The paper addresses some thematically-related films on "executive unemployment," and dialogues with assessments of today's broadening of income insecurity and a particular ethos within the corporate universe. I particularly draw on the idea of the "spirit of capitalism," as formulated by Boltanski and Chiapello (1999), which includes the beliefs justifying the capitalist order and legitimating ways of action in accordance with it, but also the critiques addressed to the system in a certain period. A recent crop of films joins the critiques on the third spirit of capitalism, denouncing the constraints imposed on workers, but with a new approach: the anxiety of the executive echelons, whose security and possibility of reproduction is affected in the context of a flexible and globalized capitalism.
Work; Executive unemployment; Third spirit of capitalism; Cinema; White-collars