Movies with corporate themes

Lisa Fairfax wants to know about movies with "good corporate themes" to show in class. Rather than suggest specific films, let me suggest some essential reading on this subject:  my papers Wall Street & Vine, which analyzes the portrayal of capitalism over 100 films (complete with index); and Imagining Wall Street, complete analysis and background of one film, Oliver Stone's Wall Street.

Partly because of my views on this subject, and for general pedagogical reasons, I do not show film clips in class. As I discuss extensively in my papers, movies take a slanted view of corporations and capitalism that I think is incompatible with the sort of analysis that needs to take place in class.  Perhaps you could use the film clip as a starting point for discussion.  But I don't see it as an efficient use of scarce class time to try to undo the misleading impressions carefully crafted by skilled but misguided filmmakers. They get enough of that in daily life -- why give it the imprimatur of class time? 

That said, in my Problems in Corporate Law advanced seminar this semester I plan to replace a scheduled class with a complete showing of Wall Street. Here I use the film, not to show an example of business in action, but as one of the theoretical topics covered in the class:  the media's role in corporate governance.  I assign Imagining Wall Street as required reading for the class -- indeed, it's partly designed for this purpose.  When combined with this paper and the theory taught in the rest of the course, the film instructs rather than misleads.

Comments

[Roman Picherack]

I would suggest The Corporation, based on the book by Joel Balkan

[Roman Picherack (again)]

The other great film of course is "Barbarians at the Gate" about the RJR Nabisco LBO.

[Seth Weinberger]

"The Corporation" is far from a great film. It is a biased, ignorant piece of anti-capitalist propaganda that hardly qualifies as a documentary. Please see my review of the film in Political Communication (vol. 23, no. 2) or on my blog at http://securitydilemmas.blogspot.com/2006/06/corporation.html

[Seth Weinberger]

Oops...that should be html at the end of the above URL.

[Larry E. Ribstein]

I think Mr. Weinberger is too kind. But I only think so. After reading the idiotic book the film was based on, and learning the film was not a parody, I passed.