Materialists and The Ideal Mate Illusion in Modern Matchmaking

The new film Materialists, starring Dakota Johnson as a high-end matchmaker named Lucy, delves into the transactional and often delusional world of modern dating, particularly as experienced by her wealthy clients in New York City. While the movie aims to offer a sharp, even cynical, look at the pursuit of love, its portrayal of matchmaking and the expectations of potential mates has sparked strong reactions from real-life matchmakers.The core of the film's narrative, and a point of contention for many real matchmakers, lies in the delusion of the potential mates. 
Lucy's clients are often characterized by their highly specific, almost superficial, checklists for an ideal partner – focusing on attributes like height, net worth, and a perfect "image." This "build a bear" approach, as one matchmaker describes it, sets unrealistic expectations, leading clients to chase an unattainable ideal rather than seeking genuine connection. The film highlights how individuals, driven by the curated realities of social media and a culture of commodification, believe they can simply "recreate" a perfect partner.
This delusion is not confined to the fictional world of Materialists but resonates deeply with everyday dating life. In a landscape saturated with dating apps and curated online profiles, individuals often fall into the trap of viewing potential partners as a collection of desirable traits rather than complex individuals. This "materialistic" approach to love, where people are "objectified" and "commodified," as writer-director Celine Song herself notes, fosters a superficial pursuit that often leads to disappointment and a struggle to find true compatibility.
While some aspects of Lucy's dedication to her clients and her post-date follow-ups are recognized as realistic, real matchmakers largely critique Materialists for its unrealistic depiction of their profession. They point out that true matchmaking involves far more than simply fulfilling a checklist; it requires deep emotional intelligence, building trust, and often challenging clients' preconceived notions to help them find meaningful relationships. 
The film's emphasis on dramatic, ethically questionable scenarios (like stalking or the mishandling of client safety) further deviates from the professional standards and community-driven nature of the actual matchmaking industry. 
Ultimately, Materialists serves as a cinematic reflection on the often-delusional pursuit of the "perfect" partner in contemporary dating, highlighting the gap between idealized expectations and the messy, human reality of finding love.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Podcasting since two thousand and five.

Speaker 2 (00:02):
This is the King of Podcasts radio network, KINGO Podcasts dot.

Speaker 1 (00:06):
Com Materialists and the way they tackle those matchmaking myths.
We're all a little depraved and debaucherous. Here is the
King of Podcasts. Thanks for joining me here on the
program King of Podcasts, here with you, fresh off of

(00:27):
getting a colonoscoped. Yeah, I don't recommend joining the lead
up to the colonoscary release. It was very quick and painless.
Just to say this like that, I mean it. That's
why I actually did so. That's what held me back
a day from doing this program. But here I am
ready to do it. I still got to do the
resting podcast tonight. We're going to knock out both of
them tonight. So if you're listening in, you know what's

(00:48):
going on. You're in the know. Thanks listening to the program.
You find the show of course at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube,
YouTube Music, iHeartRadio, Amazon Music, and all the bench podcast
platforms of course, all originating from Kingopodcasts dot com. So
I saw the movie Materialists over the weekend, starting Dakota Johnson,

(01:10):
Chris Evans, and Petro Pascal. Pretty big cast in there
an eight twenty four movie which didn't put a whole
lot into the budget, obviously for the money for the
stars that got in it. The Coda Johnson playing an
elite matchmaker, and really the movie does a good job
of kind of portraying the kind of dates and dating

(01:31):
scenarios in New York City, by the way, because matchmaking
of this kind doesn't happen much in many of the markets.
But for what they did of it, the portrayal of
the actual men and women that were being paired for dating,
the delusions that they all had together collectively in the movie,
that was really well done. I'll give them a lot

(01:52):
of credit. And I thought the Coda Johnson did a
really good job of this movie. There's a lot better
than what she had did with Madame Madam Webb. But
of course she said there was a lot of things
that the creative process cannot be done by committee, which
obviously was that. Now in this movie, she also has
to go to deal with her own love tryst, where
she meets with a brother of one of the people

(02:13):
that she matched at a wedding. Well off and quite
a guy, quite a catch. Everything she would want in
terms of being satisfied and supported by someone who was
rich because she made a point that was what she
really wanted. But at the same time, she still had

(02:34):
feelings for Chris Evans, who's Captain American. In most cases
we all know as but in this movie he was
a loser guy and was somebody that she was with before.
And the whole deal of what she decides going to
do with both of them and how she is torn
between both. So that happens there, and that's an interesting
story in itself, much different than it was with It

