"Nepo Babies" and the Power Elite

Joe, Darrow. 2022. From New York Magazine. Retrieved April 16, 2024 (https://nymag.com/magazine/toc/2022-12-19.html). 

    In this picture, the cover of a “New York Magazine” article, the heads of various celebrities are edited onto the bodies of babies, in an attempt to represent their “nepo baby” status. The caption of the article confirms this, with a witticism that pokes fun at these joyful 20- and 30- something year-old infants. The idea that these celebrities have a familial “in” to the business that has been instrumental to their success is a point that is made stronger by the imagery of these famous faces in this seemingly helpless, carefree infant form. Most of the celebrities look knowingly at the camera, beaming with pride at the reader, while a few instead look off to the side or shoot a smolder our way. The exaggerated expressions on these famous faces give us the sense that a joke is being made about them, one that they are not in on.

In “The Power Elite,” C. Wright Mills talks about a group of elite decision-makers that have the power to affect the lives of the non-elite. This elite can be involved in the political, financial, and military spheres of a country (in this case, America), and their psychology, the structural components of our society, and the combination of these spheres are the keys Mills uses to study and understand them. He discusses how these elites must go through a certain “training,” one which teaches them which personalities are accepted or rejected in an elite world. This training, combined with the fact of their positions, are the things that set them apart from the non-elite, rather than some true psychological superiority. Mills also discusses a certain group of “celebrities” who go along with this elite. He says that these celebrities are people who are more or less detached from these spheres of power, but they nonetheless impact discussions of morality and have the ability to distract people from the decisions of the elite.

Though Mills may not have been referring to Hollywood stars when he mentioned this group of “professional celebrities,” this is what first came to my mind. There is a strong compulsion in our society to dissect the lives of the rich and famous, because, as Mills says, they are presented as “critics of morality and technicians of power,” and their actions do create dialogue for the rest of us. Celebrities can also be involved in various spheres of power, or be thought of as being involved (i.e. Taylor Swift allegedly influencing Biden’s voters or Elon Musk gaining social attention such as being on SNL for being an economically significant figure). This compulsion to pick apart can be seen in cases such as this article, where celebrities are (perhaps sometimes fairly) undermined because of the familial channel through which they are thought to have gained power. The idea of undermining people in the public eye is often intriguing to people, perhaps because they are aware of the impact celebrities can have on our lives. The idea of a “nepo baby” in terms of Mills’s article was also interesting to me when thinking about the “training” that Mills talks about - in many ways, these famous children of famous parents are taught how to succeed in Hollywood throughout their upbringing. They accumulate status because of their already-accumulated familial status. These “nepo babies,” in a way then, represent both a group associated with the power elite, and the power elite itself.