There Will Be Business Majors
There Will Be Business Majors
Anthony Harris
Opinions Editor
anthonydeanharris@gmail.com
Anyone who has been around me lately knows I’ve been harping a lot about Paul Thomas Anderson’s brilliant film, There Will Be Blood. Anderson’s adaptation of Upton Sinclair’s 1927 novel, Oil!, is a testament to the hazard of greed and vengeance. Yet, to me, I saw the tale of a man who was guilty of singular motivation.
I also saw the majority of the business majors of Morehouse College.
Now, I’m not saying many of our “most successful” graduates will move on to have vendettas against religion or perverse family lives, but I do see a group of young men who have only one motivation: acquisition. I don’t hear a lot about the fulfillment they get from investment banking. I don’t catch on to their joy of crunching numbers. One doesn’t really perceive how much they’ll love they’re future fourteen hour work days when they moan about Policy.
All I hear is money. In my business law class (a sign God has an immense sense of humor), my professor in his introductory speech told tales of the money he made as a lawyer and said, “Some of you may think $10,000 a week ain’t no money…” I have no words for the outrage I felt at that statement. As an English major from a lower income family, it bothered me that I was surrounded by people who could conceivably believe they would be dissatisfied with a sum of money that my parents couldn’t make in fifteen years.
As I sat in the UT Tara Theater last week and marveled at Daniel Day-Lewis’s surefire Academy Award worthy performance, I thought about all of my classmates who think Plainview had it made. They would consider the oil wells he had all over California and the dream house in Beverly Hills. They would glamorize his later lifestyle and the everlasting resources he seemed to have. I would hope they would realize Plainview is a shell of a man, hermetic, manipulative, and vengeful. I would hope they would realize his greed is the root of his negativity.
Anderson’s There Will Be Blood is a clear morality tale, speaking of the corruption of men. There are stories for Halliburton and stories for Bishop Eddie Long. There are stories for those of us who are far too competitive and those of us who see nothing redemptive in our fellow man. I learned a great deal from Daniel Plainview. I learned to look out for the man I don’t want to be.
And I would hope others would seek out this lesson, among other lessons about drainage, milkshakes, Jonny Greenwood as a composer, and the Ondes Martenot.
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