Living in Los Angeles at this late-late stage of capitalism is akin to one long humiliation ritual. Sure, it’s hard to live anywhere right now, but the disparity between the haves (who’ve been cannibalizing creative industries for decades) and have-nots (y’know, the creatives carrying the industry on their backs) has never been quite so wide. No one can sustain a job in their dream field anymore; no one can afford even the most modest lifestyle. As Aziz Ansari claims in the opening moments of his directorial debut, Good Fortune, the American Dream is no more. It’d take an act of divine intervention to deliver his hero from his fate — but even that might not be enough to fix what’s wrong with the world.
A documentary editor in a career drought, Ansari’s Arj has long slipped past rock bottom. He did everything right — the college degree, the honest job — yet the only consistent gigs he can get now are the ones he finds on the labor app TaskSargeant. He stands in line for people at restaurants; he assembles furniture and babysits. None of it is enough to secure an apartment, so he sleeps in his car and showers at the gym. He can’t even hold down a job as an assistant for an airheaded venture capitalist, Jeff (Seth Rogen), who seems easygoing enough, until Arj charges dinner to his company credit card.
