February 17, 2026

"Good Fortune" | A Postmodern Carnival

+++ major spoilers ahead +++ 

I. The Inversion

In medieval Europe, carnival season turned the world upside down. Peasants dressed as kings. Fools wore bishops' robes. The poor ate rich food while the nobility pretended at poverty. For a few chaotic days, social hierarchy inverted completely.

Then it ended. Everyone returned to their actual positions. The lords remained lords, the serfs remained serfs, and somehow the whole system felt more bearable. That was the point. Carnival wasn't a threat to power, but a strategic tool of it. Let the peasants play king for a weekend and they won't demand to be king for real.

Aziz Ansari's Good Fortune is a 90-minute carnival for the late-modern age. A gig worker named Arj swaps lives with Jeff, a venture capitalist sitting on generational wealth. Arj gets the mansion, the Porsche, the financial security. He finds out what it feels like when money solves your problems. Then, through a carefully built narrative of “personal growth” and moral awakening, he chooses to go back to living in his car.

The film costs $4.99 to rent. Most of the people paying will identify with Arj, not Jeff. They'll live through the class swap vicariously, feel the cathartic release of temporary wealth, then return to their actual economic positions with the film's message in their ears: your current position is where you belong. You don't need a revolution when you can rent the simulation of one for the price of half a bar of Dubai chocolate.

II. The Swap as Simulation

When Gabriel the angel switches their lives, nothing about their bodies changes. Arj is still Arj. Same face, same name, same personality. What changes is everything else: bank accounts, home address, social standing, access. Arj wakes up owning the mansion, the investment portfolio, the venture capital firm. Jeff wakes up living in Arj's car, working gig delivery jobs, getting berated for not bringing enough ranch dressing.

The film lets Arj inhabit this for days, not just hours. He eats sushi flown in from Japan, has an assistant (Jeff), learns the cold plunge routine and goes fine dining for a date. Ironically, the first time Arj went to Dunsmoor, he was still Jeff's assistant, used the company card without permission to cover the bill, and got fired for it the next morning. The second time he takes Elena there, now living as a wealthy investor, the dinner is comped. "Dinner's on us tonight," the server says. When you're poor you pay full freight, or worse, you get punished for even trying to access these spaces at all. When you're rich you get it for free because your presence elevates the room. Wealth doesn't just buy things, it generates more wealth through pure social gravity.

And it works. The security, the comfort, the freedom from constant precarity: it all functions exactly as advertised. Gabriel later admits as much to his supervisor Martha in arguably the most honest line of the entire film: "I tried to show him that wealth wouldn't solve all his problems." Pause. "And?" Longer pause. "It seems to have solved most of his problems."

The audience lives through this swap alongside Arj. We watch him discover that yes, money does solve problems, that the rich actually do have it easier. We feel the satisfaction of seeing a gig worker finally get what he deserves. Then the film takes it away. Not through external force, but through Arj's own “moral evolution” he chooses to give it back. This is the Airbnb logic of class experience: you can rent a mansion in Tuscany for a weekend, live like wealth, take the photos, soak in the comfort. Then you leave. The experience of luxury gets democratized while actual wealth stays exactly as concentrated as before. No redistribution necessary: you already got to feel rich.

III. Prescribed Ressentiment

The film is honest, almost recklessly so, about how rigged the game is. The only reason Arj gets wealth at all is through literal divine intervention, a low-ranking angel performing an unauthorized miracle. That's already the thesis: rags-to-riches doesn't happen through hard work or merit anymore. Now it takes forces outside the material world to make it happen. The film isn't hiding this structural rigging, it's making the rigging its narrative premise. 

Arj knows this. Early on he's doing a Task-Sergeant gig in a house and a kid observing him says he wants to be an archaeologist when he grows up. Arj walks him through exactly how that's going to go: you'll major in archaeology, graduate with debt, find zero jobs, move back home, start doing Task-Sergeant gigs. "I used to be a little Indian kid, too," Arj says. "But I got news for you, little man. The American dream is dead." Two Star Rating. Arj loses income for stating facts.

What makes this scene cut deeper: Arj has a college degree. He's a documentary editor, or was, before freelance dried up and he ended up living in his car. He did everything right, got educated, developed skills, built a career, and still ended up waiting in line for strangers' pastries and sleeping in parking lots. The film punishes him for saying this out loud, then validates it entirely through Jeff's nepo baby origins (newspaper-owning grandfather, surgeon and lawyer parents, inherited seed capital) and the robot delivery workers replacing human gig drivers.

