Research Project by Paul Z

Research Project by Paul Z https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09 The mediation of the 2008 financial crisis en-us 2022-11-18 17:09:08 UTC 2023-01-07 00:25:27 UTC hello@padlet.com Why is this topic relevant 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2390216655 2022-11-18 17:10:20 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2390216655 Mediation theory 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2390217689 2022-11-18 17:11:08 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2390217689 Case Studies 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2390217863 2022-11-18 17:11:15 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2390217863 Introduction 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2390218100 2022-11-18 17:11:24 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2390218100 5000 words 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2390219717 2022-11-18 17:12:39 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2390219717 “Its central idea is that technologies, when they are used, help to shape the relations between human beings and the world. Rather approaching technologies as material objects opposed to human subjects, or as mere extensions of human beings, it sees them as mediators of human-world relations.” 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2390220562 Verbeek, P. P. (2020). Mediation theory. Peter-Paul Verbeek. Retrieved October 14, 2022, from https://ppverbeek.org/mediation-theory/]]> 2022-11-18 17:13:21 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2390220562 The Big Short (2015) 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2390221222 2022-11-18 17:13:51 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2390221222 Margin Call (2009) 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2390221486 2022-11-18 17:14:02 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2390221486 Inside Job (2010) 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2390221687 2022-11-18 17:14:13 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2390221687 Panic: The Untold Story of the 2008 financial crisis (2018) 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2390222271 2022-11-18 17:14:43 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2390222271 Narrative 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2390222544 2022-11-18 17:14:54 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2390222544 Documentary 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2390222634 2022-11-18 17:14:59 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2390222634 "mediality today also concerns itself with the imbrication between humans and these kinds of nonhuman things" 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2390227557 Grusin, R. (2010) Premediation affect and mediality after 9/11 / Richard Grusin. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.]]> 2022-11-18 17:18:48 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2390227557 "Considered by many critics to be the preeminent documentary on the 2008 crisis, Charles Ferguson’s Inside Job is a powerful and damning indictment of the U.S.financial industry and its leading players. Ferguson, also director of a scathing documentary on the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq entitled No End in Sight, makes no bones in Inside Job regarding who he considers to be at blame for the crisis: the U.S. financial industry at large. " 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2390316442 M. Curan (2015) One Nation Under the Market: Mediated Narratives of the 2008 Crisis in America, University of Toronto DOI: https://yorkspace.library.yorku.ca/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10315/30664/Curran_Michael_G_2015_PhD.pdf?sequence=2&isAllowed=y

]]> 2022-11-18 18:30:58 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2390316442 "Inside Job essentially tells the story about how the U.S. financial industry set out to deliberately unshackle itself from government regulation enacted in the years after the Great Depression in order to enrich itself at the expense of Americans at large." 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2390317755 2022-11-18 18:32:07 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2390317755 "the film essentially makes a case that the economic suffering incurred by so many on multiple occasions has been caused by a relatively small band of those whose unrestrained greed and insidious cooptation of the spheres of government, business and even academe has essentially allowed them to repeatedly hijack the economic system of America at large and plunge it into chaos every time that it succeeded in doing so." 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2390318952 2022-11-18 18:33:03 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2390318952 "While Inside Job’s position on the effectiveness of government in economic matters can be said to be mixed because it associates a long period of economic growth with strong governancein the form of effective regulation while associating a weakening of government regulation with the disastrous ascent of the U.S. financial industry, there is never such a degree of ambiguity inthe film concerning the American financial industry itself. This industry is repeatedly and strongly condemned as thoroughly bad-intentioned and nakedly self-interested." 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2390350488 2022-11-18 18:58:57 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2390350488 "The Big Short acts as popular culture Trojan horse, opening up a space for re-envisioning and legitimizing anger directed at a system that seems designed to exploit the average American to promote the neoliberal values of competition and individual “freedom.” Although dripping in sarcasm and frequently employing comic relief, the film incorporates these elements to infiltrate a national consciousness intent on turning a blind eye to the issues present in its current ideological framework. Critics who claim The Big Short came up short misinterpret the project of the film; it is not a comedy, an economics lesson, or a manifesto for a social revolution. It is a scathing and jaded critique of a system dependent on mass exploitation and deception, and it aims to legitimize anger toward that system while also hoping to spur discourse directed at altering our relationship with that system." 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2390384284 Long, A. (2018) ‘Calling‐Out the Bullshit: The Paradox of Neoliberal Critique in The Big Short’, Journal of popular culture, 51(2), pp. 337–355. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/jpcu.12656.]]> 2022-11-18 19:29:38 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2390384284 "By juxtaposing the commonstart to semi-biographical films (“Based on a true story”) with the reference to a canonical author, Mark Twain, and then presenting itthrough the frame of the window, the film simultaneously foregrounds its commitment to truth and situates itself within a longhistorical precedent of social critique in popular culture." 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2390385507 2022-11-18 19:30:50 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2390385507 "The acknowledgement that banking was “a fucking snooze,” although humorous, also brings up one of the films major critiques of operating within a neoliberal society: banking bores the average citizen by design in order to maintain their complacency with economic practices. This is a major reason why the system continues to operate in the fashion it does" 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2390386731 2022-11-18 19:32:05 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2390386731 "The conflation of sexual promiscuity with financial success echoes critiques by Judith Butler whoclaims that neoliberalism’s tendency to privatize elements of thehuman experience extends beyond the economic realm to more personal elements, including gender and sexuality (2–5)" 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2390387782 Butler, Judith. Undoing Gender. Routledge, 2004. ]]> 2022-11-18 19:33:09 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2390387782 "Ultimately the lesson of the film is one of tempered criticism, suggesting that there is noeasy answer for how to mount an effective counterattack to the ills ofcapitalism and neoliberal values, but there are opportunities to resistand promote thoughtful discourse, even while acknowledginginvolvement in the system being critiqued" 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2390398043 2022-11-18 19:42:48 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2390398043 "Based on the negative outcome of the film and the acknowledgement that not much has changed,5 the film can be interpreted as generally pessimistic. Indeed, the final scene explicitly explains thatwhen there is an economic crisis, people tend to blame immigrants, poor people, “and this time they even included teachers.” Burry’s final scene depicts him composing an email to his investors explainingwhy he is quitting the fund, explaining how making money “kills the part of life that is essential. The part that has nothing to do with business.” " 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2390400780 2022-11-18 19:45:44 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2390400780 Background 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2390404032 2022-11-18 19:49:24 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2390404032 "By 2015, when the movie was released, the blame-shifting scenario had already come to pass. But before Mark’s smugness can settle, the movie returns to its usual strategy, giving Ryan Gosling’s voice-over the chance to address the audience directly.The feint toward an alternative history in which justice is done sets up the movie’s own alternative mode of justice. Faced with the foreseeable failure of the government to prosecute wrongdoing and with the reconsolidation of American finance, The Big Short looks inward. The same extracinematic awareness that makes Mark’s “prophecy” dangerously pat meshes with an overweening sense that folks have gotten away with it" 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2390410085 Connor, J. D.. Hollywood Math and Aftermath : The Economic Image and the Digital Recession, Bloomsbury Academic & Professional, 2018. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/liverpool/detail.action?docID=5439849.]]> 2022-11-18 19:55:41 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2390410085 "Late in the film, two relatively novice investors are congratulating themselves for realizing that the rot in the housing market will not be confined to the marginal borrowers who will lose their homes first, but that it will spread upward, taking out the “A Tranches.” As they celebrate “the deal of our lifetimes” and dance goofily across a casino floor, Pitt talks them down: “Don’t do that. Stop. Stop. Stop that. Stop it. STOP. . . . Do you have any idea what you just did?” Rickert is a mild version of a doomsday prepper, traveling in a surgical mask and laying up stocks of seeds, but in this scene he is, essentially, a scold" 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2390420066 2022-11-18 20:06:41 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2390420066 "Ten years later, there is little consensus about the meaning of 2008 and its aftermath. Partial narratives have emerged to highlight this or that aspect of the crisis, even as crucial elements of the story have been forgotten. In the United States, memories have centered on the government recklessness and private criminality that led up to the crash; in Europe, leaders have been content to blame everything on the Americans" 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2390526891 Tooze, A. (2018). The Forgotten History of the Financial Crisis: What the World Should Have Learned in 2008. Foreign Affairs, 97(5), 199–210. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44823921]]> 2022-11-18 22:14:28 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2390526891 "In fact, bankers on both sides of the Atlantic created the system that imploded in 2008. The collapse could easily have devastated both the U.S. and the European economies had it not been for improvisation on the part of U.S. officials at the Federal Reserve, who leveraged trans- atlantic connections they had inherited from the twentieth century to stop the global bank run. That this reality has been obscured speaks both to the contentious politics of managing global finances and to the growing distance between the United States and Europe" 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2390527469 2022-11-18 22:15:45 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2390527469 "Germans cannot ignore that Deutsche Bank was a major player in those events, but they can easily explain this away by claiming that the bank abandoned its German soul. And just as the Europeans have chosen to forget their own mistakes, so, too, have they forgotten what the crisis revealed about Europe's dependence on the United States - an inconvenient truth for European elites at a time when Brussels and Washington are drifting apart." 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2390531950 2022-11-18 22:25:17 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2390531950 "Critical studies show that cultural products have become commodities along with capitalism. Films asa branch of art emerged by birth of industrial revolution, an interrelated manner through capitalism andtechnology. The first motion picture companies that were established in the 1890s and the technologicaldevelopments leading the industrial revolution in the 18th and 19th centuries coincided with the same time thatshed light on the causality relationship between variables." 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2390534933 F. B. San, Ç Yağcı (2017) Reflections of Global Financial Crisis on Culture Industry: A Study on Films Produced After Global Financial Crisis of 2008, International Journal of Business and Management Invention, 6(1), pp. 15-21 DOI: https://www.ijbmi.org/papers/Vol(6)1/Version-3/C0601031521.pdf ]]> 2022-11-18 22:31:51 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2390534933 Film counts as a part of the "culture industry" which commodifies culture as a standardised product which is used to manipulate society. 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2390540427 Adorno, T., W. and Horkheimer, M. (1944). Dialektik der Aufklarung, Philosophische Fragmente. Social Studies Association, New York ]]> 2022-11-18 22:43:51 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2390540427 "A vast majority of the films produced as a documentary according to Table 1 indicates that producersintended to show the reality of global financial crisis as it is without acting or using metaphors" 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2390541516 F. B. San, Ç Yağcı (2017) Reflections of Global Financial Crisis on Culture Industry: A Study on Films Produced After Global Financial Crisis of 2008, International Journal of Business and Management Invention, 6(1), pp. 15-21 DOI: https://www.ijbmi.org/papers/Vol(6)1/Version-3/C0601031521.pdf

