Tuesday, July 12, 2005
Fraud in Film
by Ilya
America's companies are in serious trouble.
The list could fill pages: Enron, Worldcom, Qwest, Global Crossing, Bristol-Myers Squibb. Even Easy Company from Band of Brothers has run into its fair share of bad news while fighting its way through Hitler's Europe.
Whether it be from the Securities and Exchange Commission, legions of incensed shareholders, or those goddamn Nazis, companies are under fire today as they have never been before in our nation's past.
Sure, there was all that robber baron business in the 19th century, but that was a jolly good swing through the park compared to Enron. Seriously, look at all the awesome things the robber barons gave us: Vanderbilt University, Carnegie Hall, the John D. Rockefeller Foundation for Just Sort of Handing Shit Out for Free.
What did Kenneth Lay ever give anyone? The Ken Lay Center for the Study of Markets in Transition at Rice University? Screw you, Kenny Boy, I wanted a new plasma.
This new wave of corporate crime has predictably spawned a number of books and films devoted to the subject. "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room" has already won some recognition for its smart, edgy approach to the subject, but it loses points for ripping off the "Smartest Guys" theme from last summer's popcorn megahit, The Fog of War, easily the most successful movie ever made about a sad old man shuffling around in a trenchcoat.
Another corporate scandal film hitting theaters this month is "Charlie And The Chocolate Factory," a grim biopic that chronicles the rise and fall of Willy Wonka, the sadistic, pedophilic, and corrupt CEO of a once high-flying chocolate concern.
The recent Congressional hearings on the Wonka case have resulted in a list of crimes that would make even Suge Knight cluck in disapproval. After capitalizing on the chocolate bubble of the early '90s, Wonka, flush with cash from his red-hot IPO, funneled the proceeds into the construction of an elaborate factory. A murder factory. A murder factory for children.
Court documents allege that Wonka laid his sinister trap with the help of unpaid immigrant labor, created a phony contest to lure children to his factory, and proceeded to murder them one-by-one by increasingly gruesome means. He is also alleged to have greatly inflated Earnings Per Share numbers for Q3 1998, but that's neither here nor there.
The release of Tim Burton's "Chocolate Factory" documentary this month will undoubtedly stir a deep reservoir of anger and resentment toward the white collar criminals that have run some of America's most promising companies into the ground. One can only hope that such celluloid polemics will help steer America back to the path of corporate accountability, trust, and murder-free chocolate.
