The Intangible Asset: Hollywood
While the world is running to our movie stars, they’re running away from our financial systems. What gives?
“Inside Job” narrated by Matt Damon was a film I saw several weeks ago at an Arts theatre on Broadway. I found it surprising that Matt Damon would take the time and energy to create and produce a documentary, abundant with facts and interviews exposing the Wall Street crash in 2008 and its global implications, but more so a documentary with such a political bias.
He marketed the film on the Internet and through interviews by claiming it as a “historical documentary” which truly broadcasts the global financial crisis… But never infers there is an obvious political agenda woven throughout the film’s seemingly benign credentials. The first scene is a beautiful landscape of Iceland, where simplicity equates to happiness and those who habituate the small country take pride in the culture and work ethic. Then, the capitalistic conglomerate banks appear on the scene and financial chaos ignites. But before the rabid bankers hungry for unrealistic returns, the audience sees how the banks literally manipulate academics into supporting these false reporting systems.
While their still remains arguments in Washington on how to approach large financial institutions, there is no doubt in any international mind that bankers took total advantage of the flexibility the free market system has embraced. That said, many believe that the debt DC has undertaken, and endorsed, whereas a happy-lending China can easily buy has thrown us into a spiral far more injurious than the economic collapse.
What Damon disregards in the documentary targeting and exploiting Wall Street is that the same argument could be turned around on Hollywood. He blames the loopholes, the middle class for buying into what Wall Street is selling, and the result? Job losses across the globe, utter chaos and some would say anarchy. Albeit the circumstances, which are transparent and easily calculated, Damon doesn’t dare look in the mirror at his own paycheck, or the “art” that this free market, first amendment country has provided to him and his fellow filmmakers. There is a convergence of government rights… the right to make films, the right to produce media.
So while Hollywood is capitalizing on the Adam Smith ideology that has shown proven failure in the banking world, the rest of the world is waiting to see the returns of many decades of bullets, cursing and sex…. Drama. Scientists at the same universities (Harvard, Stanford, Columbia) Damon condemns argue that his work in Hollywood has indeed exploited the minds of innocent civilians, suggesting through media something that the American dream is not.
Americans have bought into the Simpsons and US weekly, the reality shows and trash television that takes up hours and hours of time… Indian, China, Africa, South America… many nations which are fighting us for international market share, not only in exports, but pure intellectual property aren’t wasting their time eliciting in a fantasy land. Matt Damon makes $20 million a movie, if not more…. While by and large creating things that are in no way feasible? He fights for the second amendment to be removed, but readily uses guns in his action packed movies. Who are the predators? Which is worse, selling a house to someone who can’t afford it? Or influencing the minds of young children? Why bother pouring money into the education system, when Hollywood has already figured out how to capture the attention of American’s future generations.
While sure Damon donates a large percentage to charities, he still reaps those tax deductions… is he really someone who can jump up on a pedestal and tell America where NOT to put their money, but more importantly… their minds.
