SPOILER ALERT: Article does contain spoilers from recent films and some television shows between 2013-2015.
“Show me the money,” Jerry Maguire famously shouted in the 1996 film.
Hollywood wants everyone to show it the money. Hollywood wouldn’t have glitz and glamour if people weren’t plunking down their credit cards at the local theater or watching their home DVRs or streaming new episodes to other devices. Ironically, for a multibillion industry, TV and film frequently depict the individuals and businesses trying to make money as corrupt, immoral and even murderous. American teens and young adults are very likely to be influenced by soaking up those views.
Health and Human Services (HHS) estimated in late 2013 that 12-17 year olds consume 112 hours of video per month, the vast majority of those in front of a TV. 18-24 years olds were watching even more: 133 hours per month. For much of that screen time, they were being bombarded by left-wing views about companies and businesspeople.
Studies have found correlations between what young people watch and what they do. An article in Pediatrics, surveyed adolescents yearly and found that watching sex on TV could “contribute to precocious adolescent sex,” although it was not a clear cause and effect. Other studies have looked at correlations between violent content and behavior.
If watching violent and sexual content could influence younger audiences, it is absurd to think a constant barrage of anti-business themes wouldn’t impact children, teens and young adults.
That’s why Hollywood’s continued assault on free market capitalism and business owners matters, especially in the films and TV shows they marketed to younger audiences, which have included “Frozen,” “The Muppets” and “The Lorax” in recent years. In 2013 alone, at least eight of the 30 highest-grossing films included anti-business or anti-capitalism themes. “Frozen” was one of the films, which made more than $1.6 billion combined in the U.S.
In 2014, “The LEGO Movie” was a box office smash aimed at kids and adults alike. CNBC.com pointed out the irony of its “not-so-subtly named ‘Lord Business’” villain and anti-consumerism message in a “movie inspired by a consumer toy product.”
At home, young viewers could find similar anti-corporate, anti-capitalism messages on network programming as well as basic and pay cable channels. What they would have difficulty spotting were good business role models – characters worth emulating.
Two people young adults definitely shouldn’t model themselves after were the cupcake entrepreneurs of CBS’s comedy “2 Broke Girls.” On that show Max and Caroline, played by Kat Dennings and Beth Behrs, were selfish and insolent and always making fun of their boss or refusing to do the work he told them to do. They weren’t even close to the self-sacrificing, hard workers people often need to be to get a business off the ground. In real life, they would have been fired for their unprofessional behavior.
During the 2013 and 2014 TV seasons there was a character who embraced capitalism, but global criminal mastermind Raymond “Red” Reddington of NBC’s “The Blacklist” was no role model.
Although he freely admitted, “I happen to believe in capitalism. I like money,” Reddington, played by James Spader, was not a good guy. He was an FBI “most wanted” criminal who made a fortune selling secrets “to the highest bidder.” He agreed to help the FBI catch some of the worst criminals in the world, but continued to operate as a criminal all while enjoying the finer things in life like tailored suits, expensive dining. He also committed murder in at least two episodes so far.
Unfortunately, depictions of capitalists and businesses as criminal, immoral or ruthless were an all too common Hollywood theme dating back as far as silent films. It is sure to surface again during the spring television season, which began the first week of January 2015.
Fake News, Really Anti-Business
Fiction wasn’t the only place youth learned that CEOs and businesses were the bad guys. The same themes were routinely delivered by liberal comedian Jon Stewart. The only difference was that he attacked real companies and business people by name.
Stewart is a funny guy whose media criticism is often spot on. But just like the liberal news media, Stewart also spun the “fake” news the way he wanted to. That means his Comedy Central show had plenty of angry, humorous rants directed at companies and CEOs he disagreed with.
In an attack on the practice of tax inversion, Stewart lashed out at Mylan, a pharmaceutical company, and bashed them by name July 30, 2014. He also mocked Republicans for complaining about the high corporate tax rate that was the rationale for inversion. He called companies and CEOs using inversions several names including “toddlers,” “bastards” and “fiduch-bags.”
“But tonight I’d like to talk to you about corporations. Corporations. They’re a lot like us. Immortal. Shielded from liability, accountable only to shareholders. Oh, wait. That’s the opposite of us. But there is one thing corporations do have in common with the rest of us. They don’t like paying taxes. Hate it. Fortunately, they rarely have to,” Stewart said.
On July 22 and 29, Stewart attacked Rupert Murdoch, the CEO and founder of News Corp. and FOX broadcasting. On July 22, seguing from a slam on John McCain to the Murdoch story, Stewart said, “Turning from an angry old man who’s absolutely wrongness has wrought great damage on this world to an angry old man whose brilliant acumen wrought great damage to this world.”
Reacting the media’s outcry over Murdoch’s “wish” to buy Time Warner, Stewart ranted that “if he buys Time Warner news will just be BLEEP Rupert Murdoch thinks” and after showing news clips about Murdoch not taking no for an answer, Stewart said “He’s like the date rapist of media barons, with all due respect.”
