Abstract
War Movies and Economics: Lessons from Hollywood’s Adaptations of Military Conflict applies ongoing research in the relatively new genre of economics in pop culture media to Hollywood’s war movies. It is the latest book in the Routledge Economics and Popular Culture Series which has already produced books that apply economic ideas to a diverse range of topics including Broadway, Dystopia, Contemporary Film, Superheroes, and the Beatles.
War films have been serious business from the start. William Wellman’s Wings (1927), a First World War romantic drama, won the inaugural Academy Award for best picture. Nearly one hundred years later, not only has the supply of war films been inexhaustible, but their box-office attraction has proved enduring. The Second World War is a war that never ends—cinematically speaking, at least. Wikipedia’s list of films about the First World War (1914–18) tops out below 200 entries, half of which were American produced or co-produced. The number of Second World War films is more than ten times this figure. The cinematic interest in some conflicts—Korea, Vietnam, the Cold War, Iraq—comes and goes, but Hollywood cannot get enough of 1939 to 1945. Of the 14 movies featured in this book, 10 come from the Second World War. The Second World War remains an unambiguous battle of good versus evil, a war that had to be waged.
For the United States, the Second World War ushered in postwar reconstruction and the prosperity of the Golden Age: a period of unprecedented economic growth and near total global dominance which lasted beyond the fall of the Iron Curtain. Since the dawn of the new millennium, however, American soldiers have been mired in costly and protracted wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. It’s only natural that people will reminisce and yearn for a period when there was greater certainty, where evil was easily identified and defeated. The themes explored in war films—combat, survival and escape, camaraderie between soldiers, sacrifice, the futility, and inhumanity of battle—are universal; they speak to an intrinsic human desire for security and hope for a better future.
The exploration of motion pictures in search of dialogue and action relating to economic theory dates back to the early 2000s. Leet and Houser (2003) were the first to use feature-length movies of wide-ranging interest in economic education. Within a decade, researchers had provided a series of pedagogical approaches which integrated video media into the economics classroom in a number of unique and interesting ways: from movie and TV (Sexton, 2006) to iconic TV shows: Seinfeld (Ghent et al., 2011) and The Simpsons (Luccasen & Thomas, 2010) to podcasts (Molder, 2009). Continuing research in this area is reflected in meta-sites like Mateer (2012) and Wooten (2018), which house film, TV, and music clips, and the increasing use of Critical Commons as an open access resource.
Despite these advances, it is noteworthy that none of these studies or sites includes a reference to a war-related film or television movie. There are, however, a handful of studies not listed above, dating back to 2004, that examine the economics content of war-related movies. The first study that examined the economic content of war-related movies appeared in Mixon and Treviño (2004a, 2004b). They applied the tools of game theory to describe themes in Schindler’s List, a film about Oskar Schindler, a German industrialist and member of the Nazi party, who tried to save his Jewish employees after witnessing the persecution of Jews in Poland. Four years after the two studies by Mixon and Treviño, Schindler’s List was included in a study by Macy and Terry (2008) of films that examine corporate governance, ethics, and society. Next, Mateer et al. (2016) published an article discussing “The 10 Greatest Films for Teaching Economics.” In their work, they surveyed 105 educators at conferences and teaching workshops across America to identify the greatest films for teaching economics. This article was the first of its kind to identify the most important films for economic educators. The question elicited well over 100 separate films, which the authors ranked based on the frequency of responses. Among the list were two war-related movies—Gladiator and Schindler’s List—both of which were tied at 50th in the overall ranking (Mateer et al., 2016, p. 214). However, as in the case of Macy and Terry (2008), Mateer et al. (2016) did not provide examples of the economic content in either Gladiator or Schindler’s List.
This small body of literature both forms the foundation of this particular volume of essays on the subject and represents the gap in the economics literature that this volume aims to fill. This book is an original attempt to connect war movies and economics in a systematic, comprehensive manner, expanding the library of academic research on this subject to 14 motion pictures and television movies. The eight chapters included in this book cover ancient wars, such as the Third Servile War between Rome and the slave army led by Spartacus, the most destructive war of the 20th century (World War II), through to modern conflicts, such as the ongoing Afghanistan War.
