Occupy the Multiplex: Capitalists in Cinema

The Occupy movement is spreading. The Third Row Centre team have decided to throw their hat into the ring by regaling you with a selection of their favourite cinematic capitalists.

Adam:

Randolph (Ralph Bellamy) and Mortimer Duke (Don Ameche) from Trading Places [John Landis, 1983]

Randolph and Mortimer Duke like to dabble in a wager or two, seemingly unfulfilled by their highly successful commodities brokerage.  The elderly brothers decide to conduct an observational study of the America’s social hierarchy in action, using their influence to create their very own version of The Prince and the Pauper by switching the lives of their employee Louis Winthorpe III (Dan Aykroyd) and street hustler Billy Ray Valentine (Eddie Murphy).  Winthorpe bears the brunt of their actions, falling from the graceful position of managing director – as well as being engaged to the Dukes’ grandniece – to becoming a homeless, loveless, jobless criminal.  Alright, so he may strike it lucky by shacking up with hooker with a heart of gold Ophelia (Jamie Lee Curtis), but the glee that the Dukes revel in through carrying out this plan – waged for a measly dollar no less – is both joyful in its comedic value and despicable as an exemplification of their selfish fat cat pleasures.

The manner in which they look down on these individuals from their lofty position, using them as pawns in their game of socio-economical chess is asking for trouble; once the ruse is discovered, Valentine and Winthorpe work together to overthrow the maleficent duo, buying out the company and leaving them penniless.  The tables have turned; the Dukes are ruined.  The brothers make a welcome cameo in another Eddie Murphy/John Landis film of the eighties, Coming to America [1988], in which Murphy’s character, the wealthy Prince Akeem, gifts the two homeless old men a bag full of money.  “Mortimer, we’re back,” Randolph says, the familiar expression of merry greed splashed across their faces.  Looks like these avaricious capitalist bigshots won’t be down for long before someone bales them out with a wad of cash.  How life imitates art.  Sigh.

Greg:

Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) from Wall Street [Oliver Stone, 1987]

This task was a straightforward one for me – cinema’s most evil capitalist  has got to be Gordon Gekko in Wall Street. Indeed, Gekko has become synonymous with exactly the brand of speculative capitalism at which the “Occupy” protests are aimed – like a virus, Gekko moves from stock to stock, company to company, stripping businesses of their money and assets, pocketing the dough and moving on. The most heinous example of Gekko’s Reaganite brand of neoliberal capitalism happens when he promises young protege Bud Fox (Charlie Sheen) that he will buy the airline his father Carl (Martin Sheen) works for, invest in it and grow the business. What Gekko really plans to do is dissolve the company, sell off its assets, and loot the company’s overfunded pension plan, leaving Carl and his colleagues unemployed. Strip-mining the assets? Looting pension plans? Sound familiar? That’s because it’s happening to Britain’s public services RIGHT NOW!

If you need further proof that Gekko is precisely the kind of malevolent capitalist that has become the bete noire of the “Occupy” movement, look at his two contributions to the contemporary lexicon – “Lunch is for wimps” (as someone who thinks lunch is one of mankind’s finest traditions and must be defended at all costs, I find this horrifying) and, perhaps even more era-defining, “Greed is good.” Greed,  Mr Gekko, is most certainly not good. Greed is what got us into this mess in the first place.

A footnote: The scariest thing about Gekko is the extent to which he became a folk hero to Western stockbrokers, the irony seemingly lost on them. Further proof, if it were needed, that not only are rampant free marketeers evil, they are also stupid. Which makes them doubly scary.

Hannah:

Edward Lewis (Richard Gere) from Pretty Woman [Garry Marshall, 1990]

I tried really hard to find a good female evil capitalist. I couldn’t, so I’m getting as close as I can with Dicky Gere in Pretty Woman. I know you are taken aback by the very idea that Gere could be evil (the man is mates with the frickin’ Dalai Lama). But consider it this way: he destroys family businesses, breaks them down and gets filthy rich off the back of it. He says this more or less explicitly and, at the beginning of the film, he’s proud of it to boot. He is completely amoral until his heart is melted by prostitute-with-a-heart-of-gold Vivienne (Julia Roberts). He is, in other words, an arch evil capitalist disguised as a romantic hero.

Hayley:

Ebenezer Scrooge (Michael Caine) from The Muppet Christmas Carol [Brian Henson, 1992]

Well, since it’s post-firework night, it’s definitely not too early to crack out The Muppet Christmas Carol in search of the best capitalist ever ever EVER depicted on the silver screen: Ebenezer Scrooge.  It’s not just Michael Caine’s wonderful performance (and equally wonderful dressing gown) that make this depiction so great, it’s the fact that he’s being really really mean to singing puppets – even ones with small, ill puppet children on crutches.  He doesn’t let his workers have coal, he likes darkness because it’s cheap, and ‘He charges folks a fortune for his dark and drafty houses, as poor folk live in misery (it’s even worse for mouses!).’   I refuse to believe that cinema (or literature, for that matter!) has ever portrayed a more brilliantly mean capitalist, and this is evidenced in the lyrics: ‘When a cold wind blows it chills you, chills you to the bone; but there’s nothing in nature that freezes your heart like years of being alone.  It paints you with indifference like a lady paints with rouge, and the worst of worst, the most hated and cursed, is the one that we call Scrooge!’  The worst of the worst, people.  Disney says so.  (Maybe something will happen to make him he change his puppet-bullying ways.  I’ve seen this film more times than I’ve seen Christmas Day, but I may need to watch it again, just to be sure…)

Lauren:

Hudsucker Industries from The Hudsucker Proxy [Joel Coen, 1994]

Not just one capitalist, but a whole building full of them – not counting the mezzanine.

