{"id":2385,"date":"2010-09-10T10:35:18","date_gmt":"2010-09-10T14:35:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/1morefilmblog\/?p=2385"},"modified":"2015-01-10T22:56:19","modified_gmt":"2015-01-11T03:56:19","slug":"inside-job-ferguson-2010","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/1morefilmblog\/inside-job-ferguson-2010\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside Job (Ferguson, 2010)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a>
From the Director of No End in Sight<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Charles Ferguson\u2019s Inside Job<\/em> helped helped open the 2010 Toronto International Festival, garnering an enthusiastic response from a mostly sympathetic crowd. As one would expect from a follow up from the director of the terrific No End In Sight<\/em>, the film, about the global economic crisis begun in 2008 is a more probing than\u00a0kamikaze and more intelligent than the partisan screeds that pass for much political commentary these days. If I have reservations about the film\u2013and I do\u2013they lie on two fronts.<\/p>\n

Much as with An Inconvenient Truth<\/em>, I found the the eleventh hour transition from argument to application to be unsatisfying. To the extent that the one of the film\u2019s theses\u2013that the people who caused and profited from the economic\u00a0cataclysm are still running the economy\u2013is true, the nebulous populist call at the end of the film for \u201cthe people\u201d to do\u2026well, something<\/em>, comes across as a little flat.<\/p>\n

Given that two prominent topics in the Q&A following the film were the difficulty in (but importance of) making complex systems like credit default swaps comprehensible to the average layperson and the seeming reluctance of Barack Obama to expend political capital on even an attempt at economic reform, one might be forgiven for coming away from the film with a sense of fatalism about the intractable nature of the problems faced.<\/p>\n

I realize, though, that I am a bit on the pessimistic side to begin with, and I don\u2019t know if it is ultimately the\u00a0documentarian\u2019s responsibility to offers solutions to the problems he brings to our attention.<\/p>\n

The second concern I had is that the documentary is a little more diffuse than No End in Sight<\/em>. Perhaps because of attempts to be less partisan\u2013the film criticizes both Bush administrations, Reagan, Clinton, and Obama for not enforcing laws that are present, not exercising oversight, and, especially, not holding those who manipulated the system responsible\u2013it ends up without a real central focus for its outrage.<\/p>\n

In the documentary\u2019s defense\u2013it is one of the first accounts of this theme that plums the academic connections between the financial sector and the public (non-)response to it. Ferguson began as a political science academic and it shows in his interest of and understanding of think tanks and how they, as one commentator said, serve Wall Street by shaping the discussion by framing it (and the questions we ask) in ways more likely to lead to answers they want.<\/p>\n

This element of the discussion reminded me of Edward Russo\u2019s wonderful little book Decision Traps: The Ten Barriers to Brilliant Decision Making and How to Overcome Them<\/a><\/em>. \u00a0Written in 1990, Russo\u2019s book spends a good bit of time on the concept of \u201cframing\u201d problems as an important contributor to the sorts of (and quality of) answers we are likely to get. It\u2019s quite true that we have become, perhaps, a bit too dependent on expert opinion to frame discussions for us and have thus placed ourselves at a disadvantage. One of the real pleasures of Inside Job<\/em> is watching those \u201cexperts\u201d who did agree to be interviewed twist under the scrutiny of an educated and informed interviewer. In fact, a significant response in the audience Q&A was surprise at who was willing to submit to an interview. A repeated\u00a0hypothesis of Ferguson and his team was that such chutzpah comes from sustained periods of never being challenged\u2013even as to obvious, verifiable facts\u2013once one has been granted \u201cinside\u201d or \u201cexpert\u201d status. As an academic myself, I have certainly noticed that phenomenon (to varying degrees) amongst people who work in academic circles.<\/p>\n

Still, in the final analysis, the pleasure I felt at seeing some pompous, arrogant, influential figure twist in the wind was a bit of a hollow one. But it\u2019s not like\u2013as Ferguson himself repeatedly says\u2013any of them had to give the money back. So they feel foolish\/ridiculous for a spin, we all feel brave for speaking the truth about power (after the fact) and, in our umbrage, we all look around and say, \u201cSomebody ought to do something!\u201d<\/p>\n

Then again, the cynic says to himself, Charles Ferguson did do something. He made a film.<\/p>\n

What have I done?<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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