Chinatown on Noir Capitalism

What's the connection between Gittes and Marx? Here's the slide from Thursday's lecture.

The film Chinatown doesn't say anything directly about 1. It does say something indirectly: Gittes quits the police force, where he is an employee subject to the practice of getting paid less than the value his labor produces.  As a private eye, he is self-employed, which in theory would reduce his exploitation. (He gets to exploit Walsh instead!)

The film has a lot to say about 2 and 3.  Above all, it claims that mega-development depends on the corrupt use of political power.   "Market forces" such as constant migration to California do play a role.  There was quite a bit of migration from the Midwest in the 1920s and 1930s, and some famous literature tried to capture the results, like The Day of the Locust.  But the demand for low-cost housing could have been satisfied by hundreds of small builders rather than by large tract development.  Chinatown is about how moguls override the supposed invisible hand to concentrate their own wealth through force-based control of the political system.  Exploited labor is visible, but mostly around the edges of the film, in the form of mostly Japanese-American servants and gardeners.