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> tech bro... CEOs Even in this headline, there's some pretty interesting equivocation happening between techies and CEOs overall. The article makes a decent c
by Bartweiss 8y ago
> tech bro... CEOs
Even in this headline, there's some pretty interesting equivocation happening between techies and CEOs overall. The article makes a decent case for why there's collective anxiety about tech companies, but neglects the question of "why only tech?"
The ~1990s had a whole string of movies with bankers and investors as villains: American Psycho, Rogue Trader, Glengarry Glen Ross, Wall Street, Boiler Room, and so on. Lately, we had had Wolf of Wallstreet and The Big Short, but in a post-2008 world where banking already has trashed the economy we're surprisingly short on bankers-as-villains films.
We got a couple of global warming films in the 2000s, and a couple more in the 2010s, but I can't think of one which makes a serious attempt to cast oil CEOs as villains - certainly not in the sense that e.g. tobacco companies have been. Avatar is probably the closest thing to "CEOs trashing the environment" that's been a hit.
Pharma companies lend themselves to human-interest tragedies, and we did get Dallas Buyer's Club. But there's no whole genre here like there used to be with "the bank takes the farm".
So there's the missing question: why tech companies specifically? The most obvious answer is just "more impressive visuals". I'm not sure we're talking about a particular anxiety of the moment, or if it's just that banks and oil companies work better on the page than on the screen.
- eesmith 8y ago> Avatar is probably the closest thing to "CEOs trashing the environment" that's been a hit. What about "Erin Brockovich"? PG&E is a power company, though the hexavalent chromium was used to fight corrosion. I did not see the movie, but the Wikipedia summary says the decision was traced to upper management.
- Bartweiss 8y agoErin Brockovich and A Civil Action (about groundwater pollution) are both good examples, yes. I guess it depends when the article starts its timeline. I was trying to think of movies from the 2010s or so, because I can think of a lot of tech CEO villains in that span but not many non-tech CEO villains. My best guess at why is that action films with corporate villains look better with tech companies. (For instance, Robocop is way older than the article's timeframe, but fits the same villain narrative.)
- eesmith 8y agoFWIW, IMDB has a list of movies with both 'environmental issue' and 'oil' keywords at https://www.imdb.com/search/keyword?keywords=environmental-issue%2Coil&sort=moviemeter,asc&mode=detail&page=1&ref_=kw_ref_key https://www.imdb.com/search/keyword?keywords=environmental-i... . It seems to support your observation.
- Bartweiss 8y agoAh, thanks for that! This is the sort of observation where I always worry that I've just got a biased sample, so any unrelated take on the topic is helpful. I see a handful of very on-topic films there, Trouble in the Peace in particular looks like an environmental version of Hell or High Water (mortgages) or Legends of the Fall (local government corruption and mistreatment of Native Americans). But those were high-profile films with famous casts, while Trouble in the Peace looks like a sleeper labor of love. Honestly, I'm really surprised we haven't gotten any good "oil companies ruin our lives" dramas this decade, you could do fracking or sea level rise or drought or... It feels like a weird gap in the set of popular narratives.
- dlbucci 8y ago> Pharma companies lend themselves to human-interest tragedies, and we did get Dallas Buyer's Club. Don't forget the Fugitive!