Why people are searching for ‘movies about being broke’

Life is unfair. Most parents inform their children as much at an early age, possibly to explain why another child has a cooler toy. What many of those parents understandably don’t mention to their kids, however, is that the unfairness of life is unfairly distributed.

Income inequality, for instance, is a major factor in life’s unfairness, and in America it’s only gotten worse as of late. According to a CNN report, the top 10% of wage earners saw their incomes rise by about 22% between 2019 and 2022, compared with those in the middle, who saw a 5% increase in the same period. And that’s if they managed to hold onto their jobs at all, in an era of frequent mass layoffs across several industries. Government reports may boast a sunny economic outlook for 2024, with consumer confidence at a two-year high, but the reality on the ground for a lot of people feels a whole lot bleaker.

Anyone looking for an escape from financial reality might decide to spend a couple hours lost in a cinematic universe, Marvel or otherwise. But movies now seem increasingly concerned with exploring financial reality as well. Whether it’s the confused class politics of Saltburn, the witty sci-fi satire of Netflix’s They Cloned Tyrone, or the allegorical catastrophe of Triangle of Sadness, movies about broke people and their wealthy antagonists are everywhere. Instead of offering an escape from the harshness of income inequality, they reflect it right back to viewers.

Depending on who’s watching, films about broke people can either feel cathartic or present a new perspective. They often go over well with general audiences because everyone can identify with a struggling protagonist, regardless of whether the viewer personally has money woes of their own. Smart filmmakers who understand their audiences either smuggle salient class messages into these films, or infuse them into the atmosphere of every scene, even if they don’t factor directly into the plot.  

Recently, there has been an uptick of interest in movies about broke people. Here’s what those movies tell us about being poor in America today.

It’s hard to get ahead when you’re busy staying afloat

A lot of movies like Pursuit of Happyness take the form of a feel-good story. They build toward a triumphant conclusion in which a down-on-their-luck protagonist succeeds in spite of their circumstances. An unhoused Will Smith works so hard at his unpaid stockbroker internship that he wins a prized position and achieves fantastic success. Pursuit of Happyness puts a little too much onus on the individual, promoting the old bootstraps-narrative that a lot of elbow grease and a little gumption can take you anywhere. Even so, the film also illustrates a compelling point: It is exponentially harder to get ahead when you’re barely getting by.

In the years since Pursuit came out, in 2006, the conversation around the crappy ethics of unpaid internships has reached critical mass. Far more people are now aware that dangling a potential job opportunity in front of only those who can afford to work for free at first is a form of gatekeeping. The problem goes far beyond unpaid internships, though. Most well-paying jobs require a level of sterling experience, a standard of dress, or juiced-up connections that are hard to come by for anyone born into poverty or trying to work their way out of it.

I, Tonya lingers on the discrimination Tonya Harding faced over her shabby outfits, which telegraphed her inability to afford the pageantry expected of figure skaters. Erin Brockovich’s titular single mom is only able to succeed at the paralegal job she guilts her way into because she manages to finagle free daycare out of a sympathetic neighbor. These and many other movies about scrappy strivers all (accurately) depict a world in which one’s opportunities are filtered by the challenges they face.

The deck is stacked

The most insidious aspect of income inequality is that it doesn’t just happen by accident. According to The Guardian, the vast majority of U.S. states have tax systems that exacerbate inequality, rather than reduce it—with the poorest one-fifth of people paying a tax rate an average of 60% higher than the top 1% of households. Some of the best movies about broke people focus on the fact that their poverty is what makes others’ prosperity possible.

Films like Bong Joon-ho’s Snowpiercer and Jordan Peele’s Us use layered allegory to get this point across, as we find out how the train in the former actually runs and what life is like for the Tethered in the latter. Last year’s Dumb Money, however, used the infamous GameStop run on the stock market to illustrate this principle. The film depicts how Wall Street and the tech world collaborated in January 2021 to thwart The Little Guy, a contingent ranging from debt-ridden college students to suburban day trader types. Even when the underdogs used tools like Reddit and webcasting to beat the system together, the system found a way to beat them back. (Or, at least until a congressional hearing materialized in the aftermath of that beatdown.)

