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Societal pressure to date, marry, and have children1 stems from capitalist and Christian nationalist2 ideals. These systems uphold the belief that a romantic union between two individuals is the most sacred relationship, often devaluing other forms of connection. This usually implies that unity only belongs between a man and a woman — a notion reinforced by mainstream media.
This erasure extends to LGBTQ+ couples, platonic soulmates, polygamous relationships, and especially single individuals. After all, how can an unattached man or woman contribute meaningfully to society if sexual politics aren’t at play — right?
The Lobster (released in 20153), by Yorgos Lanthimos4, critiques this societal norm. While the pressure to marry is often framed as a struggle primarily faced by women, the protagonist David5 (Colin Farrell) subverts this stereotype.
His experience highlights how all gender roles are burdened by the demand to find romantic companionship, regardless of personal desire. David is resolute to become a lobster, as they live longer than most mammals — a choice that subtly signals his self-centered worldview within the film’s opening moments.
‘Hotel Hell’ — The Satirical Mechanics Of Love, Control, & Conformity In The Lobster (2015)
Individuals in the societal hellscape of The Hotel (a slightly parallel reality to our own) are forced to find matches within the first 45-days of arriving or they are turned into an animal of their choice.
The notion that finding a romantic partner is essential in adulthood is ingrained in global culture6, particularly in American society, from early childhood. The Hotel reinforces this ideology by demeaning its guests and tightly regulating their behaviors — especially their intimate actions — echoing broader governmental control over the populace and its social ecosystems and workforce productivity.
The forced institutionalization of each individual entering The Hotel is a limbo until they are successful in the romantic sphere; if not, they’re turned into animals and hunted for sport. Love may not be a game, but in this dystopian universe, failing to pursue it is a death sentence. But hey, at least its not a situationship?
Matches are determined by shared traits or behaviors — for instance, if two people experience frequent nosebleeds, they are considered compatible. The fundamental ideology behind this is to mechanize relationships and reduce them to one or two traits each individual shares, when intimacy and relationships are complicated because…well, humans are complex and multifaceted.
Yet, this reduction leaves no room for nuance, which is a highlight of the satire; the over-the-top hotel is a stark contrast to the absurdist dating rituals introduced day after day. The Hotel enforces many rules: masturbation is banned, yet sexual stimulation from the maid is mandatory.
Guests attend choreographed dances and watch propaganda films that extol the joys and supposed advantages of partnership. Guests can extend their stay by hunting others, earning an extra day, and thus participating in the very culture they are marginalized by — one driven by the pressure to outperform peers, even at their expense.
Ultimately, no one is concerned with anyone else’s fate, and David only begins to experience authentic love after joining the outcast ‘loners’ in the forest. Even on the periphery, the audience is left wondering: are David and his acquaintances ever truly satisfied with their social situation(s), or are they left picking up the pieces from a society that never gave ‘loners’ a chance in the first place?
The Complex Nature Of David & The Satirical Portrayal Of Love And Women In The Lobster
David is not a good person — he’s a product of a system that conditions individuals to prioritize self-preservation over genuine emotion. He is only concerned with himself, as everyone has been conditioned to do in this society.
He initially courted a woman with constant nosebleeds by deceiving her and smashing his face to give himself nosebleeds. Still, when that doesn’t work out, he courts a notoriously cruel woman who has hunted the most people out of anyone at The Hotel. To win her affection, David feigns emotional detachment, even pretending to enjoy the screams of a woman attempting suicide…see the irony?
After she kills his brother, or dog, he mourns, and she decides they are not a match and asks for him to be hunted, too. The gender politics become increasingly fraught here. They are seen as men-obsessed, jealous, and completely contingent on having a relationship; whilst this is purposeful, it undermines the film’s impact by centering David’s perspective and offering little insight into the interiority of the women he encounters. They are painted as caricatures who cannot fathom being uncoupled (except the hunter-lady, we guess).
His emotionally detached partner, now disillusioned (perhaps unsurprisingly, given his deceit), asks for him to be turned into “[the] animal that no one wants to be,” referencing his reverence for lobsters. However, a maid helps David escape, and he officially becomes a loner. Loners are especially unlucky, representing the opposite (yet just as overbearing) ethos: romance is forbidden, even if it comes naturally.
‘Deadpan Dystopia’ — What Defines A “Good” Relationship In A Land Of Loners?
The Loners live under constant threat of being captured by Hotel enforcers and transformed into animals. Yet, as soon as David finds love with another Loner, Short Sighted Woman (Rachel Weisz7), the Loner Leader (Léa Seydoux8) becomes vindictive; refusal to give the female characters real names strips them of individual humanity, reinforcing their roles as symbolic archetypes, essentially becoming vessels for the male characters to exploit.
Even the Loner Leader is murderous, and sets out to destroy David’s organic love with someone who shares a defining trait with him — short-sightedness — and is already risking everything by choosing life as a Loner.
This dystopian universe is laden with unspoken rules that each character willingly accepts. This mirrors our reality, where social norms are shaped by centuries of patriarchal, homophobic, racist, and xenophobic systems. Thus, this film feels especially poignant in our current political climate.9
‘Find Your Match’ — Why The Lobster Feels More Relevant Than Ever In 2025
Upon its release, critics lauded The Lobster for its surreal and unsettling satire of modern dating pressures and society’s obsession with coupledom. But in 2025, as our relationship with technology and dating has evolved dramatically, the film’s themes resonate with even greater clarity and urgency.
We now live in an era Tinder, Hinge, Bumble,10 and countless other apps offer the illusion of romantic choice when “choosing” a partner; we mash buttons to fill out traits so one might be surface-level compatible. Algorithms increasingly dictate the landscape of our romantic opportunities.
And so does conventional attractiveness — this becomes clearer as apps like Tinder offer AI detection11 to select photos from a user’s camera roll that are optimized for attracting matches.
The Hotel is no longer just a surreal backdrop — it reads as a pointed allegory for the bureaucratic systems that regulate desire: The Lobster no longer reads as merely a bizarre satire but as a prophetic warning about surrendering our most intimate relationships.
The systems reduce human complexity to manageable data points; in the movie, this is replaced by the wildness of becoming an animal, and losing yourself differently, reminding us what we risk losing when love becomes just another optimizable metric.
Footnotes
- Chloe Vescio. (2021, August 19). “Gravity Falls” (2012-2016): Deeper Than A Children’s Cartoon. The Daily Fandom. ↩︎
- Laura Barrón-López & Sam Lane. (2024. February 1). What is Christian nationalism and why it raises concerns about threats to democracy. PBS. ↩︎
- Yorgos Lanthimos, & Efthimis Filippou. (2015, October 16). The Lobster. IMDb. ↩︎
- Yorgos Lanthimos. Director, Writer, Producer. The Lobster. IMDb. ↩︎
- Colin Farrell. Actor. The Lobster. IMDb. ↩︎
- Serena Smith. (2025, January 10). How are young people feeling about dating in 2025? Dazed. ↩︎
- Rachel Weisz. Actress. The Lobster. IMDb. ↩︎
- Léa Seydoux. Actress. The Lobster. IMDb. ↩︎
- Multiple authors. (2024, November 8). Trump administration civil and human rights rollbacks. The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights ↩︎
- Greg Rosalsky. (2024, February 13). The dating app paradox: Why dating apps may be worse than ever. NPR. ↩︎
- Marita Alonso. (2023, October 13). AI Tinder already exists: ‘Real people will disappoint you, but not them’. EL PAÍS. ↩︎