The "Margin Call" Phenomena
We watched the film Margin Call last night, much because as you know if you read my blog and webzine, I am very interested in studying the massive proliferation of modern-day human sacrifice. It is fascinating how much the World System facilitates it through rigorous law enforcement (U.S. federal government and its satellites), rigid civil religious expectations (Roman Catholic ecclesia and its 501c3 subdivisions), and rabid value assessment programs (banks and finance service firms coordinated through a central bank).
Margin Call was a riveting expose of the latter. [Editors note: there will be spoilers in the following post.]
It presented a dramatization of a condition I've been sharing for years, one that is surely dismissed as folly but was pouring off the screen in the film.
The story revolves around the discovery that a financial services firm, much like a Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley, is holding a wad of "investment vehicles" that are essentially worthless. All along they've been touting these to clients as worthy to have, but now the firm's management is faced with the reality that they will soon be found out by all, eventuating the firm's demise.
Through much of the film the characters are faced with a choice. Work through selling these "toxic assets" by lying through their teeth for immense financial reward, or be principled and refuse to submit to the rank deception, yet then be thrown on the street.
Most chose to "stay with the firm" as one top manager put it when given a face-to-face ultimatum from the CEO. "I am with the firm" he sneered through grinding teeth.
In the end of it all, it came down to that condition in life that so few comprehend, but there it was in bright, brilliant colors on the screen.
People are worthless.
Oh sure we put together all kinds of rationalizations about why we're worthful. But then that's just it, isn't it? Precisely the point of the movie. A bunch of people working through the truth that they are worthless, and all they've been doing all along is sustaining a gargantuous lie and getting paid ungodly amounts of their extractees' cash to do so. They go crazy recognizing how worthless they really are in that, and frantically search for the ways to still keep getting paid ungodly amounts of their extractees' cash.
At the end of the film the "I'm with the firm" manager (played by Kevin Spacey) goes to announce his resignation to the CEO, then endures a blithering speech about how little money really means -- putridly ironic in itself. He then stands up and sighs, "I'll stay. But not because of your speech. It's because I need the money."
I could share a lot of telling moments from the film, such as the very plain scene that simply featured a pan across the office building floor with all the computer screens showing those market charts being displayed to no one. Also worth a mention is the very last scene of the film when the Kevin Spacey character is burying his dog late at night. Incessantly shovelling up dirt from a nicely manicured lawn. Images and metaphors for the tremendously dismal value disassessment that reigns in the World System.
But I do want to share a thing that struck me, something that demonstrates the filmmakers' abject failure themselves to even understand the meaning of what they've shown.
I watched a bit of the "Making of..." segment offered in the DVD, and some remarks were provided by Zachary Quinto, an actor who played one of the characters and himself a producer of the film. (You may know Quinto better as the actor who played Mr. Spock in the most recent Star Trek film remake.)
The very first thing Quinto said was, "There is no judging in this film, no one is being judged," something to that effect. He then blapped all the typical Hollywood stuff about choices and character and dilemma and feeling and all that blap.
But, really...
No judging at all?
No one is liable to be judged, let alone the characters themselves within the film?
Are you kidding me?
That's one of the compelling features of the film.
That they all were judging one another, the entire time! The splendid tension resulted in them not being able to express their very justified judgment of one another because it would've compromised their capacity to keep gulping their ocean-sized swig of the gravy train!
It is easy to see why Quinto would say something like this. That the consideration that life is all just "losers weepers" all along, that it is ugly but it is what it is, that no one can really judge anyone else.
Yes, indeed, everyone behaves rationally, which is why no one should be judged, if all there is is rationality.
But the film reveals that there is another thing in the mix that not even the filmmakers know about.
There is also righteousness.
And yes, not everything is righteous.
And yes, only those who know the One Who Judges Things Perfectly can truly know what that righteousness means.
Yes, what those people did in the film was spectacularly unrighteous, but the only true way out is to go to the Kingdom where Christ gives all good things to His followers. Indeed He is the third choice for all those characters in the film, but they haven't a clue because they've all been so thoroughly Catholicized, told that the World System is all there is with its stark "Take it or leave it" options.
The third option is to accept you're worthless, die to yourself, give up all the pretense -- the Spacey character was this close to doing so but he hadn't any clue that Christ would be there to meet him...
All he had was a grave he kept digging.
Oh my, what a body of death.
