Antitrust and Pop Culture III: Direct to Streaming

This is the end. I mean it this time. When you reach the third in a series of movies, it usually signals a dramatic decline in quality. It is also the time when you notice that the star in the series goes from being someone recognizable, like John Cena, to someone whose real name you can’t remember, but vaguely recall was a professional wrestler, reality tv star, or both.

So it is with great trepidation that I return for one final edition of Antitrust and Pop Culture before returning to my current and long overdue book project on competition and collusion in the American theatre. But first, some more movies, streaming series, books, food, beverages, and restaurants with antitrust themes (and spoilers).

Movies & Streaming

Wonka

At the time of the 2023 Antitrust and Pop Culture sequel, I had seen only the trailer for Wonka. Wonka is the prequel to the beloved 1971 film Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory and the somewhat less beloved Johnny Depp 2005 remake Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Oddly, neither of the earlier films featured antitrust themes, despite the dominance of the grown Wonka’s candy business.

I am pleased to report that Wonka is by far the best movie musical squarely based on antitrust themes. A young Willie Wonka arrives in London with new and innovative chocolate products, many magical in nature, but is blocked at every turn by a villainous chocolate cartel that raises prices, restricts output, corrupts the political process, harms innovation, and uses violence to exclude competitors. In addition, there are really some heinous labor practices. Timothee Chalamet sings, dances, acts his heart out, and eventually triumphs in a way that vindicates nascent and potential competition theories.

Bright Leaf

Professor Ernie Englander of George Washington business school brought this 1950 film to my attention. Bright Leaf is directed by Michael Curtiz (Casablanca) and stars Gary Cooper, Lauren Bacall, and Patricia Neal. The movie (named after the type of tobacco grown in the Brightmont valley of North Carolina) is based on an earlier book that dramatized the post-Civil War events loosely connected with the rise of American Tobacco, the defendant in the 1911 companion case to Standard Oil.

The movie is a wild ride and kind of cringe in terms of modern sensibilities about race and gender, but it is a genuine big-budget Hollywood epic with three legitimate stars, and a plot that is all antitrust all the time. Gary Cooper returns to the town in North Carolina that he was forced to flee as a penniless youth when his father was ruined by the cigar cartel that dominated the tobacco industry.

Vowing revenge, Cooper’s character teams up with an inventor from the North who developed a machine that can cheaply and efficiently roll cigarettes. The cigarettes then can be sold much more cheaply and to a broader market than the hand rolled cigars of the tobacco barons of the time.

Smoke-filled rooms abound, and Cooper gradually establishes a new company, popularizes his new product and production techniques, and begins to acquire or ruin his competitors and family nemeses. In the end, Cooper wins at business, loses at love, and leaves town just as he arrives—alone and penniless—but also the subject of a federal antitrust investigation.

The Man in the White Suit

Former FTC Chair Bill Kovacic suggested this movie a while ago. As IMDB notes, this 1951 film stars Alec Guinness (Obi-Wan Kenobi to younger readers) as “an altruistic chemist [who] invents a fabric which resists wear and stain as a boon to humanity, but big business and labor realize it must be suppressed for economic reasons.” A strong argument that antitrust must be ever vigilant for harms to innovation and well as price effects.

Fallout

This eight-part series, now streaming on Amazon Prime, is impossible to summarize without spoiling the big reveal in the final episode. Fallout deals with a post-apocalyptic America where the world is split between naïve humans dwelling in subterranean vaults and a more feral group of surface dwellers dealing with the fallout (literal and metaphoric) and the nuclear radiation from the war that destroyed civilization. Rest assured that cartels and monopoly capitalism have something to do with this sad state of affairs.

Food & Beverage

I have never had either the privilege or the budget to dine at Per Se restaurant, a Michelin three-star restaurant on the upper west side in New York City. However, I do love the irony of the name and the description on the web that “Chef Thomas Keller’s New American restaurant offers luxe fixed-price menus, with Central Park views.” I am told that Per Se is favored by executives in the publishing industry, which leads me to wonder whether any of the execs of the e-book litigation defendants dined there in connection with conduct later held to be Per Se unreasonable.

I have had the pleasure of sipping Per Se, an aperitif from Portugal, which the website assures us is a “well-guarded secret that brings us the light, the colour, and the essence of southern Europe in one drink.” It has an aroma “with hints of cardamom, orange, Jamaican pepper, and Portuguese hop” that give this aperitif “a balanced refreshing twist that makes us rewind to the best summer days.” It is hard to find in the United States, which makes me wonder: can you can get a Per Se at Per Se, while doing some light per se conspiring?

