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Jerry Sterner’s Other People’s Money: A Corporate Take-Over and the Realities of Capitalism

  • Journal of Modern English Drama
  • Abbr : JMBARD
  • 2016, 29(2), pp.57-86
  • Publisher : 한국현대영미드라마학회
  • Research Area : Humanities > English Language and Literature > English Literature > Contemporary English Drama

KIM,TAI-WOO 1

1국민대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

The 1980s of the United States was a violent transitional period when the economic structure was transformed towards the “post-industrial America.” Jerry Sterner’s Other People’s Money dramatizes the very process with a take-over clash between Garfinkle, a Wall Street-based corporate predator, and Jorgenson, CEO of a long family concern in Rhodes Island, New England. And in so doing, the play also raises some serious questions like ‘what are the roles of business?’ and ‘whether the change is made in the right direction?’ Garfinkle’s winning the fight in the end seems to demonstrate the author’s perception that the change is inevitable, but as for the other questions, there are no clues at all to creative and constructive answers. Employees are those who hurt most in a restructuring or a liquidation, but they remain ‘muted’ throughout the play, leaving the impression that the clash between Garfinkle and Jorgenson is simply ‘the capitalists’ game’, and that the lives of employees are helplessly dependent on capitalists, whether they are Garfinkles or Jorgensons. The economic change is accompanied by a new ethic in business, a new way of looking at things, and it can best be summarized as a ‘ruthless pursuit of self-interest.’ The idea seems to be closely related with Neo-Darwinism, which has increasingly gained influence and popularity since 1960s. Garfinkle acknowledges that he is a Darwinist, confessing that the law he believes in is “the survival of the fittest.” And indeed the behaviour and motives of almost all the characters in Other People’s Money can be explained most consistently from the Neo-Darwinian perspective. The capitalist system today is facing serious troubles like intensifying competition, increasing concentration of capital, and the deepening gap between the rich and the poor. And it suggests that the economic system has not made any significant progress since the days of Other People’s Money, or that it has even worsened. That is why Other People’s Money remains highly relevant to the present world, though its vision is a bit limited.

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