Abstract
In his 2002 documentary, Bowling for Columbine, film-maker Michael Moore asks Dick Hurlin, former producer of COPS, why he does not make a reality program about corporate crime. Hurlin says that such a program would not make interesting television because it would not be exciting. There would be no chase scenes of police in pursuit of fleeing corporate criminals. Moore then creates a whimsical sequence called ‘Corporate Cops’ in which he chases a fleeing corporate criminal wearing a suit, slams him against a car and handcuffs him.
Hurlin’s view that corporate crime is not exciting television comports with scholarly opinion about the absence of corporate crime and large-scale economic wrongdoing in the cinema. We recently argued that Hollywood films about the 2008 economic crisis tend to individualize corporate wrongdoing as an inevitable outcome of human greed (Cavender and Jurik, forthcoming). Lackey (2001) concludes that economic crimes are complicated and visually uninteresting, so film-makers subsume wrongdoing within the thriller or the comedy genres. Rafter and Brown (2010) agree that corporate wrongs are not cinematically interesting so film makers focus instead on a heroic protagonist who unravels the wrongdoing. The sub-text of Michael Moore’s questions and these scholarly observations is that public concerns with street crimes stem from frequent depictions in film and television. Popular culture does not focus on corporate economic wrongdoing, so the public is less concerned about it (Coleman, 2005).
The Big Short challenges these assumptions. The film addresses the financial crisis of 2008, and in a manner that weaves into the narrative complicated concepts such as collaterialized debt obligations (CDOs). The film challenges assumptions about the uninteresting nature of economic issues. First, the film is a box office success. Production costs for The Big Short were US$28 million, and to date the film has grossed US$65.8 million in the US and another US$52 million internationally. Second, the film has garnered numerous nominations. These include: Best Film (Academy Award, Golden Globe, American Film Institute), Best Director (Academy Award, American Film Institute), Best Adapted Screen Play (Academy Award, Golden Globe, Critics’ Choice), and Best Actor (two Golden Globe nominations and two Critics’ Choice nominations).
The obvious question is how does the film make economic issues accessible and cinematically popular with movie audiences and critics? In this review, we address these issues. First, we suggest that The Big Short offers a strong cast of popular actors who work well in an ensemble setting: Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, Brad Pitt, and Marisa Tomei.
Second, The Big Short employs an interesting cinematic technique for explaining complicated concepts (e.g. sub-prime mortgages, CDOs). These toxic assets that were bundled for sale were lucrative, but risky. They fueled the economic bubble that generated millions of dollars of profits for financial firms before causing economic collapse and a world-wide recession. Adam McKay, who directed the film and collaborated on the screenplay with Charles Randolph, uses humor to explain key concepts. In one sequence, singer/actress Selena Gomez interacts with economist Richard Thaler to explain CDOs while playing blackjack and dealing with side bets. In a second sequence, celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain explains how CDOs were bundled for sale using the metaphor of a fish stew, which he prepares as he discusses those worthless assets. In the third sequence, actress Margot Robbie explains sub-prime mortgages while taking a bubble bath. The three sequences are funny, in part, because they come as such a surprise in a film about the financial sector. These explanations also belie claims from Wall Street-types and neo-liberal economists that these concepts are too complicated for the public to understand. Gomez, Bourdain, and Robbie explain them with ease and have fun doing it. It helps that McKay usually directs comedies like Anchorman. Steve Carell, who worked with McKay at Second City (a comedy troupe), says that the director has a high level of political acumen (e.g. he is knowledgeable about financial de-regulation) and an absurdist sense of humor (Ryzik, 2016).
Third, The Big Short creates a tension that drives the film and adds cinematic style: it pits small bands of outsiders against huge financial firms that are making a fortune by selling CDOs. Working largely independently – although occasionally piggy-backing on each other’s knowledge – these protagonists conclude, based on careful analyses, that the economic bubble cannot be sustained. Essentially they bet against these huge financial firms (and the continuation of the bubble), and borrow large sums of money from these same firms to make their bets.
