Don’t Worry Darling: Critiquing the nostalgic cultural logic of late patriarchy

M. Keith Booker; Isra Daraiseh

doi:10.1386/ejac_00132_1

ISSN: 1466-0407
E-ISSN: 1758-9118

Don’t Worry Darling: Critiquing the nostalgic cultural logic of late patriarchy
Authors: M. Keith Booker¹ and Isra Daraiseh²
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¹ ISNI: 0000000121510999 University of Arkansas ² ISNI: 0000000404177292 Arab Open University, Kuwait
Source: European Journal of American Culture, Volume 44, Issue 1, Mar 2025, p. 7 - 18
DOI: https://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2102/10.1386/ejac_00132_1
Language: English
- Received: 13 Mar 2023
- Accepted: 28 Sep 2023
- Published online: 19 Mar 2025

Abstract

Don’t Worry Darling features a group of men from the 2020s who retreat into a computer simulation of 1950s suburbia in which they can exert full patriarchal control over their chosen wives. Meanwhile, the real-world models on which these fantasy wives are based are forced to give up their own lives in the 2020s in order to support the simulation (via some unspecified and rather unlikely process). The film doesn’t always make sense, but it is obviously meant to be read allegorically, rather than literally – as a commentary on the persistence of patriarchal ideas in our own time. Some critics felt that the film’s feminist commentary was a bit simplistic and heavy-handed. However, read through the optic of Fredric Jameson’s seminal theorization of postmodernism, Don’t Worry Darling can be seen to call attention to the ways in which fears of the loss of patriarchal power can be used to divert attention from the damaging psychic consequences of late capitalism. The persistence of patriarchy after decades of feminist activism can thus be partly explained by the fact that this persistence is useful to the capitalist power structure.

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Article Type: Article

Keyword(s): 1950s nostalgia; gender stereotypes; late capitalism; male fantasy; postmodernism; virtual reality

Don’t Worry Darling: Critiquing the nostalgic cultural logic of late patriarchy

Abstract

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