Stewart then launched a fake Kickstarter campaign to buy CNN, since it would be divested if Murdoch bought Time Warner. Murdoch ended up dropping the attempt to buy the media company, which was attacked by Hollywood celebrities, Stewart and liberal news sites.
This slant of “fake news” shows was significant because Stewart and others like him were gaining influence as young people abandoned television news. A Pew Research study found that 18-29 year olds were about 40 percent of the audience of “The Colbert Report” and “The Daily Show,” according to The Atlantic. This style of show has become so popular that comic John Oliver who used to work on “The Daily Show,” now has his very own fake news show on HBO called “Last Week Tonight.”
How to Succeed in Business: Lie, Cheat, Steal and Kill if Necessary
Professional ethics often didn’t exist in the businesses created by Hollywood writers. It didn’t matter if they were depicting Ewing Global, an oil and gas company, on “Dallas,” defendants on “How to Get Away with Murder,” or the consulting firms of “Scandal” and “House of Lies.” On all those shows, standard business practices included lying and backstabbing, adultery, and either not caring at all about clients (“House of Lies”) or caring so much about them they would keep their terrible secrets (“Scandal”).
The writers of “Dallas” said outright, through one character, that money and morality are opposing forces and only one can win.
Cable channel TNT’s “Dallas” was much like the old “Dallas,” and included familiar faces like Patrick Duffy as Bobby Ewing. It was still a soap opera about one Big Oil family and the Ewing’s feuds with each other and rival companies that sent a clear message that wealthy people are immoral at best and criminal at worst.
In June 2012, The New York Times said it was “one of the most popular scripted shows on basic cable,” although it struggled with a winter season placement in 2013, according to My San Antonio. The show returned to TNT for its the mid-season premiere on Aug. 18, 2014, which was watched by almost 2 million people.
As far as left-wing, anti-business views go, “Dallas” was a two-fer because it sent the message that the rich don’t don’t get rich through hard work and good sense, rather through stealing, cheating, adultery and more. And these immoral, ruthless rich folk were in the business the left despises the most: oil and gas.
The behavior of many members of the Ewing family was disgraceful. A dying J.R. Ewing had his assistant kill him and frame Cliff Barnes of Barnes Global for his murder. J.R. also supposedly switched the deeds of land between himself and Elena Ramos’ father, giving himself the oil wealthy land and leaving her father with “worthless” property. Elena grew up at Southfork since her mother was the cook for the Ewing ranch.
J.R.’s son, John Ross, resembled his father in many ways. He wanted to flaunt the family’s wealth, he cheated on his wife and he said and did anything necessary to get what he wanted for himself or the company. In season three, he continued his philandering in order to secure favors for Ewing Global with the CEO of Ryland Transport, Emma Ryland. She had put her father in prison to take over the CEO role.
Meanwhile Elena was persuaded by Barnes to seek revenge on the Ewings. But to her, it wasn’t revenge: “They kicked me out of a company I helped start. They took away my oil leases. They accused me of helping when they would have done the same to help their own and now all this. I’ll find the strength, ‘cause I’m not thinking of this as revenge. I’m thinking of this as justice.”
But the writers’ overarching message about making money was delivered so clearly by a newly introduced character. Harris Ryland’s mother, Judith, showed up unexpectedly after her granddaughter sprung her from a hospital for the insane. She came back to assert control over the company and told her son, “Your grandfather had a saying. Money and morality are like two cars on a one-lane road. When they meet, morality’s gonna end up in the ditch.”
Big oil companies weren’t Hollywood’s only targets. Consulting companies were some of the worst businesses out there, according to network and cable television. ABC’s “Scandal” focused on a political crisis management company, Olivia Pope & Associates, in the nation’s capital. “House of Lies” on Showtime was about a management consulting company called Kaan & Associates.
Pope was a “fixer,” which really meant she was great at making sure the truth doesn’t come out. She had worked as director of communications for the president before leaving to start her own company. She also had an affair with the president. Spin and deception was her business, and according to one character on the show, she “could sell a dual ticket with Hitler and Bin Laden.”
Politics can be a dirty business but on “Scandal” it wasn’t just the politicians but everyone around them too. Presidential candidates were actually murderers, secret agents ran a paper company called ACME Limited as a cover, and deception was the rule, rather than the exception. And Pope & Associates was just one company making it all happen.
The fictional management consultants on “House of Lies” were equally duplicitous although they weren’t covering up murders committed by people living in the White House. Run by Marty Kaan (pronounced con), even Forbes.com said the show was based on a former employee’s account of how “powerhouse consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton” does business. Showtime based its series on a 2005 book by Martin Kihn, who worked for the company in 2001.
