Off Topic — HabitableZone

Off Topic » in reply to I thought of two examples of a heroic businessman in films. How many can you come up with?

You're right, I can't come up with too many...
ER — (archived)

...especially from recent films. Older movies, such as "It's a Wonderful Life", "Destination Moon" and "Christmas Carol" come to mind, but even they are often about "good" businessmen in conflict with "evil" businessmen, or evil businesmen cleaning up their act. But there are solid dramatic and, yes, business reasons for this as I pointed out in an earlier post.

Audiences deal with businessmen all the time, as customers or employees. They tend to remember the adversarial aspects of those relationships more than the others. They don't want to see heroic entrepreneurs fighting crooked unions (although movies have been made about that). Moviemakers study and exploit their audiences, they give them what they want to see. Also, for the reasons I mentioned in an earlier post, the inescapable fact that most economic power in the society is wielded by private enterprise leads to the fact that economic corruption, even if extremely rare, would still be tied to business most of the time. People are familiar with the concept. A film, even one based on a true story, of a noble entrepreneur at war with crooked environmentalists, would come across as propaganda. Fairly or not, audiences just wouldn't buy it.

There are still counter-examples, though. One notable one that comes to mind was the film "Rollover" (with Jane Fonda!), where she plays a noble financier who prevents a world-wide financial crisis with some clever and courageous boardroom and bedroom maneuvers.

BTW, have you noticed the lame attempt at black propaganda by this
anonymous NIHIListic poster? His true agenda is pretty obvious, and he is doing real damage to his cause. Then again, maybe he's a clever left winger disguising himself as a stupid right winger writing bad left wing agitprop so as to discredit the right. Wheels within wheels.

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