Fill Your Stomach and Starve Your Brain: The Menu as a Neoliberal "Chosen One" Fantasy.
A few years ago, I was laid off from a job, and was then promptly invited to watch "The Menu" with 3 other people, all of whom had some combination of high paying jobs, inherited wealth, and absolutely 0 student debt. Against my better judgement, I agreed. At the job I had just been laid off from, I made 43,000 dollars a year-- the highest I had ever been paid. At the time that I was going to see this movie, I made 0 dollars and had several hundreds of dollars of student debt racking up every month, since my student loan payment schedule had just then resumed post-pandemic.
I remember leaving the movie so angry that I almost blacked out. More than anything, it was pissing me off to see a bunch of "rich" people watch this movie and fawn over it, respect it. That day, I decided that if your media about being a working class person/anticapitalism did not make the rich uncomfortable enough, it was not effective social commentary.
The humor in the fact that I was the one thinking and saying this was not lost on me. I am so scared to start conflict with my family and casual friends that I have claimed myself the victim of the fully fictional "Simon's Disease," named after the biblical Simon Peter, who denied being a disciple when questioned, even though he very much was a disciple. I am a very loud and bitchy anticapitalist, especially around my friends. But as loud and unapologetic as I am around them, I had never been that way around my family and the families of my partners. Things are different now, but at the time, I was basically two different people. I was Simon Peter, denying my dearest anarchy in the face of the very mildest pushback.
So, instead of trying to talk it out, I let it stew. I forgot about it, except for the fact that I hated it, and I hated what it thought about me as a poor person. But, the other day, I started getting into a conversation about it with my friends, whom I love. My friends, whom I love, were talking about how much they /loved/ The Menu. They were lavishing it with praise. My friends, whom I love, are people that I adore and trust. They have made me laugh to tears and cry (also to tears) with different characters and stories they have written. I respect their opinions and take them seriously.
Listening to my friends, whom I love, talk about The Menu like that, made me consider that possibly, watching it with a non-introspective and well off group of people less than a month after getting laid off, tainted my viewing of the movie. One of my friends even told me that he wanted to have an extended conversation about this in person, because he loves the movie that much, and because he gives that much of a shit of what I have to say about it.
I love my friends.
But anyways! I decided that meant I would watch it again, in good faith, so I had a better grasp of the source material the next time I talked about it.
Very quickly, let's go over what criticism I had of The Menu, leftover from my initial viewing in 2022/2023.
I could remember some things about The Menu. I remembered feeling pretty weird about watching a movie with any kind of working class message being made and created by people who don't do their own grocery shopping. I remember feeling a bit odd about how the side that you are supposedly rooting for is portrayed. But more than anything, I remember how I was able to sit in a room with a wealthy person, and how it obligated them none to think about actual class disparity and their place in it.
I was reminded of the presence of Les Miserables in American Psycho, by Bret Easton Ellis. Bateman and his rich yuppie friends are constantly bringing up Les Miserables. Everyone's going to see it, everyone's got tickets. Bateman himself has a poster/playbill (?) hanging above his toilet in the film. It's an example of the rich enjoying art that was explicitly made to talk about and even advocate for poor people. In the same way that people watch James Bond films to live out the power fantasy of being a secret agent who gets into gunfights, rich people watch triumphant movies about being poor to satisfy the desire for a sort of imagined simple purity associated with people who are poor. (The Cratchit family, Tiana's family in The Princess and The Frog, Ana de Armas in Knives Out,) Hell, here's a link to a (paywall removed) article from "The Cut" about how children's movies are often about upper-middle class children who go on to learn something from a poor person.
https://www.removepaywall.com/search?url=https://www.thecut.com/2016/02/why-kids-movies-have-so-many-happy-poor-people.html
Your movie can kill as many rich people as it wants, but if rich people enjoy it, you have to question some things about your own art, no?
So all of that is roughly what I had in the barrel when asked about The Menu. But, like any former debate kid, I can make a single point sound like many and make them last a long time, sometimes without even noticing it myself.
So, I sat down this afternoon and watched The Menu. Despite the fact that I FOR SURE liked it more this time around than last time, my criticism is more extensive, meaner, and even more of a hot take this time around than it was last time.
First of all, Shoutout Nicholas Hoult. He plays a great little worm character, and he hit my chest like a propranolol when I was starting the movie up. I literally eased back into my seat when I was getting ready to watch this film, because at least I get to see him for a bit. Full marks, Nicholas.
So, the first thing that I noticed is that the Hostess calls every guest "Miss, Mister ____" But Margot is just called Margot. First name. If I were taking the AP exam here, and I was really trying for those extra points, I'd make a point that almost every time that a member of staff is referenced, it is with their title first. Sous Chef, Hostess, Etc. The rigid power structure of the underclass, relegating everyone to the title of their job coming before their own name, contrasts with the respectful honorifics used for every guest. But again, that's really getting into the weeds for a movie that encourages their audience not to think. But more on that conclusion later.
So, to start, this is a movie that is trying to be about class. It was made message-first, unable to be consumed without at least being aware of that fact. I am someone that believes that no piece of art is apolitical. Many movies try, but this one does not. This piece of art was specifically made to be interpreted with a point. The largest prevailing theme is the difference between rich capitalists and the working class, and how the commodification of art and skill changes the end product. With this in mind, I found it odd that the restaurant workers, the cooks, all just operate as a sort of hive-minded monolith.