Elena's subplot tells the same story from a different angle. She organizes a union at Hardware Heaven. She gives an impassioned speech, gets people on board, faces pushback. Then her storyline just stalls. We never see the union succeed. At the end she's still organizing, still fighting, still working retail. No victory. Just resilience. Which is another way of saying: keep struggling, since it “builds character”, but don't expect tangible results.

So the film knows. It shows you the nepo baby origins of wealth, the death of meritocracy, the dehumanization of gig work, the futility of organizing against capital. All laid out. And then Gabriel teaches Arj that real happiness comes from tacos, dancing, and Felipe the dishwasher. That gratitude matters more than material security.

Nietzsche had a term for this: slave morality. When you can't access power directly, you convert your lack of it into moral superiority. The powerless convince themselves that suffering is noble, that material comfort corrupts, that the truly enlightened don't need wealth because they've transcended such base concerns. "The best things in life are free." "Money doesn't buy happiness." "More money, more problems." These aren't discoveries of some universal truth. They're coping mechanisms market-tested for centuries. And notice who promotes these ideas, and to whom. The film shows us Jeff's life working exactly as promised, then tells Arj, and the audience, that the real treasure was the tacos we ate along the way.

The modern packaging is slicker though. Today ressentiment arrives dressed as wellness culture, spiritual growth, manifestation mindset. Gratitude journals. Meditation apps at $12.99/month. You're not poor, you're just not spiritually evolved enough to appreciate what you have. The system isn't broken, your perspective is. “Growth" becomes a synonym for acceptance at best, defeatism at worst. It is the ultimate gaslight. Gabriel's whole arc is this logic made flesh: an angel teaching a human that fulfillment comes from within. He learns to love being human through tacos, dancing, Felipe, washing dishes. The free or cheap pleasures available to the poor, repackaged as “spiritual wisdom”. The film never once acknowledges that Jeff gets to have both the mansion and the tacos and the (real!) spiritualism, i.e. the ayahuasca retreat. Only the poor are told to find transcendence in limitation. The movie prescribes gratitude as an alternative to demanding social justice.

IV. The Voluntarism Trap

The crucial moment comes near the end. Arj, having lived as a wealthy investor for days, having verified firsthand that money solves most of his problems, sits with Gabriel and makes his choice. He wants to go back. Not because Jeff is threatening him and also not because the angel is forcing him. Gabriel explicitly says Arj has to desire it, has to want to return out of hope rather than guilt. And Arj does.

Thus, the film transforms structural violence into personal identity. Arj doesn't return to precarity because the system (the conditions of the swap) forces him. He returns because that life is "authentically him." Being poor becomes who he really is, stripped of Jeff's superficial wealth. The mansion was fake. The car is real. The financial security was empty. The existential struggle has meaning. Poverty romanticized as “realness”, wealth dismissed as shallow performance.

The alienation is total. Arj has internalized his economic position so deeply that returning to it feels like coming home. The film frames this as “moral growth”: he's learned what truly matters, he's overcome materialism, he's chosen the genuine over the gilded. But say it plainly and the insanity becomes visible: A man who verified that wealth solved all his problems voluntarily chooses to go back to sleeping in his car, and we're meant to celebrate this as “character development”.

There's another moment worth sitting with. Wealthy Arj asks Elena to skip her union meeting and come to Paris for the weekend. She refuses. He pushes, implies her organizing at Hardware Heaven isn't that important. She breaks things off.

The film frames this as conviction. Elena choosing her values over his money. "Authenticity" over luxury. But look at what's actually happening. Elena is a retail worker at a hardware store trying to organize a union that, based on everything the film shows us, will probably fail. That's her survival job. Her means to an end. But she's fused with it so completely that when a multimillionaire she cares about offers her a weekend in Paris, she picks the meeting.

Think about the odds from her perspective. What's more likely to change her material reality: successfully unionizing a hardware chain, or building something with someone who has the resources to transform both their situations? The meeting is her professional life - a job at a corporation that demonstrably doesn't care about its workers, otherwise there'd already be a union. The Paris trip is her private life, her actual relationship, her personal fulfillment. And she chooses the meeting. She chooses work over her private life, her actual relationship, her personal happiness. And the film calls this strength.

This is capitalism's deepest trick. Not just extracting labor but getting workers to mistake their job for their "soul". Elena can't see Hardware Heaven instrumentally, as what it is, a temporary gig, because she's made the fight her entire identity. The struggle is "authentic", the organizing a noble quest. Accepting help or opportunity would mean losing herself. Same trap Arj falls into. He internalizes poverty as identity and walks right back into it. She internalizes the exploited worker role and rejects anything that might pull her out of it. Both convinced that their economic positions are who they "really are" rather than structural conditions they're stuck in.

