Media and Affective Mythologies by Darren Kelsey

Author:Darren Kelsey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

Using this analogy of racism is a powerful strategy for delivering a critical argument on moral grounds. It also proposes the ethical and moral regulation of financial institutions that still avoids systemic, state regulation. This is not to suggest that the Archbishop is wrong. But this example is important because it can be used—depending on the source adopting it and the context in which it features—in different ways. It might be used to justify a review of free market capitalism in its hegemonic form or to radically review the formal structures of unregulated markets. But considered in the context above, it is situated in the discursive (ideological) position of individual morality and responsibility rather than systemic scrutiny. The bankers’ values and behavior are mocked, blamed, and ridiculed in attempts to understand complex, socio-economic phenomena.

(A3)

LOOTERS IN SUITS: THREE YEARS AGO, THIS WEEK, LEHMAN BROTHERS CRASHED. SINCE THEN, BRITAIN’S BANKERS HAVE LEARNT NOTHING AND HAVE BEEN LET OFF THE HOOK AGAIN (Hastings, Mail Online 2011).

As A3 shows, trickster traits are not only applicable to privileged or wealthy figures. These moral constructs recur across representations of social class. The ‘Looters in suits’ metaphor demonstrates the cross-cultural qualities of trickster traits through its shapeshifting forms in different social contexts. During the 2011 England riots looters were ridiculed for opportunist theft and materialism, as products of a ‘something for nothing’ benefits culture (Kelsey 2015: 81). The bankers ’ greed, excess and recklessness groups them with the looters on moral grounds, regardless of social class. Hastings provides an historical dimension to his analysis of bankers in this lengthy extract:Today’s bankers are moral descendants of medieval robber barons, tyrannical rural landlords, the ruthless industrialists of the 19th century. When a minority group is granted license to exploit others, it seldom holds back. Some eminent Victorians fought tooth and nail to sustain their right to employ child labor, send small boys up chimneys and suchlike. George Hudson, who led the investment boom in railways in the 1840s, the coal mine owners of Wales and the North, the 19th-century American industrial monopolists, were men cast in same mold as today’s bankers. Yet one big thing is different: the entrepreneurial monsters of the past took huge personal risks to make their fortunes. Today’s bankers, by contrast, are mere employees. They claim obscene rewards while placing bets with other people’s money, backed by the institutions which employ them, and ultimately by their nation’s taxpayers.

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