[The Roy siblings are deeply haunted by their upbringing.
Succession keeps finding ways to show that. ] [[link removed]]

PORTSIDE CULTURE

SUCCESSION TURNS A BOX OF DOUGHNUTS INTO A STEALTHY STATEMENT ABOUT
ABUSE  
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Emily VanDerWerff
October 24, 2021
Vox
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_ The Roy siblings are deeply haunted by their upbringing. Succession
keeps finding ways to show that. _

Kendall Roy spends a stressful moment as we all must: staring at his
phone. , HBO

 

In a famous 1919 essay on _Hamlet_
[[link removed]], T.S. Eliot reintroduced the
“objective correlative,” a previously obscure literary concept, to
the world of criticism, causing it to rocket to critical omnipresence
across the first half of the 20th century.

Broadly speaking, the objective correlative is when an artist uses a
symbol or image or object — or a string of them all together — to
create a strong sense of feeling and emotion. Eliot said he thought
Shakespeare failed to use the objective correlative
in _Hamlet_ because the play is so full of the title character
angsting all over the place about how he feels. By contrast, Eliot
wrote, Lady Macbeth is a good example of using the objective
correlative — that “damn spot” she can’t get out instantly
gives us a sense of her deep, unresolvable guilt.

I think the idea of the objective correlative relies a little too
heavily on every single audience member reading every single symbol in
the same way, when we all bring our own emotions and thoughts to
whatever piece of art we’re taking in. Yet it’s hard to deny that
sometimes, a single image or object can carry far more emotional
weight than any number of long, emotional speeches.

A well-chosen image — even the most over-obvious one you can
possibly think of — can slyly push us into a kind of dreamlike
state, slipping past our conscious mind and burrowing down to our
subconscious. A speech will always engage the conscious mind and run a
greater risk of ringing false.

If you want to see a great example of the objective correlative hard
at work, just check out “Mass in Time of War,” the second episode
of _Succession_’s third season, which features a box of doughnuts,
soaked in dread.

So much depends upon a box of doughnuts, glazed with sweet frosting,
sitting on a white table

[Connor and Shiv lay on Kendall’s daughter’s bed, as he makes his
pitch.]

That bed doesn’t look all that comfortable for an adult to recline
on, but what do I know? 

HBO

The scene: Kendall Roy (Jeremy Strong), who decisively broke with his
father, Logan (Brian Cox), at a press conference in the final moments
of last season, has spent the hours immediately following that break
shoring up his momentum. He’s hiring people to handle his publicity
and legal matters. He’s trying to find allies within Waystar-Royco,
the family business.

What he needs more than anything, however, is for at least one of his
three siblings — and ideally all three — to step out with him in
front of the press and make a joint statement: Logan Roy is no longer
fit to serve in any capacity and should be replaced.

Kendall is probably right. Beset by scandal and reeling from multiple
crises at once, Logan would likely be felled as the head of
Waystar-Royco if all four of his children were to say he’s
incompetent.

RELATED

The dark, enthralling power of Succession
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So, one by one, Kendall invites his siblings to gather at his
ex-wife’s apartment. First Shiv (Sarah Snook), then Roman (Kieran
Culkin), then Connor (Alan Ruck) drop by, ready to just feel Kendall
out. They won’t acknowledge that they’re listening to what he has
to say. “Officially,” they’ve all shown up as neutral parties or
even as allies of Logan, ready to spy. (Roman comes right out and says
his aim is to snoop.) But all the same, the more Kendall talks, the
more you can see the three of them considering his pitch.

The episode never once has any of the characters so much as suggest
they think Kendall has a point. But we in the audience might find
ourselves speculating as to whether any of the characters are quietly
siding with Kendall. As I watched, I thought it was clear Connor was
starting to see things his brother’s way, and then I thought perhaps
Shiv was as well.

Not that it matters, because Logan shows up to ruin the party.

The siblings start squabbling over the most obvious question of all:
If Logan isn’t head of the company, which one of the Roy children
should be? Kendall, who took this enormous, potentially stupid leap of
faith, is pretty sure he’s the best choice. But Shiv thinks it
should be her, and maybe she’s right. She is the one who’s least
tainted by the various scandals dragging down the Roy family name.

They leave Kendall’s daughter’s bedroom (where they’ve been
having their confab), only to find a box of doughnuts sitting on a
table — sent over courtesy of their dad. Instantly, the tenor of the
scene changes. Whatever momentum Kendall had completely dissipates,
and all of a sudden, Logan is very much present in the room with his
kids, even though he’s not physically there. The doughnuts are just
doughnuts. Hopefully, they’re sweet and delicious. But to the Roy
children, they’re also a subtle reminder from their dad: “Ah, ah,
ah!” a spectral Logan seems to say, wagging his finger. “I’m
always watching you.”

The other Roy siblings abandon Kendall in that moment, opting to side
with their dad. Desperate, Kendall launches into a tirade that only
makes the situation worse, and implies that Shiv has only gotten as
far as she has because she’s a woman and because she’s been given
power out of pity. (Like most things Kendall says in this episode,
it’s not wrong, but it’s also a) not very nice and b) not 100
percent right either.)

