According to Larry Ribstein, who teaches business law at the Illinois College of Law in Champaign, it’s not “business per se” that raises the objections of filmmakers, but the specific business people who control their projects. “Filmmakers’ main problem with capital being in control seems to be that the filmmakers are not.”

Every writer, director and actor in Hollywood cherishes stories about cruel, crude, exploitative treatment by lunk-headed executives and for many people in the creative community these encounters represent their only personal experience in the world of business. They naturally extrapolate recollections of these often unpleasant interactions toward a dim view of the free market system in general. As many entertainment insides will concede, the vicious, selfish caricatures of corporate bosses that turn up so frequently on TV and in films bear more than a passing resemblance to the studio or network honchos who may have cheated or disappointed by the projects’ principals in the past.

But if these business-bashing efforts amount to a form of revenge against the greed and ruthlessness of entertainment executives, why should those same executives grant regular approval to projects meant to attack them? Omnipotent corporate titans, in Hollywood and elsewhere, aren’t generally associated with a robust sense of humor about their own values and habits. The consistent investment in anti-capitalist diversions remains especially perplexing in light of the frequently disappointing box office returns for movies that demonize big corporations. Few movie-goers ever bought tickets (or rented the DVD) to see the propagandistic provocation “The Corporation,” for instance, while the big budget, high profile “The Manchurian Candidate” remake qualified as a major flop.

In part, the ugly view of the corporate system that emerges with such consistency from big corporations in Hollywood reflects the distinctively irrational and unpredictable nature of show business. As Academy Award-winning screenwriter William Goldman famously concluded, the operating assumption for the entire industry is “Nobody knows anything.” In other words, each studio’s superhighway of gleaming, high-powered can’t-miss hits is littered with the twisted wreckage of costly and heart-breaking bombs, while sloppy stinkers that deserve neither respect nor affection often startle their own creators by earning inexplicable millions. Unlike the widget manufacturing business, the entertainment assembly line uniquely lacks any objective criterion of excellence. If a company succeeds with its new line of widgets, it’s generally an indication of the worthiness or at least the predictable public appeal of the product. If, on the other hand, you turn out inferior or unreliable widgets you stand a real chance of going broke.

No such logic applies to the entertainment industry, where Dreamworks executive Jeffrey Katzenberg freely acknowledges that success or failure depends on the inscrutable, erratic “movie gods” as much as any reasonable calculation, craft or planning. Every actor or actress, no matter how accomplished, realizes at the deepest level that his or her popularity may owe as much to a winning smile or burning blue eyes or long, lovely legs as to painstakingly developed thespian skill. In fact, many multimillionaire performers understand that undiscovered but ambitious young people who earn their few bucks as waiters or parking attendants might easily compete with the best in the business if ever given a proper chance.

The rewards of Hollywood, in other words, flow to studio executives and to the creative community alike in a random, fickle and manifestly unfair manner, which leads pop culture powerhouses who’ve gained their primary business experience within the entertainment arena to assume that capitalism at large is similarly random, fickle and unfair. If leading celebrities condemn the entire economic system as unreasonable, exploitative, ridiculous and deceptive they do so because they’ve experienced these qualities directly in the industry in which they toil.

A NATION OF EXCEPTIONAL BOSSES

The members of the mass media audience generally accept these stereotypical visions of corporate America in spite of personal experience that contradicts pop culture’s prevailing cynicism. Though every citizen cherishes at least a few horrifying or amusing stories about egotistical and abusive bosses, the overall levels of job satisfaction in the United States remain shockingly high. In his indispensable 2008 book “Gross National Happiness,” my friend Arthur Brooks of Syracuse University and the American Enterprise Institute collates a huge volume of data to reveal the underlying American attitudes toward work. “Dilbert cartoons, the sitcom The Office, and Barbara Ehrenreich’s bestselling book, Nickel and Dimed notwithstanding, Americans like or even love their jobs,” he writes. “Among adults who worked ten hours a week or more in 2002, an amazing 89 percent said they were very satisfied or somewhat satisfied with their jobs.”

What’s more, this overwhelming sense of contentment with their participation in the economic system cuts across all distinctions between blue collar and white collar, between the privileged and the powerless. “There is no difference at all in job satisfaction between those with below-and above-average incomes: Eighty-nine percent are satisfied in both groups. Similarly, 88 percent of people without a college education are satisfied. And people who specifically call themselves working class, those ‘nickel-and-dimed’ folks? Eighty-seven percent. The middle class, who television pundits and politicians say are so increasingly dispirited, are satisfied with their jobs as well, to the tune of 93 percent.”

Since many, if not most, of these respondents pursue their employment in the business world these upbeat attitudes appear to contradict the surveys that show overwhelmingly negative views of business executives. How could Americans report such high levels of pride and pleasure in their jobs when they express so little respect for the ethics or honor of the big shots for whom they toil?

