Steven Douglas Maloney

Posts Tagged ‘Flash of Genius’

I would say that one of the reasons that the entertainment industry tends to be left-leaning has nothing to do with hideous motives, but from the fact that the left tends to have stories about human life that have a compelling, sweeping dramatic arc that a radical free market capitalist just can’t tell because he or she would think it wrong to rpesume they know the “right way” that human story arc ought to be told or how it should end.

This flashed through my mind while I was watching the trailer last weekend for a forthcoming Greg Kinnear movie, called Flash of Genius. Since I was then subjected to Mama Mia! following the trailer, I had plenty of time to continue my thoughts.

Flash of Genius is about a college professor who invents the modern windshield wiper and, as it turns out, they steal his design and do not credit him with his invention. So he sues them by himself, acting as his own counsel. My first reaction to this was that it was one of many “proudly leftist” message movie trailers we saw, and that the Hollywood that was too scared to give Brokeback Mountain a Best Picture Oscar was striking back now that their critics influence appears to be receding.

My second reaction was to think that the film, and films like it, always seem to be intended to be anti-Hayekian or anti-Schumpeterian (I cannot tell which, probably neither are specifically targeted at this point, as the tropes are quite old now) stories about how unfettered capitalism, its powerful organizations with greedy, soulless elites plunder the little man and the little man fights for justice when justice wants to abandon them. We root for the person crushed about to be crushed by capitalism, and at the end of the day, we cheer for Mr. Little Guy.

However, my third reaction (Mama Mia! was not Indiana Jones IV bad, but close, so I had time) was is that really what stories like this prove out? I still think its intended as the trope above, but the story actually seems to vindicate (I’m assuming the little guy wins) a strong exceptional person who contributes substantially to the specialization of knowledge, is resourceful enough as an individual to fight for what he is rightly entitled to, is a college professor (Hayek and Schumpeter believe that intellectuals are hugely important for social order), and ultimately, since the state has the right property laws already on the books and enforces them correctly, the resourceful, well-developed individual defeats the once-great corporation who no longer is populated by the great but is a shadow of its former self because it leans to heavily on its ability to project power to get what it wants rather than being innovative and resourceful by its own devices.

I believe the second story to be the more accurate life-lesson, but I have a feeling the movie will try to pass off the first version of the story – presumably because praising the power of resourceful intelligentsia does not put enough people in seats. Still I wonder what people think about message movies like this if we make the leap and treat their messages as worth considering.

[youtube = http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cv-8FSGiOlQ]