Of all the intellectual pursuits that make some claim to objectivity, none is as complicated and subject to disagreement as economics. The “dismal science” strikes me as accurately named because it seems doomed to eternal controversy. You’re studying the actions of millions of people at once, all making their own buying and selling decisions, all for their own reasons. It’s a task that seems somewhere between massively daunting and downright freaking impossible.
Still, economics seeks to be objective and evidence-based. Science-fiction master Isaac Asimov created a fictional science similar to economics, something he called psycho-history, in The Foundation Trilogy. The books inspired young future Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman to get into the econ game but what he does is nowhere near as precise as the work of Asimov’s Hari Seldon. Krugman, you see, is a left-leaning economist and famed pundit, who agrees on very little with the late Nobel Prize-winning neoliberal guru Milton Friedman. Economics, then, remains a matter of opinion.
Rightwing religious fanatics or free market fundamentalist global warming deniers notwithstanding, there’s no such thing as a politically liberal or conservative biologist or physicist — but we still break down economists along partisan lines because their work is still a matter of opinion. As with medicine before it, which only became effective with the discovery of germ theory and antibiotics, it might be centuries before anyone benefits a whole lot from the dismal science.
Economist Steven D. Levitt and journalist Stephen J. Dubner’s pop-econ book, Freakonomics, has become hugely popular with its quirky and counterintuitive attempts to take a truly objective look at various aspects of modern life. The film version is not an adaptation of the book in the usual sense, but a collection of four spin-off shorts by a dream team of documentarians looking at four different social questions. The film also includes material starring Levitt and Dubner and directed by Seth Gordon of the outstanding “The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters.”
If there is one link between all of the material in the film of Freakonomics, it’s incentives. Much as Deep Throat told Woodward and Bernstein to “follow the money” to crack the Watergate scandal, following the most powerful motivators, fiscal and otherwise, should get us closer to the truth of numerous social questions. Makes sense to me.
The film opens casually with director Seth Gordon introducing us to the likably matter-of-fact team of Levitt and Dubner as a brief segment explains the Freakomically counterintuitive reality that, despite working strictly on commission, real estate agents may not be motivated to get their clients the highest selling price. That’s followed by a discussion of the importance of parenting and posits that the reason that kids whose parents take them to museums, concerts, and libraries tend to do better in school is not because of the museum, concerts, and libraries, but because they have the kind of caring and educated parents who take them to those places.
From there, we finally arrive at the most purely entertaining segment, “A Roshanda by Another Name,” in which Morgan Spurlock (“Super Size Me”) looks into the matter of names popular in the African-American community and what impact having certain kind of monikers can have on a child’s life. It’s all done with a jovial, low-key sense of humor as it also explores humorously corresponding trends in names for Caucasian babies. In the end, we find out that, while names that are perceived as belonging only to black people might lead to provable forms of discrimination, a child’s overall upbringing is a lot more important than whether they are named “Tyrone” or “Morgan” or perhaps, as in one horrific case, “Winner” or “Loser.”
The next segment by Seth Gordon presents some fairly compelling evidence that many teachers are cheating on standardized tests and then moves on to more heavy-duty forms of corruption. Alas, it’s not as interesting as it sounds. Alex Gibney, justly acclaimed Oscar-winning director of the investigative “Taxi to the Dark Side,” “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room,” and the less successful “Casino Jack and the United States of Money,” spent several years in Japan, and so he takes on the seamy side of sumo in “Pure Corruption.”
Gibney’s segment methodically explores the motivations that would lead athletes to fix games – and engage in perhaps far worse actions – in a sport supposedly driven by a strict code of honor. The Oscar-winning docu-specialist can’t resist trying to tie sporting malfeasance and possible murder to the mega-thefts often orchestrated on Wall Street. He invests his segment with his usual visual and creative fair but, unfortunately, it’s a dry time regardless.
The next segment is taken on by Eugene Jarecki of “Why We Fight” and “The Trials of Henry Kissinger.” Unafraid of controversy, Jarecki takes on a hornet’s nest of a piece drawing a fascinating connection between two distinct issues in American life: crime rates and abortion. It’s the most provocative segment but ultimately it’s not advocating anything, just stating a possible unintended consequence of legal abortion. The only arguable misstep here is the use of independent African-American filmmaking pioneer, actor-director Melvin Van Peebles (“Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song”), as the narrator. There are certainly cultural resonances with the radical filmmaker who catalyzed the blaxploitation phenomenon of the 1970s, but Van Peebles’ voice is faltering and at times threatens to become more of a distraction than an enhancement.
The final segments deal directly with incentives and how they impact children. With the help of some amusing animation, economist Levitt explains how he attempted to use M&Ms as bribes to motivate his preschool daughter to use the potty, only to find her using her flexible young urinary tract to extract more and more chocolate candy. That dovetails nicely with the final segment, by Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing of “Jesus Camp,” which explores the highly controversial educational tactic of using money and other materialistic lures to motivate better performance from 9th-grade students. Using two seemingly bright but academically unmotivated boys as examples, the results are interesting but inconclusive.
As with all omnibus-style films “Freakonomics” – which is largely the brainchild of producer Chad Troutwine of 2007’s Parisian-themed anthology film, “Paris Je T’Aime” – benefits from the fact that, if you’re not crazy about a particular segment, a new segment will be coming along shortly. Moreover, the collective talents of the directors and the often intriguing results of the investigations guarantee that it’s a lively enough ride for your brain.
Considering it’s about the uber-complicated subject of economics, “Freakonomics” is easy to follow. Unfortunately, like the science of economics, it’s also easy to wonder if it adds up to much.
3 / 5 Stars
Starring: Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner
Director: Various
Interviews:
Check out Bob Westal’s interviews with Morgan Spurlock and Seth Gordon.