(02:55):
Ends with Us, which is still going on in court
even after the movie did very well in the box office.
But I saw this movie and I thought about the
matchmaking aspect and how they portrayed it, and I want
to go back to an interview that I did last year.
You might remember I actually talked to a professional matchmaker
in Texas who does this for a living, had a

(03:16):
chance to go and speak with her, had a long
interview with her. That was back in January of twenty
twenty four. And I want to go and play back
some of that interview real quick, just to take some
of the comments of what's being made because some other
matchmakers made their comments known because of this movie and
what else people thought about it. So I want to
go ahead and take what was said from here and
bring it to the forefront. So first of all, let

(03:39):
me go ahead and give you a clip back from
that episode in January twenty twenty four where I talk
about dating smarter and not harder in the digital age
with professional matchmaker Julian McCurley. And here is what we
talked about the woman's oberation movement about sixty years ago.
I mean, we can talk about effect that that was
something that has really that was a cultural change in

(04:02):
a lot of different ways. I listen, you can talk
about birth control, you can talk about women's liberation. We
cant about the rise of feminism and the modern feminism
we have today. But there's also there's changes in terms
of what a feminist is representing, you know, previously to
what a feminist represents now and politics, like you said,
it's what's causing all this, all of it, and that's

(04:23):
the part making harder. But like, what are you gonna
do about that? Like, I mean, you know, it's and
I feel like it's in the last ten years, maybe
the last fifteen years, politics now has to be a
part of all of our lives. And I'm like, you know,
we don't need Do you want to have that in
your home privately all the time? I mean that's the

(04:43):
part of like.

Speaker 2 (04:45):
Does it?

Speaker 1 (04:46):
I mean, do you feel like that? Is that where
we are now? Do you feel like that? You know,
that traditional housewife like you know the June Cleavers of
the world is as the long them are the uh?
Is that something now that it's like that's passe and
it's very politically like incorrect now.

Speaker 2 (05:01):
But no, there's a few women that are okay with that.
But I guess again, the men aren't necessarily wanting that.
I mean, they want kind of an equal And then
you and I talked about this the other day. A
lot of women are delaying getting married. So then we
run into okay, now you're forty, you may need some
help getting married, you know, getting been able to have children.

(05:23):
That is something that men are wary of. Here about
all the collog celebrities having made a fifty that you
know they did the data. So there's a lot of
moving parts to dating these days, and feminism definitely is
part of that. I mean, yes, men are very shallow.
I blame that on dating apps, there's an unrealistic view

(05:45):
of how women should look now, probably filtered photos. It's
conditioning to us. You know, the women need the full
lips and big breath or your tiny nose and just
you know, the Kardasphian look. And that's not normal either.
So and the women are that with you. They want
these get guys, and what they don't realize is you

(06:08):
really need to get to know the person. You can't
just get them on a photo. There's the throwaway culture
of oh there's somebody next out there that I blame
dating apps on. So they Amazon Prime. We want innocent chemistry.
There's a lot of fact so at least with maths
making you know, I'm betting the person. I call it

(06:30):
reverse engineering and taking them apart, like who are they
really live? Their values? Where their lifestyles little things morning
and night people messy or needs? Do they need to
watch TV to go to sleep or diet? I mean
it's crazy. There's set Peeves and there's shield bent Thros,
which I also work with people on. So the doubly

(06:51):
is coaching and trying to get people to be more
realistic and at the end of the day, all about
who's got your bath, who's the best friend? You can
allow their money, and you can all their luck, and
then what get with the person you're nut stack with?

Speaker 1 (07:06):
So everything she encompasses there makes the point about what
this movie materialistic she talks about because really everybody that's
being looked at for matchmaking in this particular case, you
have to consider it's last resort for some people because
when they're going through dating right now, the apps are
not doing it just being up in person, because we're
already past that initial stage of saying in your teens

(07:29):
and twenties where dating is very rampant and you go
through the stages of getting to know somebody, whoever that
might be, and you go through different relationships and until
you find until you get yourself familiar with the ideal
person you want your life, and sometimes it's not gonna
be the first partner that you're with. And that's the
biggest problem we have right now. When I look at

(07:49):
the current day, and I mentioned feminism in this whole part,
the one thing is with women being left to their
own device on trying to go ahead and seek out
and there's so many women I hear on TikTok on
a regular basis that say that they can't find themselves
with anyone because they're not getting approached, They're not able

