The Peanut Butter Falcon, Social Contract Theory, and the Dream of Mutual Aid

This chapter analyzes the 2019 film The Peanut Butter Falcon through an analysis of social contract theory. The film focuses on two men: Zak, a man with Down syndrome who has escaped from a nursing home, and Tyler, a young man running from the law and his brother’s death. Fugitives of the state, they forge a friendship against a deserted and coastal backdrop, conjuring a modern-day state of nature. With the help of Zak’s nursing home employee Eleanor, they reconstitute a new kind of family to provide mutual care for one another. The film is important not only because it stars a man with an intellectual disability, but also because of the ways that it envisions ethical futures for vulnerable adults in a landscape of neoliberal neglect.