Documentary Film Analysis
Park Avenue: Money, Power and the American Dream
In the film, Park Avenue: Money, Power and the American Dream, they explained the
ideas in an interesting way that engaged the viewer. The film was about the way that money is
spent in this country and how the wealthy stay wealthy and the poor stay poor. This film dealt a
lot with a street called Park Avenue in New York City. On one side of the river they are
extremely poor and on the other some of most wealthy people in America have apartments there
in a building. They focused on the tension in the debate between the poor and the rich.i
The reasoning in this film was really good. The way that the film explained both sides of
the arguments, mainly the points that they were really trying to bring home, to the viewer was
really well done. There also was not anything obviously fallacious about the arguments presented
in the film either. I think that overall the film reasoned well throughout its entirety. There were
some points that I did feel needed to be mentioned though.
This documentary, like almost any other, had a lot of different arguments in it but a
couple stuck out to me the most. One that really stuck out was right at the beginning when they
are discussing money and its role in politics. The argument that I found says that a lot of the
money is at the top. These people with all the money use it to further their own interests and their
interests are to rig the system so that it is very difficult for the lower people to get in the way and
stop their interests. They use the money that they have to invest it in political systems and
eventually get their money back, with tax cuts, and then they put it back in the system to do it all
over again. They get lobbyists to write the bills so that they can write them exactly how they
want them to get what they need. Of course this a way that they get something back for all of
their money that they spent.ii
In this argument they are trying to explain how the political system works in America.
This argument is showing that ties between money or wealth and politics are huge. They are
saying that unless you have the money to get people to notice you that you cannot get much done
politically. Money is a key role in American politics because it takes a lot of money to get
elected and that money that you get from donations should come from someone who is very
wealthy and powerful. But when you get that money from those powerful people then you want
to keep them happy so they still support you and that means helping them to get what they
want.iii
In their argument they say that someone who wants to get elected should not take all of
their money from big companies and the people who run them. The problem with this idea is that
unless you have a lot of money it is impossible to get elected. The way that the film explains it is
that there is some other magical way of just making the money appear out of thin air. That is just
not possible we have to spend these absorbent amounts of money to get the word out there about
the policies and the beliefs that the people you want to be elected to get noticed by the general
public.iv
It is much easier to get a few wealthy individuals to donate money to you than it is to try
and get a whole bunch of semi-wealthy people to give you money. That is why people go to the
big name companies for donations. Then when you finally get elected the tax breaks that they
want are nothing compared to what they put into the campaign. They are in business to make
money that is what they do so to give them some of the money back is not a bad thing. Otherwise
if you didn’t give them anything they would have no reason to “invest” in you.v
Out of the many different arguments that were in this documentary another one that stuck
out to me was about the taxes on the rich and the poor. The way that they argued this was when
they say that taxes are the price you pay for civilization. It is the way that the government pays to
fix the roads build and fund public schools along with many other things. The very poor people
don’t pay their income taxes. They then correct them when they say that the people don’t have
income but they still pay all of the other taxes that apply to them. The way that the taxes work
for the wealthy is different than the way that it works for the poor people. The poor people get
regular or higher taxes and the rich and powerful get lower and lower taxes. They end up paying
less in taxes than that of the average public school teacher. Like a magician the rich people think
that they can distract the lower income people by making them blame the people that are lower
than them and get away with not having to pay as much in taxes. They say that a civilization that
does not collect taxes is a civilization that is in great trouble.vi
What this argument is saying is that the rich and powerful are paying less in taxes than
the lower income people who can’t afford to pay the taxes anyway. They end up showing that the
reason that the lower income people are not paying their taxes is because a lot of them are older
and just living on Social Security and don’t file that. Also that includes the people who have
mental illnesses as people who don’t pay their income tax. The rich consider taxes essential to
civilization but they keep getting lower and lower taxes. They even end up paying less than most
of the people who can’t afford it in the first place. They are arguing that it is not fair to every
other American to have to pay insanely high taxes to make up for the fact that the rich don’t have
to pay hardly anything.vii
In this argument one of the main points that it tries to make is that the wealthy are paying
less taxes than that of the average American. While this may be somewhat true what it fails to
mention is what the wealthy do to make up for the money they don’t spend on taxes. They are
not showing the whole picture. Our country is supported by the spending of money. Who has the
most money to spend? The wealthy. So if we want this country to succeed we need people who
know what they are doing with money to spend it.viii
Giving all of our hard earned money to the government is not a good idea. One way to
keep the government from getting a lot of money is to not tax the rich as much that leaves them
free to spend it, and that is what we need. We need the wealthy to be free to spend their money
here and not try and not be forced to try and hide it if foreign bank accounts.ix
Overall with a few exceptions that I pointed out earlier in this paper the film reasoned
really well. It made it very difficult to find places where the film reasoned poorly. The points
about the taxes were especially well done. If they had included the whole picture when it came to
those things then they would have had an even stronger argument. The other argument that really
about the campaigns was really well constructed except for the fact that what they want is an
ideal society and that is not what we live in. Not to say that things can’t change but they want
that ideal and they are failing to mention that it is not possible to do it the way that they want on
such a large scale.x
In conclusion, I think that this film reasoned really well. It was not perfect but the
construction of the arguments was done really well and the execution as well. They presented
some really strong arguments that I did not get the chance to mention in this paper and even the
ones that I did mention were set up well enough that it made it difficult to refute and argue
against them. In the movie they really drew the viewers in and made them feel that they needed
to do something to change the way that things work today. That is the point of a good
documentary, is to draw you in and really make you think about the issues they are presenting.
i
Park Avenue: Money, Power and the American Dream, Dir. Alex Gibney, Perf. Jack Abramoff, Michele Bachmann,
and Bruce Bartlett, (2012), Netflix.com
ii
Park Avenue: Money, Power and the American Dream, Dir. Alex Gibney, Perf. Jack Abramoff, Michele Bachmann,
and Bruce Bartlett, (2012), Netflix.com
iii
Park Avenue: Money, Power and the American Dream, Dir. Alex Gibney, Perf. Jack Abramoff, Michele Bachmann,
and Bruce Bartlett, (2012), Netflix.com
iv
Park Avenue: Money, Power and the American Dream, Dir. Alex Gibney, Perf. Jack Abramoff, Michele Bachmann,
and Bruce Bartlett, (2012), Netflix.com
v
Park Avenue: Money, Power and the American Dream, Dir. Alex Gibney, Perf. Jack Abramoff, Michele Bachmann,
and Bruce Bartlett, (2012), Netflix.com
vi
Park Avenue: Money, Power and the American Dream, Dir. Alex Gibney, Perf. Jack Abramoff, Michele Bachmann,
and Bruce Bartlett, (2012), Netflix.com
vii
Park Avenue: Money, Power and the American Dream, Dir. Alex Gibney, Perf. Jack Abramoff, Michele Bachmann,
and Bruce Bartlett, (2012), Netflix.com
viii
Park Avenue: Money, Power and the American Dream, Dir. Alex Gibney, Perf. Jack Abramoff, Michele Bachmann,
and Bruce Bartlett, (2012), Netflix.com
ix
Park Avenue: Money, Power and the American Dream, Dir. Alex Gibney, Perf. Jack Abramoff, Michele Bachmann,
and Bruce Bartlett, (2012), Netflix.com
x
Park Avenue: Money, Power and the American Dream, Dir. Alex Gibney, Perf. Jack Abramoff, Michele Bachmann,
and Bruce Bartlett, (2012), Netflix.com