(08:10):
to find anyone that they like because of various things
that they might find as a nick or any specific situations, scenarios,
whatever it might be. There's just so many little things
that could be found as a reason just to not
go ahead and move further with somebody. And I know
that for myself at an older age, where we're learning

(08:30):
the fact that we just don't allow ourselves room for
someone to be a little bit different than us. We
just don't accept it. And that's the biggest problem I
think we have right now today. So overall, that's one
of the things that I thought in matchmaking, when you're
at this point, and that's the part that was being
portrayed in this particular movie, is that so into the

(08:53):
movie itself, there are several matchmakers that actually talked about
their take on a tie. So I wanted to go
ahead and give just a commentary what a half from
Julian McCurley. Please go and listen to that interview. Didn't
get a chance to go and listen to it, but
you know, I'll go ahead and post it in here
so you can go ahead and find it again and you'll
find it, especially if on YouTube. Just go ahead and look.
I'll have it as one of the futured episodes. You

(09:15):
can take a look back and listen to and catch
up for yourself. It's an over hour long conversation was
really great. So People Magazine talked to Maria Aveahites, a
professional matchmaker dating coach in New York City, about her
take on material List and In the movie The Coda,

(09:35):
Johnson plays Lucy, a successful Manhattan matchmaker to the wealthy
who's become cynical about true love and manager in her
own life, so move along here. Maria is a fourth
generation professional matchmaker in New York and she said that
she couldn't see herself in this quote. I was trying
to warn some matchmakers. I know you're about to throw

(09:56):
a whole movie screening for this. Tread carefully. I don't
know what else to tell you now. Writer director Selene Song,
who won an OSCAR nomination for movie Past Lives in
twenty twenty three, god inspired for Maturius from the six
months she spent ten years ago at working at Togafi,
a large scale matchmaking service, and she said, quote, I
feel like I learned more of those six months about the

(10:17):
people that I learned from any other period of my life. Now,
Avahitis runs a boutique matchmaking company called Agape, taking on
about fifteen clients at any given time, estimates to secure
thousands of marriages over the course of her career, and
she wrote a book asking Matchmaker Matchmaker Maria's non nonsense guy,
Defining Love. And we just talked about the fact that

(10:41):
the Cody Johnson's character Lucy makes eighty thousand dollars a
year as a matchmaker. Maria says that's accurate about showing
handing out business cards as strangers, she says that might
have happened before two thousand and eight, but there's a
stigma with matchmakers that only desperate people use them, and
that's not true. I've always taken the inbound market approach,
even before social media. I was out bars, I would

(11:02):
use the four square ap. I would call myself matchmaker Maria,
so people knew there's a matchmaker of the room, let
me go talk to her. But that cheasing sounds someone
on the street. That's not something I ever done. I
do know certain matchmakers that do it, and they do
it on LinkedIn, and then the setup of the office.
They said, well, that's movie world. Mafloce is the Empire
State building on fifty nine four for years, we left

(11:22):
it during a pandemic. But most clients right now meet
via zoom and to have public conversations at a public cafe,
something I would do, I wouldn't do in twenty twenty five,
now asked about if she ever got invited to client's weddings,
and she says that no, I'm so far away with

(11:43):
that first date once till when they finally get married.
Some of them forget how they met. I've been invited
to weddings, maybe attended to, but I'm not saving anyone's day.
I'm not in the wedding party. I acknowledge. I'm extremely
far away from the day they go down the aisle.
I'm not even part of the conversation. And about the
fact about clients becoming friends, because it was by six
degrees of separation that Lucy's character meets Petro Prescal's character

(12:06):
and they hook up. When she was trying to go
ahead and set him up for dating as a matchmaker,
when he was actually instead interested in her, and Maria says,
it's always professional. I have to respect my own boundaries.
I have other people that need me in my personal time.
Despite being a professional in the professonal space, I've set
up to think now seven thousand verse dates. I am

(12:27):
stressed out most nights between seven and nine pm because
I think about, oh my god, my client's on the
date right now. But that's it.

Speaker 2 (12:34):
Overall.

