These Two Movies Can Teach You More About Economics Than Any Textbook
Learning economics doesn’t have to be such a slog
Ugh, economics.
Take it from someone who’s spent hundreds of hours teaching at the college level — getting students interested in economics is REALLY hard. There are only so many ways you can dress up concepts like The Invisible Hand, Capital, and Globalization before people’s eyes start rolling into the back of their heads.
And those are students. They’re paying to be there.
It’s no wonder, then, that after graduation many of us are thrilled to put economics in the rearview. Sure, we may hear about the growing trends of automation and outsourcing. We may read an article or two about trade relations with China. And — especially during times of economic crisis — we may pay extra attention to the unemployment rate and GDP.
But, at the end of the day, it’s a chore.
Taking economic topics and making them human is an unenviable task. So I was thrilled to discover over the past few months, two movies that dive into the core of changing U.S. (and global) economic dynamics. They do so with heart, passion, and a focus on forgotten segments of the working population.
In the end, economics is really just about people.
Content and Spoiler Warning! The movies discussed here contain content that some viewers may not be comfortable with. American Factory is rated TV-14 and Nomadland is rated R. Also, light spoilers.
American Factory (Available on Netflix)
I’ll confess. This movie sat in my Netflix queue for a year.
On paper, American Factory should have been an instant-watch for me. I’ve been on a deep documentary binge for months. The movie is backed by Barack Obama’s production company. It even won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature.
And yet, since I spend so much time teaching and thinking about the topics of global business, the idea of watching a movie about factory workers in Ohio — during my spare time no less — took me a while to warm up to. It was so much easier to boot up re-runs of The Office than face the real challenges plaguing this economy.
American Factory, after all, is about people and culture and business — and the incredibly difficult work of making all three of those work together.
Set against the backdrop of Dayton, Ohio, the movie tells the story of factory workers who lost their jobs at a GM production factory in 2008, only to be rehired at the same factory in 2015 by the China-based glass company, Fuyao. The change from U.S. to Chinese leadership, and the injection of hundreds of Chinese workers brought over to help upskill the Americans, created the perfect melting pot of international cultures (and culture clashes).
The movie is brilliant, and worth the two-hour investment for the personal, human stories told throughout. But it also contains hints about the future of work and the impacts of global business.
Culture: “Culture” is one of those business buzzwords that’s been around for decades, but never seems to have a transparent definition. However, if there ever was a clear demonstration of culture — both within a company and across international borders — it’s the Fuyao plant.
American Factory shows the cultural clashes that take place at every level of this organization. From the Chairman of Fuyao interacting with the American leadership team (which, spoiler alert, doesn’t go well), to the line workers interacting with each other, the challenges are front-and-center.
One of the most telling scenes comes about halfway through, when a group of American workers travels to China to visit the Fuyao headquarters. Within minutes, it becomes clear the workers are being exposed to new ideas and new ways of doing things. The office decorations are different. The Chinese workers have a different attitude towards work. Even the after-hours party thrown by Fuyao is different.
Some embrace these new concepts. Others, not so much.
And that’s the heart of culture. Take individuals with unique backgrounds and temperaments. Add the complexity of a language barrier and international cultural differences. And stir the mixture together with the stresses of turning a profit, and you have a one-of-a-kind recipe.
Whether that recipe is a success or failure … you’ll have to watch to find out.
Unions: I fully respect that unions are important to many workers in this country. But as someone who grew up in the American West, and works in an industry that isn’t generally unionized, unions can be hard for me to relate to.
Most of the time, when I think of a union, I think of something out of a 1950s movie, with Jimmy Hoffa playing the lead. I associate unions with the Northeast and with factory work. But mostly with the past.
(In full disclosure, I’m a member of the American Federation of Teachers — aka the teacher’s union — through an adjunct teaching position. Since the adjunct position is not my main source of income, I don’t pay much attention to the goings-on of the union. I do skim the emails from the union rep occasionally.)
It was eye-opening, then, to see the topic of union representation pop up early into American Factory. One of the main points of contention between the Chinese owners of Fuyao and the American front-line workers is unionization. There is a strong contingent of workers who feel so strongly about forming a union that they’re willing to put their jobs on the line just to get a vote.
I won’t spoil the results of the union vote — one of the most tension-filled parts of the documentary — but the simple fact that there was so much passion from the workers drew me in. And as the documentary carefully laid out the cases on both sides, I began to see more clearly why unions matter, why they are dying, and why companies seem to hate them so much.
Change: American Factory, more than anything else, is a story about change and how people handle it. The factory workers in Ohio spent the better part of a decade tackling change after change. Thousands of them lost their jobs in 2008, only to find that the work they returned to was vastly different.
And their experience isn’t wholly unique. It’s representative of the economic changes brought on by globalization.
Globalization is a concept economists have been studying for decades, and more recently has become a hot-button topic in the media. Just this week, for example, The New York Times published an article titled, In Suez Canal, Stuck Ship is a Warning About Excessive Globalization.
You can decide for yourself whether this is a bit of hyperbole — but the issues surrounding globalization are not.
American Factory shows, better than anything I’ve seen or read, the on-the-ground impacts of the evolving global economy. These are not theoretical concepts that only impact economists. The impacts are real, and they are coming for every part of the U.S. workforce.
