As far as I could tell in the movie the rich people were depicted as decent parents if not a bit naive, while the poor family were backstabbing assholes who betrayed their fellow workers (the housekeeper and her husband) because of sheer malice. Not once does the film hint at the underlying economical system as the reason why the rich are rich and the poor are poor.

If you are a socialist, you will (correctly) identify capitalism as the reason for the misery of the poor people in the film, and the rich as part of the bourgeoisie who exploit them. But that isn't any different than analysing an IRL crime through that lens, the film didn't help you reach that conclusion, it just presented a scenario.

A chud could easily see the rich family as the honest entrepreneurs and the poor family as poor because of the negative behaviors they exhibited, and there is nothing in the film that would dispute that interpretation.

With the poor family getting punished for their deception, and the son resolving to make money to save his father at the end (presumably through more "honest" means), it even displays the "pull yourself by the bootstraps" belief.

The best case interpretation of the film I can make is that "the rich people should be more conscious of the poor's struggles, and the poors should stay in their place or risk losing everything" which is pretty reactionary and not the class conscious film many people described it as. I guess you could see the ending as punishment for the class betrayal but I think that's a stretch.

Am I overzealous in policing the politics of the media I consume to the point of misinterpreting things or finding an even vaguely leftist film that hard?

  • BelieveRevolt [he/him]
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    edit-2
    9 months ago

    Agreed that someone could interpret the message as bootstraps, since I've seen someone on Reddit say the main characters were a good poor family because they worked hard at improving their status in life, while the man and woman stuck in the rich family's house were lazy. This is more of a problem with liberals barely engaging with media outside of Harry Potter and Marvel and having no media literacy.

    A lot of what the movie presents is subtle in a way, like if you're the average liberal who believes the existence of poverty is an inevitable fact of life, then you probably don't have the same reaction to seeing an entire family living in a flooded basement, because they can rationalize to themselves that poor people are only poor because of their individual choices, lack of work ethic and whatever usual excuse. I'd even argue that the movie lampoons the ruthlessness needed to "succeed" in bootstrapping yourself by having the main characters scam a rich family. Liberals see this as the "bad" way to succeed because it's illegal, but compared to the crimes rich ghouls commit daily, it's not even a drop in the ocean. The only bad thing they did, and it's a pretty major one, is throwing other working class people under the bus.

    The movie also makes fun of the rich people bootlicking working class people do constantly with the scenes of the guy trapped in the rich family's house shouting RESPECT! at the dad's picture every day.