the new villain
Really interesting article in the Washington Post about the appearance of the corporation as a villain in movies - which extends to the idea in culture of how we view corporate power.
Link
Think of the first global corporation -- the Catholic church -- with its offices in many countries (monasteries and churches), language peculiar to the institution (Latin), aggressive takeover methods (the Crusades), vigorous marketing campaign (missionaries) and competition-killing strategy (the Inquisition). It took 1,500 years and Martin Luther's entrepreneurial spirit to create a viable alternative for consumers.
Link
2 Comments:
Don't forget The Godfather III.
I'm interested in how some things just get renamed - we still have feudalism and Empires all around us - we just conveniently rename them as if to convince ourselves that progress has been made. The commonality between the idea of corporations being evil and our previous history of literature in the arts is that there is an inherent villain always lurking in the concept of monolithic power - as if we know subconsciously that of all the specious human traits greed is one of the most dangerous and overwhelming.
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