Although willing to loan the money, these firms treat these outsiders in a smug, condescending manner. There is a David and Goliath vibe to these interactions. The financial officers’ disdain for our protagonists is a proxy for corporate executives’ condescending attitudes toward the public. Suspense is generated through the temporal and economic pressure on the protagonists: time is of the essence, and time is running out. Borrowing huge sums of money requires large monthly interest payments, and the outsiders wonder if the collapse on which they are betting will occur soon enough to avoid their own bankruptcy from interest payments. Moreover, when the indicators of collapse fall into place, our heroes are shocked that nothing changes! Ratings companies continue to issue AAA ratings for over-valued CDOs, government regulatory agencies do nothing, and the protagonists are near bankruptcy. By all principles of rational economics, our heroes know that ratings should be falling as housing prices plummet and foreclosures skyrocket. How could market forces in the free market not lead to falling ratings? The emerging answer is that the market is not free; the protagonists uncover a conspiracy of silence among banks, ratings firms, and government to maintain the economic status quo. This is exactly what happened in 2008 (Sorkin, 2010).
So, sometimes The Big Short pits the small ‘Davids’ against the powerful ‘Goliaths.’ Sometimes, there is a ‘heist’ sensibility to the film because these ‘Davids’ are trying to beat the ‘Goliaths’ at their own game. However, there are more poignant sides to the film that in contrast to other Hollywood films on this crisis (Cavender and Jurik, forthcoming) reveal the human tragedy of these conditions. Steve Carell plays a cynical critic of Wall Street. Because he is unsure about the data predicting a crisis, he and colleagues travel to Florida to have a look at real estate. They discover smooth-but-foolish agents ripping off unsuspecting home buyers and earning large commissions. They drive through a subdivision filled with ‘FOR SALE’ and ‘FORECLOSURE’ signs, and see the reality of the coming crisis. They talk with people who live in these homes and do not know they are about to be at ground zero when the bubble bursts. In other poignant scenes, two young fund managers solicit help from their guru, a former Wall Street wunderkind, Ben Rickert, played by Brad Pitt. Rickert helps his protégés, but when they are too gleeful he reminds them that, yes, they may make a fortune, but millions of people will lose jobs and homes. When the bubble finally bursts and Wall Street is devastated, some protagonists linger outside of an investment firm and watch as terminated employees leave with their work possessions in cardboard boxes. This scene reminds us that our heroes are not purely heroic; they also profited from the devastation of millions of people despite helping to expose systemic problems. As a further reminder, there is another scene in which the protégés sneak a visit inside the firm, a tomb-like room, empty of employees. One of the protégés muses sadly: ‘I didn’t think it would look like this.’
The Big Short.
In a coda, Steve Carell laments that he thought the collapse would bring about change, new regulations, and possibly imprisonment for the high-flying thieves whose actions produced such horrible consequences. But his cynicism kicks in and he proclaims that the government will bail out these companies, no one will go to prison, and instead of regulatory reforms, leaders will blame the poor and immigrants for the collapse. Unfortunately, he is generally correct. He risked everything to show cracks in the system, a system even more cracked than he realized. Yet in the end, he took the money.
The Big Short is funny, clever, poignant, and informative. It demonstrates that a Hollywood film can deal with complicated economic issues and be a box office success. It lets us root for outsiders fighting against ‘big corporations’ that were systematically and ruthlessly ruining the world. Yet, these outsiders are not actually heroes, and still missing from the film is much hope or vision for progressive social change. Nevertheless, perhaps a first critical step is that complex crisis economics are explained and viewers might realize that the market was neither free nor rational – indeed, the emperor had and still has no clothes.
Importantly for criminologists, The Big Short shows that clever writers, directors, and actors can offer a compelling education and critique of economic wrongdoing that is cinematically interesting, even exciting. This is what good movies can do.