Always Be Closing: An ABC of Business in English Language Feature Films

For the most part, the world of work is missing from feature film representation. Films are not made about librarians, plumbers and quantity surveyors, or if they are, their work is tangential to what they do or signify in their respective films. Even cowboys are rarely seen with cows. The only work that is routinely explored is that of cops/detectives, doctors and lawyers—the staples of television serial drama. The pursuit of business goals, the designing, making and selling of products, constitutes daily experience for many if not most on this planet, yet this area of life remains seriously under-represented. This presentation looks at the instances of doing business that do make it into film culture and the kinds of statement films make about commercial enterprise. It will mostly represent the American scene, because for every Il Postino in Europe delivering letters, there are 10 postmen in America, perhaps knocking twice, but rarely delivering them. The broad movement of film representation, I will argue, is to move trade from concerns about the soul of man in commerce and corporate life towards the realization (or imposition?) that business is near allied to crime. In general terms, it is the change from Death of a Salesman (1949) to Glengarry Glen Ross (1983), when a man who had to work himself to death to turn a buck finds himself having to screw workmates and customers alike in order to survive. In addition, the pressures of work of the little guy (I will briefly inspect the humbler world of salesmanship and marketing, two activities which have taken on a higher profile since the mid twentieth century) have largely given place to the unbridled opportunism of Reaganomics and deregulation in high finance. The general discontents associated with the financial crises of the 1980s and 2000s have created their very own film genre, the corporate scam exposure movie, as well as a number of important feature-length documentary films.