Filthy Rich: A far cry from justice

Those who set aside four hours of lockdown to watch Netflix’s newest docu-miniseries Epstein: Filthy Rich will be left with many of their questions left mysteriously unanswered.

Directed by Lisa Bryant, alongside Joe Berlinger and Netflix’s usual executive producers, Filthy Rich is the platform’s latest in a turn of series to exhibit the churning fallout from the #MeToo movement. Like Surviving R. Kelly and Leaving Neverland, Filthy Rich places the victims front and centre, and is driven primarily by 1-1 interviews with a handful of Epstein’s most outspoken victims.

It doesn’t make for easy viewing. There’s a disturbing familiarity that runs throughout many of the women’s testimonies, although some of the details are heartbreakingly unique. Many point to assistant Ghislaine Maxwell’s role in procuring young girls, a claim she has always denied. Testimonies show Epstein’s particular tastes required constant feeding. An elaborate ‘pyramid scheme’ which forced victims to recruit their school friends for $200 churned through young girls at an alarming rate.

In the end they satisfied one rich man’s bizarre daily sexual routine. It’s almost banal; they were offered money to massage Epstein, before he groped or forced them to fondle him. Thereafter, the girls were offered more to recruit their friends and the cycle continued. A routine involving the almost daily destruction of young women’s lives for sexual gratification.

Throughout these accounts of trauma is a story reflective of an America that gave Donald Trump his presidency. It tells the story of a man who was ushered into some of America’s most lofty positions through side doors and covert personal favours. Predator though he may be, Epstein was clearly affable and charming, gaining a teaching job with no college degree, before getting headhunted as a stock trader at Bear Stearns, thanks to a chance encounter at a parent’s evening. Epstein won the favour of much of the elite global circle, with friendships including two presidents, several oligarchs, businessmen and even a British prince.

Despite its length, the show grapples with its tricky subject. Stylistically, the series struggles to fill space. B-rolls of flowing champagne and cheaply-made drone footage of West Palm Beach are pasted over the accounts of exploitation, abuse and sexual violence – a trope that quickly feels tired.

Filthy Rich’s handling of Epstein remains surface-level and one gets the impression when watching it that its executives gave little thought to why they made the series and who they made it for.

Epstein’s story is in many ways one of class exploitation, a point the documentary barely touches. One woman describes how Epstein imported “three 12-year-old girls that he had purchased from their parents.” In its four hours the documentary never once asks why parents sold their daughters to him, nor why so many girls were so desperate for $200 they were willing to go to a strange man’s house to give him a massage to get it.

The post-#MeToo world has populated our cultural zeitgeist with highly visceral and private traumatic accounts direct from the mouths of victims of abuse. But we’ve become numb to the stories of trauma. And Filthy Rich doesn’t make us any smarter. It’s a symptom of something that is becoming more prominent daily. Airing trauma publicly, though symbolic, is nothing but that unless backed by something more tangible. In fact, it might only serve to desensitise an already numb public even more.

These accounts become homogenised when they’re recounted in such a lazy way. It suggests a victim of Michael Jackson, is the same as that of Jeffrey Epstein, is the same as that of Brock Turner, the boy convicted of raping an unconscious 19-year-old behind a bin at a Stanford frat party. These cases are all very different but through lazy storytelling those differences are lost.

Perhaps it’s Epstein’s permeating aloof power that makes this docu-series such a flop. That he remains so callously immune to scrutiny even posthumously denies the victims the justice they deserve. Bryant’s intentions might have been good, but unfortunately Filthy Rich, lazily treats Epstein’s victims like so many others. And it’s a far cry from what they deserve.