And the film needs this. It needs wealth to poison the relationship, so it makes wealthy Arj suddenly dismissive of Elena's work. There's no reason he couldn't respect her organizing or even fund it and use his resources to actually help her win. But the film can't allow that because it would collapse the whole framework: wealth corrupts, poverty preserves "authenticity", you can't have money and values at the same time.

Gabriel showed Arj a vision of his future where he and Elena are together, where it's "true love." That connection wasn't contingent on their bank accounts. It just was. But once the swap happens, suddenly their compatibility hinges entirely on class position. The millionaire and the minimum-wage worker can't make it work because the film decided their economic roles determine who they are as people. If this were really about love, Arj's net worth wouldn't matter. Elena would still be Elena. They'd figure it out. But the film needs love to fail when wealth shows up, needs poverty to be where "real connection" lives.

Outside Hollywood however, financial stability is overwhelmingly correlated with relationship success. Money reduces stress, removes precarity, gives people room to actually focus on each other. The film knows this. Gabriel said it out loud. But the narrative needs Elena to choose her retail job over her relationship so Arj's eventual return to poverty looks less like defeat and more like choosing love. Two people who care about each other, one of them temporarily holding the resources to help them both, and the film insists the one with resources must become dismissive and the one without must choose work over relationship for the story to function. That's not a reflection of anything real, not even close. That's ideology writing whatever script it needs to keep people exactly where they are.

The medieval carnival forced people back to their stations when the festival ended. The digital carnival gets you to walk back on your own, convinced you're exercising “authentic choice”. The film makes Arj (and Elena in the broader sense) an active participant in his own economic subjugation, then calls it “liberation”. This is how the poor get convinced they're poor because that's who they “authentically are”, not because the system keeps them there. Your economic position becomes your identity, and choosing to stay there becomes “self-actualization” rather than what it actually is: the total victory of capitalist ideology over any competing vision of how life could be organized differently. 

V. Ending on False Hope

After Arj switches back, Jeff has his epiphany. He's lived it. Slept in the car, worked delivery gigs, got berated for missing ranch dressing, watched his rating tank, felt the algorithmic punishment for being too slow. So in the final act, Jeff walks into a board meeting for Foodzr, the food delivery app his firm invested in, and demands changes. Better pay for drivers. Real benefits. A complete redesign of the rating system. Because he has the controlling stake, the board has no choice but to comply.

This is the film's most naive fantasy - or its most cynical one. The idea that a venture capitalist with majority ownership would voluntarily reduce profits in favor of human dignity. Let’s be honest: this doesn't happen. Not in reality, not without external pressure from unions or regulation or market collapse. But the film needs this ending because without it, Arj's return to poverty is just defeat. The narrative has to pretend systemic problems can be solved through individual moral awakening, that one good rich guy "getting it" is enough to fix the whole exploitative structure. Capitalism is fine, we just need nicer capitalists.

The message to workers becomes almost insulting. Maybe someday a CEO will have a change of heart. Don't organize, don't demand, don't build collective power - it’s futile anyway. Just trust that eventually the right wealthy person will experience temporary poverty and fundamentally restructure their business out of newfound empathy. Meanwhile Elena is still organizing. Arj is back to doing gigs, except now he's working on a documentary about gig workers, turning his exploitation into content to sell back to the system. Nothing material has changed for either of them. The carnival is over. Hierarchy restored.

VI. Angel Corp.

There's one more layer in the movie, and it might be the most telling one. Look at how the film depicts Heaven. Gabriel has a manager. Her name is Martha. He has performance metrics: saving people from texting and driving. He has career ambitions: bigger wings, more meaningful assignments, the kind of work Azrael gets to do. He wants to move up, prove himself, save lost souls instead of just preventing fender benders. So he takes initiative. He goes beyond his assigned role. He tries to help Arj.

And the system destroys him completely for it. One mistake. One failed intervention. Not a demotion, not a warning, not a second chance. Immediate termination. Cast down into humanity. Suddenly he's washing dishes, chain-smoking, working multiple jobs like Felipe, being in constant existential crisis, struggling with the same precarity he was trying to save Arj from.

Think about what the film is doing here. It literally cannot imagine a divine realm that doesn't run on corporate logic. Heaven has hierarchical management, performance reviews, specialization of labor, risk punishment, and termination without safety nets. When Gabriel gets fired, Martha takes his wings. Not as symbolic punishment - as literal repossession. The wings were never his. They came with the job, the way a company laptop comes with the job. His identity, his abilities, his entire capacity to function as what he is: all of it on loan, all contingent on continued employment. The moment the institution withdraws, he doesn't just lose his position, he loses himself. Suddenly he's washing dishes, chain-smoking, scrambling for shifts like everyone else. The celestial order is a company org chart. Angels have bosses and initiative gets punished. One bad quarter and you're out.

