Economic Film Analysis: Monsters, Inc
In the movie Monsters, Inc. , the Monsters Inc. produces energy by using scary monsters to make innocent children scream in order to produce energy for their monster world. As time passes by, the monsters are finding it very hard to scare the children and competition is becoming a huge issue. A little girl, Boo, has entered the monster’s world. Sully and Mike Wazowski must return Boo back to the human world without being caught by CDA. Many challenges come as they return Boo back because CDA knows that a child has entered the monster world. Randell’s competitiveness to be #1 causes him to use Boo in order to get more screams than Sully. Sully and Mike Wazowski save Boo from Randell’s evil plan and returns her safely to her world. Due to company’s way of getting energy, Waternooze, boss of Monster Inc. , gets arrested and Sully and Mike Wazowski takes over the company. Now that the company is under their control, they now produce energy by making the innocent children laugh. Let's look at this story from another side, namely from the economic side in "The Principals Of Economics: Analysis For Monsters, In" paper.
The principals of economics that were covered in the film are scarcity, trade-offs, opportunity cost, and incentives. Scarcity is the limitation of resources to meet an unlimited amount of goods. Trade-offs is the alternatives someone may sacrifice whenever they choose one action over the other. Opportunity cost is the most desirable alternative given up as the result of a decision. Incentive is offerings that encourages you to work harder, make certain choices, and behave in a certain way.
Scarcity affects the characters’ decisions because many children are getting harder to scare which is causing them to get a lower supply of energy. Trade-offs affect the characters’ decisions because they must scare the innocent children in order to produce more energy. The hardest trade-off decision that Sully made was either to return Boo to her home to ensure her safety or to spend more time with her in the dangerous monster world. Opportunity cost affects the characters’ decisions because they know that they’re scaring innocent children for them to benefit. Another example of opportunity cost is when Mike Wazowski wants to go to work by using his car but Sully warns him that it is a waste of energy because they can use it for more important things. When making decisions, people must consider the benefits and the consequences of their decisions because it may affect all the people around them.
Characters didn’t utilize cost benefit analyses when making their decisions because once you scare a child and it makes any contact with you CDA must come and cleanse the monster. Involving the CDA makes the job more complicated by involving people who may have better monster to save that are critical danger, because the little children are innocent compared to the monsters scaring them. Sully didn’t utilize cost benefit analyses when they decided to “keep” Boo because they knew that could cause their company to shut down and for them to be fired. Mike Wazowski was telling Sully the consequences, but Sully wasn’t listening because he was slowly getting attached to Boo.
The incentives that the characters are presented with is Monster of the Month located at lobby and being #1 on the leaderboard at the work station. Sully is always #1 on the leaderboard due to his excellent performance of scaring little innocent children. Due to him being #1 on the leaderboard, Sully and Mike Wazowski would always make it to the Monster of the Month wall. People reacted to this by praising Sully and Mike Wazowski on their achievements. Waternooze is very proud of Sully’s work that he asks him to help train the other monster to become like him. Randell reacted to Sully’s achievement by being competitive and cheating his way to being #1 on the leaderboard.
The individuals weren’t allowed to compete freely based on self-interest because it would cause the business to undergo CDA inspection. In the movie, Randell became competitive and attempted to cheat his way to become #1 but he failed by making Boo entering the monster world. Due to Boo entering the monster world, the monster world became very hectic and Monster Inc. becomes more aware of their monsters making human contact.
The government played a role of being strict on human contact. They made sure that the Monster Inc. didn’t do anything horrible that would ruin the monster world. They were in charge of making sure that the city was informed and updated of all the events and occurrences that was happening. In the movie, news reports informed the whole mister world that a child has entered their world and that they should report it if they see it and to not make contact with it. Also, the government is in charge of sanitizing. The government needs to make sure that all their monsters are living well and that the Monster Inc. is running well without any bad decisions and records.
If the main characters were trained economists the movie would be completely different because they would make better decisions and Boo wouldn’t have entered the monster world. Also, competition between monsters wouldn’t happen because their main goal is just to scare children in order to produce energy but competition became a big deal in order to be praised and recognized. Another example is that Sully wouldn’t have a deep bond with Boo. Due to his attachment with Boo, his performance was no longer outstanding compared to the other monsters. If Boo didn’t enter the monster world, the movie wouldn’t have been suspenseful and touching the concepts of love for others.
The film illustrates the truth about economics because it presented multiple principles of economics. The principles of economics that were present are scarcity, trade-offs, opportunity costs, and incentives. Also, decision making plays a big part in the movie because without these decisions the movie would have a completely different plot. Decision making is very important in economics because you need to make decisions that both benefits the company and the people who uses the goods produced by the company.
The film contains both false and overly simplistic economic themes. In the movie, Monster Inc. was the only company that was presented to the movie which shows that there is no competition. Competition between companies in economics is a very big deal because they tend to produce the same/similar goods at different prices which consumers always consider if the extra money is worth it for the same good. Boo’s noises is overly simplistic because it would make all the electricity go off.
In conclusion, the movie demonstrates many aspects of economics. Decision making makes a huge impact on the companies performance because if a company lacks on making wise decisions many problems will rise and it will affect the company from producing goods.
