t seem necessary to open it. The benefactors of this closed system are not the Nepo babies – they are not famous, nor are their parents – but they enjoy the same rewards of privilege. I know. On the road of least resistance, they will take care of you first.
Or take legacy-enrolled children who get relaxed requirements for admission to their parents’ alma mater. That’s certainly a category that overlaps with Nepo’s babies. Full houseLori Loughlin of . But across the tertiary education pipeline, kids from expensive private schools can rapidly advance to name-brand liberal arts colleges, get corporate jobs at six-figure salaries, and get discounted passes. their Kids Admission is a unique closed system. It privileges the same lineage over and over again. The reverse side of this coin is School-to-prison pipelineIn underfunded public schools, an escalating chain of zero-tolerance practices that begins with suspensions and expulsions, often leading to the detention of juveniles, disciplining students.adults.
As for Nepo’s urge to create a baby genealogy, he basically pleads with us to bring a case for reparations. As you trace it back to Hedren, you can’t help but ask. What if your grandmother wasn’t a Golden Her Globe-winning actor or model in the 1960s, but a civil rights activist who was imprisoned for her time spent protesting? What if imprisonment is the legacy America wants to impose on you?
The Nepo Baby discourse masks the very injustice it illustrates. Even New York magazine describes its own detailed taxonomy as “extremely detailed” and “a little crazyBut beyond comically blatant celebrity nepotism, there’s a larger, darker field of privilege, the fishnets we’re all caught up in. If we’re just talking about what we don’t like and what we don’t like, baby Nepo wins again. I decided that those were the most important parts of this story.
But Nepo’s baby is just the tip of the class critique iceberg. Their spectrum of privilege, which New York magazine has painstakingly mapped, is very small. There is no meritocracy in Hollywood or anywhere else. All industries and institutions are tainted by intergenerational wealth feedback loops. We choose to glamorize or push this latest celebrity romp, and challenge ourselves to confront the moment with more thought about where and how power works. ●