Fourteen films and television-films are covered: Band of Brothers, Conspiracy, The Dirty Dozen, Dunkirk (1958 and 2017), Lone Survivor, Memphis Belle, Saving Private Ryan, Schindler’s List, Spartacus (Vengeance and War of The Damned), Stalag 17, Third Servile War and Valkyrie.
Pop culture is a useful tool for stimulating student engagement at principles level, to show students how economics relates to everyday life. The most impressive thing about this book is that it goes way beyond the first-year experience. The economic concepts described in these war movies are vast, ranging from the core principles of economics, such as scarcity, opportunity cost, specialization and division of labor, to game-theoretic concepts, such as commitment devices and ultimatum bargaining. In addition, concepts from the management (leadership) literature are also discussed, such as how an organization’s performance depends on its leaders’ stock of human capital in the area of risk-taking in instantaneous decision-making contexts.
This review does not permit a description of every chapter, so I will limit myself to two of the most memorable chapters from a teaching perspective.
In Chapter 2: “45 Cigarettes, The Price Has Gone Up,” Joshua C. Hall and Daniel Bonneau illustrate how several core concepts in economics are present in the movie Stalag 17, a comedy-drama detailing life in a prisoner of war (POW) camp from the perspective of a group of U.S. pilots. Through the eyes of the central protagonist in this movie, J.J. Sefton, we gain an insight into how market activity evolves in a POW camp.
Each prisoner receives nearly identical rations but individuals have different preferences, so trade becomes common. Barter can be costly if goods are indivisible or costly to transport. It also requires a double coincidence of wants. Cigarettes become the common form of currency to facilitate the day-to-day transactions of the prisoners. The use of cigarettes as commodity money allow Hall and Bonneau to discuss how this choice by the POWs relates to the characteristics (functions) of money, including as a medium of exchange, a store of value and a unit of account. This is the perfect launching point for discussing why different forms of commodity money have been used throughout history, what makes a good commodity money and why fiat money has replaced commodity money in most countries.
Of course, all of the intracamp trading that occurs during the movie illustrates, as Hall and Bonneau explain, how preferences, scarcity, opportunity costs, and property rights are important features or elements of a market economy. All of these are evident in the POW camp depicted in Stalag 17. From the use of cigarettes as currency, to the betting markets for activities such as horseshoes, racing, and prison escapes, viewers are subconsciously absorbing a valuable lesson in economics.
In Chapter 4, Méndez-Carbajo explores examples of the now well-known ultimatum game captured in the movie The Dirty Dozen. In one example, the movie illustrates a strictly rational, analytical strategy where, in assembling a small commando unit made up of convicts facing the death penalty, each convict receives the following ultimatum: Join the daredevil outfit or serve your death sentence. Even though the mission assigned to the group appears to be suicidal, self-preservation dominates. A small chance to live is superior to certain death. Therefore, as Méndez-Carbajo explains, the offer is accepted. The second example uses behavioral theory strategies where, in testing the candidates’ commitment to the secrecy of their mission, an army commander orders the convicts to each speak publicly about their mission or suffer the consequences for an act of insubordination. As in the prior example, self-preservation dominates: Talking will expose the secret mission, canceling it and sending the convicts back to the gallows. In this case, everybody keeps quiet, meaning the responders choose a game strategy where the proposer’s payoff is lower, even if that requires lowering each responder’s own payoff as well. This deviation from a strictly rational strategy can be understood through the experimental economics literature (Camerer, 2003) which shows that most players of the ultimatum game avoid highly unequal proposals. Gächter (2004) documents the phenomenon on negative reciprocity, or rejecting a positive offer in the ultimatum game.
War Movies and Economics provides numerous examples of how economic principles often play an important role in military conflict—through the lens of Hollywood war films. One wonders whether a similar book, as seen through the eyes of non-English speaking allies or antagonists (using the Second World War as an example: France and Russia [Allies] or Germany, Italy and Japan [Axis]) would have broad appeal.
Overall, I recommend this book for students of economics looking for an approachable path to understanding basic principles of economics and game theory. It is also accessible to amateur and professional historians and any reader interested in popular culture as it relates to television, movies, and military history.