Gabriel wanted exactly what Arj wanted: more meaningful work. A chance to prove himself. To move beyond grunt labor into something that matters. The system crushed them both. The human tried to climb out of poverty and ended up back in his car. The angel tried to do more than his job description allowed and ended up washing dishes at a Korean BBQ restaurant. Same story, different altitude.

This is the deepest tell of capitalist realism: not that we can't change the system, but that we can't even imagine what to change in the first place. "It's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism”. So we even organize the heavenly spheres - the literal kingdom of God - according to the same principles that govern gig work. The American Dream is dead even if you have supernatural abilities. Risk-taking, ambition, going above and beyond: none of it saves you. The slightest deviation from your assigned function results in existential free fall. Don't reach beyond your designated role. Stay in your lane. The hierarchy assigned you a position, and the only safe move is to keep it. Even the angels aren't safe from this.

VII. Self-Aware Complicity

Now the film itself becomes the object. Good Fortune is a Hollywood production that cost millions to make. Seth Rogen, at least temporarily playing a gig worker who lives in his car, has an estimated net worth of $80 million. Aziz Ansari, directing this critique of wealth inequality, is worth roughly $25 million. The film will generate profits for investors, distributors and streaming platforms. And it will be consumed, mostly, by the people it claims to represent. Gig workers, struggling creatives, anyone grinding through the late-modern precariat. They're paying to watch rich people tell them poverty is “authentic”.

This isn't accidental hypocrisy, but what Mark Fisher called capitalist realism in its purest form: the system absorbing its own critique and selling it back as commodity. You can make a movie about how the gig economy destroys lives, cast millionaires in the roles, stream it on platforms that exploit gig workers, and none of this undermines the product. If anything, this meta-awareness becomes part of the appeal.

The deeper irony cuts further. The film, simply by existing, can’t even believe in its own message about authenticity. A Hollywood production with A-list actors performing poverty for profit is the definition of manufactured, packaged and sold. And yet the film's narrative demands authenticity from the poor. Arj must choose his "real" life. The film itself is pure performance, but it insists the people at the bottom must be genuine. Authenticity is something only demanded of those without power. The rich can be as manufactured as they want: Bought credentials, inherited positions, performed charity. But the poor must really believe.

And your sophistication about all this doesn't break the spell. It is the spell. You see Rogen is worth $80 million playing a man who lives in his car for a week. You catch Jeff's nepo baby origins. You notice Elena's union subplot getting abandoned without resolution. You see through it. Good for you. But seeing through it doesn't produce action. It produces more consumption. You watch the film, recognize its contradictions, maybe discuss them with friends or read and write essays like this one. You feel sharp for noticing. That feels good. The circuit closes. Nothing changes.

The medieval carnival depended on some level of sincerity, or at least suspended disbelief, to work as a pressure valve. The digital carnival thrives on your awareness of the manipulation. The film was made for an audience that would consciously recognize its contradictions. That recognition doesn't threaten it, but completes it. The system - arguably having arrived at a postmodern state - doesn't even need your sincere belief in its myths anymore. It just needs your attention, your engagement and your $4.99. You can be as cynical as you want about the transaction, but the transaction still happened.

VIII. And so the System Hums Along

A gig worker sits in their car between deliveries, parked outside a restaurant, waiting for the next ping. The algorithm has been slow today. Rent is due. They open their phone, see Good Fortune, $4.99 to rent, about what they make on a single delivery after the app takes its cut. They press play.

For 90 minutes, they watch Arj's journey. They relate. The gig work, the financial precarity, the car living, the algorithmic punishment. They watch him get Jeff's life through divine intervention, the only way class mobility happens anymore. They watch Gabriel admit that yes, wealth solved all the problems. They watch Elena try to organize and get nowhere. They watch Arj choose to go back to poverty voluntarily, framing it as finding his “authentic self”.

The film ends. Their phone pings. New delivery request, 2.3 miles, $6.50 payout. They accept. They deliver someone else's dinner to someone else's home. They get a 4-star rating because the food wasn't hot enough, which wasn't their fault, but the algorithm doesn't care about fault. They park somewhere the security guard won't hassle them, try to get a few hours of sleep.

Nothing has changed. But something has happened. They had their carnival moment. And they can have it again next month when the system feels too crushing. The medieval carnival at least had the decency to end, to make its temporariness visible, to remind everyone the inversion wasn't permanent. The digital carnival is permanent and invisible. Always there. Always ready to provide exactly the release you need to keep going. Not enough to change anything, just enough to keep you from needing to. The film doesn't represent class struggle - it replaces it. You've already consumed the revolution. Why would you need to enact one? This is what we're calling “culture”. ■