Brave New World

Rating: Null/10 (25 November 2011)

"We are all Keynesians now." - Friedman
There are currently almost 14 million unemployed persons in the United States. The chieftains of three of the four largest economic schools of thought (Marxists, Keynesians, Monetarists and the Austrian School) view these numbers in wildly different ways. For Marxists, such numbers are intrinsic to capitalism, a constant pool of unemployed keeping wages down and workers in perpetual fear. Guys like Milton Friedman, however, believed in a natural rate of unemployment; an acceptable and necessary rate. The Keynesian goal, in contrast, has always been "full employment". Keynesians work toward this dream by bolstering a fallacy: the notion that pumping money or fiscal stimulants will result in more jobs and a "healthy" economy. But these are temporary fixes which, for a range of reasons, merely results in the problems occurring again, magnified, further down the road. Friedman himself believed that such Keynesian stimulants would result in unemployment and inflation steadily climbing, forming the twin monster which Paul Samuelson dubbed "stagflation", which is what the United States is currently experiencing.
Jason Reitman's "Up in the Air" begins by throwing us headlong into the United States' current economic crisis (the late 2000 financial crisis). Thousands of white collar workers have been fired from their jobs and so are busy bemoaning their predicament. "This is what I get after 30 years of service," one man says bitterly.
Enter Ryan Bingham (George Clooney), a "transition specialist" who is hired by corporations to inform employees that their employment has been terminated. Like the lead character in Reitman's "Thank You For Smoking", Bingham's a charismatic con-man. A smooth talking corporate spin-doctor, Bingham stabs you in the back and then convinces you that the knife's a smart career move; a chance for personal reinvention. Reitman's point: corporations are sneaky, cold, inhuman, impersonal, and don't care about you. "Don't take this personally," is Bingham's motto.
The film's title has a double meaning, referring both to the status of America's employees, their jobs "up in the air" and subject to whimsical market fluctuations, and Bingham's lifestyle. Perpetually airborne, Bingham circles the globe, firing anyone who stumbles into his cross-hairs. In between jobs he delivers motivational speeches to corporate audiences, urging the attendees to empty their "emotional backpacks" of possessions and personal connections. "Your relationships are the heaviest components in your life," he says. "Drop them. We are not swans. We are sharks."
Of course Bingham gradually begins to reassess such cold thinking. When the drive to maximise profits begins to encroach on his own job (he is being replaced by a computer), Bingham begins to empathise with those he fires, reconsider everything he previously deemed to be "of value", and understand that one should be part of, or responsible to, a larger community. The film itself constantly clashes "career relationships" and the perceived joy of being a "valued member of the corporate family" with more meaningful connections. The point: corporate families are not "real" families. You and your welfare are not important to the corporation. You will be ejected.
What makes the film particularly bleak, though, is that when Bingham casts aside his old corporate life and makes an effort to reconnect to both his family and an attractive woman, he gets supremely burned. He finds no value in marriage and the woman he loves is revealed to be already married; she was simply using him, treating Bingham as a dispensable object, exactly as he treats the hundreds of men and women he lays off. So what's surprising is that the film critiques Bingham while proving his cold world-view ABSOLUTELY RIGHT. Humanity outside Bingham's aloof corporate sphere is seen to be already inhumane, narcissistic, self-obsessed, and selfishly motivated. Where then is Bingham to go?
The film's topics are timely and interesting, but Reitman's not strong enough an artist to push things further. The film nihilistically accepts "inside" and "outside" the corporate sphere as being devoid of hope because it accepts that greed and self interest are intrinsically dominant in man (rather than nature being contingent). This is a form of circular thinking; so long as man exists in an system that promotes the worst aspects of mankind, that rewards greed, violence and self interest, this is how he will act. Reitman's perfectly understandable pessimism ("There is no outside", "there is no alternative", "that's just the way it is" etc) was common with 60s and 70s directors, and is starting to become common again. Academia is caught in a similar dead-end. The task is for artists/thinkers to dream/think harder.
The film mostly ignores the machinations of its vague, off-screen corporations. Capitalism is a wealth-concentrating system. If you concentrate wealth in a society, you concentrate power and breed an increasingly psychopathic organism. Indeed, if corporations were "persons", their mental condition could accurately be described as pathological. And as democracy is undermined by power, capitalism and democracy may be said to be mutually exclusive. In the film, the corporations are simply seen to be coldly pragmatic. And you're made to accept this as being both understandable and a necessity.
The film gets right the cultural logic of postmodernism (overall commodification) and somewhat touches upon commodity fetishism (an emphasis on the abstract value of commodities conceals the underlying social relations of their producers), but looks away from more traumatic truths. Audiences don't like looking at real work and real employee plights. That's too messy. We like debonair movie stars and sexy jobs. Cue Clooney.
The film tries to paint Bingham's existence as being empty/hollow, but Clooney too heavily oozes movie-star charm, glamour and sexy non-committance. In a way, Reitman's serving a contemporary take on Huxley's "Brave New World", in which a futuristic society suffers the effects of dehumanisation, spiritual and familial deprivation, misused technology and obsessions with narcissistic, personal pleasure, but he can't quite tap into such things. Still, good mainstream dramedy.
8/10 - Worth one viewing.