Kajillionaire: A Reflection on Family, Capitalism, and Connection

Opening Moments: The balance of power

In the opening moments of the movie, we focus on family dynamics: a complicated go-no-go from the authorities in Old Dolio’s life that eventually offloads the risk of the operation entirely onto her, but the management of that risk onto her parents. Our heroine is thus established as very competent and practiced within the specific context of the life crafted for her, but particularly unable to shape the direction of that life.

It resonates for me today in seeing the efficiency with which many closeted people learn to perform the (honestly, deeply silly) rituals of cisheteronormative life. I can still tie a tie better than any cis man, and I look darn good in a suit, two skills I expect to never use again. What life prepares us for, when we do not direct it otherwise, is not where we thrive.

Also, just an operational logistics note, they start their op far too quickly, and are far too conspicuous as they wait. A person who leaves almost but not quite immediately after arriving to wait for the next bus is suspicious. Either go immediately, or wait for a random interval - say, the third blue car to pass.

Robert’s view of Old Dolio: “You’re not of gentle birth.”

“Well, you can’t see it, because you’re not of gentle birth.” The disregard Robert has for his daughter’s experience here is, on its surface, the disregard of many fathers of their daughters’ capacity in their own areas of expertise. More than that, though, the delivery of this line establishes the extent to which he disregards Old Dolio as a person in herself, replacing her as an auxiliary of his own experience, one which lacks certain skills and need never gain them.

It’s hardly a surprise that she’s disconnected from the experience of human connection (represented at first as the experience of being massaged). It’s an exercise in value, in efficiency. And when something exists purely for her, there’s just no way to fit it into her lived experience - it’s as alien as doing something deeply meaningful for a well-used wrench without benefit to its user. The massage scene, with the masseuse’s hands hovering over Old Dolio’s back, is nearly as awkward for the viewer as it is for her (and, doubtless, the masseuse).

The Logistics of Capitalism: Bubbles and Exploitation

When we are introduced to the bubbles, they seem at first an exercise in absurdism. The wall spews bubbles at predictable times, and the Dyne family has the obligation to clean them up. In essence, is this not what it is to exist under capital? To be continually presented with meaningless tasks, which are required lest “the dampness becomes rot, and then the whole building collapses. Very expensive?”

The story, then, becomes one in which the proletariat heroine Old Dolio, who is disconnected from humanity by the continual demands of capital that she chase money for survival, is presented over and over with well-meaning people around her. These people wish to offer the chance to bond not for survival, but for the life that can grow within the confines of survival.

The first night, after the class in which Old Dolio is introduced by a social worker to the concept of parenting, she responds in kind. She seeks to extend that connection, and offers Theresa the chance at a mother-daughter getaway. It’s a pleasant dream, but nothing more. Soon enough, it’s thrown back into her face by Robert, the continual eye who intrudes into the most private moments she is afforded.

The dream of family seen in the class lives on, though. Later in the film, Old Dolio will abandon the strictures of the bubbles in favor of returning to that echo of a family, choosing herself over the toil demanded of her. This is the duty of every worker who finds herself torn between labor and life.

The Big Job

Old Dolio’s initial dream of a mother-daughter getaway, of course, turns into a money-making venture, as all dreams do under the weight of capital. The two of them are no longer getting away, but rather taking Robert with them, and wresting in the process such profit as can be made from the situation. In a mid-flight moment of stress, during turbulence in the flight, Robert, our capitalist, patriarchal authority figure in the film, claims even more of the freedom Old Dolio had thought she had gained.

He is distressed by the turbulence, and it becomes Old Dolio’s job to comfort him with a story. As it is the only truly novel thing that has happened to her, the concept of empathy that she felt at that class is turned to Robert’s benefit, then discarded as soon as she is not needed. Naturally, her manager-mother, Theresa, is suspicious of that experience, combing over her for traces of breaking faith with the duty of a proletariat-daughter to remain capable of duty however she may be needed.

On the trip back from the brief, peaceful nothing that is New York, we are introduced to Melanie, our love interest.

Melanie, and the Reach of Power over Novelty

Melanie, the seatmate of Robert and Theresa on the way back, is presented with the expectation that she fill the turbulent air, just as Old Dolio was on the trip there. As a person outside the system of absolute control Robert establishes, she is ironically more prepared to fill that expectation than Old Dolio was - though, of course, far less accepting later on of the exploitative nature of that dynamic. This reflects the inability of any system of control to adequately craft solutions to all its problems.

“How is this person an asset? I don’t… I don’t understand.” Old Dolio, who has grown up entirely under Robert’s heel, cannot yet think of people in modes other than transactional. Blinded by the tiny box in which she has been raised, Old Dolio cannot conceive of a purpose for a person in her demographic of “young woman” which she is not herself able to fulfill - this makes Melanie a threat to her own position.

