ABSTRACT
The two documentaries chosen to illustrate the links between masculinity and the 2008 crisis in this chapter are Oscar-award winner Inside Job (2010), directed by Charles Ferguson, and Abacus: Small Enough to Jail (2016), directed by Steve James, known for his ground-breaking sports documentary Hoop Dreams (1994). Ferguson offers a thorough analysis of the conditions that allowed the rogue American finance system to cause the collapse of the world economy. Abacus narrates the odyssey of Chinese-born banker Thomas Sung and his daughters to defend their innocence after being indicted for fraud. Sung's dignified masculinity and his position as a man working to help his community is in direct contrast with the predatory, villainous patriarchal masculinity rampant in the finance sector, which Ferguson portrays. Both Ferguson and James downplay the importance that masculinity has in each of the cases they describe, but whereas Ferguson essentially bemoans the excessive empowerment of the men who ruined so many and scaped protected by the system, James offers a lesson on a type of alternative masculinity focused on caring for the community and working with women in a capitalistic context which eschews predatory practices.