]]> 2022-11-18 22:46:17 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2390541516 "Investigation of home countries for these films shows that more than half of the films produced inUnited States which is both the land of financial capital, film industry and the epicenter for the global financialcrisis of 2008. It is important to note in this point that some of the films sampled are jointly produced and crosscountry projects. " 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2390542008 F. B. San, Ç Yağcı (2017) Reflections of Global Financial Crisis on Culture Industry: A Study on Films Produced After Global Financial Crisis of 2008, International Journal of Business and Management Invention, 6(1), pp. 15-21 DOI: https://www.ijbmi.org/papers/Vol(6)1/Version-3/C0601031521.pdf ]]> 2022-11-18 22:47:26 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2390542008 "Predicting and turning crisis into opportunity is another common theme used in the films which remind hindsight bias in behavioural finance literature. The Big Short (2015), Margin Call (2011), Wall Street:Money Never Sleeps (2010) and Collapse (2009) are some examples to this prediction of crisis. It is not enough to live in an economically self-sufficient environment even no matter how much someone worked hard. Especially 99 Homes (2014); Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010); Assault on Wall Street (2013); TheQueen of Versailles (2012) and Margin Call (2011) show how deep people live in crisis and how they cope with evolving to requirements of the system. For example, Assault on Wall Street (2013) shows a violently revenge of aggrieved person from financial institutions and its senior managers. It absorbs the anger of the massesaffected from the global financial crisis which confirms the second hypothesis of the study. Capitalism: A LoveStory (2009) and its critical approach utilities some manipulative approaches to increase the effect of itsperspective which supports the image act theory" 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2390544652 2022-11-18 22:53:23 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2390544652 "One thing that makes the film stand out is the fact that it doesn't take sides or take a condescending tone: it is good old fashioned journalism." 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2394663547 Valdez, R (2019) Must Watch: The Untold Story of the 2008 Financial Crisis, Forbes, May 26. https://www.forbes.com/sites/rogervaldez/2019/05/26/must-watch-the-untold-story-of-the-2008-financial-crisis/?sh=2741a3172352]]> 2022-11-22 20:06:27 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2394663547 "The film zooms in on the inner workings of a fictional investment bank at the dawn of the financial crisis that had much to lose from the impending crash of the hitherto very profitable mortgage-backed securities market" 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2394668406 Werner, A. (2014). “Margin Call”: Using Film to Explore Behavioural Aspects of the Financial Crisis. Journal of Business Ethics, 122(4), 643–654. http://www.jstor.org/stable/42921462]]> 2022-11-22 20:12:43 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2394668406 "In the face of such anti-cognitive mapping, which shuns any conception of the economic whole or of the names with which to indicate and represent it, there is an important role for cogent delineations of the crisis that acknowledge and explore its systemic nature. Documentaries like Capitalism: ALove Story, Inside Job, American Casino, and The Flaw have begun to do this, though when they are not conduits for theexplanations (or refutations) of economists, they often struggle to find forms that can effectively span the complexity ofeconomic phenomena and their individual and collectivere percussions" 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2394672339 Kinkle, J., & Toscano, A. (2011). Filming the Crisis: A Survey. Film Quarterly, 65(1), 39–51. https://doi.org/10.1525/fq.2011.65.1.39]]> 2022-11-22 20:17:51 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2394672339 "In fiction films, where the cognitive payoff is less at stake, the risks of framing the crisis in familiar narratives and clichédimages have been even greater. framed as a personal or entrepreneurial project, the dimension of collective politics, which shadowed earlier figurations of crisis, is lacking" 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2394674227 Kinkle, J., & Toscano, A. (2011). Filming the Crisis: A Survey. Film Quarterly, 65(1), 39–51. https://doi.org/10.1525/fq.2011.65.1.39]]> 2022-11-22 20:20:24 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2394674227 "Inside Job embodies a contemporary trend to represent global capitalism and its effects through a kind of slicknaturalist sublime. The documentary form is treated hereprimarily as a vehicle—ideally an entertaining one—for delivering knowledge to an otherwise disoriented public." 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2394674477 Kinkle, J., & Toscano, A. (2011). Filming the Crisis: A Survey. Film Quarterly, 65(1), 39–51. https://doi.org/10.1525/fq.2011.65.1.39]]> 2022-11-22 20:20:44 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2394674477 Full-length films - both feature and documentary- have increasingly been recognised as an effective tool in management education. They help bring to life management topic, and abstract ideas, concepts and theproes related to the workings of organisations. (Huczynski and Buchanan 2004; Hassard and Buchanan 2009; Berger and Pratt 1998). Feautre films in particular offer a more dramatic, engaging, motivating and memorable experience than conventional classroom methods. (Hassard and Buchanan 2009; Hassard and Holliday 1998), not least because of their ability to depict emotional aspects of experience (Hassard and Buchanan 2009). They provide a window into worlds that are normally inaccessible to students as well as offer opportunities for 'naturalistic generalisation', that is, discussion on how the film could be relevant to their own life. 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2394681038 Werner, A. (2014). “Margin Call”: Using Film to Explore Behavioural Aspects of the Financial Crisis. Journal of Business Ethics, 122(4), 643–654. http://www.jstor.org/stable/42921462]]> 2022-11-22 20:28:42 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2394681038 " It is important, however, to be aware that film narratives are highly selective (Hassard and Buchanan 2009) and are their creators' (subjective) accounts of reality (Huczynski and Buchanan 2004). This may leave the film open to criticism of depicting an unrealistic, exaggerated or sen- sationalised view of the world, and may leave audiences vulnerable to manipulation (Hassard and Buchanan 2009)" 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2394682472 2022-11-22 20:30:40 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2394682472 "Unlike Wall Street , the film does not simply focus on characters that some might call 'ruthless', 'greedy' or 'bad apples', rather, it provides insights into the complexity of human motiva- tions and how they might be influenced by organisational priorities, structures and culture. The film also critically examines the links between the behaviour and practices of investment banks and wider societal values and priorities, thus telling a more complex story than Wall Street" 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2394683702 2022-11-22 20:32:33 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2394683702 "Toward the end of Margin Call, Dale is seen sitting on the steps of his brownstone in the early morning hours, contemplating whether he should return to the firm that sacked him. It is revealed that they need Daleto be the sacrificial lamb and take the blame for the toxic assets that would drag down the net value of the firm. In fact, the conversation between Dali and his colleagues also prompts one tothink about the deal Dale is about to make tocontinue his comfortable lifestyle and thusdefraud the public on behalf of the company,in order to remain financially rather than morally solvent. The depraved and self-motivated decision to save his family’s multimillion-dollar home is a hollow choice, especially in the faceof what destruction he knowingly is about to participate in before the markets open. Yet the leafy street becomes a fictive dream, another idealized notion of prosperity under neoliberalism and one Dale is not willing to give up" 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2394704966 Wagner, K. B. (2016). Giving Form to Finance Culture: Neoliberal Denizens in Wall Street (1987), Boiler Room (2000), and Margin Call (2011). Journal of Film and Video, 68(2), 46–60. https://doi.org/10.5406/jfilmvideo.68.2.0046]]> 2022-11-22 21:04:24 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2394704966 "Jeremy Irons’s performance as CEO John Tuld in the last third of Margin Call is memorablefor his character’s calculating, implacable,and coercive haughtiness, on display during a manipulative oration to his underlings. Tuld, as stochastic neoliberal, hits like a precisionstrike, landing by helicopter in Manhattan todeliver a petulant and blameless speech to his executives and management team, drawing on his virtuoso command of language and economic history to tap into their avarice. We soon learn his speech is successful, and his mission to rid his company of the valueless securities through a fire sale in the finale of the filmworks. The closing shot finds Irons eating lunch alone, gazing out at the cityscape, unmoved by the calamity and life destruction he has just advocated" 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2394705476 2022-11-22 21:05:10 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2394705476 "The creation of a film that could describe all of the convolutions involved in such an affair, which relies on a vast inter- national network of cutthroats, willfully ignorant abettors, and bystanders count- ing on plausible deniability, would seem to be beyond the grasp of pop cinema, which remains as star-based as our view of business, focused on the public-facing CEO rather than the blame-dispersing structure of the ensemble cast corpora- tion. Adam McKay attempted something of this nature in The Big Short (2015), but wasn't filmmaker enough for the job" 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2394709320 PINKERTON, N. (2018). THE PICTURE OF WEALT. Film Comment, 54(5), 54–58. