Are you a valuable product?
Materialists: Rom-com? LoL
Set in New York City, Materialists has been advertised as a “rom-com.” I didn’t laugh once, except a few scoffs of horrified recognition. But I was riveted.
Beware: Spoilers ahead.
Having spent most of my adult life in Los Angeles, the New York dating scene depicted in the film was relatable – outlandish expectations, gameplaying, sexual assault... But primarily, I found myself contemplating the ways in which we judge and determine value. Star-studded cities like NYC and LA thrive on you comparing yourself to other people. Your value lies in how you look, how much money you make, how accomplished you are, who you know, even how tall you are. You should be all these desirable things on paper, or you’re not a good enough option.
“Love is... the last surviving ideology.” - quoted in the film, during a wedding toast.
It is an effort to make us think that this story is about love. The premise claims: Love is the one thing we all want. God is dead[i], but love is the ideology that we all still agree on.
Love is a red herring. I’m a romance writer, and trust me, there was no romance in this movie. (Though I think they think there was…)
So what is the ideology that we all truly agree on?
Value.
What is uniquely human? Not love. But the tendency to judge, to value.
In his Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche endeavors to prove that valuing – the individual as incontrovertible judge - is the source of all of our problems. And he and I don’t always agree. (No relationship is perfect.) But I am wholeheartedly on the same page with him here.
Even though I’m as guilty of valuing as you are.
The most compelling dialogue in Materialists had nothing to do with love, but everything to do with our marketability as human beings. Sure, this film is exploring our marketability on the dating scene, specifically. But let’s face it – aren’t we always marketing ourselves? This is what social media is. But it’s bled into everything – making friends, finding a job, starting a new hobby. What do people think of me? Does everyone find me attractive?/witty?/interesting? Did I present myself as the version I want people to see? Did anyone notice that I’m pretending?
As an aspiring actress in Los Angeles from about 2008 to 2017, I was told repeatedly that I would never land a lead role, never be an ingenue. I was 4’11” and those roles were for tall, willowy women. The role that I booked repeatedly? The Bitch. It’s the opposite of my personality. I am never disagreeable. (I kind of hate it about myself and it would probably behoove me to be more disagreeable IRL TBH.) Maybe that’s why I play The Bitch so well. Like how if you’re submissive in your daily life, you want to be dominant in the bedroom? *shrug*
The expectations on women in these lively cities are higher than anywhere else in the world, because the most supposedly “beautiful” people live in these places, right? And you must compare yourself to these people and strive to be the most beautiful that you can be, too. Always fit, always looking young and dewy, always energetic and friendly and well-dressed and well-spoken. I know these expectations well, and I lived up to them fairly adequately for a decade. It was like being on Love Island – All. The. Time. I stayed around 16% body fat, spent money on great clothes and beauty treatments, exercised obsessively, and when I wasn’t auditioning or performing, I was out partying almost every night, being seen, getting known. No matter what I did, though, I was never able to get taller. Never a good enough product. Always reminded that I didn’t have enough value.
I don’t live up to these expectations now, though I tell myself that I still should. I should all over myself. And it’s affected my own sense of my value. It’s hard, time-consuming, lengthy healing work.
It’s exhausting to be a woman. But Materialists gave me a look into what it’s like for men in these cities, too. To be of the highest value on the dating market, according to the dating service depicted in the film and its representative - our main character, Lucy – a man must make a ton of money, have a full head of hair, be physically fit, and be 6’0” or taller.
Pedro Pascal’s character, Harry, says that women looked right past him until he had a limb-lengthening surgery that took him from 5’6” to 6’2”. Then, he became a “unicorn” – the perfect man, irresistible to women. I swear to god, I considered this surgery when I was younger. I’m glad I didn’t do it, even though I basically look like a teapot - short and stout. (Hey, there’s a role I can play - Mrs. Potts!)
In an essay called “Homer’s Contest,” Nietzsche writes that competition is one of the most important elements of social life, because it spurns us to envy others, and to then strive harder to get those objects or achievements or bodies for ourselves. (Because scarcity.) Materialists tells us that there aren’t enough decent romantic partners to go around, especially if you aren’t at peak value.
Eventually, I had to accept that The Bitch (and sometimes The Character Actress) was my brand. It was a lie that I had to tailor myself to, practice, fake, put forward, uphold. The dating market is the same thing, according to Materialists: Your value is in what you present, how you look on paper, in a resume and headshot, on social media. At this matchmaking agency, the men lie about their heights and their salaries, and the women lie about their weights and their expectations. Everyone is lying. And remember what Kant said about lying: it destroys language, the one thing we rely on to build connections and understandings with one another.
