A Night at the Movies

Yesterday was the opening of Batman Begins, and a lot of people are excited about it. It's been getting pretty good reviews (you can sample a few here, here, here, here, and here; for a divergent view, go here or find my favorite line of all the reviews so far in Stephanie Zacharek's pan in Salon, "[Batman] speaks only when necessary, and then in a deep monotone devoid of feeling or expression, and when his work is done, he retreats to Wayne Manor to listen to his Morrissey records," here). The clerk at Chicago Comics called it a religious experience, and even though he immediately pulled back and claimed he was only joking, it was clear that he was at least half serious. It was an exciting day for comics-themed movies. So what else could I do? I headed out to put my money down for the Enron documentary.

Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room is a story that should by now be more familiar than it probably is. Ken Lay, Jeffrey Skilling, and Andy Fastow essentially looted their way to fame and fortune (though these days, I imagine they could do without the fame part). That they falsified their financials goes without saying, but the more disturbing crime, for me anyway, was their ruthless manipulation of the California energy grid. Contriving power disruptions and rolling blackouts for fun and profit wouldn't be out of place as a scheme for the Joker in the next Batman film. That we know as much about this as we do (and if I recall correctly, it wasn't that hard to figure out what was going on as it was actually occurring) and that we have essentially done nothing to punish the perpetrators is hugely frustrating (probably to Gray Davis more than anyone).

But what most struck me as I watched the movie was Enron's facade that everything was perfect and getting more perfect by the minute, no matter how it may have looked behind the scenes. Any negative commentary on the company was the result of jealousy, corporate intrigue, or mean-spiritedness but certainly couldn't have anything to do with "the facts." Enron showed nothing but higher and higher profits because all its losses (which far overwhelmed the profits) were hidden from view, so they didn't really exist.

Shortly before November's election, journalist Ron Suskind introduced a phrase that was quickly seized upon in the land of eternal blogshine. It wasn't original with him, but in an article in The New York Times Magazine, he credited it to an unnamed senior Bush advisor.

The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''

Although Suskind was writing about the Bush administration and not Enron, as that company is depicted in this movie, he might as well have been. The same arrogance, the same unwillingness to present straight facts and information, and the same willingness to win at all costs that we see day in and day out in Washington was on display at Enron. It would be tempting to note the ties between Enron and the Bush administration--the corporation was the largest donor to W's first presidential campaign; Ken Lay was in consideration to head Bush's energy department; and Lay certainly had a significant hand in Dick Cheney's top secret anonymous energy task force (if the White House can have anonymous sources, why does the press get so much grief over the same thing?)--but there's no way of knowing how much the attitude in one institution might have influenced the attitude in the other. Regardless, Enron was doing nothing less than creating its own reality as its stock price kept going up and up and up in the face of monumental losses. To get an idea of what creating new realities looks like, as well as what happens when the old-fashioned reality-based world can't be denied any longer and the matchstick structure comes crashing down, spend a couple of hours with Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. (And then slip down the hall in the multiplex and see Batman Begins.)