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44991348]]> 2022-11-22 21:12:02 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2394709320 "AS CLOSE TO AN INTERVENTION AS ANY studio film in recent memory, Adam McKay's The Big Short minces no words in explaining how the 2008 financial crisis went down - and wields Wall Street jargon and numbers with a precision that is unprecedented. It's not the sort of thing you see on American screens outside of documentary, but it also wasn't the only film this year to reflect a certain openness about the grimmer realities of American politics and economics that are usually acknowledged only grudgingly or vaguely if at all" 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2394711467 Rapold, N., Taubin, A., Jones, K., Koresky, M., Fear, D., & Smith, G. (2016). State of the Art: TAKING THE PULSE OF CINEMA IN 2015. Film Comment, 52(1), 36–38. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43746030]]> 2022-11-22 21:15:28 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2394711467 My topic for this research project will be the use of film when mediating the 2008 financial crisis to the public. I will be looking at four case studies, two within Hollywood narrative films, and two documentaries to analyse the variety of ways in which these films communicate the crisis into the public sphere. 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2394743510 2022-11-22 22:09:20 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2394743510 In the wake of the crisis, it became disastrously apparent that the deregulation of the financial markets since the late 1970s coupled with the predatory lending that targeted low-income home buyers and excessive risk-taking by global banking institutions would cause a bubble to form in the housing market, the bursting of which would affect the entire global economy, specifically if you were in a class outside of the rich elite. And while these repercussions were dire, people are still not fully informed about what happened, that number would be even greater without media involvement, however. That’s why I believe this topic is important to research, since our entire economic system is built on the foundation of trust within credit, the abuse of this trust by Wall Street has now made it necessary for that trust to be recaptured globally with the use of technological mediation. Since this topic has gained popularity in the relevant literature, I shall be focusing specifically on films' role in this mediation process. 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2394743779 2022-11-22 22:09:44 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2394743779 For my methodology, I will be using a textual analysis that will focus on the film language that has been used to relate the intricacies of the crisis, and to what extent these films contributed to a public understanding of events. To be specific I will be looking at the films Margin Call (2009) and The Big Short (2015) as I believe they both are effective in their role of mediation, with The Big Short specifically having already had much academic attention for me to build upon. I will also be looking at the documentaries Inside Job (2010) and Panic: The Untold Story of the 2008 Financial Crisis (2018), since I believe that narrative film and documentary may have a similar aim but different approaches, and their genre differences call into question the different aspects of authenticity and trust that make the mediation process itself interesting. 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2394744082 2022-11-22 22:10:16 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2394744082 Jean Gagnepain’s mediation theory will be the main theory that I will be applying to this research, specifically its interpretation by Peter Paul-Verbeek, as its idea that technology mediates the human world has the potential to expose real-world impacts of the media industries, making it possible to grasp a better understanding of how communication and meaning are employed to aid global cooperation. 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2394746709 " Perhaps it would be good to expand a bit more on mediation theory and how it can inform your research specifically, but your focus remains clear nonetheless. " - Luis]]> 2022-11-22 22:15:02 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2394746709 ""the cultural" constitutes the specific order of reality in which only human beings participate. It is the cultural order that permits human beings, while remaining natural beings, to constantly transcend their natural being in abstracting themselves from it. The theory of mediation understands culture as the ensemble of properly human capacities which, absent pathological conditions, all human beings share regardless of their historical epoch or geographical setting. For the theory of mediation, culture and reason - the"rationality" which philosophers have discussed for centuries - are identical. The human sciences, understood as the theory of mediation understands them, take up in their own distinctive fashion the questions which philosophy has treated only speculatively" 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2394774568 Couapel, B (2005) http://merciber.free.fr/telechargement/dissertation_religions.pdf]]> 2022-11-22 23:06:14 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2394774568 According to Thomas Ewens [Ewens1994] the theory of mediation is nothingless than a new, clinically based theory of reason or culture -understanding by culturethose mediations of our relations to the world that characterize us as human and thatare not accessible to animals. Though the theory of mediation is extraordinarilycomplex in its details and its ramifications, two principles underlie it: the principle ofdiffracted reason and the principle of incorporated reason. 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2394777650 2022-11-22 23:11:59 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2394777650 "On the one hand, it originates from theories of thinkers like de Saussure, Freud and Marx, but also from the heritage of philosophy and metaphysics after the “death of God” of Nietzsche. On the other hand, the TDM validates its model in the observation of pathologies associated with human reason. Therefore, it combines approaches from philosophy and from biology, and at the same time reorganizes the field of human sciences which was constituted by linguistics, sociology and psychology, each of these domains claiming to explain the entire human reason" 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2394780484 2022-11-22 23:17:17 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2394780484 "Arguably, the relative lack of historic depth of Inside Job stems from the film’s attempt to pin the full weight of responsibility for the 2008 crisis on the contemporary U.S. financial industry" 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2394793013 2022-11-22 23:39:47 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2394793013 "Margin Call is complex in its articulation of economic collapse. On one level, the filmserves as an indictment of those figures of high finance whose purported greed and recklessnessresulted in the catastrophic economic damage of the crisis. However, the title of the film itselfsuggests something considerably more nuanced than this. The term ‘margin call’ refers todifficult decisions that must be taken as a result of financial losses. This ambiguous tension based around harddecisions that must be taken under difficult circumstances is at the heart of the film’s narrative." 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2394794742 M. Curan (2015) One Nation Under the Market: Mediated Narratives of the 2008 Crisis in America, University of Toronto DOI: https://yorkspace.library.yorku.ca/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10315/30664/Curran_Michael_G_2015_PhD.pdf?sequence=2&isAllowed=y]]> 2022-11-22 23:42:47 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2394794742 "One notableway the film conveys the restricted nature of time is the time stamp that periodically appears inthe lower left corner of the screen over the course of the film. This visual feature is used tocreate the feeling that time is an adversary against which the characters in the film are competingand to show the viewer how the pressure of time shapes the dilemmas, decisions, and actions ofcharacters. The combined signifiers of spatial and temporal restriction endow Margin Call witha suffocative quality meant to emphasize the highly restricted nature of the desperate actions ofcharacters operating against obscure forces much more powerful than themselves." 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2394795384 2022-11-22 23:43:56 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2394795384 "In Margin Call the market is represented as anomnipresent, apparition-like force, a spectre of sorts that is simultaneously everywhere butnowhere in particular." 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2394796352 2022-11-22 23:45:46 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2394796352 "Since the collapse of the Lehman Brothers global investment bank in September2008, the public all over the world has been introduced to a number of abstractand technical concepts such as derivatives, Credit Default Swaps, refinancing, andderegulation, describing complex financial instruments and banking proceduresthat have been in the centre of what is considered as the worst financial crisissince the Great Depression. " 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2394801795 Tseronis, A. (2015). Documentary film as multimodal argumentation: Arguing audio-visually about the 2008 financial crisis. In: Wildfeuer, J (2015) Building Bridges for Multimodal Research. International Perspectives on Theories and Practices of Multimodal Analysis, pp.325-343, DOI: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Assimakis-Tseronis/publication/319713154_Documentary_film_as_multimodal_argumentation_Arguing_audio-visually_about_the_2008_financial_crisis/links/59fd76b00f7e9b9968c16c65/Documentary-film-as-multimodal-argumentation-Arguing-audio-visually-about-the-2008-financial-crisis.pdf

