‘It’s the Economy, Stupid’: Politico-Economic Theories and Cinematic Language in The Big Short

Abstract

In this chapter, Nesselhauf analyses how films not only adopt a theory with regard to content but also, on a second level, how aesthetics and the narration of a film are (loosely or explicitly) based on a theory, or rather, how the ‘cinematic language’ correlates with the theoretical basis. After a general introduction to film narration, this interplay is outlined using the example of politico-economic theories in Adam McKay’s The Big Short (2015), a movie about the key events and figures of the US housing bubble of the early 2000s, resulting in the recent worldwide financial crisis.