CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Why do moviemakers seem to delight in raking big business over the coals, a law professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign asks.
In big-budget movies such as "The Insider" (1999), "Erin Brockovich" (2000) and "Silkwood" (1983), corporations are depicted as harmful to society and as shadowy antagonists to a crusading hero or heroine.
The conventional take is that Hollywood likes to side with the "little guy" for purposes of drama and audience appeal. Another explanation is that Hollywood is simply to the left politically and hence anti-business.
But such explanations don't answer some of the peculiar aspects of anti-corporate bias revealed in Hollywood movies, according to Larry E. Ribstein, the Corman Professor of Law at the Illinois College of Law. "Filmmakers display little concern with workers' problems and only rarely blame firms' social irresponsibility on the fact that capital rather than labor is in control," he wrote in an essay available through the Social Science Research Network.
What's more, films with anti-business themes are the product of big business. "Why would they attack themselves?" Ribstein asks.
His answer: It is not business per se that filmmakers object to, but to the businesspeople who control their films. "Filmmakers' main problem with capital being in control seems to be that the filmmakers are not."
In support of his thesis, Ribstein runs through an array of movies that portray business as "the enemy of the people," but with a coyness that makes the depictions of corporate "evil" more a plot device than Marxist analysis.
"Many films are less concerned with identifying the mechanism of evil than with showing how the creative types expose the evil. Filmmakers therefore need only produce some peril, which functions like Alfred Hitchcock's 'McGuffin,' rather than ascribing blame for it," Ribstein wrote.
The depiction of corporate evil often is dramatized through agents of the law. In both Clint Eastwood's "Pale Rider" (1985) and in "Open Range" (2003), the marshal is "a lampoon of law," favoring whatever side pays him. "Since the capitalists have the law on their side, the people must rely on film heroes, liberated from the capitalists, to represent the cause of justice," according to the Illinois professor.
The film heroes appear to be proxies for the filmmakers who toil at the behest of the moneymen. Typically, the only good businessperson portrayed in movies turns out to be an artist or other visionary who seeks more than cold cash. This was made explicit in "Executive Suite" (1954) where Don Walling, a hands-on factory manager played by William Holden, faces off against unsavory bean-counter Loren Shaw, played by Frederic March, for the soul of a furniture company.
"Walling wins by smashing one of the company's new, cheaper chairs and convincing Barbara Stanwyck, who holds the deciding vote, that the company's financial success lies in producing smash-proof chairs, ... leaving no room for Loren Shaw and his fellow heartless capitalists."
According to Ribstein, "Every filmmaker to some extent makes a Faustian deal in order to produce her art. Even filmmakers such as Woody Allen, who have secured significant independence from major studios, still rely on outside financing and so must be conscious of monetary constraints on their art. Since the constraints are so central to their ability to function as artists, it is not surprising that the resulting frustration or resentment emerges in their work."
The producers and financiers in control of Hollywood studios apparently let this theme run through so many movies "because they do not care what their films say as long as they're making money."
But such is the power of cinema that the negative portrayal of corporate America fuels populist sentiment for more government regulation of business, Ribstein concluded. "Certainly unions' cause was helped by Sally Field's spunky performance in 'Norma Rae,' people were more likely to care about corporate pollution after 'Erin Brockovich' and 'A Civil Action,' and takeover and insider-trading regulation got more sympathy after 'Wall Street.' "
Ribstein's film analysis is an outgrowth of his years of scholarship in the area of business law. He is the author of the books "Unincorporated Business Entities" and "Business Associations" used by law schools throughout the country. In addition, he is the co-author of the leading multi-volume treatises on partnership law and on limited liability companies.
His essay on Hollywood, "Film and Firms," is available online.