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AP English 11 Enron: The Dumbest Guys in the Room The Enron corporation began as any ordinary business. The seemingly prosperous company originally possessed only equitable intentions that guided them to become one of the nations most influential and well-known financial groups. In time though, their malignant nature transformed them into an untruthful society of selfish men. The fallacies in their records altered them from thriving company with a desire to be a part of, to a fallen establishment with nothing left to it besides the negative eedback of American investors and consumers.
The story of their company, portrayed in the famous documentary, “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room”, discussed the occurrences in their company that led to their downfall. According to the documentary, Enron’s decisive ways of informing their stockholders of the truth behind their mysterious prosperity led to their false accountability and bankruptcy. The film, a huge hit, developed a relationship with the viewers by including certain key elements. It successfully affected the audience by including great pieces of nformation that triggered their appeal to their emotions.
The factual motion picture gave credibility to those who worked as a part of the company, and their brutal honesty of the events led the audience to sympathize with those who were negatively affected. The plausible statistics they provided served as the basis for an impression directed to the viewer, creating a sense of respect and inclination to absorb the information given. It helped the common person to understand what each person involved endured and lost as a result.
A Californian who viewed the documentary, may have become especially outraged due to the fact that their state served as a financial puppet. Right as California reached their breaking point with cooperatively working with Enron, a fire struck the state and worsened their conditions. The blaze served as a tragic event to most sane people, but an evil economic opportunity to Enron. To fully grasp the pathos of the audience, the filmmakers included a by a company representative stating, “That’s a beautiful thing… Burn baby burn. (Enron epresentative). Enron pulled their strings when they wanted a profit, and abused their ability to control the state and the inhabitants. As the movie concluded, slides containing evidence of how much people lost were displayed over and over again, followed by the unfair gains of the CEO’s and other people of high ranking, who seemed to show little remorse towards everyone else. Enron indirectly sent a message stating that if they couldn’t be prosperous in ethical ways, they should fake it; and that is what they did.
On broadcasts, the ompany would talk about how amazing their success was, but at the same time the film would show images of close to one ton of paper evidence being shredded and disposed of. The fact that certain people refer to Enron methods in the economic field as, “black magic” in and of itself makes a point that some things did not make logical sense. Their moral rectitude vanished the second they fgured out how to trick their investors. leaders of the Enron corporation became so caught up in their delusions, that they started to loose sight of actuality and to send unremarkably controversial messages.
With the start of their company, they were focused on truth and actual profits, but as their fraud scandal escalated, so did their inability to maintain composed. The film incorporated Enron’s method shift to humor to display how the company lacked factual supports and found it necessary to refashion their usual approaches, and quoted a Joke that said that, “… at least when the Titanic went down, the lights were on. ” (Enron CEO). In addition to their new humorous was, the organization became greatly characterized as masters of avoiding questions that would expose them.
Jeff Schillings and Cliff Baxter could have been depicted as leaders captains of differing and finding a way around questions that targeted their fraud; Schillings by indirectly differing the questions, and Baxter by his suicide to successfully end all questions directed to him. The documentary on the Enron scandal brought forth information that many people might never had heard of, and persuaded those viewers to take the side against Enron. Through the use of pathos and ethos, the filmmakers produced an attack against Enron.
Because of Enron’s fabrications of the truth and inability to rid hemselves of their egocentric nature and greedy culture, their stockholders were let down and left with nothing. Works Cited “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room ” . IMDb. IMDb. com, n. d. web. 15 NOV. 2013.. “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. ” Top Documentary Films RSS. N. p. , n. d. Web. 15 NOV. 2013. . “Ethos, Pathos, and Logos. ” Ethos, Pathos, and Logos. N. p. , n. d. Web. 16 Nov. 2013.. Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. Dir. Alex Gibney. By Alex Gibney, Peter Elkind, Bethany McLean, and Peter Coyote. Magnolia Pictures, 2005.