Tom Van Riper at Forbes wrote in 2012, “Your main goal if you’re a consultant: selling the client on the value of keeping you on board for months or years, to help implement all of your brilliant recommendations. It’s called ‘after work’ in industry jargon, and it’s where the money is. For a management consultant, ‘The point is not to solve the problem, but to get the after work,’ Kihn says.”
Although Van Riper found “House of Lies” “funny,” he admitted “the show serves up the usual entertainment industry fare of corporations as houses of evil.”
But it looked like all of Kaan’s ill treatment of his clients might have finally caught up with him in the finale of Season three. In the finale the FBI searched the company top to bottom after Kaan’s secretary and lover, Jeannie, offered to sell out a client in exchange for a lucrative contract with the Department of Justice. The DOJ contact went after Kaan & Associates after Jeannie changed her mind. When clients got wind of the federal investigation one by one they fired the consulting firm.
Just before Kaan was arrested Jeannie told him, “I’ve never been an honest person, Marty. It’s. I just – never seemed like a viable option.” He replied, “Me either.”
Kaan’s lawyer told him the only way to save the company was to leave it and he tells her, “I guess I taught you well, huh, Jeannie? You out Marty-ed Marty Kaan. The keys to the kingdom are yours.”
Good Cops vs. Bad Business
Crime shows were one of the most common ways Hollywood bashed businessmen. A look at primetime television in 2005 found that businessmen were 21 times more likely kidnap or kill than the mob and committed five times as much crime as terrorists, and four times as much as gangs.
That trend continued as television programs showing business people as corporate “scumbags” and would be murderers, whose crimes were discovered by hardworking, good public servants. Programming also showed everyday businesses being used as fronts for backroom deals between spies, terrorists or criminals.
On CBS’s “Hawaii Five-O,” many episodes pronounced business people guilty. In the episode “Kupu ‘eu” a man, John Cutler, was murdered. The Honolulu Police Department set out to solve the case and learned Cutler was stealing company secrets from his wife’s computer. A “trio of private companies” was the most likely the employers of Cutler’s corporate espionage.
Later, it turned out that one of them, Himmel Aerospace and Defense, had hired him and used a real estate subsidiary company to keep it a secret. Although it turned out they had not killed Cutler, they did obstruct justice when they “scrubbed the crime scene” after he was murdered.
In another episode, an arcade was run by a former KGB agent and sales of dangerous secrets took place in the back room.
But one of the worst episode plots attacking business was “Makani ‘olu a Holo Malie.” In that episode, a chemical company’s top executives resorted to organ theft in order to creatively kill an attorney who was suing them. The attorney, Jason Helani, was suing Attis Chemical for poisoning a community’s water supply and causing cancer. He also happened to need a liver transplant.
The Five-O team realized “we’ve been looking at this all wrong” and figured out that the liver was stolen “so that opposing counsel would die of natural causes.” They arrested Attis Chemicals’ CEO and CFO for “conspiracy to commit murder” after finding a wire transfer paying for the organ theft.
NBC’s “The Blacklist” was a different kind of crime show. While it was certainly about crime and the FBI working hard to stop it, it was also part political thriller. Sadly, Reddington (Red), the criminal mastermind of “The Blacklist,” was one of TV’s greatest proponents of free market capitalism.
Red, whose “only allegiance is to the highest bidder,” was a former Naval Academy grad turned traitor and a killer who turned himself into the FBI in order to help them catch a Who’s Who of international criminals and terrorists – all names on his personal blacklist. He was also one of the few TV characters who used words like “free market” and “capitalism.” On the show, legitimate jobs like banker, freelancer and contractor were descriptions of some of the most heinous international criminals.
He freely admitted his bottom line is profit. In the “Wujing” episode, FBI Agent Elizabeth Keene expressed dismay that he’s decoding CIA messages for the Chinese. Red replied, “Now, you see, you make it sound like it treason. So black and white. It’s not. It’s green. The fact is, American secrets are for sale from an assortment of reputable vendors, myself included. If I don’t do this, someone else will.”
In the “Gina Zanetakos” episode, Red told Keene that “multinational corporations and criminals run the world” and explained “corporate terrorist” Gina Zanetakos was someone corporations hire to destroy one another. Even worse than the corporate espionage of “Hawaii 5-0,” in the fictional world of “The Blacklist,” companies didn’t just spy on one another, they hired people to commit acts of terror against other businesses regardless of the ordinary people those acts would harm.
“In 1982, seven people in Chicago were killed by an over-the-counter drug laced with potassium cyanide. The company’s market share went from 35 to 8. It was never determined how the drug was poisoned, but I will tell you someone was hired to do that,” Red said. “Remember those tire recalls? Chernobyl? Deliberate and malevolent actions taken by corporations to protect their vital interests. Nothing happens by chance.”
As it turned out, Zanetakos was working for a company, the Hanar Group, that wanted to blow up the port of Houston, so that business would move to New Orleans. So she hired a bombmaker and shipped the dirty (radioactive) bomb to Houston.
Continue reading the full analysis at MRC Business.