]]> 2022-11-22 23:53:35 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2394801795 "With the use of the non-diegetic voice-over and of interviews with key players in theworld of finance it builds on factual information presented through animated charts and official documents in order to point to those who are accountable forthis crisis. Ferguson’s documentary argues that the crisis is related to the greed for power and money and to the lack of political control over the financial system;at the end, it implicitly advocates taking up action, namely by reinstituting the accountability of financial agents" 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2394802399 2022-11-22 23:54:43 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2394802399 "the voice-over in Inside Job is never commenting directly on what appears on the screen. Despite the lack of a direct commentary, the juxtaposition of what interviewees claim in one shot with archival footage or intertitles in the following shot directly invites the viewer to infer the inconsistency between their words and deeds, between presumptions and reality. On various occasions throughout the film, key players in the political and financial field are shown making public statements about the security of derivates, for example, while the next shot is a title card informing the viewer about possible ulterior motives there agents may have had, thereby explicitly confronting their words with their deeds" 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2394803476 2022-11-22 23:56:32 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2394803476 "It is worth taking notice of the ambiguity of the term “myth” itself. On the one hand,the classical myth is based on the faith and beliefs of primitive communities, belonging to the sphere of the sacrum, when knowledge related to the profanum was not yetfully developed. This category includes Greek mythology. On the other, modern myths are defined as beliefs that claim the right to shape the social world and sometimes even manage to influence it. In this case, they often take on a pejorative meaning, becoming the means of manipulating the society or restricting the freedom of the individual. At the same time, they are also stripped of that universality, which once constituted their value.1 Taking all this into account, I shall try to move beyond the contemporary notions of myth and indicate that there is a certain continuity between myth and knowledge. Thus, I shall argue that the approach putting the myth (as something untrue) andscience (dealing with truth and facts) in opposition to each other is incorrect, as is theone that gives the “myth” a pejorative coloration due to the specifi c narrative imposed by it, and fi nally, the rejection of myth’s “universality” is also incorrect, resulting fromthe need to assign its analysis to a specific field. 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2394812129 ANNA CEGLARSKA (2018) Krakowskie Studia z Historii Państwa i Prawa; 11 (3), s. 343–355 doi:10.4467/20844131KS.18.023.9049 file:///C:/Users/Paul/Downloads/3-Anna%20Ceglarska.pdf]]> 2022-11-23 00:09:15 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2394812129 "Most of the modern sciences, using the concept of “myth”, fi rst apply their own defi nition to that term and then use it appropriately for their own fi eld of research" 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2394812804 2022-11-23 00:10:21 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2394812804 "Those stories however played an essentialpart in the formation of our culture and are not devoid of political themes. At their beginnings, whenmyths were being formed and retold, they were mingled with reality and perceived as “historical”. Aspart of tradition and history, they were the carriers of values and concepts, many of which could bedeemed “political”, and they helped to create a sense of community. Therefore, this article proposesanalysing the myth and the literary works retelling it, along with pertinent ancient history, in a “Greek”fashion, that is, without stressing the diff erences and classifi cations, but with reading between the lines,to see how deeply political thought can be rooted in peoples’ minds." 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2394814434 2022-11-23 00:12:55 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2394814434 The global financial crisis of 2008 was a complex event with many moving parts that would ultimately have a disastrous effect on the global economy. 3.7 million jobs were lost (Skynews 2013), $9.8 trillion in wealth vapourised for Americans as their home values plummeted and retirement accounts were depleted, and an overall $2 trillion decline in global economic growth, a drop of nearly 4% (Merle 2018). Yet it is not entirely obvious that these events have been absorbed into the public consciousness and that the ordeal has been understood. As with many events of great significance, the communication of the crisis into the public sphere was handled by multiple forms of media. News reports, radio broadcasts, books, articles, feature-length films and documentaries all highlighted various aspects of the crisis. It is this process that has great significance as the ability of technology to mediate such an event allows for a public understanding to develop and global cooperation to take place. Media in this way acts as the first point of contact with a global public sphere. This is also relevant as global trust in credit and the financial system is the foundation of our global economy, a trust which was abused by Wall Street to a catastrophic effect but is now having to be rebuilt as several narratives have emerged in the wake of the crisis. 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2395819781 https://news.sky.com/story/financial-crisis-led-to-3-7-million-job-losses-10454101#

