Portraying the global financial crisis: Myth, aesthetics, and the city

Meissner, Miriam

doi:10.5117/necsus2012.1.meis

Cited by 9 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…Screens as a contemporary medium of the financial markets have been noted by several scholars (Burgoyne, 2017;Meissner, 2012;Morsch, 2018) as characteristic elements of films on financial markets and their crises. Meissner (2012) remarks that "[i]t is not by coincidence that the only financial insider's perspective that is shown almost as frequently as the urban panorama view is the flickering surface of digital trading screens, displaying finance's indexical parameters of complex mathematic abstraction."…”

Section: Between Overview and The Loss Of Insight: Financial Markets ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Nevertheless, public opinion about economic changes and dependencies massively depends on audiovisual media. Meissner (2012) argues that the global financial crisis as a discursive event is not to be separated from the media. In a strict sense, one might argue that films on the global financial crisis are always also films of the crisis as they themselves are an essential part of societal communication that turns "developments on the financial markets" and their real-life consequences into a "financial crisis."…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Can't read my broker face?—Tracing a motif and metaphor of expert knowledge through audiovisual images of the financial crisis

Scherer,

Stratil

2024

Literature Compass

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Based on the question of the representability of economy and economics in audiovisual media, developments on the financial markets have often been discussed as a depiction problem. The abstractness and complexity of economic interrelations seem to defy classical modes of storytelling and dramatization. Nevertheless, public opinion about economic changes and dependencies crucially relies on audiovisual media. But how can the public communicate in images, sounds, and words about forces that are out of sight and out of reach, and can supposedly only be adequately grasped by experts? In a case study on audiovisual images of the global financial crisis (2007–), this paper tracks and analyzes a recurring motif: the staging of expert knowledge as close‐ups of expressive faces vis‐à‐vis computer screens in television news, documentaries, as well as feature films. It draws on the use of digital tools for corpus exploration (reverse image search) and the visualization of video annotations. By relating and comparing different staging strategies by which these “broker faces” become embodiments of turbulent market dynamics, the paper proposes to not regard them as repeated instantiations of the same metaphor, but as a developing web of cinematic metaphors. Different perspectives (news of market developments or historical accounts of crisis developments) and affective stances toward the global financial crisis are expressed in these variations of the face‐screen constellation. The paper thus presents a selection of different appearances of “broker faces” as a medium for an audiovisual discourse of the global financial crisis. A concluding analysis of a scene from Margin Call focuses on its specific intertwining of expert and screen as an ambivalent movement figuration of staging insight. Between the feeling of discovery (of a potential future threat) and the sense of being haunted (by a menacing force), the film stages the emergence of a “broker face” in an atmospheric tension between suspense and melancholy. We argue that the film thereby reframes the motif and poses questions of agency, temporality, and expert knowledge.

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Section: Between Overview and The Loss Of Insight: Financial Markets ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Can't read my broker face?—Tracing a motif and metaphor of expert knowledge through audiovisual images of the financial crisis

Scherer,

Stratil

2024

Literature Compass

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“…As the events unfolded the British popular press reflected the anger of their readers (Philo 2012), as did the global media, with expressions such as 'greed', 'madness', or 'irrational exuberance' commonplace (Philo 2012;Meissner 2013). The sensationalism in language and focus partly reflects the transformation of financial news to entertainment and the need to find personalities and drama on which to hang simplified stories (Manning 2013) but also a tendency to apportion blame (Philo 2012).…”

Section: The Media and The Financial Crisismentioning

confidence: 99%

Financialisation, media and social change

Happer

2016

New Political Economy

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This article uses a circuit of communication framework to examine the role of the media in shaping public debate of the financial system and the way in which this impacts on audience response and related societal impacts. It is founded in debates about neoliberalism and financialisation which highlight the shift of power from, or through, the state to large corporations. One result of this structural shift is an increasingly integrated political, media and corporate culture which promotes the interests of the 'market' in public and private lives, and operates to limit the information available to audiences. Alternatives to economic policies and solutions to problems are marginalised in public debate, as illustrated by media coverage of the financial crisis. This limiting of alternatives is decisively implicated in the development of sympathetic attitudes to 'preferred' perspectives and related policy moves, which constrain the potential for effective resistance at the level of collective and individual responses.

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“…This has given rise to Boletín de la Asociación de Geógrafos Españoles, (95) numerous studies of the visual representation of the urban landscape or cityscape, its different elements and its inhabitants. Examples showing the diversity of approaches can be found in Giardina (2005), who analyzed sport as a representation of popular urban culture in America and of the associated racial issues; Meissner (2012), who reported on the urban imaginary of global financial crises; Bickford-Smith (2013), who explored the perceptions of South African metropolises in cinema from the late 19th to the mid-20th centuries; Fichera (2018), who analyzed the stereotype images of suburban Italy presented in different films; or Martens (2020), who studied how delinquency is represented in Jamaican cinema; to cite just a few of the countless works that cover similar lines of research to those explored here. In this way, the sensations transmitted by the different places portrayed in cinema can influence how people perceive their own city or other cities unknown to them, and whether they view them as desirable or undesirable (Bickford-Smith, 2013).…”

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confidence: 99%

Representations and imaginaries of cities in the opening sequences of three U.S. TV series: The Sopranos, Weeds and House of Cards

Gallardo

Reyes

2022

BAGE

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Representaciones e imaginarios urbanos a través de los opening de tres series estadounidenses: The Sopranos, Weeds y House of Cards Las secuencias de apertura de una serie o de una película funcionan como preámbulo en el que se encapsulan elementos denotativos de la trama o se insertan atributos estéticos e iconográficos directamente relacionados con la historia. Este trabajo analiza la representación de la ciudad contemporánea estadounidense a través de los openings de tres series recientes con notable recepción: The Sopranos (HBO, 1999–2007), Weeds (Showtime, 2005–2012) y House of Cards (Netflix, 2013–2018). Se lleva a cabo una caracterización de estos espacios urbanos, la representación y uso que se hace de sus elementos, la diferenciación (o no) entre “realidad” y ficción en cuanto a la configuración de su dimensión espacial y urbana, junto con la proyección mediática de los distintos contextos urbanos. The Sopranos y House of Cards dan cuenta de la figuración y funcionalidad de núcleos urbanos conocidos globalmente (Nueva York y Washington DC) y de su espacio metropolitano. Weeds, pero también The Sopranos, detalla lugares del ámbito suburbano, ejemplo del urban sprawl estadounidense e ideal residencial familiar, en contraposición con la ciudad vinculada a la cultura y la historia de House of Cards. Las tres secuencias de apertura conforman y representan los estereotipos del imaginario colectivo que tenemos del paisaje urbano de la costa este y oeste del país.

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Portraying the global financial crisis: Myth, aesthetics, and the city

Cited by 9 publications

References 8 publications

Can't read my broker face?—Tracing a motif and metaphor of expert knowledge through audiovisual images of the financial crisis

Can't read my broker face?—Tracing a motif and metaphor of expert knowledge through audiovisual images of the financial crisis

Financialisation, media and social change

Representations and imaginaries of cities in the opening sequences of three U.S. TV series: The Sopranos, Weeds and House of Cards

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