Speaker 1 (12:34):
She says the movie was about half accurate. That people
are still have extreme dainty fatigued and they're just like, look,
I wait to this song, Just find me the person.
So they'll come of these lists. But then there's the
client's other clients. Eighty percent of my clients are bus
in New Yorkers who don't have time to participate in
modern dating on apps. So clients might work at Goldman
or black Rock, or might be entrepreneurs or business owners

(12:56):
and they're doing just stuff and they're not online, and
they're just the kind of people that would hire us,
just like they would hire a personal trainer and a personal chef.
They're also going to hire a matchmaker to help them
with this. Now, I never talked about myself, but I
did do one of these type of matchmaking things. It
was what took over great expectations, which that used to
be the thing they used to get a panned on

(13:16):
Mad TV on a regular basis. You might remember if
you're old enough. Well, I did go to one of those,
and roughly they did want you to spend roughly about
three to four thousand dollars a month to put yourself
in the matchmaking of the men and women that they found.
So for me, looking at the women that they had,
I noticed that this particular matchmaker had a lot of

(13:37):
people that had just come into the country their mid thirties, forties, fifties,
you could till there's a bit of a gap in
what they had available, but they had people that were
available as partners. But it felt like a bit of
a more of a male order. Bride kind of fell
to it, but it was like very vetted type of individuals,

(13:58):
not on your own. That was just something that was
kind of weird doing when I looked at that. Now,
in the film, one of Lucy's clients are sexually sexually
assaulted on an arranged first date, and when Maria was
asked about this, she says that I've had the fire
clients for being bad on dates two times in my

(14:18):
seventeen year career, but they were able to admit, you
know what, Maria, that was really inappropriate behavior, but it
was not sexual assault. I did ask three colleagues, have
you ever heard any this happening to any other person?
They're like, no, I'm sure it happens, and dating it happens.
I want to believe that there's no assault or abuse
in this, but people are in their own people and
are some of the employers trying to say. But at
the same time, it was just kind of presented as

(14:40):
a normal thing and that if it actually happened, it
would be so the matchmaking part in the movie materialists.
So the one character that does get sexually assaulted essayed.
One of the things was that they meant somewhere public,
and she did offer to go ahead and let the
guy follow her home. Not the idea to go with

(15:03):
brought off the bat in New York City. I would
imagine you want to meet somewhere public and then you
go through your separate ways, like you're not coming together,
you're not leaving together. Ole thing's just absolutely click, and
especially in the matchmaking scenario, I don't think you would
go ahead and jump right into something immediately anyway, and
if you did, I would probably call it a red flag,

(15:27):
to be honest with you. But I don't know where
we are in this point. I think it was just
something here that it didn't feel like it was the
right situation. But nevertheless, that's one matchpaker's thought. So there
was a lot of stories that came out and picked
up on that People magazine story with that matchmaker. And

(15:49):
in the area of matchmaking, it still is a thing.
Cosmo Sultan Cosmo Talten in Australia actually talked about this.
If you do a Google search now with matchmakers, it
still has a lot of executive dating the agencies and
organizations promising exclusive introductions and elite matchmaking. Now apps are
trying to do the same thing as well. Keep that

(16:10):
in mind too, that we have talked about this. The
dating apps right now are trying to act like matchmakers
in the same way for whatever reason. First of all,
I already is filling a new need to get into
the matchmaking thing because they see what they see on TV.
There's a movie married a first Sight Millionaire Matchmakers out
there as a show Jewish matchmaking HBO's The White Lotus,
giving anot of the matchmaking on Two of the show's

(16:31):
characters admitted they met through a matchmaking service. So, as
I mentioned, the mainstream maps are trying to go do
the same thing right now, Bumble working on concierge dating services,
and there are others exploring premium teers offering creative introductions.
We know that ten are trying to do the same
thing here with their select their whether the three hundred
dollars or five hundred dollars a month service, among others.

(16:52):
But there are a lot of places that are trying
to say that the matchmaking when they're not. They talked
to matchmaking advocate Arlene washburn And in Daily Dating News
dot com. She was asked about this and says, unless
there's real deep vetting, real accountability, and someone to take
your responsibility for outcomes, there's not matchmaking. There's marketing. But
if dating sites and apts are trying to find the

(17:13):
right bounce between automation and human insight, they might have
a leg up in the next phase of the dating game.
And Washfurton says, well, we're entering a trust revolution. People
are tired of feeling like commodities, and in five years,
I believe Matchmaker will be the goal center for serious daters.
That's one thing that's being importantly said commodities because guys
feel like they are being treated like commodities because of

(17:34):
how we're being treated if we're going on on a date.
Because how many women do we have out there that
are looking at the value. Even when she when Lucy's
character and Materialists says that she talks about that she
wants these girls want to be noticed, they want to
be looked at, They want to be valued, but value
comes with a price, with a price tag and where

