All bark no bite: The toothless critiques of Hollywood’s anti-capitalist media

Overcoming the one-inch tall barrier that most vernacular language films get buried under, Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite took home four Oscars at the 92nd Academy Awards in 2020, including Best Picture, becoming the first non-English film to do so. The lockdowns that followed soon after restricted the masses to the four walls of their houses as they lost $3.7 trillion while the billionaires gained $3.9 trillion, making the dichotomy between the Kim family and the Park family ever more so relevant.

The sting of a crumbling health infrastructure and the absence of social security schemes ushered in an anti-capitalist sentiment into the social consciousness of the young. Subsequent wars, a genocide, and an ongoing trade war highlighted the fragility of the modern economic apparatus, leaving the proletariat craving for catharsis. Hollywood production studios took a hint and rose to the occasion. Nodding their heads in agreement to Slavoj Žižek’s proclamation that anti-capitalism is widely disseminated in capitalism, they pumped millions of dollars into manufacturing content that disapproved of the current economic order, and film festivals in turn have honoured them.

Superficial satire abounds

Two-time Palme d’Or winner Ruben Östlund’s Triangle of Sadness follows a group of wealthy elites whose lives spiral into chaos after their cruise ship sinks and they are left stranded on an isolated island. To market the film, the trailer of the movie quoted blurbs from reviews that alluded to the anti-capitalist bend of the movie. Promising a revolution, Mr. Östlund subjected the audience to hollow satirical whimpers that sink with the ship halfway through the movie. Right as water starts flooding the beast, for a moment, it feels like a new dawn is possible.

However, our hopes are dashed when Abigail, a low-ranked staff member of the ship, takes control of the survivors on the island and replicates the power structures and social hierarchies prevalent in capitalist society to further her desires. In movies where catharsis is hard to come by, the producers seem to be keen to persuade the audience that resistance is futile and that we should not bother attempting to resist the misgivings of the current society.

The Menu featuring Ralph Fiennes and Anya Taylor-Joy is another example of superficial satire. It puts the focus on a chef exacting revenge with a touch of class dynamics and a sprinkling of politics in the culinary world. We meet the rich at their dining table — each with their own shades of arrogance, ignorance, and egotism. While satire necessitates exaggeration, this concoction of personal flaws doled out to the uber-rich characters drives home the belief that they are undeserving of their wealth because of their shortcomings. The creators of such films shirk the responsibility of interrogating larger socio-economic structures that divide the haves from the have-nots.

Movies that satirise comically evil rich characters provide catharsis by getting the audience to point their fingers and laugh at the cost of their characters’ misery. They give people an outlet to declare their opinions on the situation, overvaluing their beliefs instead of striving to present an alternate world that is more equal or an idea that could inspire praxis. They affirm the notion that as long as we believe in our hearts that capitalism is bad, we are free to continue to participate in capitalistic exchange.

One of Netflix’s flagship shows, Squid Game, enraptured the audience in 2021 with a seemingly refreshing take on financial desperation that traps the working class. However, its critique too overlooked the structural economic issues plaguing society and focused on turning the competition into a spectacle.

Following its global success, the streaming giant greenlit Squid Game: The Challenge, a reality show that mimicked games from the original show sans the fatal consequences. The show cast 456 participants in the age range of 18 to 74 years competing for a whopping $4.56 million prize. The irony of turning social satire into a reality game show raised serious questions of artistic integrity. Reports of mishaps on set surfaced in the wake of its release, and contestants who allegedly suffered hypothermia and nerve damage have threatened legal action.

As Mark Fisher remarked in Capital Realism, in the current neo-liberal world order, subjugation no longer takes the form of a subordination to an extrinsic spectacle, but rather invites us to interact and participate. It seems that the cinema-going audience is itself the object of this satire.

Flip side of visual aesthetics

In their quest to satirise the rich, shows like Succession and Severance have banished the poor to the margins of the cinematic frame. In instances where the working class makes it to the frames, they are punished for overstaying their welcome. In the first season of The White Lotus, Kai, a native Hawaiian, is persuaded by a resort guest to steal from the hotel to ease his family’s struggles under the pretext of “getting back at the colonisers”. However, when he is caught in the act, he is sent to prison and is never heard from again.

Usually, the production of shows critiquing the uber-rich is set in elaborate mansions and sprawling holiday resorts under saturated colours and sanitised lights. Their costumes are procured from high-end fashion houses, and the carefully curated custom props are added to suit the sensibilities of their characters. While they succeed in manufacturing an ecosystem seeped in opulence and excess, that is removed from the daily lives of the masses, the magnitude of Hollywood’s cultural capital inadvertently commands replication from the audience, mostly in the form of merchandise sold by the production houses at inflated prices.

These material production staples in the age of mechanical reproduction seem to take a life of their own, feeding into the hegemonic propaganda machine, rendering the satire toothless — as pointed out by Fisher, “film performs our anti-capitalism for us, allowing us to consume with impunity”.

The consumption choices presented to us by the Hollywood elite under the garb of culture are shaped by the imperatives of market logic and are the result of prioritising profit over creativity and artistic integrity. Their cultural projects are designed to conceal the fact that operations of capital do not depend on any subjectively assumed belief.