It doesn't take a genius to interpret the simple divide as The Rich, and the Communal Environmentally-Oriented Group That Wants to Set The Rich on Fire. They move in unision, laugh in unison. It's reminiscient of the clips I was shown growing up of North Korea, you know? A bunch of people doing stuff in unison, blindly following one leader. The depiction of the kitchen staff at Hawthorne doesn't feel especially empathetic. It's creepy.
There's also a touch of what I would call eco-nihilist sentiments in certain parts of the film. There's a portion in the film during one of the early courses, where chef Julian Slowik says the following:
"Here is what you must remember about this dish. We, the people on this island, are not important. The island and the nutrients it provides exist in their most perfect state without us gathering them, manipulating them or digesting them. What happens inside this room is meaningless compared to what occurs outside, in nature, in the soil and the water and the air. We are but a frightened nanosecond. Nature is timeless."
And that in and of itself is a small taste of what I would call "Eco-nihilism." It's generally a thing you see on the left, rather than the right, and it's not a super popular thing to think amongst most people because most humans like living, and eco-nihilism is the opinion that the earth would be better off if humanity kicked the bucket. It isn't wrong, that it would probably be in the earth's best interests if we disappeared, as opposed to whatever we're doing now. But when someone implies that they don't think the human race should survive, other humans find that pretty creepy (Looking at you, Peter Thiel).
I think I've explained enough in these last two paragraphs to reveal that I think the kitchen staff as a whole is made to represent not just the working class, but "The Left." Slowik even quotes MLK during his final course, as he gets ready to kill everyone inside the restaurant. This is played out as more of a joke. Like, the customers comment on how crazy it is that he's doing that. The exaggerated nature of personality is not exclusive to just the rich clientele who become trapped on the island, but the people trapping them there, as well. We get /some/ good scenes between Slowik and Margot-- the office scene when they have a moment of solidarity as service workers, and the cheeseburger scene, meant to create a moment of humanity between the two. But, besides those two scenes, by and large, there isn't really much of an emotional connection between the staff and Margot. The staff are crazy hive-minded zealots with a death wish and the customers are selfish and somewhat snobby capitalists. The perspective between the two that we can seek safe harbor in, is Margot.
Margot, who convinces Slowik to turn his head from the treacherous world of food-as-art and avant garde meals to the simple joy of a cheeseburger. Margot, who insists upon her own role as a consumer (despite the fact that she is not paying for the service at all) by insisting that she send her food back.
The point that I'm getting to is that The Menu is this sort of Neoliberal exceptionalist fantasy. The left is scary, the right is scary; all that is left is Margot in the center (Or, the center-leaning-left, to be more specific.) She hates what the commodification of certain crafts by the rich has done to the product that is created, but to the product specifically. She empathizes with Slowik in particular, despite the fact that Slowik is used specifically as an example of the top of the toxic hierarchical structures that the western restaurant industry creates. Despite the fact that the staff work in unison (sometimes too well), There is by no means any doubt as to who is leading.
And listen, I know it's only a movie, but I thought it was really interesting that the art that was construed as "pure" was a cheeseburger. Like, at the end of the day, it's what you /want/ to create that's the pure thing, yeah? I've worked in the service industry for most of my working life. I understand what the movie was about. But a cheeseburger is safe, consumable by the masses, and takes it's place on the top of the pedestal, above all of the other courses presented, by being something that Margot wants to eat. It just feels like a weird take to me that the cheeseburger becomes /THE/ moment of the movie because it is, firstly, something Margot would be willing to pay for. Something that she wants to eat-- And secondarily, because it's something that brings the head chef joy.
It is that fact, the obvious distaste towards critics and those who make a living off of criticizing the art of others, and the muddling of their attemped message somewhat, that convince me that this movie possesses a subtle anti-intellectualism. The very post that you are reading is the very same thing that this movie is attempting to escape by admonishing the idea of consumption for criticism in the movie. To this film, an artist only has one job, which is to make art which makes the masses feel the way they want to.
I think something that would have prevented me from writing this at all is the presence of poor joy. There is no success of the poor after the destruction of the rich. Like, I'm not someone that believes that everything has to have a happy ending. The poor person doesn't have to come out on top for your art to be good. But! if you are writing satire with a clear message about class, the way you depict your stand-ins for real groups of people is going to imply something, even if you didn't intend for it to. To me, as an anticapitalist, ending the ruling class means nothing if we destroy ourselves in the effort to do so. That's why I don't feel like this is an anticapitalist movie. It feels like a liberal, finding distaste in both sides, and then watching them kill each other and themselves. It's a nihilist movie, and I find that pretty exhausting.
I think that's where I'll wrap it. The only other thing I have to say, (and this is a bit of an AP-test take, so I'm not like, dying on this hill or anything) is that I thought it was pretty interesting that this movie about food is pretty devoid of fat people, and Anya Taylor Joy, the person the audience is cheering for, shows Chef Slowik that she's /different,/ and /special./ How? By refusing to eat the food. A skinny person, whose revolutionary action is refusing to eat. Again, I don't feel too strongly about this, and it clearly wasn't intentional, but just a thought that I had during this movie that I thought I'd share.
Thanks for reading my initial blog post. I promise I'm more fun at parties than this article would leave you to believe. Maybe some day, I'll share the story about how I accidentally ate an entire bag of dog treats, or ate one of my french tests on purpose. Keep an eye on this blog if you find either of those ideas particularly interesting, or if you want to read too-serious takes on the things you probably enjoy.
Much love,
VAL.