'Materialists' and the Particular Sadness of Modern Dating
Is it broke man propaganda or is it uncomfortably accurate?
If you haven’t seen Materialists and don’t want to read spoilers, stop reading now.
Last fall, after a series of increasingly depressing experiences with online dating, I started employing an extremely picky approach known as the Haystack Method. Invented by professor
, the Haystack Method uses rhetoric to dissect dating profiles and eliminate as many potential suitors as possible, thus zeroing in on matches that actually might work out. The idea is to find a needle in a haystack not by picking up each individual piece of hay and trying to find out if it’s a needle, but by burning the haystack down as quickly as possible.When I explained to friends and family that this is what I was doing—spending only 15 minutes on the apps once or twice a day and mainly dedicating that time to blocking red-flag profiles so the algorithms wouldn’t recycle them—the responses I received betrayed at least a little concern about my mental health.
The thing is, though, it worked!
In fact, it worked so well that I hadn’t thought about it much at all until I recently saw Celine Song’s new movie Materialists, ostensibly about real-life matchmaking but actually a cutting satire of what online dating feels like: a liminal space where no one really knows what they want and so they end up projecting unmet needs onto strangers, all in the hopes of not dying alone. And so we transmute what is basically an unsolveable existential ennui into an obsession with height, or looks, or where someone went to college, forgetting along the way that these are markers of status, not compatibility, and no more likely to make us happy that the latest microtrend blowing up TikTok.
Materialists illustrates this dynamic beautifully, both in its depiction of the marriage-obsessed match-making agency that employs our heroine Lucy (Dakota Johnson, for whom I am an apologist1) and its central tension between a romance that looks good on paper and one that actually feels that way—the collision between what we’re told to want and what we actually do. It makes me think of another, lesser romantic comedy, 500 Days of Summer, in which a minor character says he prefers his actual girlfriend to an imagined romantic ideal, because “Robin is better than the girl of my dreams. She’s real.”
In Materialists, Lucy is in a mildly drawn love triangle between Harry (Pedro Pascal), who is hot-rich-tall-handsome, and her ex-boyfriend John (Chris Evans), who is sort of a broke mess but knows her well and loves her deeply. Lucy ends up with John, which makes sense because this is a Celine Song movie, and Pretty Woman already exists and is excellent, but it’s caused some viewers to complain that the movie is “broke man propaganda.”
And sure, if you’re looking for a man in finance, maybe that’s a dealbreaker. But I find it a bit of a stretch to suggest that a movie about partnering with someone you actually like who isn’t rich is somehow an affront to feminism. I actually found it incredibly charming to see a big blank-check romcom that’s basically about how love is more important than money, despite being tied up in it. Because whatever late-stage capitalism and Instagram targeted ads would love for you to think, it is! If you’re looking for a man in finance, perhaps you aren’t really looking for love at all. And that’s okay! There’s nothing wrong with marrying rich! But it’s not Celine Song’s fault she made a movie about something else.
Besides, if you want to see “rich man propaganda,” look no further than almost any other romance, including the one that made Dakota Johnson famous. Casting Johnson, the only reason Fifty Shades of Grey was even a little bit watchable, was a canny move. Because if it does anything, Materialists subverts the myth at the center of Fifty Shades and an entire genre of ordinary girl-meets-billionaire romances2: that the ultimate pinnacle of heterosexual womanhood is having a very handsome, very rich man fall in love with you, plucking you from the ordinary stresses of your daily life and probably taking away some of your agency, but we don’t need to get into that!
In Materialists, this prospect is all the more appealing for being embodied by Pedro Pascal. But it doesn’t really work, because Lucy, it turns out, is basically an imposter: She may have an enviable wardrobe, but aside from wanting to have a transactional relationship, she and Harry have very little in common. She and John, on the other hand, are equals. If John’s a broke boy, she’s a broke girl. She’s just better at hiding it. And when she realizes the hollowness of what she does professionally, she is capable of growing past it.
What I loved about Materialists wasn’t so much its depiction of romance, although there is one and I rooted for it, but its almost-too-accurate portrayal of what it’s like to actually try to date right now, and what a confusing experience it can be when the insistent normative expectations of the outside world bear down on you with all their force. It can feel compelling and easy to go along with them, but it’s much more liberating—and fun—to make up your own rules.