Melanie’s Mother

Meanwhile, we are introduced in parallel to another character presented with a similar, but contrasting worldview to Old Dolio’s own: Melanie’s offscreen mother. The relationship between Melanie and her mother is distant, not for lack of effort but for lack of substance. Melanie invents an issue to avoid the ordeal of explaining her actual life, and her mother orders a solution to be purchased and delivered to avoid the ordeal of sitting with imperfection. They exchange some meaningless chatter, and no depth exists between them. Capital in the uniquely imperial core mode of rampant consumerism has subsumed connection here, just as surely as capital in the mode of the desperate accrual of wealth has with the Dyne family.

Melanie’s Scam

Robert, the authority, is in the patriarchal mode of exploitation: both accepting Melanie’s concept for a scam at once and going readily along with Theresa’s exclusion of her from any profit. (Of course, he promptly turns it into a different, more exploitative concept of a similar scam, without mentioning it to Melanie herself.) The group are suddenly in the business of robbing from the elderly - hardly an unfamiliar task for the capitalist class. Melanie herself is uncomfortable with it, extremely conscious of the axis of oppression she faces as a woman of color, but her concerns are dismissed. It is not the concern of the boss if the worker lands in external trouble; there can always be found more hands eager to work.

Once the Dynes have their ill-gotten gains, Robert proceeds to turn his mind to luxury - living, tellingly enough, like the kajillionaires he decries and putting desires ahead of concrete needs. As a person out of power, Old Dolio can’t understand the impulse - she clearly would prefer to just pay half of their rent - but she has no room, power, or emotional space to meaningfully object, and thus a hot tub is purchased in place of basic needs.

(I’ll call attention here also to the adorable moment at the hot tub store in which Old Dolio is flustered by Melanie being too hot, which makes her ‘uncomfortable’ (read: aroused and unfamiliar with the concept.))

The Grift Must Go On

As the elder robbery continues, the scene of Abe’s death is significant. It’s the moment in which Old Dolio gets a glimpse of the dream she’s been denied, the experience of being a family. It’s explicitly performative, but for both Old Dolio and Theresa, it’s the closest they’ve been to family in ages - for Old Dolio, in her life.

(Also, Melanie tries to do a classic porn intro, which is completely missed by Old Dolio. The romance side of this movie is just precious.)

A dance of empty plates and glasses and Melanie alone fully living into the expectation of normatively is simply emblematic of the Dynes as a whole: they have the trappings of a family, but none of the substance. They simply practice roles to sate the needs of their mark, then move on.

As it goes, Abe rests as their end state, lonely and waiting for the end. He has people, but they don’t meaningfully have him. His solace at the end is Old Dolio’s voice, the uncertain words and ideas of a person who was never given the space to grow, as she is first branching out. This first step into Old Dolio’s life beyond oppression is bookended by the last step of Abe as he leaves his own life behind. This is too often the way of things when capital renders us, as Abe’s family, “not bad kids, just busy.”

Melanie is hurt by the act of guiding someone through death for profit, and the structures of power represented in Robert explain it as “tender feelings.” As for Old Dolio, “You wouldn’t know about any of that.” And she doesn’t, but she’s beginning to learn.

The Return to Parenting Class, and Melanie and Robert (and Theresa)

Learning, as a process, is something that happens in stages, and there is never shame in beginning to learn, wherever you are. When Old Dolio runs away to the parenting class, she’s given the chance to be loved in ways she never has, but that she now knows she wants to be loved. The moment of being touched by the teacher of the class, the moment of being safe for a moment while her hair is brushed, is a powerful moment of growth for her - up until a quake comes through, and upends that sense of safety that she was beginning to grow.

Meanwhile, with Melanie and the Dynes, the power structure attempts to exploit its most recent inductee in one more axis as Robert and Theresa pressure Melanie towards an obviously sexualized group bath. Melanie, thankfully resilient after long experience of living with sexual harassment (as seen in her first moments onscreen), does fend them off, but the experience is one more instance of the continual trauma of being sexually desirable and oppressed, highlighted by the discomfort the camera eye paints onto the canvas of the viewer’s mind. (Here, much like the conversation with the Dynes around the escalation in “her” con, the particular intersection of her oppression becomes more evident — Latina women are particularly sexualized in American society, an experience that the scene reflects.)

Finally, with growth through the experience of being loved, Old Dolio is able to stand up to Robert and Theresa’s lack of parenting, calling them out for their failure to give her affection and for their readiness to use affection as a tool to leverage control over other vulnerable people around them. The Dynes are unprepared for pushback, and Melanie takes the opportunity to invite Old Dolio to make a break from her family and exist outside the continual scramble for the next dollar.

(Disclaimer: I didn’t write during a significant portion of this sequence because I love watching it too much)

Beyond Robert?