When Waring Hudsucker throws himself out of the window of the New York skyscraper headquarters of Hudsucker Industries without having written a will, his board of directors, led by Paul Newman’s delightfully insidious Sidney J. Mussburger, hire the hapless Norville Barnes from the mailroom, in order to depress share prices to enact a takeover of the company when it goes public.

The Coens’ quick witted humour is evident as ever, particularly in the boardroom scene where Norville is subjected to a barrage of questions about his new invention – a plastic circular toy – that reveal the nature of big business and the lug-headedness of those in charge:

Board Member 1: What if you tire before it’s done?
Board Member 2: Does it have rules?
Board Member 3: Can more than one play?
Board Member 4: What makes you think it’s a game?
Board Member 3: Is it a game?
Board Member 5: Will it break?
Board Member 6: It better break eventually!
Board Member 2: Is there an object?
Board Member 1: What if you tire before it’s done?
Board Member 5: Does it come with batteries?
Board Member 4: We could charge extra for them.
Board Member 7: Is it safe for toddlers?
Board Member 3: How can you tell when you’re finished?
Board Member 2: How do you make it stop?
Board Member 6: Is that a boy’s model?
Board Member 3: Can a parent assemble it?
Board Member 5: Is there a larger model for the obese?
Board Member 1: What if you tire before it’s done?
Board Member 8: What the hell is it?

What it is, of course, is a hula-hoop…”you know, for kids”

In a sequence that could easily be used to teach the principles of supply and demand in business school, the hula-hoop is launched into the market. Hilarious, and educational. I love it!

Owen:

Harry Ellis (Hart Bochner) from Die Hard [John McTiernan, 1988]

There’s no doubt about it: Harry Ellis from Die Hard is a complete banker. Just look at him:

Take it in: the slickly parted hair, the grin that’s eaten more s**t than Tom Cruise’s, all wrapped up in a suit so offensively loud that John McClane’s sweat-and-blood-stained string vest becomes the more tempting sartorial option. While the hard-working cops on the ground below attempt to help their blue-collar colleague McClane out of a hostage situation instigated by international crooks that is putting his family’s Christmas holiday at risk, Ellis contibutes to the glaring obviousness of the scenario’s metaphorical nature by deciding that the best way to deal with proceedings way up on the thirtieth floor is use his sadly-not-so-unique blend of self-assured insufferability, sexism, and xenophobia in order to get chummy with said brigands. “Hey babe”, he tells Holly Gennaro McClane, “I negotiate million dollar deals for breakfast – I think I can handle this Eurotrash”. Telling “exceptional thief” Hans Gruber (another fine cinematic capitalist) that he is his “white knight”, and promising to betray McClane for self-preservation, he lays down his manifesto: “Business is business. You use a gun, I use a fountain pen – what’s the difference?” The bullet that travels through his brain when negotiations go skew-whiff answers this question in an ambiguous, though rather beautiful fashion.

Rick:

Henry F. Potter (Lionel Barrymore) from It’s A Wonderful Life [Frank Capra, 1946]

The ultimate ‘evil capitalist’ surely has to be Henry F. Potter from Frank Capra’s It’s A Wonderful Life, because unlike many of the other great movie capitalists who are intent on making as much money as they can at all costs, Potter is also intent on the deliberate and systematic destruction of one company, one family and one man in particular, George Bailey (James Stewart). The sequence where Potter takes advantage of Uncle Billy’s mistake and steals $8,000 from the Bedford Falls Bailey Building and Loan Association is callous, cold, gut- and heart-wrenching, because we know that unless the money is recovered it spells the end for Bailey and the Building and Loan. We realise that Potter genuinely has no regard for human life and emotion, and that he would rather see George Bailey go to jail – even kill himself – than admit to taking the money and allowing a small, rival competitor to exist side-by-side his exploitative big-time business operations. In a vision of an alternative future we see what life without George Bailey would be like for the people of Bedford Falls, and it has Potter all over it – indeed the town is renamed Pottersville. What is also significant, and unusual, about Potter is that he has no come-uppance. He steals $8,000 and isn’t held accountable. The Building and Loan survives because of the generosity and humanity of Bailey’s fellow residents – the people he has helped throughout the years – and so Potter’s plan is foiled, but he lives on, without punishment to continue the assault another time. Unusual indeed, and somewhat at odds with the film’s feel-good ending.

What do you think of our choices? If we’ve missed your favourite cinematic capitalist we’d love to hear from you! Comment away, or give us a tweet @thirdrowcentre.