Stella Lefty, Miley Cyrus, Dakota Johnson, Gracie Abrams and Nicolas Cage walk into a bar. It sounds like a joke. In reality, this sounds a lot like the music, film and fashion industries.
The seemingly glaring similarity? Nepotism.
Standing on generations of social capital and opportunity their family names have afforded, these ‘nepo babies’ are being slighted for their seemingly effortless entry into their respective industries. But what is driving their success: merit or access?
Miley Cyrus, daughter of Billy Rae Cyrus and goddaughter of Dolly Parton, became a big name through “Hannah Montana” before building a music career of her own. Nicolas Cage, born Nicolas Coppola, is the nephew of Francis Ford Coppola, the famed director of “The Godfather.”
Dakota Johnson, daughter of actors Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson, grew up in Hollywood. Gracie Abrams, daughter of filmmaker J.J. Abrams, has built a successful music career.
Stella Lefty (Leftofsky), daughter of billionaire co-founder of GroupOn Eric Leftofsky, has been bashed for her alleged sampling of Noah Kahan’s “Stick Season” in her song, “Boston,” later adding him to songwriting credits.
These familiar examples coincide with a familiar question: Is the entertainment industry flooded with industry plants, or are we simply frustrated that some people have a positional advantage we can’t imagine?
It is not wrong for a parent to pour their money, time and connections into elevating the potential success of their child. But for a moment, consider the difference between writing a reference letter and funding a start-up, for example. Both can help someone get ahead, but one might get you through the door while the other offers money, connections and time to build something once inside. Most importantly, it offers the freedom to fail.
An aspiring musician without financial support might have to choose between paying rent and recording an album. Someone with family connections has more tickets in the lottery bucket, and less proportional risk in the game if it doesn’t work out. Neither is guaranteed success, but the risks are fundamentally different. Arguably, the greatest advantage of ‘nepo babies’ isn’t the leg up but the safety net.
We get mad about the marginal chances of making it big and how they seem to reflect our own personal chances at success. This happens everywhere: high school sports teams, college internships, sorority recruitment. Nepotism is a real advantage, but our obsession with calling people ‘nepo babies’ can become a lazy substitute for judging their actual work.
I think it says more about our own resentment at life’s circumstances than our ability to criticize music and film with tact. It’s easier to call the system rigged than it is to sit with the uncertainty of whether we could succeed ourselves.
My encouragement is to let merit and access exist in the same room and ask yourself, if you didn’t know who these people were connected to, would you still listen to their music and rewatch their films?
Is Gracie Abrams’ “Hit the Wall” actually good? Is Stella Lefty an artist worth listening to? Is Dakota Johnson a talent of her own? If these artists shouldn’t be famous, who should be? My critique is not to dismiss nepotism as a role in these industries. Access does have great influence, but we should instead spotlight the bigger blind spot in consumers: are we truly good judges of talent, or are we letting family ties blind our own judgment?
There’s more to it than “who’s your daddy?” Babies gotta learn to stand on their own two feet at some point, and the rest of us should be capable of deciding whether or not they’re worth listening to, regardless of family ties.
