Jurassic Park Tells You Everything You Need to Know About the Dangers of Global Capitalism

For­get putting a bird on it. Put on a dinosaur on it for a sure­fire hit in our mar­ket-dri­ven econ­o­my. Direc­tor Stephen Spiel­berg cer­tain­ly did­n’t skimp on the “ter­ri­ble lizards” when adapt­ing Michael Crich­ton’s Juras­sic Park for the screen, and things turned out pret­ty well for him.

Mike Rugnetta, the fast-talk­ing host of PBS’s Idea Chan­nel, the­o­rizes that the 20-year-old film is a great, pos­si­bly inad­ver­tent com­men­tary on the dan­gers of glob­al mar­ket cap­i­tal­ism. His mer­ry spoil­er-packed video touch­es on such phe­nom­e­na as risky invest­ments, the sub­prime mort­gage cri­sis, and the hav­oc that can be wreaked by a dis­grun­tled employ­ee. He hales both Richard Atten­bor­ough’s park own­er char­ac­ter and Direc­tor Spiel­berg as ego­tis­ti­cal mad­men chas­ing mon­strous prof­its. His kitchen sink approach inevitably leads to appear­ances by both Bar­ney and Sloven­ian philoso­pher and cul­tur­al crit­ic Slavoj Žižek.

Rugnetta is quick (of course) to point out that he could come up with sim­i­lar hypothe­ses for such com­par­a­tive­ly fresh releas­es as World War Z (wage slav­ery), Iron Man (glo­ry be to the world-sav­ing entre­pre­neur), and Pacif­ic Rim (the glob­al mar­ket will unite us all)… but why, when Juras­sic Park’s got endur­ing, mar­ket-test­ed crowd-pleasers?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Does Math Objec­tive­ly Exist, or Is It a Human Cre­ation? A New PBS Video Explores a Time­less Ques­tion

Hen­ry Rollins: Edu­ca­tion is the Cure to “Dis­as­ter Cap­i­tal­ism”

Intel­li­gent YouTube Chan­nels

Ayun Hal­l­i­day final­ly got around to see­ing this movie last spring. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday