Analysis of: The women who saw Melania in theaters: ‘If you’re Republican, this is girls’ night’
The Guardian | February 7, 2026
TL;DR
Amazon's $70M Melania documentary serves as a cultural loyalty test for Republican women, with audiences applauding inauguration scenes while critics pan it. The film's real function is manufacturing consent through lifestyle aspiration, masking class interests behind identity and aesthetics.
Analytical Focus:Class Analysis Contradictions Historical Context
Amazon's Melania documentary reveals how cultural production under late capitalism functions primarily as ideological infrastructure rather than mere entertainment. The film—which cost $70 million to produce but earned only $7 million opening weekend—represents a massive capital expenditure that makes no economic sense unless understood as a political investment. Jeff Bezos, whose Amazon empire depends on maintaining favorable relations with state power, has essentially bankrolled a propaganda vehicle for the Trump administration disguised as documentary filmmaking. The film's audience demographics—72% female, 83% over 45, 75% white—illuminate how class identity in contemporary America increasingly expresses itself through cultural consumption and political performance. The women interviewed speak of 'girls' night out' and admire Melania's fashion choices, yet their professional backgrounds (real estate entrepreneurs, land developers, credit union workers) reveal a petty-bourgeois and professional-managerial class base. Their enthusiastic consumption of this film constitutes a ritual of class belonging, where political loyalty is performed through aesthetic appreciation and social gathering. The film's deliberate exclusion of controversial policies—ICE raids, border enforcement—demonstrates how capitalist cultural production separates 'lifestyle' from material politics. One viewer explicitly praised how the film let Melania 'stick to her role' while her husband 'deals with' immigration policy. This ideological work naturalizes a division between the domestic/aesthetic sphere (acceptable for women's concern) and the political/economic sphere (men's domain), while simultaneously celebrating Melania as an immigrant success story. The contradiction between celebrating one immigrant's luxury lifestyle while the administration conducts mass deportations goes unremarked, illustrating how ideology functions precisely by making such contradictions invisible to those it interpellates.
Class Dynamics
Actors: Jeff Bezos/Amazon (monopoly capitalist), The Trump administration (state power), Professional-managerial class Republican women (documentary audience), Petty-bourgeois entrepreneurs (real estate, land development), Cultural workers (filmmakers, critics), Conservative media apparatus (Fox News, 'Womanosphere' influencers), Working class (absent from narrative)
Beneficiaries: Amazon/Bezos (political capital with administration), Trump family (image rehabilitation, normalization), Conservative media ecosystem (content, engagement), Professional-managerial Republican women (cultural identity reinforcement)
Harmed Parties: Working class audiences (fed ideology masquerading as entertainment), Immigrant communities (their struggles erased while one elite immigrant celebrated), Victims of Brett Ratner's alleged misconduct (his rehabilitation), Democratic discourse (normalization of plutocratic propaganda)
The documentary exemplifies the symbiotic relationship between monopoly capital (Bezos/Amazon) and state power (Trump administration). Bezos invests $70 million in political goodwill; the administration gains cultural legitimation. This capital-state nexus is mediated through a professional-managerial class audience who consume the product as lifestyle content, their class position allowing them to treat politics as aesthetic preference rather than material struggle. Critics—positioned as 'coastal elites'—are framed as ideological enemies, converting class analysis into culture war.
Material Conditions
Economic Factors: $70 million production/marketing cost versus $7 million return (political, not commercial investment), Amazon's dependence on favorable regulatory environment and government contracts, Theater chain economics (AMC, Regal profit from any successful release), Conservative media monetization through engagement, Audience members' class position (entrepreneurs, developers, credit union workers)
The film represents a peculiar commodity: produced at a loss, its value lies not in box office returns but in political capital. Amazon, as a monopoly platform controlling distribution infrastructure, can absorb losses that would bankrupt traditional studios. Brett Ratner's rehabilitation—a man sidelined by #MeToo allegations—demonstrates how capital can restore disgraced cultural workers when politically useful. The film's production relations also reveal gendered labor: Melania's 'work' consists of aesthetic performance and emotional management, presented as aspirational rather than analyzed as a specific form of labor that produces ideological value.
Resources at Stake: Amazon's political positioning with federal government, Cultural legitimacy for Trump administration, Conservative women's identity and community formation, Control over narrative framing of the administration, Bezos's personal and corporate interests in regulatory environment
Historical Context
Precedents: Corporate sponsorship of political movements (1930s industrialist support for fascism), Hollywood studio system's ideological function during Cold War, Reagan-era fusion of celebrity and political power, Citizens United enabling unlimited corporate political spending, Previous first lady documentaries and their ideological functions
This documentary emerges at a specific conjuncture of late capitalism characterized by: (1) platform monopoly power that allows companies like Amazon to operate media ventures without profit motive; (2) the collapse of boundaries between entertainment, news, and propaganda; (3) the financialization of political influence where capital directly purchases cultural production for political ends; (4) identity-based political mobilization that substitutes cultural consumption for political organization. The film's appeal to Republican women as 'girls' night' echoes historical patterns where ruling classes have mobilized women through domestic ideology, from Victorian 'separate spheres' to Cold War suburban consumerism. The National Federation of Republican Women, founded in 1938, represents an institutional continuity in organizing bourgeois and petty-bourgeois women around conservative politics through social rather than explicitly political frameworks.
Contradictions
Primary: The film celebrates an immigrant's success story while the administration it promotes conducts mass deportations—a contradiction made invisible by separating 'lifestyle' content from 'political' content, allowing audiences to admire Melania's immigrant journey while supporting anti-immigrant policies.
Secondary: A $70 million production that loses money framed as a 'success' because box office performance is irrelevant to its actual purpose, Audiences seeking 'authenticity' and 'vulnerability' from a carefully controlled propaganda piece, Claims the film is 'not political' while it literally documents a presidential inauguration and audiences applaud political moments, Celebrating Melania's 'privacy' through a documentary that required her cooperation, Rehabilitating a director accused of sexual misconduct while the film implicitly addresses women's cultural concerns
These contradictions are managed rather than resolved through ideological compartmentalization—audiences are invited to see 'Melania the person' as separate from 'Trump policies,' fashion as separate from politics, individual immigrant success as separate from structural immigration policy. This compartmentalization is inherently unstable; the article itself notes the Epstein files released the same day and Ratner's background, suggesting the contradictions constantly threaten to surface. The long-term trajectory points toward either deepening ideological polarization (where such contradictions become permanent features of parallel media ecosystems) or potential rupture when material conditions (economic crisis, policy impacts on this class base) make the contradictions impossible to ignore.
Global Interconnections
The Melania documentary illuminates how cultural production in the imperial core functions to manufacture consent among key demographic segments. The audience profile—older white women in managerial and entrepreneurial positions—represents a crucial political base whose support depends on identity affirmation rather than material benefit. Many of these women's economic interests (real estate, land development) align with Trump policies, but the film addresses them through affect and aspiration rather than explicit economic appeal. The South Africa incident—pulling the film in protest—reveals how domestic cultural production reverberates internationally. Katie Miller's response that South Africa is 'biased against white people' exposes the racial dimensions underlying the film's class appeal. The documentary thus operates within a global context where white identity politics in the imperial core connect to international dynamics of resistance to American hegemony. The Super Bowl counterprogramming against Bad Bunny—a Puerto Rican artist representing communities directly harmed by Trump policies—further illustrates how cultural events become sites of struggle over whose narrative dominates American consciousness.
Conclusion
The Melania documentary represents a near-perfect case study in how cultural production under late capitalism serves class consolidation rather than artistic or even commercial purposes. For the left, this presents both a challenge and an opportunity. The challenge: capital can produce and distribute ideology at scale, absorbing losses that would destroy independent media, while framing propaganda as entertainment and political loyalty as lifestyle choice. The opportunity: the visible contradictions—the $63 million loss, the rehabilitated #MeToo director, the immigrant celebrating while immigrants are deported—create potential openings for consciousness-raising. The task is not to mock these audiences from a position of cultural superiority (the 'coastal elite' trap the right has prepared), but to name the material interests served by this cultural product and connect the women consuming it to the workers—including immigrant workers—whose exploitation subsidizes both Amazon's losses and Melania's designer gowns.
Suggested Reading
- Prison Notebooks (Selections) by Antonio Gramsci (1935) Gramsci's analysis of cultural hegemony directly illuminates how the Melania documentary manufactures consent among a specific class fraction through lifestyle aspiration rather than explicit political argument.
- Women, Race & Class by Angela Davis (1981) Angela Davis's examination of how race and gender intersect with class formation helps explain why the film's audience is overwhelmingly white women, and how bourgeois feminism can align with reactionary politics.
- The German Ideology by Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels (1845) Marx and Engels' foundational analysis of ideology—how the ruling class's ideas become the ruling ideas—provides the theoretical framework for understanding the documentary's function as ideological production.