Before
watching Born Rich, the documentary
made by Jamie Johnson of the Johnson & Johnson family, I expected most of
these rich individuals to be stuck-up and seemingly happy with their
situations, not having to work a day in their lives. What I found, however, was
far different; everyone in the film seemed grounded in their situations.
Although most of them had hundreds of millions of dollars, they all realized
that they had a responsibility, both to themselves and to their families,
specifically their family name.
When
I say “grounded in their situations,” I mean that these individuals were aware
of their money. They knew that their families made enough money or inherited enough
that they never had to worry about making a dollar in their life. Some of the
individuals in the film went to work at hard labor jobs to try to understand their
situations in a better way- Josiah
Hornblower, for example. He struggled in school and decided to take a few years
off to work multiple manual labor jobs, including one in an oil field.
Most
of the cast became aware of their situations early on, but many had moments of
clarity where either someone else told them that they were rich or they noticed
that other people weren’t. Johnson, for instance, found out that he was rich
one day because his father was in a magazine as one of the 400 richest people
in the world, and his classmates informed him. SI Newhouse IV found out because
he got beat up by kids at a Quaker school.
One
of the gigantic things that I noticed throughout the documentary was that these
people never seemed to be “talking down” to individuals of a lower net worth.
Maybe this was because they were on camera—to me, this is a very likely scenario.
What I would like to think, however, is that many of these people are good at
seeing the world for what it is. They know what their money is capable of,
which is exemplified when Luke Weis comments that he could ‘buy your family’,
when referring to someone ragging on him. They do not, however, seem to think
that they are “better” people because of this.
Although
they seemed firmly planted in their situations, something that was interesting
to me was how the cast reacted when Jamie presented them with the thought of
what would happen if they spontaneously lost their wealth. When asked if he
would be cut off, Newhouse said that the idea bothered him- it was a stigma
that he thought about every day, but he had no idea what he would do if it
happened. Stephanie Ercklentz had the most well thought out answer to this
question, though it was answered in a more roundabout way earlier in the film-
she said that, if she lost most of her money, all she had was what was in her
head. I think this is important to note; the wealthy are people too, and I
think that the disparity between both rich and poor sometimes frames them as
monsters. They got where they are for a reason, though.
To
conclude, I wanted to point out that many of these self-proclaimed “rich-kids”
knew about the value of hard work. Ivanka Trump realized from a young age that
she wanted to add to the New York City Skyline; although she was taking after her
dad, she knew that she could not just sit around on her father’s money. Many of
the people interviewed stated that they had to earn their place in their family’s
wealth by doing something productive. Throughout the film, Jamie Johnson wanted
to discover what it was that made second, third, and fourth generation wealthy
individuals click, and I think that the way it was done was a successful peek
into the lives and minds of the wealthy, and an interesting window into how
wealth is maintained.
