The Pursuit of Happyness (2006) has to be up there. The inciting incident is Will Smith going to Wall Street and seeing all the happy, smiling rich people walking out of the New York Stock Exchange, and deciding he wants to be like them. There is no irony in this or in any other scene; pursuing a finance-bro internship at all costs is portrayed literally and uncritically as the "happyness" in the title. The entire rest of the movie is a masturbatory hustle-culture fantasy in which Will Smith having to do things like being homeless, sleeping in subway bathrooms, kissing the asses of as many banking executives as possible, and foregoing feeding or clothe his kindergarten-age son are portrayed not as indictments of the system but as evidence of Smith's smart, bootstraps-oriented thinking. The rich people throughout the movie are jovial and well-adjusted, always willing to give a smart guy like Smith a shot (but only when they see his plucky bootstrappiness firsthand, which they only do once he insistently fellates them first); meanwhile, all poor people are miserable, underhanded slimeballs who are nothing but trouble for Smith. This movie is the Mein Kampf of liberalism.

What else?

  • D61 [any]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Its a pretty good litmus test of where you are in your political education.

    Young and a silly liberal? Well then the world is just full of uneducated layabouts with no culture.

    Older and sliding farther into leftist liberatory theory? Shit, all of these uneducated people seem to just be chill and having a good time. Also, somebody has the actual answer to a national crises and .. they like... just do the right thing. Fuck yeah!

    • TraschcanOfIdeology [they/them, comrade/them]
      ·
      2 years ago

      That is very relatable. I re-watched it a couple months ago for the first time in years, and what struck me the most was that the people were portrayed as stupid but caring, with an actual sense of community and duty to others. If anything, it makes solidarity look easy.