Thought I'd post this to see what responses I get. I've often enjoyed watching the portrayal of economics and economic theory in film, or more to the point how various aspects of certain movies seem to belie a complete ignorance of the subject among the hollywood creative folk. One of the more obvious examples might be Oliver Stone's Wall Street, and Gordon Gecco's various speeches and claims of a 'zero sum game' and what not. But the one that struck me most recently was in 2005, Romero's Land of the Dead. In brief zombies have overrun the planet and humanity exists in small isolated pockets in hardened outposts. They live by regularly raiding outlying areas for food and medical supplies. What really struck me though was that in the outpost that was the focus of the movie the people were still using reserve notes as money. Dennis Hopper plays a Rumsfeld-like dictator who was rich prior to the zombie outbreak and set up this particular outpost, and he and his associates live in an immaculate apartment building while most people live in an outdoor slum.
The idea that people in such a situation would still be using fed notes as money seems more than laughable, though I can think of some barely possible situations where it might happen. What's more, Romero seems to posit no productive output for anyone in the apartment building while the 'peasants' out in the slum scrape by for a living doing the raids, putting on shows, and presumably trading something or other when necessary. The whole set up really smacks of a whole bunch of typical left wing errors thrown together and it seriously detracts from the movie for me.
Anyone else find yourself wincing when you see such things in movies or read them in books (fiction), and like me does it make you wonder just what the heck is going through these people's minds? Got any examples you want to get off your chest? As an aside, the topic has been discussed to death on Romero's dedicated message boards and it seems everyone there thinks the idea of the continued use of worthless fiat notes in a post apocalyptic world of extreme scarcity, and where the entire banking and financial infrastructure of the US has been wiped out, is perfectly reasonable. Makes one wonder.
Yes, I often notice such things. However, the continued use of pre-catastrophe "notes" is not unreasonable if they still have a monetary economy to speak of - Mises' regression theorem in action! You might expect the value of the notes to increase, in fact, with the disappearance of the pre-catastrophe issuer - see the "Swiss dinar" in Iraq.
Hah, I saw the movie a while ago. Hollywood has a penchant for portraying the rich as heartless and evil.
I've often enjoyed watching the portrayal of economics and economic theory in film, or more to the point how various aspects of certain movies seem to belie a complete ignorance of the subject among the hollywood creative folk. One of the more obvious examples might be Oliver Stone's Wall Street, and Gordon Gecco's various speeches and claims of a 'zero sum game' and what not.
I enjoy filmic discussions of business and economics, too. Browsing through Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide, I found an entry for Rollover, a 1981 drama starring Jane Fonda and Kris Kristofferson as financial wheeler-dealers. What really piqued my interest was Maltin's description of the movie as "One of the few examples of financial science fiction." I know there's a whole genre of financial fiction out there, since I was assigned Murder at the Margin long ago in my introductory economics class.
(See http://www.bus.lsu.edu/academics/finance/faculty/dchance/MiscProf/FinanceNovels.htm for a list of financial-themed novels.)
I thought Wall Street was a pretty good film. It's being a bit harsh to say that Gecko mis-characterises things in his various speeches. How many businessmen really understand free market principles, anyway? Mostly they are focussed on the next deal. The "Greed is Good" speech was pretty reasonable.
It would probably be easier to list films that didn't make a complete hash of economics. It would be a short list.
I vaguely remember thinking Executive Suite (William Holden) was a good business film, but it was a long time ago that I saw it.