Damian Chazelle’s Brilliant ‘Babylon’ Should Be Required Viewing for Lina Khan

FTC Chair Lina Khan is hopelessly disconnected from reality. Conversely the movie industry is reality. It’s a constant reminder through producers, directors and actors of how incredibly difficult it is to remain relevant in business. Too much change makes the latter a tall order. Khan should pay attention.

Instead, she’s presently hard at work trying to block Meta (Facebook’s) acquisition of virtual reality startup Within. According to Khan, if the latter is completed then Meta will be “one step closer to its ultimate goal of owning the entire ‘Metaverse.’” If only Khan could see the extraordinary limits of her knowledge. What she doesn’t know is that Mark Zuckerberg and those like him would give anything to possess even a fraction of her certitude about the future. At present they plainly lack this knowledge.

Which explains the billions annually in acquisitions by the titans of tech at the moment. At the moment is italicized precisely because dominance in any dynamic industry is by its very name an ephemeral concept. Which explains all the acquisitions, including Meta’s would-be purchase of Within. Uncertain about what the future will be, today’s giants pursue all manner of investments fully aware that most won’t bear fruit.

They really have no choice, and they don’t because to paraphrase George Will, tomorrow in commerce is another country. All Zuckerberg et al know is that stasis is the path to certain obsolescence. This being true, they search feverishly for what’s ahead.

Khan doesn’t seem to think the future is opaque. Supposedly Meta’s acquisition of Within would position Meta as the dominant force in a future that Khan apparently sees clearly. Her faux arrogance is astounding. She would be wise to get out more, and in doing so, see for herself how uncertain is the life of business. Or she could just go to the movies. They often vivify how difficult it is to grasp where things are going.

Consider Damian Chazelle’s excellent new film, Babylon. A look back at the film industry in the 1920s, Chazelle’s latest reminds us that uncertainty about the future and what the public will want is a forever thing. In the 1920s, the question was whether the silent films that had made the industry great would continue to make it so. Or would viewers prefer to hear the voices of the industry’s stars?

It’s so easy to conclude nearly 100 years later that the answer about moving from silent films to “talkies” was very simple, but that wasn’t true at the time. Again, the silent-film industry was booming in the mid-1920s. Isn’t business success all about “knowing your customer,” and giving your customer what he or she wants? Khan would likely say yes to both questions, which helps explain why she’s the proverbial ankle-biter on the sidelines endlessly getting in the way, as opposed to the kind of person engaging in gut-wrenching speculation about what’s ahead.

Contra Khan, true business success is not a consequence of giving customers what they want, or really even knowing them. As evidenced by how the film industry boomed in the silent era, filmgoers were very pleased with the status quo. In Babylon, the excellent Brad Pitt’s “Jack Conrad” is the silent-film industry’s unrivaled star. Box office gold. All that. Couldn’t the industry ride him to bulging profits until retirement? No.

Through gossip queen Elinor St. John (played so well by Jean Smart) we learn what Conrad will come to understand the hard way; that actors are ultimately interchangeable. Conrad’s character seems to halfway understand this given his embrace of progress, and his order for Manny Torres (Diego Calva) to go see The Jazz Singer in person in order to find out if there’s something to these “talkies.” It turns out there is, only for audiences to find Conrad literally laughable in the new form of filmmaking.

The adjustment also proves challenging for Nellie LaRoy, played so well by Margot Robbie. Her mere presence makes her a star without sound, but then change is the only constant in actual commerce. LaRoy, like Conrad, isn’t fit for what’s ahead. See the movie to see how it all plays out, but more important is for Khan to drink deeply of the story told by Chazelle. If so, she might see just how needless her policing of future dominance is.

She can’t do what she aims to, simply because she wouldn’t work at the FTC if she had a faint clue about future dominance. All that Khan can do is slow the creation of knowledge by blocking the intrepid doings of those most capable of creating it.

Successful businesses don’t so much cater to customers as they lead them. Lina Khan is suffocating those aggressively producing the information that will light the way for tomorrow’s leaders.