I really like horror films. I really do. Margin Call was about as good as any.
_
For more, check out this page in my webzine that describes more about the human sacrifice of today. I also wrote this about the "flash crash," getting into more about the meaning of what's going on in those finanical services firms.
Margin Call was a riveting expose of the latter. [Editors note: there will be spoilers in the following post.]
It presented a dramatization of a condition I've been sharing for years, one that is surely dismissed as folly but was pouring off the screen in the film.
The story revolves around the discovery that a financial services firm, much like a Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley, is holding a wad of "investment vehicles" that are essentially worthless. All along they've been touting these to clients as worthy to have, but now the firm's management is faced with the reality that they will soon be found out by all, eventuating the firm's demise.
Through much of the film the characters are faced with a choice. Work through selling these "toxic assets" by lying through their teeth for immense financial reward, or be principled and refuse to submit to the rank deception, yet then be thrown on the street.
Most chose to "stay with the firm" as one top manager put it when given a face-to-face ultimatum from the CEO. "I am with the firm" he sneered through grinding teeth.
In the end of it all, it came down to that condition in life that so few comprehend, but there it was in bright, brilliant colors on the screen.
People are worthless.
Oh sure we put together all kinds of rationalizations about why we're worthful. But then that's just it, isn't it? Precisely the point of the movie. A bunch of people working through the truth that they are worthless, and all they've been doing all along is sustaining a gargantuous lie and getting paid ungodly amounts of their extractees' cash to do so. They go crazy recognizing how worthless they really are in that, and frantically search for the ways to still keep getting paid ungodly amounts of their extractees' cash.
At the end of the film the "I'm with the firm" manager (played by Kevin Spacey) goes to announce his resignation to the CEO, then endures a blithering speech about how little money really means -- putridly ironic in itself. He then stands up and sighs, "I'll stay. But not because of your speech. It's because I need the money."
I could share a lot of telling moments from the film, such as the very plain scene that simply featured a pan across the office building floor with all the computer screens showing those market charts being displayed to no one. Also worth a mention is the very last scene of the film when the Kevin Spacey character is burying his dog late at night. Incessantly shovelling up dirt from a nicely manicured lawn. Images and metaphors for the tremendously dismal value disassessment that reigns in the World System.
But I do want to share a thing that struck me, something that demonstrates the filmmakers' abject failure themselves to even understand the meaning of what they've shown.
I watched a bit of the "Making of..." segment offered in the DVD, and some remarks were provided by Zachary Quinto, an actor who played one of the characters and himself a producer of the film. (You may know Quinto better as the actor who played Mr. Spock in the most recent Star Trek film remake.)
The very first thing Quinto said was, "There is no judging in this film, no one is being judged," something to that effect. He then blapped all the typical Hollywood stuff about choices and character and dilemma and feeling and all that blap.
But, really...
No judging at all?
No one is liable to be judged, let alone the characters themselves within the film?
Are you kidding me?
That's one of the compelling features of the film.
That they all were judging one another, the entire time! The splendid tension resulted in them not being able to express their very justified judgment of one another because it would've compromised their capacity to keep gulping their ocean-sized swig of the gravy train!
It is easy to see why Quinto would say something like this. That the consideration that life is all just "losers weepers" all along, that it is ugly but it is what it is, that no one can really judge anyone else.
Yes, indeed, everyone behaves rationally, which is why no one should be judged, if all there is is rationality.
But the film reveals that there is another thing in the mix that not even the filmmakers know about.
There is also righteousness.
And yes, not everything is righteous.
And yes, only those who know the One Who Judges Things Perfectly can truly know what that righteousness means.
Yes, what those people did in the film was spectacularly unrighteous, but the only true way out is to go to the Kingdom where Christ gives all good things to His followers. Indeed He is the third choice for all those characters in the film, but they haven't a clue because they've all been so thoroughly Catholicized, told that the World System is all there is with its stark "Take it or leave it" options.
The third option is to accept you're worthless, die to yourself, give up all the pretense -- the Spacey character was this close to doing so but he hadn't any clue that Christ would be there to meet him...
All he had was a grave he kept digging.
Oh my, what a body of death.
I really like horror films. I really do. Margin Call was about as good as any.
_
For more, check out this page in my webzine that describes more about the human sacrifice of today. I also wrote this about the "flash crash," getting into more about the meaning of what's going on in those finanical services firms.
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