Cedar Rapids / The Wordy Shipmates

Pretty funny movie, especially if you're a fan of The Wire. Definitely recommended.

Probably the best way to think of this film is that it's about the protestant ethic versus the "greed is good" as self-conceptions of the capitalist. The movie gives you a feel-good story about this in the end, but it's not particularly convincing.

Relatedly, I listened to the audiobook version Sarah Vowell's The Wordy Shipmates (it's got an all-star cast) about the Massachusetts Bay Colony. It really brings home the extent to which the founders of New England were oddball religious fanatics, and also quite a bit different from the religious fanatics of today's bible belt (she's very good on this point). The point of being successful was that success was a sign that you were a "visible saint," one of the saved, and that your success was a reward for good conduct. That of course could be merely self-serving, but if you take it seriously there's no point to ill-gotten gains. And there's plenty of evidence that Puritans mostly did take their own ideas very seriously.