Week 5

I first saw the Hudsucker Proxy about 5 or 6 years ago and I enjoyed it for its sharp dialogue and comedic chemistry between Tim Robins and Paul Newman.  When I decided to watch it again, this time paying close attention to how this film could be related to this class, I was surprised with some of the aspects that I found.  Before I get into the symbolism of this movie and how there are certain aspects that might be analogous to the broad category of “Business History”, I should point out that these are possibilities and conjectures and should not be confused with what the Coen bothers’ intent was.  On the other hand, if you are in the O’Malley camp, intent is not important anyway.  While intent may not be important, I did find an unverified comment on Wikipedia (gasp) where a reporter had made a comment that the characters represented capitalism versus labour economics.  Joel Coen replied, “Maybe the characters do embody those grand themes you mentioned, but that question is independent of whether or not we’re interested in them – and we’re not.”  Translation:  Sometimes ruby slippers are just ruby slippers.

 

One aspect that I thought related directly to this class was the battle of the educated, yet untested, trying to break into the business world.  The inexperienced and naïve Norville Barnes takes a basement mail-room job at a huge (we know that the company is large because it has 44 floors [45 counting the mezzanine]) New York company.  It is interesting because although Norville Barnes graduated at the top of his class at Muncie Business College, none of that helped him get a job, because that all required previous experience.  The only reason that Barnes gets elevated from the mail-room is because the Vice President of Hudsucker Industries think he is unintelligent and wants to depress the stock. 

 

Another important feature that struck me, while watching this movie was that the corporation was presented in a modern light even though it was loosely based on the business world in 1958.  I am not convinced that people believed the corporation to be the heartless, soul-sucking machine that many people associate with it today.  I would actually be interested in finding out when exactly the negative connotation was connected with the corporation.      

 

Comments

[Dianne Schmidley]

Casting my mind back, I don't know when it happened either. Was it Ike's farewell speech on the military-industrial complex? Was it the sick sixties when the world seemed to come apart at the seams as upper-middle class brats behaved badly? Maybe it was after the long gas lines in the early 1970s, or Carter's national malaise speech in the late 1970s. Maybe it was the fall of the wall and the discovery that at last the communist enemy was no more...well sort of no more? Or did it happen earlier? I have been reading literature from the turn of the century (19th-20th) and it seems that labor had a decidedly negative attitude way back then. The communists who took over Russia sure didn't like capitalism very much and they murdered 30 million people to prove it.

My favorite Coen Bros. film is 'No Country for Old Men.' I love Tommy Lee Jones and watching Javier Bordeem is like watching a snake..... fascinating and scary. Now that's a movie.

Ruby slippers? Was Tommy Lee the right wing and Javier the left wing?