Would Tony Stark be Tony Stark if he weren’t a billionaire?

If you think this statement in the opening dialogue of Ironheart is about criticising Iron Man, you might not be wrong, but is this what it is all about? well, I feel like it’s more than that. It represents the privilege that leads the so-called better-than-everyone, geniuses, talented into the 1% club.

Well, I don’t know much about wrestling, journaling, or law, but I definitely know a little about Academia, especially Indian academia. I might not be a good scorer, but I am a good observer. And what I have observed is most of the professors come from a privileged background, privileged enough to not worry about earning to feed their families after graduation. These professors will look the students in the eye and lie in wide daylight about how merit brought them where they are, tell you tales about their exceptional performance, subtly omitting their privileged background. Let’s not talk about the faculties of these tier 1 institutes anymore.

Academia taught me that privilege comes in different flavours. The Vanilla being financial prosperity, prosperity to afford coaching, good school education so their kids end up as the creamy layer. But it doesn’t end here. there are more filters, more flavors of privilege. It’s also about whether someone is from a city like Bangalore, Mumbai, or Delhi. Small town boys and girls struggle to befriend city peeps or be a part of a so-called “smart” community. some of them just dissolve in the darkness. Now, to be meritorious is someone expected to ignore their solitude? some of the students have a more detailed idea about the functioning of academia owing to their family being in academia. And its very much like real world capitalism. the privileged meritorious student keep getting more privileged, more meritorious, and the underprivileged ones, get better but not as good as those meritorious students.

So, if this world of academia continues to be unempathetic towards the not-so-privileged ones, would Tony Stark be Tony Stark if he weren’t a billionaire? He would be a great mechanic, or a decent engineer, or at the very best, a marvelous mechanical engineer earning in millions of dollars. but he wouldn’t be Tony Stark.