Pizza Money: looking at poverty through the lens of The Florida Project

One of the powers of pop culture is that like art it holds a mirror up to our society. Whether it’s the top movie at the box office, the latest book club pick, or the current #1 song, they’re all reflections of who we are and where we’re at in this moment. That reflection can be filtered though, either by the artists themselves or more often by the companies who are responsible for distributing their work. The art resembles us just enough to get our buy-in but it has to be made palatable so it can be sold to the masses. When a piece of art doesn’t do that it can be jarring. Seeing honest depictions of ourselves or other parts of society can be hard to deal with. We tend to prefer the movie versions of our lives and society. Yet, when pop culture forces us to face reality, it can give us a new perspective on our world. Not only that, but it can also foster a better understanding of who we share this world with. Recently I was reminded of how powerful that experience can be while watching The Florida Project. Poverty has been on my mind lately, and this movie is one of the best depictions of how it affects people and our communities. 

I’ll admit I missed The Florida Project when it came out. In a way, I’m glad I waited because its story is even more poignant in the current post-pandemic economy. For those unfamiliar, this movie follows a six-year-old girl named Moonee who lives in a seedy motel in Orlando with her young mother. There isn’t a whole lot of plot as the movie centers on Moonee’s day-to-day experience as she goes about her life one summer. She has the freedom that most kids dream of, but with that freedom comes a lot of weight. As she does her best to be a kid, she has to deal with the harsh realities of her situation. There’s a lot of pain and suffering around her. Most people in the motel struggle, her Mom included. Moonee’s Mom is constantly trying to hustle to pay the weekly rent without a job or education, sometimes wrapping Moonee up in her schemes. Despite trying to care for Moonee, her Mom just isn’t there as a parent and still tries to live like she would without a kid. Her lifestyle makes an obvious impact on Moonee, in the absence of supervision, Moonee is a menace both on and off the motel grounds. Moonee and her Mom’s behavior is terrible in so many ways. The movie can be a rough watch at times but you can’t look away because it’s such a surreal experience. There are few movies like it, where it feels as if you’re peering into somebody else’s life instead of just watching a movie. It's also incredibly moving as you’re reminded that for millions of people in this country this is their reality.

The reality that we get a glimpse of shows one of America’s dirtiest secrets. In generating obscene wealth for a select few, we left people like Mooney and her Mom behind. Don’t get me wrong, we’ve always had a problem of inequality in this country. What we see in The Florida Project isn’t new. It’s always been hard to raise a family or just be a kid with no money. At various times through the mid-1900s we tried to fix that. We invested in the public safety net and communities across the country. Those on the bottom of the ladder were able to have some dignity and make sure their kids were taken care of. There was work people could be proud of and it didn’t feel impossible to make it out of the mud. Then came 50 years of conservative fiscal policy spearheaded by Reagan. Quality of life was no longer the barometer by which we measured the success of the country. Instead, GDP and the stock market became the priority. NAFTA and the Great Recession were just a few of the events that killed jobs, transferred money up the social ladder, and forced foreclosure on huge swaths of the lower class. People were forced into the streets, and in that desperation, many turned to the only comfort available to them, drugs. Our kids suffered too as their parents lost resources to take care of them and education was defunded. It only took a generation or two to wipe out the proud working-class families who built this country. (In writing this I want to acknowledge that the social welfare programs of the 1900s weren’t distributed equally. Black families did not get the same leg up, and have had to deal with the consequences of conservative fiscal policy for far longer than anyone else in this country.) 

Poverty is traumatizing, and we don’t talk about that enough. It’s impossible for someone’s mental health not to take a hit as they descend further into survival mode. It’s why a single mom would turn to her worst impulses to pay rent. All she’s thinking about is meeting her basic needs. There’s no energy left over to think about consequences and morality. Kids who grow up in that environment don’t know anything else. Moonee is exposed to things no child should be. In turn, she doesn’t always act like a kid. She swears, is manipulative, and is honestly kind of an asshole. You have to empathize with her though, because how could she be any other way? It’s all she knows. That’s where the genius of The Florida Project lies. By framing the story through the eyes of a child, you’re forced to reconcile with how society treats people. It’s impossible to blame Moonee because of the environment around her. Her Mom is largely to blame, and deservedly so, but even that begs a question. What if she had the same childhood as Moonee? If that’s the case shouldn’t we extend the same empathy to her that we do to Moonee? I’ve said this before but these are the things that people don’t see when they look down on people who are living in seedy motels or on the street. This wasn’t their choice. Most of them have been kicked by a world that forgot about them. Too many didn’t get the love they needed. People who were supposed to take care of them didn’t. We also don’t care enough for people as a society to help those who don’t get the support they need, creating a vicious cycle of poverty and trauma. How Mooney and her Mom act is terrible, and you can’t excuse that, but I’m not sure you can blame them for it either. 

When discussing poverty, people always bring up the argument that not everyone stays poor. Sure, some people do make it out, but they still carry the burden of what they were forced to endure. I’m only one generation removed from this type of world and have heard first-hand accounts of what it’s like. Growing up in a system with parents who are shells of themselves due to poverty leaves a mark. You can’t unsee and unfeel things. Without the right support, those experiences will lead to more trauma, even if someone may have more resources than before. Again, the same question arises about who is to blame for all of this pain. We can’t excuse anyone’s behavior, but the system is flawed. We live in a decaying society that seems to have forgotten what it means to be a community. We have enough resources to help lift people up but that wouldn’t help the bottom line. It doesn’t help that we turn an individual’s suffering into content. We like to laugh at people being “ignorant” on TikTok, but the reality is that they’re not ignorant. They’re ignored. Ignored by a system that gave up on them a long time ago. 

These types of questions are uncomfortable, it’s why we do our best to look away when we see it in our lives. If you live in a city you’re probably confronted by poverty daily but it’s hard to face it head-on. Sometimes it doesn’t feel real because that experience is so different from your own. That’s why we need movies like The Florida Project. It may be tough to admit that you need art to feel empathy, but it can be hard to relate to someone in the abstract. You can’t always get empathy from a fleeting interaction on the street. The world is so noisy that these interactions can get drowned out. Art can immerse you in another person’s experience. It can give you a window into a life that you wouldn’t otherwise have. These stories aren’t about feeling sorry though. People dealing with poverty don’t need our pity. We’re not better than them, we just got lucky with the people, resources, or structure in our lives. What we need to take away from this art is to feel what they feel. They need us to see them as humans who the system failed; because, in the end, they were all kids once too.