Sometimes this trend takes the form of gallows (or guillotine) humor. Take “Revolutionary Chocolatier,” a commercial for Kellogg’s Crunchy Nut Chocolate Cornflakes that aired in the U.K. in 2013. In it, an unruly mob of sans-culottes sporting tricolor cockades storms the shop of an elderly chocolatier, where two aristocrats cower beneath the floorboards. One of them can’t resist digging into a bowl of chocolate cereal so crunchy that it gives away their hiding place. The ad ends with the pair of them (and the traitorous chocolatier) being carted off to the guillotine; the blade even drops in shadow.

This wry reenactment of the Reign of Terror is an exception—in most cases, the one percent is depicted more sympathetically, particularly when represented by supermodels dolled up as Marie Antoinette. Gisele Bündchen wore pearls and a pink corset to channel the doomed queen in a 2012 commercial touting Sky TV Brazil. A mob of ruffians invades the palace where she’s obsessively watching the channel, but instead of losing her head, she calmly invites them to join her, proclaiming: “Everybody has the right to watch Sky!” It’s the digital-revolution equivalent of “Let them eat cake!”—an optimistic, modern update that has a subtly political point to make: that television is a democratic medium, a great equalizer that can break down class distinctions and defuse societal resentment.

Some of music’s most successful image-makers have taken inspiration from Marie Antoinette, including Madonna, Beyoncé, Katy Perry, and Nicki Minaj. Indeed, Perry and Minaj took strikingly similar approaches to the 2013 ad campaigns for their royalty-themed fragrances, Killer Queen and Minajesty. In both TV spots, the singers start out in full 18th-century Marie-Antoinette garb—complete with wigs, corsets, jewels, makeup, and hoop petticoats—before they revolt, stripping off their royal regalia piece by piece as the music surges and they run away in slow motion. Neither dwells much on the tragedy of the monarch’s real-life story. Instead, they summon the spirit of the underclass and end up dressed in fetching rags (but also fetish-worthy shoes).

Perry’s version is the fiercer of the two, embracing a more subversive take. Her gown is blood red; her hair, beneath the powdered wig, is jet black. The classical soundtrack is drowned out by pulsing guitars as Perry struts through her palace, eliciting gasps from the stuffy courtiers. She approaches her throne, but instead of seating herself, the Killer Queen embraces her inner angry peasant and topples it, declaring: “Own the throne!” Of course, more generic messages underly the whole commercial—that the rules and conventions of the past are stifling, that beauty products offer a route toward independence and self-definition. In keeping with the historical angle, though, Perry’s newest fragrance is called Royal Revolution, an even richer oxymoron.