Capitalism in Film

In Michael Moore’s most recent documentary titled, Capitalism: A Love Story, Moore explores the role of capitalism in today’s society by investigating a wide range of cases from people of every economic class. In doing so, Moore articulates the main focus of the documentary: that all around us, “capitalism trumps democracy”. Essentially what Moore means by this is that the process of capitalism has become too polarizing—making the wealthy wealthier, and the poor poorer. In doing so, the wealthier population becomes more powerful and is able to further manipulate the lower classes by treating them as products instead of people, all in an effort to further increase profits. In turn, as they nurture the idea that people are products, the people begin to forget that they are human beings with the power of voice and opinion. It is at this point that the public no longer utilizes all powers instilled by democracy, making it seem almost nonexistent in this capitalist society.
During the movie I found two particular examples of the above process particularly intriguing. First is in regard to the juvenile delinquent program through “PA Child Care”. In this example, judges were payed off by this private corporation to meet a certain quota in terms of the number of people they send to juvie. One of the victims articulated the process best when saying that he was simply viewed as a product in the eyes of this company and all human attributes were no longer considered. His original reason for being placed in juvie was illegitimate and he was forced to stay longer than he should have—he was simply an instrument for profit making.
The second example was even more disturbing and it dealt with “Dead Peasant Insurance”. This refers to a type of life insurance for employees that are bought by companies so that they make money when you die. This becomes an even more blatantly disgusting illustration of greed when you learn that more often than not, the thousands or even millions of dollars they make off of the death of someone’s loved one is used to pay for the retirement funds or bonuses of high-level execs, instead of being used to help pay for the funeral expenses of the one who passed. Both examples illustrate how this extreme sort of capitalism that exists today is concerned about nothing other than profit.
What Moore suggests we do to combat this sort of capitalism is to go back to our American roots of democracy and rebel against the few elites that control the system. In doing so, we will help to reinstate a balance between capitalism and democracy that will help to dissolve the drastic barriers between today’s economic classes.