Materialists filmmaker Celine Song is clapping back at those who have described her film as “broke man propaganda.”
During a recent interview with Refinery29, the writer-director behind the romance movie responded to the “very cruel” commentary surrounding the relationship between Dakota Johnson and Chris Evans‘ characters, Lucy and John.
“I think that it doesn’t make me laugh, because it really is disappointing to me,” Song said. “I think that there is a very real confusion about feminism and the history of feminism. Through intersectionality, so much of feminism has been about anti-corporate and anti-capitalist and, of course, it was always at the forefront of fighting capitalism, so I’m very concerned about the way that we talk about people who are poor.”
The Past Lives director continued, “The thing that’s very important to me is to stress that poverty is not the fault of the poor. And I think that given that, it is very brutal. I find it very cruel to talk about John as a character who loves Lucy, and who is a beautiful character being played beautifully by Chris, to talk about him in such cruel terms as ‘broke boy’ or ‘broke man.’”
Materialists follows Lucy, a young, ambitious New York City matchmaker who finds herself torn between the perfect match, wealthy financier Harry (Pedro Pascal), and her imperfect ex-boyfriend, struggling actor John.
“There is something about the classism of that, the kind of hatred of poverty, the hatred of poor people, who, again, it’s not their fault that they’re poor,” Song added. “I think that is a very troubling result of the way that the wealthy people have gotten into our hearts about how it’s your fault if you’re poor, you’re a bad person if you’re poor. So it doesn’t make me laugh, actually.”
The filmmaker continued, “It makes me feel very concerned that anybody would talk about my movie and my characters and to really think about it in such classist terms. The whole movie is about fighting the way that capitalism is trying to colonize our hearts and colonize love.”
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