When asked in a poll what they desire in marketing, Gen Z respondents answered: authenticity. Authentic marketing. Have you ever heard such an oxymoron?
In his In Defense of Sex (a book I’ve mentioned in a prior piece), Christopher Breu utilizes the work of Judith Butler and of Michel Foucault, both of whom perceive the body as a “blank slate… a surface for discursive inscription” (Ch 1, 7). Taking a page from their books – pardon my upcoming pun –, Breu wants us to consider how the body is read. Specifically, we are pointed to the role of capitalism as defining, narrating, and exploiting bodies in instrumental ways. Breu coins the term avatar fetishism (Intro, 14) to demonstrate how the body, the self, the brand must be crafted, honed, repeatedly sold as product on the capitalist marketplace. Lacan’s psychoanalytical approach to the body – specifically to extimacy – lends itself to Breu’s intentions to analyze the body as both material and constructed via its interaction with the world. Breu asserts, “…we do not start with identities, but instead are split subjects situated in a field of meaning and desire that begins outside of ourselves” (Ch 2, 33). A Marxist critique such as this brings attention to what is taken from our bodies and reified as material gain – our labor, yes, but also our identities and all of the elements that proceed from it.
And we are complicit, participatory, even enthusiastic, sometimes. We allow the materialistic world to put all of its “shoulds” upon us, and we carry them like heavy sacks of flour on our shoulders, struggling beneath their weight, hating what we see in the mirror, thinking everyone else is better than us, but also that we’re better than them, but also that we have to do better, better, better...
“I’ll look directly at the sun, but never in the mirror.” – Taylor Swift, “Anti-Hero”
Though I found the film to be awkwardly constructed, lacking cohesion, and sometimes cheesy, it was a social commentary that really helped me to think more deeply about the ideology of Los Angeles that I still carry inside of me.
I feel more intellectually and emotionally valuable than I’ve ever felt in my life. But when I look in the mirror at this heavier body and aging face that I don’t recognize, I feel that my sexual value is gone. And as a woman in a misogynist society, my intellectual value is less important than my sexual value, I’m told. Now, I’m not on the dating market or in the acting business anymore, but whether I am or not, shouldn’t I have outgrown this by now? I’ve gotten past my daddy never loving me. Right? So why am I still tying my value to how I look, how accomplished I am, what people think of me?
It's because, though this problem is more obvious in movies, in big cities, in acting, in dating, the truth is that it’s the undercurrent of all of our social interactions and feelings about ourselves as social beings. If all life has dignity and value – and we generally agree that it does – then why do we value ourselves in these material ways? Why do we compare ourselves to others, worry what others think of us, should all over ourselves, think ourselves worthless when we don’t live up to those social expectations?
The answer lies within the internalized horrors of capitalism, which renders, over and over, our value as material. We have to be able to see someone’s value. Do they look good? Do they make good money? Are they charismatic? Do they have lots of friends? Are they talented? Have they accomplished a lot? How tall are they? How’s their hairline? How many followers do they have? Do other people value them?
Human beings are not avatars. We are not numbers or images on screens. We are feeling, thinking (ugh, valuing) creatures who are innately dignified in our very existence, in the very immaterial life that resounds throughout our material bodies.
Every conflict we’re in right now is because of valuing. My way of life or my religion or my nation is better than theirs, and hence, more valuable, and hence, they are less valuable, and hence… ends justifying means, and people become means, no longer ends in and of themselves. (Kant again, sorry…)
Ask yourself this: Do you believe that some people are more valuable than others? If so, why? Are you judging others? Are you judging yourself?
I’m not trying to make you feel guilty. We all do it. (See me doing it above.) It is only by becoming aware of it that we can start to change it.
Materialists was, perhaps, attempting to tell us that we have more valuable commodities than our looks, our bank accounts, our heights. “Love is what matters.” But two hot people end up together in the end, so I’m pretty sure the message didn’t quite land.
With love, Your Friendly Neighborhood Philosopher
[i] “God is dead” is Nietzsche’s declaration in Aphorism 125 of Die Froliche Wissenschaft. This aphorism is titled “The Madman” and it is wrought with meaning. For my purposes here, I’m referring to Nietzsche’s claim that, long ago, all of humanity (at least in the west) agreed upon this one thing – “God” – and now that we no longer have a point of unified connection, where does that leave us?