When Luxury Starts to Feel Normal

Marxist theory really shines when it comes to showing how inequality can hide in plain sight. It doesn’t always appear as obvious oppression or open conflict. More often, it works quietly by making certain lifestyles feel expected, earned, or simply “the way things are.”

In "The Rhetorical Power of Popular Culture," Deanna Sellnow explains that popular media often reinforces ideology by portraying social structures as natural rather than shaped by power dynamics. When wealth and comfort are framed as personal choices, the larger systems that produce them tend to fade into the background.

You can see this dynamic in HBO’s The White Lotus, particularly in moments that feel casual rather than dramatic. Below, two women make small talk that slowly turns into a subtle class comparison. What begins as polite conversation about where they live, who they married, and what they do for work reveals how uneven their material realities are. One woman mentions student loans and career uncertainty, while the other casually notes that her husband’s family wealth can absorb those pressures with little effort.

Here, no one is openly rude or confrontational, yet the class divide still comes through in subtle assumptions about money, debt, and stability. The woman with less financial security ends up carrying the awkwardness of the conversation, while the wealthier characters barely seem fazed. Wealth's treated as something you just happen into, not as something shaped by larger systems, and hard work feels oddly disconnected from real security. Through a casual exchange like this, The White Lotus shows how class hierarchy continues not just because of money, but because of confidence, comfort, and whose stress gets taken seriously.

A similar pattern shows up in Selling Sunset, just in a glossier way. The show makes extreme wealth feel exciting and, strangely... relatable. The agents are framed as hardworking and ambitious, but their labor is highly polished. Selling multi-million-dollar homes becomes less about housing and more about image, competition, and personal drama. 

Work looks flexible and social, even though it revolves around properties most people could never realistically afford.

What the show leaves out matters just as much. Issues like housing affordability, access, and displacement are rarely (if ever) part of the conversation. Homes are treated as luxury objects rather than places people actually live.

When you pin each show against the other, the pattern's clear. Both center on elite comfort and emotional stakes, while the labor and inequality supporting those lifestyles fade into the background a bit. Whether it’s a luxury resort or a high-end real estate deal, wealth is treated as normal and expected, shaping what kinds of lives start to feel achievable - or even the default.

So when luxury's presented as entertainment or aspiration as often as it is, how does that shape what we think “normal” work and success should look like?