{"id":231,"date":"2011-06-13T18:26:35","date_gmt":"2011-06-13T16:26:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/?p=231"},"modified":"2011-06-13T18:26:35","modified_gmt":"2011-06-13T16:26:35","slug":"two-styles-of-documenting-the-crisis-capitalism-a-love-story-and-inside-job","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/2011\/06\/13\/two-styles-of-documenting-the-crisis-capitalism-a-love-story-and-inside-job\/","title":{"rendered":"TWO STYLES OF DOCUMENTING THE CRISIS: CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY<\/em> AND INSIDE JOB<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

\tIn this unusual long weekend in June with no exercises to mark, and after a WHOLE lecture-less week in which I\u2019ve managed to write non-stop I don\u2019t know what trash (and thank God for that little time…!), I\u2019ve finally managed to find some time to see two fine documentaries on the current crisis: Michael Moore\u2019s Capitalism: A Love Story<\/em> (2009) and Charles Ferguson\u2019s Inside Job<\/em> (2010). The pack was to be completed with Oliver Stone\u2019s Wall Street 2<\/em>, but I\u2019m afraid I fell asleep over that one… not focused enough on the crisis, except for Michael Douglas-Gordon Gekko\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

One thing I sure learned is the answer to the final question in my previous blog entry: what\u2019s 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 \u2013call them derivatives, CDOs, etc.\u2013 with the disastrous results we all know, aided by everyone\u2019s 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\u2019s vanished into thin air are the many personal dreams of millions around the world, if not their whole lives. Our<\/em> lives.<\/p>\n

Anyway, I\u2019m getting carried away. I don\u2019t want to discuss what Moore and Ferguson\u2019s 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<\/em> got an Oscar and Moore\u2019s film was greeted by critics (not so much by spectators) as yet one more example of Moore\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve taught in a course on globalisation Moore\u2019s moving Bowling for Columbine<\/em> and his scary Farenheit 9\/11<\/em> 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<\/em> necessary. If only the patriarchal clique \u2013Ferguson makes a point of stressing there were no women in it \u2013 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.<\/p>\n

Think twice next time you reject Moore\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In this unusual long weekend in June with no exercises to mark, and after a WHOLE lecture-less week in which I\u2019ve managed to write non-stop I don\u2019t know what trash (and thank God for that little time…!), I\u2019ve finally managed to find some time to see two fine documentaries on the current crisis: Michael Moore\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":98,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/98"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}