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/a-guide-to-the-financial-crisis--10-years-later/2018/09/10/114b76ba-af10-11e8-a20b-5f4f84429666_story.html]]> 2022-11-23 16:46:02 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2395819781 In this research project, I will use content analysis to examine the ways in which films specifically have played a role in this process and to what extent they have contributed to a public understanding of the crisis through an analysis of the different narratives and angles that emerged in cinema. In the first chapter, I will give a brief background to the crisis as it is still contested by some scholars and will provide a good basis for comparison when analysing its depiction. In the following chapter, I will be focusing on narrative cinema by analysing the films Margin Call (2009) and The Big Short (2015), where we can examine the Hollywood response as they detail the market crash in different ways. The Big Short, in particular, is useful for the mass of academic attention it has already received. Chapter three will look at the documentaries Inside Job (2010) and Panic: The Untold Story of the 2008 Financial Crisis (2018), since the documentary format highlights several aspects of the mediation process itself for inspection. The content analysis method will be particularly useful as it allows for the making of "replicable and valid inferences from texts to the contexts of their use" (Krippendorff 2019) which is extremely relevant when analysing the relationship of the text to its audience. By using content analysis we can see the ways in which the films use different aspects of film language to relate the intricacies of the event by exposing different narratives and presenting a multi-layered explanation. 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2395861880 Krippendorff, K. (2019). Conceptual Foundation. SAGE Publications, Inc., https://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781071878781]]> 2022-11-23 17:29:20 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2395861880 Whilst employing the content analysis method this project will be using the theory of mediation as its critical framework since the mediation process has already received a vast amount of critical attention, with the Theory of Mediation being developed by Jean Gagnepain in the late 1950s. His theory combined aspects of biology, anthropology, and philosophy in combining culture and reason in the " dialectical process in which the human reason negates nature in organizing its representation structurally, but also negates and reinvests this representation in the real" (Couapel 2005). For the purposes of this paper, the structural organisation of a representation can be seen in the films mentioned. Peter-Paul Verbeek (2022) would interpret the theory to have the central idea that technologies shape the relationships between human beings and the world. This simplification is more relevant for this paper as Gagnepain's original theory is extraordinarily complex and detailed in its exploration of human rationality (Couapel 2005), and while it is still relevant to this research the limitations of the theory have to be accepted as we are not necessarily exploring human rationale as much as communication through film. Verbeek applies this to specifically look at how technology shapes our world and is, therefore, more relevant to this paper rather than an analysis of human rationale since we can identify film as the technology that humans both impact and are impacted by. An important element of this theory is that technology is not viewed as separate from humans but functions as their extension, mutually changing each other (Verbeek 2015). This change allows for meanings to be given to the world that is deeply shaped by the presence of technologies (Liberati 2020). This will be applied to the four films since they each function as a technology used to shape the world, yet the purpose of this project is to analyse to what extent these films fulfil this function. The work of Richard Grusin (2010) is also highly relevant here as he also looked into the relationship between humans and the media but from a less clinical aspect than Gagnepain. His theory of pre-mediation implies that the media constructs a constant low-level fear of a crisis in order to prevent a public shock from developing in the case of a re-occurrence, with his main example being how the media increased their fear-mongering of a terrorist attack in order to not suffer the same shock as on 9/11. This is a relevant angle for my research too as it can be applied to the films I am studying, specifically with the messaging in each of the four case studies implying that a reoccurrence of the crisis is on the way. By applying this theoretical framework we can ultimately infer the intended impact of the films and therefore the role they play in the mediation of the crisis to the public. 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2395940650

