One year into the biggest bankruptcy in US history, a year in which bankers and their bonuses have drawn vitriol across the political spectrum, we ask how American TV and Hollywood are feeding off this fresh new meat of material. In a very reserved way. This is surprising on the one hand, given how the US culture machine?s reputation has, for a large part, been built on its ability to churn out commentaries on critical events faster than we can say how do you do. Fahrenheit 9/11, 9/11, World Trade Center and United 93, for example, offer varying treatments of the most significant event concerning US political presence in today?s world. TV dramas like 24 were even quicker in delivering commentaries. Why didn?t Lehman draw a similarly speedy rejoinder?
The answer may point to a fundamental misunderstanding of American popular culture?s relationship with its Richie Rich class. After watching Oliver Stone?s Wall Street in 1987?a sequel is on the way?Roger Ebert wrote that it was a radical critique of the capitalist trading mentality, especially powerful because it came at a time when the financial community was vulnerable??What the Gekkos do is immoral and illegal, but they use a little litany to excuse themselves: Nobody gets hurt. Everybody?s doing it. There?s something in this deal for everybody.? That?s certainly one truth about Wall Street. The other is that, to this day, Michael Douglas finds himself buttonholed by bankers who hail his Gordon Gekko character, and cry out: ?You?re the man. You?re the reason I got involved in this business.? The other truth is that there are some villains Hollywood just loves to make other people love too.
Take shows like Entourage and Dirty Sexy Money, all of which star characters living in amazing mansions, eating at expensive restaurants, attending celebrity charity galas and wearing designer clothes. They have much to do with banks, hedge funds and the like, which finance their charities, films, mansions etc. Ratings suggest that watching wealth is still a favoured pastime for those losing wealth, home values and 104Ks. But how banks or hedge funds or investment agents work hasn?t moved centre stage. A simple explanation is that bankers perform action that?s hard to capture in images , say making a margin on interest income over cost of funds. How do you dramatise credit default swaps? But, aren?t TV shows about human interaction? Whatever Michael Douglas was up to in Wall Street or Russell Crowe in A Good Year could be turned into a solid dramedy. Surely, that wouldn?t be harder to show than the stuff-expanding franchises like CSI? Actually, it would. CSI may represent a supersonic advance, but it?s still based on traditional cop stuff, common fodder for American TV for long. Scrubs and Grey?s Anatomy similarly build on the established medical genre. So, perhaps it?s the want of precedence that?s done the downer on a Lehman show.
As famous as the US popular culture machine is for its insatiable appetite for controversial material, it?s also a child of convention. At the peak of the Great Depression, US unemployment was at 25% but 60-70 million Americans were dishing out hard-earned 15 cents to pack the theatres every week. President Franklin Roosevelt said that when the spirit of the people was low, it was a splendid thing that they could look at the smiling face of a baby and forget their troubles. Certainly, films like Modern Times (1936) cushioned economic hardships in comedy. The Wizard of Oz (1939) offered comfort in mythic terms. Failed farmers were pictured poignantly, as in Grapes of Wrath (1940), filled with the debris of farm foreclosures. Finally, and most pertinently for today, there was It?s a Wonderful Life (1946), where the Christmas spirit rises against a bank run. James Stewart got everyone on the bank?s side, crying: ?Just a minute. You?re right when you say my father was no businessman. I know that. Why he ever started this cheap, penny-ante Building and Loan, I?ll never know. But neither you nor anyone else can say anything against his character, because … he never once thought of himself.?
It?s an oft-proven thesis that the US culture industry moves in advance of the times, and that its intuitive representation of the American psyche is accurate more often than not. If that?s the case, it would seem that the country?s soothsayers aren?t quite convinced about audiences being ready to bash up the bankers. Sure, you could argue Michael Moore?s Capitalism: A Love Story, but that hasn?t got quite the play that Fahrenheit 9/11 got, even on the festival circuit. In desperation, you could even shout out Martin Scorsese?s upcoming The Wolf of Wall Street. Quite apart from the fact that it?s based on a 1990s securities fraud, what are the odds that Leonardo DiCaprio will truly be a bad guy?
?renuka.bisht@expressindia.com