“It’s really more of a three-person job. They’ll be calling any second… Just, after they put the buckets down…” Old Dolio, like many workers, has been kept in her position by the threat of being essential. She can’t leave, she can’t strike, because it’s her duty to do her job, lest “the dampness becomes rot and then the whole building collapses.” As much as we as communists take power from the idea that our work drives industry, we also take moderation from the same. The truth is, when it must, power finds a way to skate by. This frees us to not only have, but use the power of our labor for our own benefit.

Reparenting, and Littleness as Claiming Power

The whole sequence of reparenting/ameliorating the failures in Old Dolio’s upbringing is adorable, but is also a strong example of how often for queer people we find ourselves making connections with people through the desire to reenact a childhood that was incomplete the first time around. In my own experience, I often find myself fantasizing about having the same parents, but a different body — all the more, then, queer people whose home lives were not charmed ideals of youth may find peace and comfort in enacting those ideas and rites of youth now. I can’t cite studies or statistics, but I know many queer people, including myself, find comfort in the sensation of age regression and littlespace in large part because it assures us that every missing memory of joy is something that need not be missing forever.

In other words, Old Dolio, I think you should try calling Melanie “mommy”.

The Earthquake as Social Unrest

With the earthquake scene, the Big One, I think we come to the understanding of what Robert’s conception of The Big One really looks like, and how it connects to the story. There have been a number of upheavals over time, and whenever there’s unrest, there’s always the chance for the power structure to be meaningfully challenged. Everything is live; anything could be shocking, could even break things down. In those moments of upheaval, it’s important to not touch anything at all - but more than that, it’s important that those you oppress follow that same instinct. Don’t do anything, don’t speak up, don’t act out, lest you face reprisal: the patriarchy, the capitalist class, the power structure says you can’t do anything. Who knows the punishment if you do?

Old Dolio feels the Big One while she’s temporarily free from her chains, disconnected from Robert and all the oppression he represents. Naturally, she falls into the routine of the only thing she’s ever known, to be afraid. She has to stay back from what could be the revolution, because… Because. Only when she survives it without Robert and Theresa to shelter her does she really start to dream of what life can be like without those systems of authority. It is by living without hierarchy that we realize that we can live without hierarchy.

There is joy in living past capital.

Epic III [Instrumental]

In Old Dolio’s dance, I am reminded of an absolutely beautiful bend I saw once, in a parking garage. I know only just enough about running electrical conduit to know the way it is typically done, and the challenge of precise bends one after the other. It was at a pillar, next to a fairly large air duct going down to some office underground. The pipe was flush against the ceiling, and then it was not. It snaked in smooth twists about the place, shifting in a perpetual map of the state of the garage’s infrastructure when it was installed. It extended past the end of the duct by about three inches, then a foot or two along its rear length, it angled back to be flush against it. A space remained, where likely once a pipe was held tight, and now no longer.

If it were taken from that garage, the wires snipped and pulled free, that conduit could stand free in a sculpture gallery. Old Dolio has likewise pulled what was once a craft refined for the eternal scramble for petty cash into a work of art, and she has blended it with the rage of every proletariat who must do from fear what could surely be more beautiful in love.

If You’re Not the Exploiter, You’re the Exploited

In the midst of this, power comes to seduce Old Dolio back to the structures of oppression she knew. This is the only response of capital in the face of its alternatives, to bribe the proletariat back with petty trinkets and a momentary blindness to oppression. Her parents leave her a number of gifts, one for each birthday throughout the childhood she was denied. Taken at the surface level, much like Melanie’s mother, Robert and Theresa would be seeking to replace the experiences they never created with the things they could buy to make up for it.

Old Dolio engages with their games, and at the fancy restaurant she and Melanie are invited to, Robert gives a empty claim of sympathy and desire to connect to his daughter. He considers at length the trauma of potentially losing his favorite worker - er, his daughter - in the Big One. The thing is, though, Robert knows perfectly well that the unrest was not, in fact, the big one. He benefits from calling it the big one, because it keeps the people of dreaming of something actually big enough to turn the structures of capitalist society to dust, but he is still in a position of power when this Big One is done. Theresa follows his lead, he has the power of patriarchy on his side, and he has the chance to run another con. He doesn’t quite get Old Dolio back under his sway, but he gets enough of an inroad to take advantage of her, all the same. Really, that’s what matters - the chance for exploitation for gain.

So What? Living Past Power

When at last the rug is pulled out, we see the best possible response from Melanie and Old Dolio: So what?

In the end, Kajillionaire is a story about what happens when we reject the systems that exploit us. Old Dolio’s journey shows us that it’s never too late to seek connection, even if it means tearing away from everything we have and are.

If we are denied the trappings of luxury, if we are told we can never have it as good as if they were still in charge, so what? We have freedom, and we have love, and we have one another, and that’s what really fills life. If the only thing we ever had was each other, so what? We are to each other more than worlds.

So, go be lesbian about it.