Poverty is a warning to others

While the worlds of brokerage firms and broke college students seldom cross over, opposite financial spheres aren’t always kept apart. In fact, the entire American experiment relies upon the poorest people remaining visible to everyone else, as a looming threat to motivate participating in the system. As sociologist and author Matthew Desmond says, “America does so much more to subsidize affluence than alleviate poverty.” It’s at least partly because the country needs poverty to exist as a warning.

The films of Sean Baker derive their power from the juxtaposition of poverty and wealth. Tangerine (2015) follows a pair of sex workers barely scraping by in Hollywood, contrasting the grittiness of their lives with the façade of glitziness that envelops the city; show business and its underbelly coexisting together. Baker’s 2017 masterpiece, The Florida Project, is set, obviously, in the other Sunshine State. It centers on a trio of children who live among the rundown budget motels in Kissimmee, Florida—right near Disney World. Throughout the film, the main characters interact obliviously with the affluent families visiting the Happiest Place on Earth. The kids have no idea what they look like to those tourists.

Unfortunately, we do. Those kids look like a reminder to keep going back to whatever job helped bankroll that vacation—or else.

The desperation of precarity

Finally, what many movies about broke people have in common is their interest in the shady things their protagonists are willing to do in order to become less broke. In Moonlight, it’s dealing drugs; in Emily the Criminal, it’s credit card fraud and worse; in Shoplifters, it’s, well, you get the picture. The plots are fueled by the desperation that financial precarity inspires in people, and they get a boost from how relatable that desperation should be for many viewers.

Nearly two-thirds of Americans are currently living paycheck to paycheck, and according to a May 2023 Federal Reserve survey, nearly 37% of them couldn’t afford to cover a $400 emergency expense. A dramatic inciting incident is always potentially lurking right around the corner, both in movies and real life. For too many people—way more than could ever fit in the rundown motels around Kissimmee, Florida—financial security is either temporary or an illusion. Movies about broke people are designed not just to make their viewers grateful that at least they’re not that broke, but also to inspire empathy toward those who are and what they do.

Life is unfair. Most parents inform their children as much at an early age, possibly to explain why another child has a cooler toy. What many of those parents understandably don’t mention to their kids, however, is that the unfairness of life is unfairly distributed.

Income inequality, for instance, is a major factor in life’s unfairness, and in America it’s only gotten worse as of late. According to a CNN report, the top 10% of wage earners saw their incomes rise by about 22% between 2019 and 2022, compared with those in the middle, who saw a 5% increase in the same period. And that’s if they managed to hold onto their jobs at all, in an era of frequent mass layoffs across several industries. Government reports may boast a sunny economic outlook for 2024, with consumer confidence at a two-year high, but the reality on the ground for a lot of people feels a whole lot bleaker.

Anyone looking for an escape from financial reality might decide to spend a couple hours lost in a cinematic universe, Marvel or otherwise. But movies now seem increasingly concerned with exploring financial reality as well. Whether it’s the confused class politics of Saltburn, the witty sci-fi satire of Netflix’s They Cloned Tyrone, or the allegorical catastrophe of Triangle of Sadness, movies about broke people and their wealthy antagonists are everywhere. Instead of offering an escape from the harshness of income inequality, they reflect it right back to viewers.

Depending on who’s watching, films about broke people can either feel cathartic or present a new perspective. They often go over well with general audiences because everyone can identify with a struggling protagonist, regardless of whether the viewer personally has money woes of their own. Smart filmmakers who understand their audiences either smuggle salient class messages into these films, or infuse them into the atmosphere of every scene, even if they don’t factor directly into the plot.  

Recently, there has been an uptick of interest in movies about broke people. Here’s what those movies tell us about being poor in America today.

It’s hard to get ahead when you’re busy staying afloat

A lot of movies like Pursuit of Happyness take the form of a feel-good story. They build toward a triumphant conclusion in which a down-on-their-luck protagonist succeeds in spite of their circumstances. An unhoused Will Smith works so hard at his unpaid stockbroker internship that he wins a prized position and achieves fantastic success. Pursuit of Happyness puts a little too much onus on the individual, promoting the old bootstraps-narrative that a lot of elbow grease and a little gumption can take you anywhere. Even so, the film also illustrates a compelling point: It is exponentially harder to get ahead when you’re barely getting by.