Couapel, B (2005) http://merciber.free.fr/telechargement/dissertation_religions.pdf

Grusin, R. (2010) Premediation affect and mediality after 9/11 / Richard Grusin. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Liberati, N. (2020) ‘Making out with the world and valuing relationships with humans: Mediation theory and the introduction of teledildonics’, Paladyn (Warsaw), 11(1), pp. 140–146. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1515/pjbr-2020-0010.

Verbeek (2015) https://interactions.acm.org/archive/view/may-june-2015/beyond-interaction

Verbeek, P. P. (2020). Mediation theory. Peter-Paul Verbeek. Retrieved October 14, 2022, from https://ppverbeek.org/mediation-theory/

]]> 2022-11-23 19:02:18 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2395940650 Adam McKay, who directed the film and collaborated on the screenplay with Charles Randolph, uses humor to explain key concepts. The Big Short creates a tension that drives the film and adds cinematic style: it pits small bands of outsiders against huge financial firms that are making a fortune by selling CDOs. Working largely independently. The Big Short is funny, clever, poignant, and informative. It demonstrates that a Hollywood film can deal with complicated economic issues and be a box office success. It lets us root for outsiders fighting against ‘big corporations’ that were systematically and ruthlessly ruining the world. Yet, these outsiders are not actually heroes, and still missing from the film is much hope or vision for progressive social change. Nevertheless, perhaps a first critical step is that complex crisis economics are explained and viewers might realize that the market was neither free nor rational – indeed, the emperor had and still has no clothes. 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2398180488 Cavender, G., & Jurik, N. C. (2016). Film review: Adam McKay The Big Short. Crime, Media, Culture, 12(2), 283–286. https://doi.org/10.1177/1741659016656428

]]> 2022-11-25 17:54:55 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2398180488 In Margin Call, we see the preparation to dump toxic assets. This includes behind-thescene meetings in which the traders are given their marching orders, and then the actual salesfrenzy. The parallel documentary, Inside Job, uses narration, interviews, and charts to explainthe creation of toxic assets, how they were bundled for highly profitable sales, and how therisk was either disregarded or mediated through insurance. We also see speeches by financialexecutives, politicians, members of presidential administrations and the Federal ReserveBoard who perpetuated the deregulated status of these risky securities. 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2398182975 Cavender G, Jurik N (forthcoming) Risky business: Visual representations in corporate crime films. In: Brown M, Carrabine P (eds) The Routledge International Handbook of Visual Criminology. New York: Routledge.

]]> 2022-11-25 17:59:35 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2398182975 Also frequently depicted were ancillary behaviors—unrelated to corporate crime—that reflected a problematic persona. These behaviors are akin to the notion of generalized,undifferentiated deviance. There is a lot of debauchery in the films, most frequently in termsof executives’ use of drugs and prostitutes. Inside Job includes an interview with the madamof an escort service who reveals that executives frequently used her service and billed corporate expense accounts. A character in Margin Call explains that he spends a considerableamount of his income on “booze and strippers.” 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2398183624 2022-11-25 18:00:46 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2398183624 The documentary films were more attuned to the victims. They address the plight ofvictims in several ways. Both documentaries use graphs, figures, and other visual aids toconvey the scope of the damages that result from economic wrongdoing. 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2398185082 2022-11-25 18:03:39 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2398185082 The Big Short uses humor to give voice to a widespread outrage over the crisis. Although his film offered audiences an outlet for their anger and anguish, both the source material and economic sensibility that McKay draws on limit the movie’s overall political and social commentary. In addition to being adapted from the best-selling book, The Big Short is deeply informed by behavioural economics, a field that is focused on how ‘decisions are affected by social and psychological influences, as well as a rational calculation of benefits and costs’ (Baddeley 2017, p. 1). The 2008 crisis would seem to offer a vivid illustration of behavioral economic principles, and sure enough, these ideas influence both plot and humor in The Big Short. However, the film’s combination of behavioral economics and satire proves to be an awkward mix, ultimately reaffirming many of Wall Street’s cultural and political ideals even as it seeks to challenge them. 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2398188736 Benke, G (2018) Humor and heuristics: culture, genre, and economic thought in The Big Short, Journal of Cultural Economy, 11:4, 303-314, DOI: 10.1080/17530350.2018.1445005

Baddeley, M., 2017. Behavioural economics: a very short introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. [Crossref], [Google Scholar]]]> 2022-11-25 18:11:04 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2398188736 "Based on a thorough validation of Lewis’ arguments throughout various contextual subjects, the result that virtually every general hypothesis formedupon his statements could be verified, proves that his display of the crisis is principallyconfirmed. Nevertheless, as one-sided, incomplete, and exaggerated argumen-tationcould repeatedly be identified within Lewis’ individual positions on a more detailedlevel, the presented incentives for investigation including simplification, bias or aconscious use of embellishment cannot be rejected. " 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2398675627 Stempal, S. (2021) The Big Short – A systematic literature review on the causes of the subprime crisis as cited in popular literature, University of Hamburg, Thesis for Faulty of Buisness and Social Science, URL: http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12738/11113]]> 2022-11-26 17:14:40 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2398675627 "Movies have long been used as teaching aids in a variety of disciplines. They, and other forms of multimedia,have been used in economics classes (Geerling 2012). Berumen (2008) provides a whole list of popularblockbusters that can be useful in teaching biology.There are several benefits to the use of movies in education, as long as narrow rules apply. Engert and Spencer(2009) note that one advantage is to capitalize on students’ natural proclivities towards popular culture andvisual stimulation—an important part of their socialization." 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2398678059 Raboy, David, How 'The Big Short' Flipped a Traditional Principles of Macroeconomics Course: Teaching to a Dominant Event in Students' Lives (March 16, 2017). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2934412 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2934412

Geerling, Wayne. 2012. "Bringing the "Dismal Science" to Life: Teaching Economics Through Multimedia." International Review of Economics Education 11: 81-91

Berumen, Michael L. 2008. ""Life" in the Movies." The Science Teacher 75: 26-31

Engert, Stefan, and Alexander Spencer. 2009. "International Relations at the Movies: Teaching and Learning about International Politics through Film." Perspectives 1: 83-104.

