The Illinois Business Law and Policy Roundtable on the portrayal of business in film, previously noted here, wrapped up yesterday. After a day of thought-collecting I have some details and observations.
First, the details. The participants were a sort of intellectual Noah’s ark of folks who brought a variety of perspectives, including an entrepreneur (Virginia Boyd), a journalist (John Carney of Clusterstock), law professors with general interests in film and law (John Denvir, USF, David Papke, Marquette, Barak Orbach, Arizona, David Ritchie, Mercer), journalism professors (Matthew Ehrlich and Amy Gajda of Illinois (who also teaches law)), a non-law academic with an interest in popular culture (Judith Grant, Ohio University), and corporate law scholars with interests in culture and film (Peter Huang, Temple, Mae Kuykendall, Michigan State, and Usha Rodrigues of Georgia). My colleague Christine Hurt was the main organizer, and Christine, Nicola Sharpe and I kept the discussion going.
I had a couple of other roles in the conference – target, and curator. As target, I provided the theory that the participants could shoot at, via my papers Wall Street & Vine and Imagining Wall Street. My theory is that what might seem to be negative view of business in film is, more accurately, a negative view of capitalists. I think the most important (though not the only) explanation of this view lies in film artists’ resentment of the constraint that capitalists put on their self-expression.
This theory matters because it affects the story (or what some would call “narrative”) of business that is presented in countless films: the heroic artist (sometimes represented by journalists, gunfighters, athletes, entrepreneurs) struggling against the capitalists and often exposing the evils they would prefer to hide. Since the general public lacks a clear countervailing view, this narrative directly or indirectly affects decisions made in the jury room, voting booth, boardroom, and the halls and offices of Congress and administrative agencies.
As curator, I picked the movies. Here they are, detailed for the academics and others out there who may want to follow up on this subject or present it in class. Film clips are identified by approximate timings or scene numbers on the DVDs. For general descriptions of the films, see www.imdb.com.
Introductory movie: The Insider. Here we see both sides of the narrative – the evil corporations (Brown & Williamson and CBS) and crusading journalist.
Session #1; The Evil Corporation: Analyzing and preliminarily discussing Hollywood’s negative view of business. Michael Clayton 1:47:47-1:52:31; Erin Brokovich, 1:55:44-1:57:55; Tucker, 1:39:10-1:42; The Aviator, 1:57:37-2:03:15. Note that these clips presented two alternative views of the corporation -- as evil manipulator, and as the victim of government. My point was that there is more than one possible way of characterizing corporations. Why do we see mainly the first, and rarely the second?
Session #2; How films deal with specific participants in firms (capital, labor, management): Executive Suite, 37:10-40:00; It's a Wonderful Life, 1:07:36-1:12:45; Wall Street, 1:34:20-1:38; Hudsucker Proxy, Scene 5; Glengarry Glen Ross, Scene 3; The Big Knife, Scene 13; Hudsucker Proxy, Scene 4.
Session #3; Explaining Hollywood’s View of Business: Executive Suite, 1:31:20-1:41:52; The Insider, 1:43:53-1:48:22; Big Night, 22:50-29:15; Quiz Show, 2:05:31-2:09.
Session #4; To what extent does the Hollywood view reflect the reality of business? Pursuit of Happyness, 1:48:25-1:51:30; Other People’s Money, 1:24:31-1:30:27.
Session #5; The Political and Public Policy Impact of Film: Silkwood (2:04:30-2:08:20); China Syndrome, 13:00-21:30 (plus the commentary from around 5:00 explaining the making of this scene). In this session we also discussed a Dubner-Levitt NYT article, The Jane Fonda Effect, about the public impact of this film and the Three Mile Island incident, which happened only a few days after the film’s release, on the nuclear power industry.
Session 6 was intended to be an open-ended discussion about the film industry and how the evolution of that business might affect films' portrayal of business. But our scheduling of the conference in conjunction with a major local film festival, Ebertfest, paid an important dividend. We were able to induce an actual filmmaker, Nina Paley (whose film Sita Sings the Blues is playing today at Ebertfest), to join us.
Of course I couldn’t resist the temptation to ask Nina what she thinks of business and how this is reflected in her films. Given Nina’s complete independence, enabled by her low budget, the standard story of the artist’s capital constraint would not seem to apply. And this may be an important model going forward, as films can be independently financed and produced at low cost on personal computers. This is basically what Nina said.
So will the evil corporation retreat to the sidelines in films – where it already is in plays and books? Maybe not. our filmmaker also pointed out the sharp constraints placed on her work by the extended copyrights controlled by large corporations. And her next work is going to deal with these issues.
Throughout the conference the participants pushed from all sides at my story. They pointed out that there were a lot of other things going on in films that contribute to what we see – audience demands, other things artists have on their minds, etc. For example, audiences are looking for convincing villains, and alien, impersonal corporations are handy targets.
But I’m sticking to my story. Filmmakers could make corporations more personable and user-friendly if they wanted to. Hence the clip I showed from Pursuit of Happyness. See also, e.g., Tom Hanks in Cast Away. Audiences may resent corporations, but they don't necessarily care as much about capitalists as the artists do. Maybe that's why we don't see more films like Office Space.
And if you’re looking for a villain, why not government? There’s no better example than the critical confrontation between Howard Hughes (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Senator Brewster (Alan Alda) in The Aviator. Brewster (who’s portrayed as being in the pocket of PanAm’s Juan Trippe) threatens to put TWA out of business by giving a monopoly on overseas flights to PanAm. Brewster tells Hughes that he should go along, explaining: “It's not me Howard. It's the United States government. We just beat Germany and Japan. Who the hell are you?"
The bottom line is that it is pretty clear that a narrative of business is being constructed both in film and the popular press (though Mae Kuykendall has her doubts). Law and economics types like me generally eschew narrative theory as soft stuff, lacking rigor. But that leaves the construction of the critical stories to others. Moreover, this is an area that is susceptible to both rigorous public choice analysis and data about the construction and effect of the story. That’s the discussion I’m trying to promote.
Finally, this conference further convinced me of the value of this type of gathering. Unlike the typical law school conference, this was not a law-review-driven collection of mini-workshops on papers in process. Though that sort of conference can be valuable, too often it amounts to the retailing of ideas that are best done in other ways. This was instead an extended discussion that, I hope, contributed to the process of forming ideas. In our digital age, this could end up being the primary function of physical meetings among academics.
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