The movie Joy (2015) tells the story of a talented woman who grows up in a thoroughly broken home, gets into an equally broken marriage, then, after years, becomes a successful entrepreneur. After viewing the movie, I could not help but relate it to the discussion of institutions and other like entities on entrepreneurship and the effects of the converse. This could be the existing structure of businesses, investors, and patent laws and application thereof, but it also includes family and its structure and the effects that entrepreneurship has on all. Joy gives a perfect case study for all of these.
Given that the plot begins and is driven by family issues, family and entrepreneurship shall be the first topic of discussion. We might first note that Joy lives in a communitarian family structure throughout the majority of the movie, meaning that multiple generations and multiple branches of the family live in the same house drawing from commonly held resources. This creates issues that we see in the movie, like the potential entrepreneur being expected to take care of everyone due to being more talented or productive. Another less prominent issue includes a lack of resources available to the potential entrepreneur due to being expected to distribute earnings and time to the rest of the family, either to care for them or to provide for them. We see this in the movie, as Joy is expected to clean up after her mother, manage the housing of her ex-husband, repair the plumbing (until she is unable to), house her father, clean the house, and more. This is very obviously stifling, as our potential entrepreneur is expected to invest countless hours into these tasks, not to mention other tangible resources. There exist some positive benefits to be had, as it is because of these extremely close family connections that Joy is able to first secure funding for her venture. Without these connections, she would not have been able to do a single thing.
Family does not just affect entrepreneurship, though. Entrepreneurship directly impacts the family. In the movie, zooming out slightly from Joy’s story in particular, we see that the family is familiar with entrepreneurship due to Joy’s father owning and operating a workshop. While some may argue as to whether or not traits are or are not present in a person prior to becoming an entrepreneur, maintaining a successful business for a period of time will cause and require someone to possess specific traits. While her father is presented as a very flawed man in character, he is able to keep his business not just afloat but nicely profitable throughout his lifetime. This becomes a key factor for Joy’s journey, as this workshop, aside from potentially inspiring her or teaching her valuable knowledge about crafting, is where the first prototype mop is created to win over her father and his love interest. After becoming a successful entrepreneur, Joy then cares for her father and the rest of her family with luxury. As a result, we see a much more serene, tranquil picture than what is shown before the success. To summarize, the entrepreneurial activity not only builds up the family early on, but fundamentally alters its wellbeing by the end.
We see now the connection between the entrepreneurial activity and the social institution of family, though there is one consideration. Being as this course is about entrepreneurship and society, I have no qualms further elaborating on the topic of family. Were Joy’s actions moral, and are entrepreneurship and morality usually in conflict?
To connect morality and society quickly to complete the formality, a society is undeniably shaped by its morality, as morality regulates what can and can not be done, what is acceptable and taboo, and how these restrictions apply to different people. Which system of morals should be used here? The movie is fairly amoral, so I will just default to using the system I hold to and analyze from there. The movie reveals to us that Joy marries, has children, then decides on a divorce so as not to become like her family. The reasoning here is potentially understandable, though, to most Christians and for much of the history of European civilization, entirely unworthy of warranting a divorce. For the purposes of the plot, it is implied that this divorce is what prevents her from solely focusing on family and going down the path that she went down. There are already potential issues to discuss here regardless of morality. Was this a moral decision? Obviously no, and violating morals goes beyond just immediate social consequences. They exist for a reason, that is, morals serve a function and have utility. By divorcing, Joy has negatively altered the lives of her children, broken her oath that she presumably swore at her marriage, irresponsibly abrogated her duties as a mother, and seriously cast doubt on her judgment. The more personal or familial problems can remain personal and familial, as bad as they are, but by breaking oaths and discrediting her judgment, Joy harms her success at entrepreneurship.
As a side note, seeking a divorce in such a manner could be very easily argued to be high time preference behavior. Even though the counterclaim could be made that she pursues this so as to secure a more profitable future, this can easily be dismissed by looking at what could have been done instead. Instead of seeking an intervention of family or church (which is entirely absent from this movie save for a small shoutout to the Amish Anabaptists), she quite rashly decides to bear the permanent consequences (and in doing so decides the same for her children) and gets a divorce, surprising everyone save for her father. So what if this is high time preference behavior? This is important due to a society’s “health” being built on the population’s time preference. Although the movie presents a happy ending, the behavior really remains the same throughout all generations of Joy’s family in terms of time preference. We can use this to extrapolate that this familial victory might not be sustainable without significant adaptation from Joy’s children, something that would be made much more possible if she was present with them more than is presented in the movie.
Other institutions could be elaborated on at length, like the miserably stifling IP laws presented in the movie, as these are institutions that affect and are affected by entrepreneurship too, but they warrant their own book and not a small article.