What I’ve been writing: For my politics newsletter at Cascade PBS, I had the pleasure of speaking with
about her wonderful new book, Blazing Eye Sees All: Love Has Won, False Prophets, and the Fever Dream of the American New Age:From Elizabeth Clare Prophet in Montana; to Ramtha’s School of Enlightenment, the Yelm-based spiritual center started by JZ Knight, a Washington woman who claimed she could channel a time-traveling being named Ramtha; to notorious fascist William Pelley, Northwest communities and charismatic leaders figure heavily into the history Sottile maps out.
“I think it goes back to the way the West was colonized, and this perception that continues, in some ways, that this is wide open space where you can come and live out your utopian ideas,” said Sottile of why the Northwest seems to attract a disproportionate share of New Age groups. The problem, she said, isn’t so much individual beliefs: “There's no harm in my mind if you have crystals in your pocket or are engaging in a wellness retreat that is helpful to you.” But when leaders claim to “have all the answers” or focus beliefs on hatred, “there is a real distinction.”
You can read the whole thing here.
What I’ve been reading: The biography-as-pleasure-reading years really come at you fast, don’t they? Here I was, a devotee to books under 200 pages, and suddenly, I found myself overcome with the urge to read the 1,000-page Sylvia Plath biography that’s been sitting on my bookshelf since 2021. I guess The Cider House Rules was a gateway drug? Anyway, there’s something very satisfying about reading a thick biography in the summer. I can’t explain this but it just feels right. And Heather Clark’s Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath is a biography whose rigor provides sound scaffolding for a surprisingly easy and pleasant read.
In college, I wrote my capstone essay for my major on Plath and Virginia Woolf, and I briefly lived in the house at Smith where Plath once roomed. I learned about her drafting process in the archive where her papers are housed. Plath’s work has always been very important to me, and I’m loving being immersed in her story, with a narrator in Clark as nuanced and thoughtful as she is respectful and appropriately reverent.
In this video, you can hear Plath speaking about her influences. She has a distinct New England/Massachusetts accent—I remember finding it jarring when I first heard it in college, but now the timbre reminds me of the way my grandfather spoke. Also, Sylvia Plath loved sunbathing, sailing, and going to the beach, so her biography does feel like a beach read in the best way.
What I’ve been watching: I’m rewatching—and reevaluating—Lena Dunham’s Girls, a show I worked very hard to distance myself from when it came out while I was in grad school. I remember once telling a classmate, a buttoned-up writer who would become tragically redpilled, that I had to get my laptop fixed because because I had left it open on my bed while I was eating milk and cookies and I spilled, and he told me that sounded like an episode of Girls. I was not happy with this comparison, but joke’s on me because it did, and Girls is actually good?
Perhaps I’ll write a future newsletter about the show, which I think is much funnier and more self-aware than her critics were initially willing to give Dunham credit for. The era it depicts—one of early-twenties millennial ennui circa 2013—is now far enough away that it feels comfortable to revisit. I remember when Girls first premiered, I was frustrated because it felt close to my experience but not exact enough in its proximity. I felt an uncanny valley effect watching it: It was both relatable and alien to me, and I couldn’t get past the simultaneity of those feelings.
In my thirties, I’ve let go of the need for such precise emotional resonance and am simply enjoying remembering that moment in time, realizing how young the characters really are, and letting in all the sense memories that come with the soundtrack, which features LCD Soundsystem, Phantogram, Feist, and probably every other artist I put on a playlist between grad school seminars and writing workshops and the various existential crises and sparkly moments of joy that come with being an ambitious but unformed young person. I’m glad Dunham found a visual language for this.
(I’m also watching Love Island USA. It does not prompt meaningful reflection of any kind, which is what I like about it.)
A note about this newsletter: It goes out about twice a month. Burbank Industries is just me, a reproductive health policy reporter at the dawn of the theocracy. This post is public, but most of the content on this account is paywalled, so if you want to follow it, I would strongly recommend getting a paid subscription.
Playing you out: This is my favorite LCD Soundsystem song, the one I listened to over and over again in my twenties, on planes between Seattle and Chicago and New England. It was an era of PBRs consumed in dive bars, intense friendships forged over art, incredible loneliness and sublime little moments that made all the mistakes worthwhile. Like the salty OB/GYN in Girls, you could not pay me to return to these experiences, but I’m glad I had them.
I think her Architectural Digest tour is fun and her acting is fine! Sue me!
If you have read any romance novels ever, you know this is a robust genre, often involving jetsetting finance guys and love interests with ties to the mob. I’ve read one of these books and I felt very dumb after, but also, it was kind of fun? IDK, read what you want!