]]> 2022-11-26 17:20:21 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2398678059 "Rather, a new ideology of greed and corruptionhad taken its place, giving Wall Street, and the financial sector as a whole, a negative connotation amongst Americans. The Big Short capitalizes upon this worldview by further providing its audience with explicit images of those working at the large financial institutions engaging in greedy, power hungry activities–completely cognizant that lining their own pockets is coming at the expense of innocent American citizens. In turn, the filmpromotes citizens’ self-serving biases, by which they are responsible for their successes but attribute their failures to situational dynamics– in this case, financial institutions." 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2398681015 Kolodziejski, L (2016) The Big Short, California Poytechic state university, https://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/comssp/202]]> 2022-11-26 17:28:15 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2398681015 I"nside Job opens with the text: “Te global economic crisis of2008 cost tens of millions of people their savings, their jobs, and their homes."this is how it happeed”, and thus, it establishes from the verybeginning its place within what Bill Nichols called the “expository mode”of documentary (Nichols2001:149–171). Based on thorough research,the form of theflm operates within the realm of “truth”, avoiding otherpotential poetic features and emphasizing instead rhetorical narrativetechniques that disseminate the veritability of its information.Trough itsextensive display of facts and interviews, Inside Job shows its pedagogicalpurpose in questioning the intentional obscurity offinancial language—implicitly, for instance, when discussing the creation of derivatives.Tis engages with the aim of theflm to create a communicative andinformative document rather than an aesthetic proposal for openinterpretation.Tis approach to the matter of thefnancial vocabulary isthus closer to the way it appears in the bookTe Big Short " 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2398699473 Pedregal, A. (2018). BOOK CHAPTER: The Drama of the Great Financial Crisis: Adaptation and Representation of Economic Collapse in Adam McKay’s 'The Big Short' (2015). Adaptation and Convergence of Media: 'High' Culture Intermediality Versus Popular Culture Intermediality (BOOK), 150–167.]]> 2022-11-26 18:13:39 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2398699473 "As for Margin Call , the issue of financial terminology is central to the whole lm, because of the significance of the algorithm that triggers the drama. Whether loosely inspired by Lehman Brothers’ collapse, depictingGoldman Sachs’ activity months before the crisis or referring to WallStreet culture in a general way, Margin Call is a linear drama built through character-driven technique, where the goals and obstacles of each character conflict with one another.The intricacies of the󿬁financial world are integrated within the story without breaking with its linearity, and the complicated features of its vocabulary get crystallized towards the end, when the CEO of the company, John Tuld, played by Jeremy Irons, shows up. In his scenes, he emphatically underlines that he knows nothing about the financial products of the firm he runs. Also, the main character of the film, Sam Rogers, played by Kevin Spacey, asks the employees to “explain to me in plain English” at one point, referring to 󿬁financial terms. This criticism seems to question the lack of meritocracy within the󿬁financial sector, which is even clearer when Tuld expresses to his subordinates that he is not󰁃󰁅󰁏 for “his brains”—thus, suggesting at other possible reasons: nepotism, dynastic heritage, toughness…" 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2398699869 Pedregal, A. (2018). BOOK CHAPTER: The Drama of the Great Financial Crisis: Adaptation and Representation of Economic Collapse in Adam McKay’s 'The Big Short' (2015). Adaptation and Convergence of Media: 'High' Culture Intermediality Versus Popular Culture Intermediality (BOOK), 150–167.]]> 2022-11-26 18:14:44 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2398699869 "Te role of stardom in mediating reality is also a significant element when comparingTe Big Short and Inside Job. In the former, the image of celebrities talking directly to the spectator produces a paradoxicaleﬀ ect, interrogating the learning process of the audience, while in InsideJob, having the voice of Matt Damon as the narrator aﬀ ects the film’s pedagogical and epistemological dimensions.Te sobriety of Inside Job’s narrative is sustained by Damon’s voice-over, which conducts theexplanatory display of facts. Ironically, despite the critical goals of theflm,this choice suggests an inclination towards certain aspects of dominantcinema regarding stardom. And while this certainly helps to gain broaderattention—positively bringing the content to a larger audience—, it alsounderscores, uncritically, the role of celebrities in mediating reality.Certainly, the confrontational manner of the interviews compensates forthis eﬀ ect to some extent, providing credibility to the endeavors of theflmmakers. But, in casting a star like Damon, Inside Job avoids beingas radically critical or subtle asTe Big Short , where the presence ofcelebrities legitimating the veritability of the message seems to suggesta sarcastic self-criticism of the very role of the culture industries in thesocial construction and understanding of “truth”" 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2398701214 2022-11-26 18:18:38 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2398701214 "It might be true that the󿬁lmTe Big Short does not give an accountof the actual causes of the󿬁nancial crisis in a detail. But it surpasses theeﬀ orts of its literary source, Inside Job and Margin Call , and proposes amore structural explanation for the changes that took place in the bankingsystem during the1980s" 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2398702422 2022-11-26 18:21:07 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2398702422 "Te󿬁lmTe Big Short is a great example for the broad creativepossibilities of󿬁lm adaptation.Te positions exposed in Michael Lewis’non-󿬁ction book got transformed, in McKay’s hands, into a more radicalproposal by means of a motley tapestry of dramatic techniques and formalmechanisms meant which broke with the classical individualization ofcon󿬂icts in drama. Traditional storytelling appears thus undesirablefor representing a reality as intricate as the one shown inTe Big Short and the󿬁lm’s sophisticated artistic techniques catalyze the󿬁lmmakers’broader critical intentions and strategy.Te󿬁lm provides a complexmap of intellectually connected relations that favors the search for anadequate way to represent a major issue—the󿬁nancial crisis—which is,above all, structural. Additionally, by engaging with diverse aesthetics, andrecreating and reinterpreting the content of its original written text,Te Big Short challenges both the dominant formulaic󿬁lm forms and many ofthe traditional prejudices towards󿬁lm adaptations." 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2398703041 Pedregal, A. (2018). BOOK CHAPTER: The Drama of the Great Financial Crisis: Adaptation and Representation of Economic Collapse in Adam McKay’s 'The Big Short' (2015). Adaptation and Convergence of Media: 'High' Culture Intermediality Versus Popular Culture Intermediality (BOOK), 150–167.]]> 2022-11-26 18:22:34 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2398703041 "In comparison to this and other󿬁lm representations of the great󿬁nancial crisis—like the documentary Inside Job and the feature drama Margin Call —, the󿬁lmTe Big Short oﬀ ers a more critical and radicalinterpretation of it. Each of these works has brought into the public spherea great amount of information and data through an array of narrativeand dramatic techniques. And, in this regard, the comparative analysis ofthe three󿬁lms reveals the great potential cinema has for disseminatingknowledge in an accessible manner and intervening in criticalcontemporary debates. But, by embracing more radical insights than thoseembodied in its literary source and the other two󿬁lms studied here, the󿬁lmTe Big Short has contributed in a richer way to alternative narrativesof the events it describes, and thus is capable of producing a deeper andmore re󿬂exive impact on the audience." 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2398703384 Pedregal, A. (2018). BOOK CHAPTER: The Drama of the Great Financial Crisis: Adaptation and Representation of Economic Collapse in Adam McKay’s 'The Big Short' (2015). Adaptation and Convergence of Media: 'High' Culture Intermediality Versus Popular Culture Intermediality (BOOK), 150–167.]]> 2022-11-26 18:23:33 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2398703384 The Big Short works because it makes finance seem fun. The typical narrative of the crisis tends to be highly technical. In contrast, Lewis’ book, and the film based on it, personalizes the financial crisis, by approaching it from the point of view of the traders who bet against housing prices. In doing so, it dispels the myth that the housing bubble was invisible to all. The advantage of this narrative approach is that it makes us feel smart. When complex financial instruments and strategies are introduced, the film breaks the fourth wall to offer helpful explanations. One break-away explanation features Margot Robbie . The problem with the narrative slice that The Big Short presents, however, is that it tends to obscure the way that the crisis was experienced beyond Wall Street. Short-sellers make good protagonists but were not really at the center of the crisis. The Big Short also grapples with two other persistent myths related to the housing bubble and its aftermath. It aptly suggests that it was side bets on mortgage-linked securities on Wall Street, not irresponsible borrowers on Main Street, that transformed the housing market collapse into a global catastrophe. Generally, though, the comedic strategy of The Big Short requires that the bankers who crashed the system be fools, not villains. Otherwise, we would be in a tragedy. While the film notes at the end that no high-level bankers were criminally punished and that the system has not been sufficiently reformed, the movie’s spoonful of sugar more than makes the medicine go down. 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2398717480 Taub, J. (2016). Nightmare on Main Street: The Big Short and 99 Homes. New Labor Forum, 25(3), 126–129. https://doi.org/10.1177/1095796016660328]]> 2022-11-26 19:04:28 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2398717480 Chapter 1 - Official account of the 2008 financial crisis ---------------------------------------------- Since the event itself has enough moving parts to be widely known as the relatively vague "financial crisis" or "the great recession" it is best to first lay down the official account of what happened before we can start analysing its depiction. The official 2008 financial crisis enquiry report (Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission 2011) summarises the event like this: It started with the collapse of the housing bubble, which had been slowly building as easily available credit and scant regulation meant there was a build-up of toxic mortgages that were packaged together and sold to investors as low-risk investments. Yet when the bubble burst it meant that financial institutions around the world were filled with toxic assets that had massively depreciated in value, which was only magnified thanks to the use of derivatives. This would escalate in 2008 as the failure of the investment bank Lehman Brothers shook the confidence in the big financial institutions that eventually led to a credit seize-up and the plummeting of stock as investors rushed to withdraw their money in a panic from banks that had over-borrowed. This massive escalation lead to an option of two painful alternatives, either the financial institutions were allowed to fail and the economy would totally collapse, or trillions of taxpayer dollars were injected into these institutions to keep them afloat. The report would conclude that the crisis was avoidable and directly the result of human action and inaction, both on the side of the bankers and regulators. 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2409501752 The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report: The Final Report of the National Commission on the Causes of the Financial and Economic Crisis in the United States Including Dissenting Views. (2011). United States: COSIMO REPORTS.]]> 2022-12-05 17:24:17 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2409501752 Chapter 2: The Big Short (2015) -------- As previously mentioned, The Big Short has already achieved a high amount of critical attention that would be amiss if not explored in this research as many observations that have been made are relevant. For example, several writers pointed out how the film could wield economic jargon effectively with the use of humour as an effective strategy to relay several complex aspects of the crisis in a more understandable way(Rapold 2016; Cavender 2016; Long 2018; Pedregal 2018). This ability would be narratively advantageous as it has the effect of making the audience feel smart (Taub 2016) which can alleviate any feelings of alienation that may be felt in the face of overwhelming economic concepts being deployed. This increase in viewer confidence is also more likely to result in a stronger engagement with the content as well as a generally wider appeal and therefore spread. Several other scholars would also analyse the overall message of the film with it mostly coming down to observations either around the film's intention to legitimize and voice the anger of the national consciousness (Long 2018; Benke 2018) or the film's overall critique of the structural issues within financial institutions that have allowed for the crisis to happen rather than shifting blame to specific groups of people (Pedregal 2018; Kolodziejski 2016; Cavender 2016; Taub 2016; Long 2018; Connor 2018). This point in itself is highly significant as this message seems to be a point of agreement for the majority of the sources aside from some expected deviations. This consensus is important as we can combine this with our own analysis of he films message to have a strong understanding of what the films output was, in doing this we can fit this within the theory of meditation by treating the films message as the part of the technological mediation process where the technology is reaching and having an impact in people's lives. 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2425142319

