Friday, November 30, 2012
Follow the Money
Cotton Comes to Harlem got me thinking about the trajectory of money. Think about the Greenleaf money. It starts with an old-time bourgeois who actually builds things and has a hands-on involvement with his business. Then it goes toward a cheerful idler with no interest in such things. Then it ends up in the hands of a psychopath who has better tastes than the cheerful idler and whose remunerative labor is basically personality-work: he runs on charisma and performances. Do any aspects of this trajectory remind you of other texts?
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Reminds me of "trickle down economics"- whereby God-fearing heartland small-business owners create all the wealth, which subsequently filters out towards the coasts, lining the pockets of New York hippie actor types. I suppose that we see this in "Queenpin" though, where money trickles down from the big-cheese clean-handed industrialist who owns the casinos, and into the sequined pocket books of Gloria and the narrator. These two characters certainly run "on charisma and performances" insofar as, aside from those two factors, their jobs could be done by armored car drivers.
ReplyDeleteA similar trajectory seems to happen a little bit in Double Indemnity. Walter and Phyllis, two charismatic characters themselves (baby), are trying to cheat an insurance company out of their money. Companies serve as pretty good representations of sticks in the mud, and insurance companies especially seem to be part of a bigger "system" designed to keep the money for themselves.
ReplyDeleteThis type of trajectory seems to apply to the murders Johnny Marr commits in Rendezvous in Black. Similar to how the money was being passed around to everyone, even those not involved with the original incident, Johnny Marr murdered a lot of people who were only marginally related to his girlfriend's death. In addition, I don't remember where, but a female decoy was used in Cotton Comes to Harlem similar to how a female decoy was used at the end of Rendezvous in Black to trick Johnny Marr into believing his girlfriend was still alive.
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