Rumble and Crash : Crises of Capitalism in Contemporary Film

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, as the contradictions of capitalism became more apparent than at any other time since the 1920s, numerous films gave allegorical form to the crises of contemporary capitalism. Some films were overtly political in nature, while others refracted the vicissitudes of capital in stories that were not, on the surface, explicitly political. Rumble and Crash examines six particularly rich and thought-provoking films in this vein. These films, Milo Sweedler argues, give narrative and audiovisual form to the increasingly pervasive sense that the economic system we have known and accepted as inevitable and ubiquitous is in fact riddled with self-destructive flaws. Analyzing four movies from before the global financial crisis of 2008 and two that allegorize the financial meltdown itself, Sweedler explores how cinema responded to one of the defining crises of our time. Films examined include Alfonso Cuarón's Children of Men (2006), Stephen Gaghan's Syriana (2005), Fernando Meirelles's The Constant Gardener (2005), Spike Lee's Inside Man (2006), Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), and Woody Allen's Blue Jasmine (2013). Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction Allegory Capitalism and Film Sources Chapter Outlines 1 Exceptions and Rules: States of Emergency in Children of Men States of Exception Neoliberal Nightmares The End of the Sixties The Real State of Emergency No Hope for Tomorrow 2 Mapping Syriana Gaghan’s Cognitive Map “Syriana” Imaginary Geographies Fictional History 3 Corporate Murder in The Constant Gardener Strategies of Deception Meirelles’s Protean Corporation The Corporation as a Pathological Institution Corporate Murder Becoming Tessa 4 Secrets of Primitive Accumulation: Inside Man A Film in Which “Things Ain’t All They Appear to Be” Who Is the Title Character of Inside Man? A Portrait of the Wall Street Banker as a War Profiteer Accumulation by Dispossession The Short American Century Inside Man as Class Allegory 5 Fictitious Capital and Narrative Spin in The Wolf of Wall Street The Wolf of Wall Street as Mock Infomercial How to Make a Fortune in Three Easy Steps Is The Wolf of Wall Street about Wall Street? Fictitious Capital in the Film’s World and Ours 6 The Meltdown and the Bailout without the Recovery: Blue Jasmine Jasmine’s Delusions Neoliberal Lifestyles Freefall Blue Jasmine as National Allegory Conclusion: Allegories for the Present Notes Bibliography Index Analyzes six films as allegories of capitalism's precarious state in the early twenty-first century