ALEX'S CULTURE//ADVERTISING BLOG

I’ve just watched the trailer for Michael Moore’s new film, “Capitalism: A love story”. It kind of pissed me off, but I wasn’t going to comment on it… until I came across this amazing post on Dealscape about the film’s New York premiere:

Before the film, the crowd sipped champagne and cocktails in the “Morgan Stanley Lobby” and then headed to their seats in the “Citi Balcony.” Movie tickets were available at the “Bank of New York Box Office” and there’s outdoor seating at the “Credit Suisse Information Grandstand.”

Hypocrisy at all? The premiere was followed by a rather swish event at one of New York’s trendiest and most expensive bars. I guess Moore isn’t all that much opposed to capitalism.

Judging from the trailer, the movie is much more interested in scoring cheap points out of an emotionally charged situation than actually evaluating what went wrong and how to fix it. In the trailer he chases down traders in expensive suits asking:

“Can you tell me what a credit default swap is? Can you explain a derivative to me?”

I can’t help thinking, “Maybe if you weren’t such a simplistic, ignorant, illiterate, manipulative, fat-ass then you’d be able to read and understand the Wikipedia articles on these basic financial instruments”. See credit default swap, derivative.

For those who can’t be bothered: a credit default swap is a contract you can buy from that pays you a certain amount of money if a specified bond defaults (fails to pay). A derivative is a contract that derives it value from the value of a traditional financial asset (e.g. a stock or a bond). It’s not that complicated.

Moore’s film makes me so angry because he is trivialising such an important subject. After Lehman collapsed in September last year, we came unbelievably close to global disaster on a scale that is very difficult for us to imagine. I remember saying to people that the only thing standing between Western civilisation and a 1930s style Great Depression was the IMF - a scary situation indeed.

It appears that we have successfully purchased our escape from the brink. At what ultimate cost I don’t know. We need to learn some tough lessons from the events of the past two years, and we need to learn them fast. I just don’t think Moore’s sensationalist, crude exploration of the subject is going to help at all. This is a shame - because if he did this right then he could really make a difference.