The answer involves a media driven syndrome that spreads confusion in every corner of American life. Forty years ago Dr. Thomas Harris published “I’m OK, You’re OK,” one of the bestselling self-help books in the history of civilization. Unfortunately, most members of the public now embrace a very different concept – “I’m OK, but you’re in a world of hurt and trouble.” The great majority of people say they’re hugely pleased with their own family life, for instance, but then declare (by similarly huge margins) that the general state of the family is dire and desperate. Most parents express pride and satisfaction with their own children’s public schools, but assume that the rest of the education system does a horrible job. Voters overwhelmingly re-elect their own Representatives in Congress, but tell pollsters that Congress on the whole counts as a disgrace; they love their doctors and feel pleased (some 77%!) with their health insurance, but still assume that the system itself is broken and needs radical change.

The chief cause of these contradictions involves the common reliance on media for information about the world beyond personal experience. The individual American never counts on Brian Williams (or his colleagues) to assess the state of his own marriage, or health, or financial well-being, but still uses the images and messages from television to evaluate the situation in society at large. Inevitably, the media reports always emphasize dysfunction and difficulty and despair—tornadoes get better ratings than sunshine, and torture-murder attracts more attention than acts of kindness or philanthropy. The networks and the newspapers (as well as the new medium of the internet) don’t constitute a news business as much as they comprise a bad news business. When we acknowledge our blessings, and revel in our own freakishly fortunate lives, we become convinced that we’re far removed from our neighbors --- surviving on a tiny sun-kissed island of good fortune, while surrounded by turbulent and toxic oceans of despair. Regarding our elected representatives, or our children’s teachers, or our physicians, we assume that we’ve secured the only good and wholesome apple in a vast barrel crammed with rotten fruit. In the world of business, it’s far easier to assume that the head of your own company stands apart from all his colleagues rather than to challenge the prevailing assumptions about the corporate system itself. Like the smug citizens of Garrison Keillor’s fictional Lake Woebegon, we’re convinced we live in a setting where “all the children are above average,” and function in a nation where all the bosses are exceptional.

GRATITUDE ABOVE GUILT

The prevailing view of a dysfunctional and desperate business system flows from widely accepted, endlessly repeated lies that directly conflict with the actual economic engagement of most Americans.

The crucial lies insist –

That capitalism and the free market system are dead – or dying
That when the rich get richer, the poor get poorer
That business executives receive gross overpayment for empty, lazy, corrupt and unproductive lives
That big business, with its global reach, is inherently worse for both consumers and workers than small business
And that government responds to public needs more reliably, more compassionately than the private sector

These pillars of conventional wisdom go largely unchallenged in academia and media where various experts and traditional critics of the free market eagerly emphasize the bad news about business. Nevertheless, many Americans feel instinctive doubt or at least discomfort with the ubiquitous smears against an economic system that allows us to plan, produce and dream.

Despite more than a century of socialist agitation aiming to purge “selfish” motives from every aspect of our society, we still rely on for profit companies in every moment of our lives. I couldn’t be writing these words without the computer company that produced the word processor, or the publishers who printed my sources, or the coffee distributor who provided fortification for the work. Even if you work at some supposedly noble non-profit enterprise, every element of your work depends on some productive capitalist venture --- from the car (or bike, or bus) that took you to work, to the lights and phones and desks and electricity essential to any office, to the building itself, to the food and plates and glasses in the lunch room. For entertainment, we’re utterly dependent on the competitive business system – to organize a nice restaurant, or a good movie at the local multiplex, or a trendy club, or a major league baseball game (and think of all the companies that worked on that scoreboard with its jumbotron, or the retractable roof, or the increasingly exotic fare available between innings, or the exercise equipment that trains the athletes, or their beautifully crafted mitts and bats and cleats.

One could argue that we only avoid the blessings of business in those hours that we manage to sleep, but even then we need someone to provide the bed, and sheets, and pillows, and alarm clock, and heating, and windows with screens, and Ambien (as needed). The literally hundreds of thousands of people required to delivery these goods and services may not see themselves as our benefactors, but they help and serve us nonetheless. As Adam Smith, the pioneer philosopher of capitalism, summarized human motivation more than 200 years ago: “It is not from benevolence of the butcher, the baker, or the brewer that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.”

To satisfy each of our needs in daily life requires processes of overwhelming complexity that for-profit business provides in seemingly effortless, organic fashion. The companies that serve themselves by serving others manage to bind us together in an intricate system of mutual demand and satisfaction. The pursuit of profit allows us to depend on one another and, in most cases, to rely on one another.

Far from the heart-hardening and spirit-killing processes cited by poets or movie producers who loudly lament the central role of business in our society, the capitalist system actually opens us to a greater sense of connection and even community.

And to a richer, more constructive, more youthful chance for risk and daring, applied to the ongoing romance of building a business.

I should have recognized these qualities in my father’s many decades as an independent businessman. It wasn’t just scientific breakthroughs that let him relish every day as a new adventure, nor was it the satisfaction of profit and financial progress (he did not die a wealthy man). He loved the sense of creativity, nourishing institutions that grew out of his own energy and imagination, turning out nifty high tech products that no one had ever shaped before. He also enjoyed the relationships, with colleagues, employers, even competitors.

He didn’t have time for the big lies about American business and so simply disregarded them even as he discredited them with his example. Even at a time of financial hardship and menace, a similar celebration about the big truths of our free market system will enable us to face the years ahead with inspiration rather than insecurity, and with gratitude above guilt.