Hollywood and capitalism on TCS

TCS and Media Research Center are co-hosting an interesting looking program tonight on Hollywood’s portrayal of capitalism. James Pinkerton has a preview on TCS, and Steve Bainbridge has a fine reply, kindly noting my fairly extensive work on this topic (see Wall Street & Vine and Imagining Wall Street).

Pinkerton notes that though Hollywood is clearly liberal, it’s not having any luck liberalizing America. Directors who try to subvert American middle class values are strictly niche, and “Hollywood's in-your-face liberalism has a way of backlashing.” The A-list directors know when to pull their punches. In general, Pinkerton says, Hollywood’s “true heart. . . is close to its wallet.”

Steve B is right on the money when he says “[t]he problem with Pinkerton's argument is that he conflates how Hollywood portrays class and how it portrays business.”

Despite what Pinkerton says, how Hollywood portrays business is not just a problem but a big problem, and getting bigger.

I constantly hear sanguine talk like Pinkerton’s whenever I present my paper – Hollywood really cares about money, and look at all the “conservative” movies.  What these commenters miss is the nuances I try to bring out.  Of course Hollywood artists like business – after all, they’re in business.  But they like their own particular type of business. What they don’t like is capitalists – the folks who lord it over the artists, and force them to constrain their vision. 

And so what we get in Hollywood films is an unrelentingly dismal view of money, stock markets, and impersonal market forces.  On the other side are the forces of good – the altruistic businessman, the businessman as artist (think The Aviator), the small businessman, the employee-owned business. What is continually impressed on movie audiences is that high finance is a zero sum game, that business success is a matter of luck, that worker control is good, that government regulation of business is good. I’ve got many examples in my papers.

Moreover, the message is being conveyed by experts.  Even the most intellectually incoherent films are made by people who have been trained their whole professional lives to manipulate emotions.  If they want the capitalist to be the bad guy, they know just the casting, directing, camera angles, lighting that will sell this to an audience.

So what, you may ask – it’s just entertainment.  Well, yes, until the moviegoers become voters, or serve on juries.  As I say in my Wall Street and Vine:

films generally can alter the political equilibrium if they consistently express a coherent political position. . ..[F]ilmmakers consistently express distrust of capitalists and support for workers and worker-owned firms.  In other words, films implicitly take the side of those who advocate bringing non-shareholder “stakeholders” into corporate governance and calling on managers to be more socially responsible. By instilling such communitarian attitudes in audiences of voters, films lower the lobbying costs of stakeholder groups and commensurately raise those of groups favoring shareholder wealth maximization.

Moreover, you don’t have to wait for an election.  Moviegoers serve on juries.  They can send capitalists to jail, and they can levy huge punitive damages against big capitalist firms.  They are primed to believe the worst about these defendants, and need only a little prodding from plaintiffs’ lawyers and prosecutors.

What's the solution?  Certainly not regulation of film content. I suggest more business education, and more awareness of filmmakers' perverse take on business. The awareness part is what motivated my article. I hope that the TCS/MRC program tonight will help further that mission, rather than minimizing the problem.