Benke, G (2018) Humor and heuristics: culture, genre, and economic thought in The Big Short, Journal of Cultural Economy, 11:4, 303-314, DOI: 10.1080/17530350.2018.1445005

Cavender, G., & Jurik, N. C. (2016). Film review: Adam McKay The Big Short. Crime, Media, Culture, 12(2), 283–286. https://doi.org/10.1177/1741659016656428

Long, A. (2018) ‘Calling‐Out the Bullshit: The Paradox of Neoliberal Critique in The Big Short’, Journal of popular culture, 51(2), pp. 337–355. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/jpcu.12656.

Pedregal, A. (2018). BOOK CHAPTER: The Drama of the Great Financial Crisis: Adaptation and Representation of Economic Collapse in Adam McKay’s 'The Big Short' (2015). Adaptation and Convergence of Media: 'High' Culture Intermediality Versus Popular Culture Intermediality (BOOK), 150–167.

Rapold, N., Taubin, A., Jones, K., Koresky, M., Fear, D., & Smith, G. (2016). State of the Art: TAKING THE PULSE OF CINEMA IN 2015. Film Comment, 52(1), 36–38. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43746030

Taub, J. (2016). Nightmare on Main Street: The Big Short and 99 Homes. New Labor Forum, 25(3), 126–129. https://doi.org/10.1177/1095796016660328

]]> 2022-12-19 19:28:22 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2425142319 Nichols, B. (2017). HOW CAN WE DEFINE DOCUMENTARY FILM? In Introduction to Documentary, Third Edition (3rd ed., pp. 1–28). Indiana University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt2005t6j.5 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2435168898 2023-01-05 22:11:03 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2435168898 Brown, R. (1951). Film Myth and the Limits of Film. The Hudson Review, 4(1), 111–117. https://doi.org/10.2307/3847129 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2435215491 2023-01-06 00:19:52 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2435215491 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2436031208 2023-01-06 20:18:27 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2436031208 201344466 https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2436038812 2023-01-06 20:30:42 UTC https://padlet.com/201344466/flauqezaoccqdk09/wish/2436038812