This article is mainly about a Canadian economist’s view on the current state of Canada’s economy in 1978 and future expectations. Arthur Donner, the economist, starts by talking about the then current state of the world economy by mentioning that several countries were suffering from stagflation. Then he goes on to talk about how Canada’s economy was not doing very well in several sectors and there were no strong signs of the unemployment rate and inflation decreasing. The Bank of Canada couldn’t do anything about the situation because of fears of worsening the balance of payments. Among other things, Donner is also concerned about lack of business investments and Canada’s declining real gross national product going into 1979.

The U.S. film industry has always been able to do better than other industries during bad economic times. Films offer audiences an escape from the misfortunes of reality, so people turn to theatres when life is not going very well. In the 70’s there was a special situation where the collective world economy was doing quite poorly. This was mainly because of the oil shocks of 1973 and 1979 and stagflation. Hollywood still had the major share in the international film industry and had to come up with a new way to keep audiences in theatres, especially after the decline of the studio system. Hollywood fought these economic troubles with the modern day Hollywood blockbuster. Superman helped to keep attracted multitudes because the storyline and special effects were so powerful they made one forget about real life. Rather, movie goers gained hope and were captivated by the magic that was going on before their eyes. By gaining more than 300 million dollars in international revenues, Superman showed Hollywood that a movie like it was always going to be the most successfully, especially since it did so well during a world economic recession.