In the years since Pursuit came out, in 2006, the conversation around the crappy ethics of unpaid internships has reached critical mass. Far more people are now aware that dangling a potential job opportunity in front of only those who can afford to work for free at first is a form of gatekeeping. The problem goes far beyond unpaid internships, though. Most well-paying jobs require a level of sterling experience, a standard of dress, or juiced-up connections that are hard to come by for anyone born into poverty or trying to work their way out of it.

I, Tonya lingers on the discrimination Tonya Harding faced over her shabby outfits, which telegraphed her inability to afford the pageantry expected of figure skaters. Erin Brockovich’s titular single mom is only able to succeed at the paralegal job she guilts her way into because she manages to finagle free daycare out of a sympathetic neighbor. These and many other movies about scrappy strivers all (accurately) depict a world in which one’s opportunities are filtered by the challenges they face.

The deck is stacked

The most insidious aspect of income inequality is that it doesn’t just happen by accident. According to The Guardian, the vast majority of U.S. states have tax systems that exacerbate inequality, rather than reduce it—with the poorest one-fifth of people paying a tax rate an average of 60% higher than the top 1% of households. Some of the best movies about broke people focus on the fact that their poverty is what makes others’ prosperity possible.

Films like Bong Joon-ho’s Snowpiercer and Jordan Peele’s Us use layered allegory to get this point across, as we find out how the train in the former actually runs and what life is like for the Tethered in the latter. Last year’s Dumb Money, however, used the infamous GameStop run on the stock market to illustrate this principle. The film depicts how Wall Street and the tech world collaborated in January 2021 to thwart The Little Guy, a contingent ranging from debt-ridden college students to suburban day trader types. Even when the underdogs used tools like Reddit and webcasting to beat the system together, the system found a way to beat them back. (Or, at least until a congressional hearing materialized in the aftermath of that beatdown.)

Poverty is a warning to others

While the worlds of brokerage firms and broke college students seldom cross over, opposite financial spheres aren’t always kept apart. In fact, the entire American experiment relies upon the poorest people remaining visible to everyone else, as a looming threat to motivate participating in the system. As sociologist and author Matthew Desmond says, “America does so much more to subsidize affluence than alleviate poverty.” It’s at least partly because the country needs poverty to exist as a warning.

The films of Sean Baker derive their power from the juxtaposition of poverty and wealth. Tangerine (2015) follows a pair of sex workers barely scraping by in Hollywood, contrasting the grittiness of their lives with the façade of glitziness that envelops the city; show business and its underbelly coexisting together. Baker’s 2017 masterpiece, The Florida Project, is set, obviously, in the other Sunshine State. It centers on a trio of children who live among the rundown budget motels in Kissimmee, Florida—right near Disney World. Throughout the film, the main characters interact obliviously with the affluent families visiting the Happiest Place on Earth. The kids have no idea what they look like to those tourists.

Unfortunately, we do. Those kids look like a reminder to keep going back to whatever job helped bankroll that vacation—or else.

The desperation of precarity

Finally, what many movies about broke people have in common is their interest in the shady things their protagonists are willing to do in order to become less broke. In Moonlight, it’s dealing drugs; in Emily the Criminal, it’s credit card fraud and worse; in Shoplifters, it’s, well, you get the picture. The plots are fueled by the desperation that financial precarity inspires in people, and they get a boost from how relatable that desperation should be for many viewers.

Nearly two-thirds of Americans are currently living paycheck to paycheck, and according to a May 2023 Federal Reserve survey, nearly 37% of them couldn’t afford to cover a $400 emergency expense. A dramatic inciting incident is always potentially lurking right around the corner, both in movies and real life. For too many people—way more than could ever fit in the rundown motels around Kissimmee, Florida—financial security is either temporary or an illusion. Movies about broke people are designed not just to make their viewers grateful that at least they’re not that broke, but also to inspire empathy toward those who are and what they do.