(17:57):
they might go to meet up. I can tell you
that off the bat, this matchmaking service they had in
this movie was all executive matchmaking. So women will get
the idea that they're going to try to go ahead
and get into one of these things, not knowing how
what cost is going to be for this. And second
that the guy that might pay into the matchmaking service

(18:17):
as well, of course, the woman's not gonna go and
pay more into it. And I can invest more, but
is an investment. And nevertheless, even with Petrick Pascal's character,
he talks about dating her, Lucy's character Dakota Johnson as
an investment, and that's acceptable, and that is a normal

(18:38):
way of life. Now it's a new normal. So people
are starting to feel like that there's something new here
and that's how it's going to be. So the matchmaking
thing is going to come back once again. So the
question is going to be if dating apps start offering
matchmaking services, if all of them start going, because we
already know they're losing customers. We already know that putting

(18:59):
a certain price down on services is not getting enough,
so they're going to charge more and try to offer
matchmaking services. So it could change industry standards if the
apps commit the real vetting, ethical practices and outcome focused services,
but if not, they'll dilute what true matchmaking really is.

Speaker 2 (19:21):
Now.

Speaker 1 (19:22):
Washburn also said that most dating apps she thinks are
designed to keep people single, matchmakers are the opposite. They
want you off the market for good, and that unless
dating apps fundamentally shift their business models, matchmaking offerings may
remain more lip service than true service. But people are
now tired of going through swiping and matching, especially guys,

(19:44):
and being ghosted by their matches didn't get users are
creating something more intentional personal human and in this article
they talking about that the inating industry needs to evolve
investing in hybrid models, chanting, ethical matchmaking, and real human
connection to really make ways. Now back into the story
from Cosmopolitan, there's a lot of this going on worldwide

(20:11):
as a normal thing of life, but here in America,
that's the part where you know, if you think that
you really need to go this route and go in
the matchmaking to find someone special, I don't know if
I would want to go ahead and depend on some
professional matchmaker out there, because they're only going to be

(20:31):
left with the crop of clients that they have, which
is another thing that's gonna be said, Okay, you're gonna
get bodified singles, no doubt about it. You cut through
the red tape of trying to go ahead and approach
and go on dates that might not go anywhere. That
who you're going to meet on the matchmakers guidance is

(20:53):
going to be somebody that you feel like this matchmaker
will have done the best job of trying to go
ahead and position someone that hopefully is not something that
just decided to go and throw at you because they
think they might fit a role and they want to
get that person off the client list, but at the
same time they're hoping that it'll be somebody that might
be an actual fit for you. But I do feel

(21:15):
like it's that part with matchmaking. There's the idea where
we want all the choices, especially when you've been mostly damaged. Okay,
that's why it's most important if you're able to go
ahead and overcome what you've gone through that has caused
the dating laps that you have, that has caused a
dating a law that you have that has caused the

(21:36):
disastrous dating that you've gone through, where you have not
gotten to the point of finding someone to be in
a relationship with, let alone get married with, let alone
have kids with. If you haven't gotten that far yet,
then something's gonna be said about what do you got
to do to get to that point that maybe matchmaking
is not supposed to be the rut of this problem,
but we don't know. I mean, look, you just got

(21:58):
to work out on yourself. There can be more to this,
and for this episode, I want to go and close things,
close things out real quick with more of my interview
with Julian McCurley, just to take some final tips away.
Here that I thought she made poignant on the program.
So if you don't hear me say it beforehand, I
hope you'll come back next week from the episode I remember,

(22:19):
it's okay, all right, we can all be a little
depraved and the bocherss. How many articles on data you
can find on a regular basis, and you'll see women,
oh well, you know, pregnant and I have became a
mother of forty. I like, I had a guest for
another program for a podcast that she has a podcast
of her own, and she was forty one for when
she first started having children and she has three now

(22:41):
and they all came out wells. You know, she was
in a great shape and yes, possible, but that's not
the norm.

Speaker 2 (22:47):
Right, it is the norm. It so you could pay,
you know, feminism or whenever. It's kind of like it's
easy and get caught up a job as well, and
time goes on one of its Well why are you
find alone? I thought my girlfriends like go my vahs,
I really don't quote unquote need and more on. But
as you get older, it's a loneliness will kick in eventually.

(23:11):
I mean, all your friends are got their families for kids,
they're not calling you after you to go do your
spots and so because the smaller and smaller cooler people
even in your social life. So, I mean, maybe there's
a reason why Hey generates this before us. All that
married younger is just realize there is nobody's purpose.