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Tags: Smith | entertainment | industry | business

Competitive Enterprise Institute's Smith: Entertainment Industry Vilifies Business

By    |   Wednesday, 19 November 2014 11:23 AM EST

The entertainment industry may be run by businessmen, but it does its best to tear down the U.S. business community, says Fred Smith director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute's center for advancing capitalism.

He cites the recent remake of The Manchurian Candidate as an example.

"While it repeats most of the plot of the 1962 original, the North Korean military is replaced by a private equity firm as the villain. These days, it seems that capitalists are easier to demonize than communists," Smith writes in an article for Forbes.

"Culture warriors have had many villains, but the businessman — the capitalist — has long been a favorite." It goes back to the 19th century, he says.

"Those [anti-business] themes, their flames kept burning by the Naomi Kleins and Michael Moores of today, have come to dominate our novels, movies, and TV shows. And the attacks only seem to increase in both frequency and intensity."

Business people need to respond more strongly to the attacks. "Where are the businessmen today — in America or elsewhere — with the courage and the ability to defend capitalism?" Smith asks.

"Rhetoric matters, and the drumbeat of anti-business narratives has had an impact, not only on how the public views business, but on how businessmen view themselves."

Movie critic Nell Minow agrees in an article for Politix.

"Corporations always make very handy villains. Heroes are almost always an individual against some large, powerful, bureaucratic organization, because that is a story everyone in the audience can identify with easily," she writes.

"The corporate bad guy in stories has been around as long as the corporation. One of the best-known characters in literature is Charles Dickens' Ebenezer Scrooge, a stingy moneylender without any vestige of kindness or compassion," Minow explains.

"While corporate executives greenlighting movies for production might prefer a pro-business storyline, as long as their own paychecks depend on box office receipts they will keep releasing movies that reinforce the audience's concept of the CEO as the bad guy."

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Finance
The entertainment industry may be run by businessmen, but it does its best to tear down the U.S. business community, says Fred Smith director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute's center for advancing capitalism.
Smith, entertainment, industry, business
330
2014-23-19
Wednesday, 19 November 2014 11:23 AM
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