Whether we like it or not.
Nomadland (Available on Hulu)
This movie is probably going to win Best Picture.
At a minimum, the movie is on pace to score several Oscars next month. Director Chloé Zhao — after becoming the first Asian American woman to win a Golden Globe for Best Director — is in contention for the Best Director Oscar. Frances McDormand is up for Best Actress. And the film is nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, and Best Film Editing.
Pretty shocking for a story about a small group of Americans living a nomadic lifestyle.
Beneath the movie’s breathtaking surface — seriously, you won’t find a movie that films the desert landscape more beautifully — is a story about a segment of the population that has been completely overrun by the modern economy.
Just look at the movie’s opening text:
On January 31, 2011, due to a reduced demand for sheetrock, US Gypsum shut down its plant in Empire, Nevada, after 88 years.
By July, the Empire zip code, 89405, was discontinued.
When we first saw this pop up on the screen, my wife and I looked at each other. “Did you know it was possible to discontinue a zip code?”
The next two hours are a deep exploration of one woman’s journey. And the storyline alone is worth the investment. But there are also themes contained within the movie that ask fascinating questions about the economy.
Loss: Nomadland is about loss. Francis McDormand’s character, Fern, suffers the loss of her husband, which she grapples with throughout the movie. But with the shutting down of Empire, Nevada, Fern also grapples with the loss of her identity. And the identity that tied her to her husband.
I’d always wondered, naively, why people stuck around in a small town if there were no job opportunities. Why would you stay there and struggle when you could go find work elsewhere? Why wouldn’t you pick up and leave?
Through the story of Fern, I was able to see — for the first time — how work and life and home are inextricably linked for many people. How losing their work can come to feel like losing their purpose and their connection. And how setting up new roots can feel like a betrayal.
The film doesn’t offer a magic pill for personal and economic loss. But it offers an honest look at Fern’s journey.
Home: At the start of the movie, Fern packs up her belongings, puts them in a van, and sets off down the road. The concept of home shifts noticeably for her — in a way that, I realized, is not comfortable for most of us.
It’s not just that the average American identifies a house with a home. It’s that the entire U.S. economy is structured around homeownership. As she travels, Fern faces hardships directly tied to the fact that she lives out of her van. She’s not allowed to park overnight. She’s charged by the RV park for services she’s not using. And she struggles to find work without an address to list.
And that’s not to mention the realities of van life.
Toilets. That’s all I’ll say.
But Nomadland shows great respect for Fern’s choice of home, and she is able to find solace with others who share her lifestyle. Still, the movie brought up the idea of home and made me question what is and isn’t one.
Work: Perhaps the most pressing economic question Nomadland explores is the ethics of temporary work. As she travels, Fern takes on a number of odd jobs to pay the bills. She works as staff at a state park. She waits tables at a truck stop. And she works seasonally at an Amazon packaging facility.
The stop-and-start nature of the work creates real challenges for Fern and others (like her best friend, Linda May) who have to move on once the work season is done. The movie touches on this subject, and several writers have gone further to criticize the way Amazon takes advantage of “plug-and-play labor”— including injury concerns, a lack of benefits, and other workplace-related concerns.
There’s nothing wrong with portraying disenfranchised folks as bold, resilient, people — most are — so long as we fully account for the structures aligned against them. It’s why it’s not enough to call essential workers “heroes”: we need to get them hazard pay, time off, and PPE. -Wilfred Chan, Vulture
Like American Factory, Nomadland presents the stories of workers who are on the margins. And who, according to some, are victims of the companies that employ them at their convenience.
I haven’t fully decided how I feel about this topic.
But I’m glad this movie has me thinking about it.
What Young Professionals Should Do Next
Watching a movie may not feel like an investment in your career. But if you watch critically and with an eye toward the world around you, movies have the ability to do something few textbooks can — make topics of business and economics come to life through the stories of individuals.
Whether you’re watching American Factory, Nomadland, or thinking about the way our economy is growing and changing, here are a few suggestions:
- Engage with the stories of others (especially those least like you). You may not be a factory worker in Ohio or a nomad in Nevada, but seeing what others go through on a daily basis can help foster empathy and expand your worldview. Seek out tales that show a side of human struggle that isn’t your own.
- Consider the economic impact of companies. Young professionals today are paying a lot of attention to the impacts of the companies they work for. If a company’s operations are having negative downstream impacts, to their employees or communities, then there’s a way to speak up. And if a company shows a pattern of this behavior, it might be time to leave.
- Embrace change. Change is coming. It may have come for the factory workers and Fern before it comes for you and me, but it is coming. It will take the shape of automation, or globalization, or something we haven’t discovered yet. But it will come. Best to learn how to embrace change.
- Lastly, think about loss. Globalization and economic change may be inevitable. But the inevitability doesn’t diminish the loss felt by those who are impacted. Losing a job hurts. Losing a lifestyle is devastating. We should be wrapping our arms around those who are hurting. They don’t have to feel alone in their loss.
Already seen American Factory and Nomadland? Drop your own thoughts in the comments below. And join the Young Corporate page where we’re talking about career success, corporate citizenship, and more.
