Beyond the Screen

  When Elizabeth Holmes launched Theranos , she promised to revolutionize medicine with a single drop of blood. Instead, she became the subject of one of the most infamous frauds of the 21st century. The collapse of Theranos wasn’t just a business story—it was a story tailor-made for the screen. Ambition, deception, charisma, and collapse: all the ingredients of tragedy and satire. Filmmakers and showrunners seized on Holmes’s rise and fall because it reads like myth. She isn’t just a failed entrepreneur; she’s a character who embodies larger themes about innovation, gender, power, and the American obsession with disruption. Let’s look at the major portrayals and the filmic themes they highlight. The Documentary Lens: The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley (2019) Alex Gibney ’s HBO documentary was the first full cinematic treatment of Holmes. The film draws on interviews, archival footage, and slick visuals to frame Holmes as both visionary and con artist. T...

Money doesn’t just corrupt—it calcifies. While stories of self-made fortunes celebrate ambition and risk, tales of inherited wealth expose something darker: how privilege passed down through generations doesn’t liberate families, it imprisons them. From the crumbling estates of Downton Abbey to the glass towers of Succession , cinema has long understood that generational wealth is less about security and more about silent warfare. These aren’t just dramas about rich people behaving badly. They’re examinations of how wealth shapes identity, weaponizes family bonds, and ultimately asks: what does it mean to inherit not just money, but the burden of maintaining an empire you never built? The Gilded Cage: When Inheritance Means Obligation The Forsyte Saga introduced television audiences to a fundamental truth: old money comes with old rules. Following a wealthy Victorian family across decades, the series revealed how inheritance functioned as a form of social control. Marriage w...