I also hope that I will soon sample Satan’s Cartel Coffee Tequila Liqueur, which promises a “rich, smooth liqueur, a beautiful combination of tequila and coffee” for around $44 dollars a bottle. Perhaps the perfect gift for that successful leniency application?

If you are looking for an antitrust dining, or coffee, experience on a more frugal budget, please consider some of these options:

• Cartel Coffee Roasters with locations throughout the Southwestern United States serving excellent coffee and selling merchandise extolling the virtues of Cartel Roasters;
• Burger Cartel in Australia promising “Intimate counter-serve joint with indoor & outdoor seating serving up burgers, fries, ribs & sides” (or other Burger Cartels in Ireland, Scotland, and New Zealand that may or may not be affiliated with the Australian burger cartel, raising questions whether this is a global burger cartel);
• Coffee Cartel Lab, Tempe Arizona;
• The Bean Cartel: Specialty Coffee Roasters, Melbourne, Australia;
• The Coffee Cartel, Bali;
• Café Cartel, Hoboken, New Jersey; and
• The Good Coffee Cartel, Glasgow.

None of these should be confused with any actual or contemplated coffee cartels.

Las Vegas seems to feature a great number of food cartel options including:

• Cartel Takos;
• The Food Cartel; and
• The Caviar Cartel Club.

All appear to be hiding in plain sight.

If you find yourself more in a Section 2 kind of mood when having a drink, consider Monopolio beer from Mexico, which promises on its web site to be the Beer of Truth. I truly consider it to be a most pleasant lager. I was also delighted to learn that in 1911 “revolutionaries fighting in the deserts and mountains of San Luis summoned up courage with a Monopolio before battle.”

Why not toast a good result in an antitrust case or investigation with Monopole Champagne? Monopole is a brand of the Heidsieck company and retails on the web for between $28 and $47 a bottle. Clearly, no resale price maintenance in play for this tasty product!

Finally, if you prefer spirits, Professor Darren Bush suggests that you unwind with Monopolowa vodka. Monopolowa literally means “under monopoly” in Polish, referring to the exclusive rights given to Polish nobility to produce and sell vodka in their territories. While originally Polish, Monopolowa now is produced in Austria, which does kind of defeat the point of the original monopoly grant. Or is it a monopoly extension?

Books

Jonathan Baker brought to my attention the book, Antitrust and Infidelity by Peter Helmberger. This modestly priced e-book promises: “In a bedroom/boardroom comedy, a quixotic prosecutor with the Federal Trade Commission battles with a hard-driving CEO of a fast-growing diversified food company. Solemn legal proceedings eventually give way to a comic wrestling match in which the two protagonists, confused but nonetheless fighting doggedly for the women they love, learn to bear life’s desperation with both a little more understanding and a little less disquiet.”

Monopoly Music

In light of the new Section 2 litigation against LiveNation, it is worth noting at least four songs called Monopoly available for your listening pleasure. The most famous is Ariana Grande’s “Monopoly.” Grande’s Monopoly appears to have nothing to do with antitrust concepts but instead expresses her anger at a controlling ex who: “Treat my goals like property, collect them like Monopoly.”

Georgia Lines has her own “Monopoly” song released in 2023. This song also seems to have nothing to do with competition law, but it features childhood memories of the singer-songwriter playing the Monopoly game on the verge of winning it all, only to lose everything at the last minute. A pleasant song and a terrific encapsulation of the concept of Schumpeterian competition.

The Monopoly game has inspired the “Monopoly Song,” which was created for the 2000 Monopoly PC game. The Monopoly Song tells us:

Come on let’s play Monopoly,
Cash, fun, and ritzy property,
I’ll build a house and watch my fortune grow,
Passing GO.

Finally, the website Musicbed intriguingly offers for license: Monopoly (featuring CADE) by Mokita. One can only wonder if this is a new side hustle for the wellregarded Brazilian antitrust enforcement agency known by the acronym CADE.

And in Conclusion

So, what have we learned from this three-part tour of the countless books, movies, tv shows, plays, music, and consumer products connected in various degrees to antitrust law? As I suggested back in 2022, there is a feedback loop between antitrust (really any area of the law) and pop culture. Current events and controversies find their way into pop culture, and eventually the art and commerce depicted returns to influence the law and its reform. If you doubt me, just wait for the next round of antitrust hearings or cases in the music industry and the inevitable Taylor Swift references and lyrics that make their way into the discussion.