Brandscape films materially embody financial speculation, not just symbolize it

Evidence

These films demonstrate our descent into a financialized popular culture—not just as a symbolic representation of such, but as a material embodiment of vast speculation. — Andrew deWaard, Derivative Media, 402

Categorization

• QUESTION: This is exactly the causation-vs-correlation claim the reader must test: brandscape blockbusters as material embodiment of speculation.
• DEEPTHINKING: The central theoretical wager of the book — aesthetic form as direct materialization of financial structure. Dense enough to sit with.
• XREF: connects to: The film In Time makes time serve as money to dramatize precarity — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1623