User Reviews

"Unfortunately, there is a ruling class in America. Yes, you should definitely try to be in it. If you are smart enough, you will be invited in. You won't get in just because you apply."--Walter Cronkite

"The world is like a seesaw out of balance: on one side is a box of big rocks, tilting it its way. On the other side is a box, and a bunch of us with teaspoons, adding a little sand at a time. One day, all of our teaspoons will add up, and the whole thing will tip, and people will say, 'How did it happen so fast?'"--Pete Seeger

The movie is at its best interviewing such sages. Unfortunately, it also interviews the ruling class members who spout the usual lies about American military hegemony being good for the world.

I'll first agree with other reviewers that the musical sequences are hokey and awkwardly inserted. I don't have much to add beyond that, except for the closing sequence (we'll return to that in a moment).

This film seems a little confused as to whether it contains a message of noblesse oblige or "workers of the world unite!" Lewis Lapham is himself a caricature of an American elite: Ivy League and Cambridge educated, the editor of an elite northeastern publication, and father of children married, respectively, to a prince, and to the daughter of a Canadian prime minister. However, he seems to believe that the American ruling class is comprised of those in pursuit of profit rather than those born into, and thoroughly moving about and between the oldest, most exclusive and elite circles of American, and indeed global society. He seems, however, not to consider himself part of the American ruling class and instead focuses on Wall Street -- a flawed and privileged sector of American society, but far less exclusive and more meritocratic that the world Lapham inhabits.

Lapham hires two actors to portray recent graduates of Yale (again, a bastion of pedigreed exclusivity) faced with the choice of whether to, in Lapham's words, do well or do good. Hence the noblesse oblige. However, so much of the movie concentrates on the plight of the working class (for instance, servers at IHOP)-- people who could win the lottery tomorrow and still have no hope of ever being welcome at the Upper East Side cocktail parties in which Lapham's ilk socialize.

The final musical sequence refers to the "fall of empires," and uses children dressed to portray various professions and segments of American society rebelling against Lapham's caricature of the ruling class. However, the children meant to be understood as the rulers are dressed as doctors and lawyers -- professions long seen as the attainable achievements of the middle class resulting from hard work and education -- not necessarily of pedigreed elites. A doctor educated at a state medical school may indeed make a very good living, but he/she is arguably far less elite than the head of a non-profit foundation born to old money and educated in the Ivy Leagues.

Lapham seems confused about the difference between two corollary conversations: the divide between elites and the masses, or the inequality between professionals and the working class. I would guess this results from a very limited perspective. Very few of us probably regard ourselves as part of the ruling class, and I'd imagine Lapham is no different. I can't think of a more ironic example, though.

I recommend seeing this movie, not because it raises the issues it intends, but because it exposes one of the ongoing contradictions of so- called limousine liberals. People born into generations of privilege, moving seamlessly between the most elite and exclusive sectors of society, but unceasingly concerned with others they consider elites: ironically inhabitants of the professions most likely to move members of the middle class upward. The conspiracy-minded might attribute this to a desire on the part of elites to attack the vehicles most likely to allow others into their club. I tend to think it's more likely that Lapham just doesn't understand how elite he is.