In this unusual long weekend in June with no exercises to mark, and after a WHOLE lecture-less week in which I’ve managed to write non-stop I don’t know what trash (and thank God for that little time…!), I’ve finally managed to find some time to see two fine documentaries on the current crisis: Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story (2009) and Charles Ferguson’s Inside Job (2010). The pack was to be completed with Oliver Stone’s Wall Street 2, but I’m afraid I fell asleep over that one… not focused enough on the crisis, except for Michael Douglas-Gordon Gekko’s spot-on speech about how greed seeped dwon from Wall Street and onto any of us who thought houses are to speculate and not to live in. Bubbles bursting, you should be thinking.
One thing I sure learned is the answer to the final question in my previous blog entry: what’s the situation in Mathematics? It turns out that because the American university system encourages less and less the development of pure science, the best young mathematical brains of the US (not necessarily US nationals) were hired in the early 2000s by Wall Street to dream up new investment products that would make money out of thin air. They did –call them derivatives, CDOs, etc.– with the disastrous results we all know, aided by everyone’s self-indulgent greed (the once fearsome villain Gekko said). If only those brains had been left to enjoy the beauties of pure science… or had been applied to other more apt dreams, like, the space race (yes, I read SF) or how to produce a reasonable amount of wealth for all… Now what’s vanished into thin air are the many personal dreams of millions around the world, if not their whole lives. Our lives.
Anyway, I’m getting carried away. I don’t want to discuss what Moore and Ferguson’s documentaries have to say (do see them!) but how they say it. My point today is that even though the argumentation they present is pretty much the same, Inside Job got an Oscar and Moore’s film was greeted by critics (not so much by spectators) as yet one more example of Moore’s dubious populism. Disregard this… Seeing them back-to-back is a very rewarding experience because, of course, you get a much rounder picture of the darned crisis than either can provide independently. Ferguson, clearly, aims at the educated segment of the audience, whereas Moore, also clearly, goes beyond that into the mind of the popular, less educated classes. He does succeed in making crystal-clear sense, for everyone to grasp, of the absurd behaviour of those in government who should have controlled money but failed to do so.
I’ve taught in a course on globalisation Moore’s moving Bowling for Columbine and his scary Farenheit 9/11 and in each edition we crashed against his populist sentimentalism. This, as we know, is manipulative and, essentially, anti-intellectual. I think, however, it is also, ultimately, very necessary. If only the patriarchal clique –Ferguson makes a point of stressing there were no women in it – had put, as Moore does, a human face on the blank images of those whom they mercilessly destroyed the world would be now a better place.
Think twice next time you reject Moore’s films or his working-class sentimentalism. They may not be to all tastes but have their uses. I should know, coming, as I do myself, from the working classes now everyone is pretending not to see.