Does Hollywood like the free market?

Read this interesting paper by law professor Larry Ribstein, link courtesy of Ben Muse and ProfessorBainbridge.com. The question is why so many movies appear to be so anti-business. A money quote:

This article seeks to provide a plausible explanation of films’ bias against capital. It is not business itself that filmmakers do not like, but the capitalists who control it. This may sound like Communism, but it is not the classic view of the struggle between capital and labor. Filmmakers display little concern with the problems of the workingman, and they do not usually blame firms’ social irresponsibility on the fact that capital rather than labor is in control. Rather, the filmmakers’ main problem with capital being in control seems to be that the filmmakers are not. The “workers” that are oppressed are often creative types, and middle managers who stand in for them, who are being denied adequate opportunity to display their creativity. The point of displaying the evil that firms do seems not to stop it, but to show how much we need the artists and seekers among us to do the finding…

We are told that as technology lowers costs, and moviemakers become less dependent on capitalists, the problem will diminish. If this is true, drama should be less anti-capitalist than costly special effects spectaculars. I am not sure I buy this, but the paper nonetheless makes for interesting reading. For an alternative perspective, see my earlier post on movies for entrepreneurs.