Then everybody but Kendall is gone, and he has no idea why a box of
doughnuts seems to have completely foiled his plans.

How the Roy siblings exemplify different experiences of parental abuse
survivors when they’re suddenly confronted with a reminder of that
abuse (a.k.a. doughnuts)

[Shiv listens as Roman and Kendall talk about their dad.]

Roman remains pretty unconvinced by the whole deal. 

HBO

Across the first two episodes of season three, Kendall has been acting
in an atypically manic fashion. The first two seasons
of _Succession_ featured, respectively, a Kendall who tried to get
his way through brute force and a Kendall who had been ground into the
dirt beneath his father’s heel. In season three, he’s racing
around, spouting social justice language, and declaring that his dad
is just _the worst_.

He has the zeal of a religious convert because, in a way, he is a
religious convert. He has reevaluated the falsities he was raised with
and come to discover a core tenet of the universe: His dad is just the
worst. This newfound realization has made him pretty insufferable.
Kendall, having seen the truth about one specific aspect of his life,
now thinks he sees the truth about everything, and, well, there’s
the religious convert aspect for you.

I use the words “religious convert,” but Kendall’s behavior is
also typical of people who’ve left fundamentalist religious
movements or people who’ve recently come out as some flavor of queer
or people whose political beliefs fall outside of the traditional
conservative/liberal dyad. Any time you feel like you alone have
grasped some fundamental principle about the way the world works, even
if you’re 100 percent correct, you run the risk of convincing
yourself that you can see the truth about everything, and becoming
just a little bit insufferable to those around you.

Reporting I’ve done for other, as yet unpublished, articles also
informed how I thought about Kendall in this episode because this
dynamic [[link removed]] also often plays out in
families where one or both parents were abusive. One of the children
has a moment, usually in adulthood but sometimes earlier, when the
glass shatters, and they suddenly realize the way they were raised was
not okay. They often cut off their parents. But when they try to tell
their siblings, their siblings haven’t had a similar epiphany.

Often, the child who has become estranged from their parents will have
some measure of independence from their parents. Their siblings might
be more dependent financially or emotionally on their parents. That
disparity can open up a rift among the siblings, one that can start to
seem like a fight about who’s right about the true nature of their
parents. The child who knows_ _they’re right about the abuse (and
often is right about it) will push and push and push, but the other
kids just aren’t ready to go there. Hurtful things might be said,
and relationships are badly damaged.

_Succession_ is exploring this exact scenario in season three
[[link removed]].
Kendall is absolutely right that his dad is a terrible person, but the
ways in which he’s expressing that idea are an active turnoff to his
siblings, who are still deeply ensnared in their father’s web. He
keeps pushing them just a little too hard and a little too far, and
they always snap back.

But we don’t need to have any of the characters say this because the
doughnuts, a stark symbol of Logan Roy’s omnipresent terror,
efficiently and elegantly express the fear that Logan instills in his
children. The instant they notice the box of doughnuts in the room,
only Kendall (who, remember, has seen through his father’s bullying)
is able to identify them as the intimidation tactic they are.
They’re just doughnuts! They’re not the literal, physical presence
of Logan Roy! They’re a symbol, an image, an object! The objective
correlative is never the actual thing it points to, but it makes you
feel that thing (in this case dread) deeply.

So the other kids immediately begin to shrink away from the conflict
they were thinking about entering. They’re out of the apartment.
They’re back to Logan. Kendall understands what’s driving this
response, asking them incredulously if they’re going to let
themselves be rattled by a box of doughnuts. But, yeah. They are.

One of _Succession_’s smartest moves is the way it flips a common
characteristic of the antihero drama — the main character is always
six steps ahead — to reveal how “mastermind” status can mask
toxic and abusive tendencies. If this story were told more
uncritically from Logan’s perspective, the box of doughnuts would be
presented as a brilliant masterstroke, a way of intimidating his
children into doing what he wants without setting foot in the room.

Logan isn’t a mastermind, though
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He’s just a bully, and in the absence of his love, his children have
been warped by fear. Kendall clearly thinks he’s broken free of that
fear, but it seems much more likely that he’s just running scared.
It would be so easy to let fear overcome him all over again, so he has
to keep going and going and going. Shiv, Roman, Connor — they’re
all still in its grip, and once Logan makes his presence known, they
recommit to it.

As _Succession_ season three continues to unfold, pay attention to
how often the show’s directors include many of the actors from the
show’s considerable ensemble cast lurking in the same shot. These
shots are peppered throughout “Mass in Time of War,” and they’re
often used to contrast how the different Roy siblings react when Logan
is either mentioned or makes his presence known via pastry. Some of
them recoil, some of them sit up a little more sharply, some of them
just look away. But they’re all reacting, often in very different
ways.

_Succession_ is a show about all of the ways that abuse warps entire
generations of families. If that wasn’t clear before “Mass in Time
of War,” it should be now. Logan Roy doesn’t have to be present to
get his children to do his bidding. All he has to do is send a single
object, a symbol of his eternal, deeply angry affection. So when that
box of doughnuts shows up, it’s like he’s sitting right there.

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