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ENRON EXAMPLES DEFINITIONS
1. Characters 1. Characters
2. Plots 2. Plots
3. Themes 3. Themes
4. Dialogs 4. Dialogs
5. Rhythms 5. Rhythms
6. Frames 6. Frames
7. Spectacles 7. Spectacles
OTHER ITEMS

 

PAPER TITLE: Critical Dramaturgical Analysis of Enron Antenarratives and Metatheatre

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David M. Boje

New Mexico State University

July 10, 2002; July 31, 2002 version

Plenary presentation to 5th International Conference on Organizational Discourse: From Micro-Utterances to Macro-Inferences, Wednesday 24th - Friday 26th July (London). 

Abstract

Enron shows us dramaturgy gone amuck. Enron is Metatheatre, defined here as the TAMARA-esque contending, fragmented, simultaneous, and multiple theatres that constitute the global economy. Key to developing a more critical dramaturgy is deconstructing the specter of Metatheatre, especially its romantic Poetics. I will propose what I call the Septet (plots, characters, themes, dialogs, rhythms, spectacles, & frames). Septet re-theorizes Aristotle’s Poetics and Burke’s Pentad, integrating their critical dramaturgy roots with more critical-postmodern turns taken by Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed and Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle. Septet allows us to analyze, for example, how Metatheatre interpenetrates four spectacles (concentrated, diffuse, integrated and mega).  Enron’s critical dramaturgy analysis reveals how megaspectacles played in public Metatheatre to teach cathartic lessons of pity and fear (do not be an Enronite) to millions of spectators, who could confidently replug into the resanctified first three spectacles of concentrated illusion, diffuse global predation, and integrated hyper-reality. My intended contribution to a more critical dramaturgy is to oppose narrative closure with an antenarrative theory that builds upon Fairclough’s intertextuality work, and Deleuze and Guattari’s rhizome processes.

Act I Scene I – A Death Bed. I would like to dedicate the honor of being invited to give this plenary talk to my dad, Daniel Q. Boje; he died March 12th 2002 (78 years old). December 2000, he called me, “David, I want you to research connections between the Whitehouse and oil; I don’t like what President Bush is doing to the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge.”[i] He had worked in the late 1950s around ANWR repairing U.S. early warning defense installations. Dad called again, shortly after September 11th, “David, I want you to research the relation between oil contracts in the Gulf War[ii], and in Afghanistan, and the escalated War on Terrorism.”[iii] I flew to visit him, and explained, “Dad, I study Nike and Disney storytelling; I am not an oil industry economist or political scientist.” He said, “You work in a Business College, this is about business.” I finally agreed to do the analysis. Dad died before I could share with him those oil-Whitehouse-war connections that now are so very obvious to you due to the Enron debacle.[iv] I know this deathbed promise is why I reviewed over 9,784 Enron stories (Figure 3) for their critical dramaturgy, for this talk. Dad refused to be silent.

Enter 3 more Ghosts - I want to thank Cliff Oswick, Tom Keenoy and David Grant (2001), our conveners, and also guest editors of “Dramaturgy and Organizing,” a special issue of Journal of Organizational Change Management; they observe the field of organizational dramaturgy is split between Goffman-ites who assume theatre is a metaphor (Mangham & Overington, 1987) to apply to organization, and Burkeans who say “organization is theatre” (Rosen, 1985; Maital, 1999; Pine & Gilmour, 1999; Harvey, 2001; Kärreman , 2001; Somerset, Fahey & Mears, 2001; Boje, Cunliffe, & Luhman, 2002).  I say Enron is theatre, but would stretch both Goffman and Burke into more TAMARA-esque (Boje, 1995) theory, into the multitude of simultaneous theatres on networked stages, to which Grace Ann Rosile and I invoke the name ‘Metatheatre’ (Boje & Rosile, 2002a & b). Metatheatre is defined as the TAMARA-esque evolution and revolution in dialectic cycles of theatric-integration and disintegration, the networking of simultaneous stage-crafted performances seeking to instruct and control spectators and actors; these erupt into more fragmentation. Each integrating attempt of leaders and directors to evoke spectacular theatre, to control the center stage, to enroll a cast of characters, that will influence spectators, soon disintegrates as the pull of multiple scripts, plots, and characters spin Metatheatre out of control.

Enron is Metatheatre in 3 ways – First, Enron is Metatheatre in how it sets out to deceive using façade and illusion. For example, each year (between 1998 and 2001), an elaborate theatre stage was constructed on Enron’s 6th floor to simulate a real trading floor; it’s expensive theatre, $500 to set up each desk, and more for phones in this stage-crafted spectacle, and more for the 36-inch flat panel screens, and teleconference conference rooms; the entire set was wired by computer technicians who feed fake statistics to the screens. On the big day several hundred employees, including secretaries, played their rehearsed character roles, pretending to be ‘Energy Services’ traders, doing mega deals, while Jeffrey Skilling and Kenneth Lay played their starring role in the Enron Dramatis Personae to a target audience of invited Wall Street analysts, who can not tell real from fake.[v]

According to former Enron employees, on the sixth floor of the company's downtown headquarters was a set, designed to trick analysts into believing business was booming… former employee Carol Elkin said that it was all an act, and that no trades were actually made there. The people on the phones were talking to each other.[vi]

 

Second, Enron is Metatheatre as a way to control and motivate employees using the technology of theatre; several times a year, Enron hired choreographers and dramatists (Banerjee, 2002)[vii] to coach executives in character roles in elaborate corporate extravaganzas; executives and staff would dress in Star Wars or other costumes; executives would enter the ballroom riding Harleys or elephants to the thundering applause of employees and spouses.[viii] Finally, Enron is Metatheatre in a much more important sense of Shakespeare’s “Life is theatre” a part of our daily lives in work and consumption (Boje, Rosile & Malbogat, 2002). For example Rebecca Mark’s globetrotting visits on the Enron jet, became a road show complete with an entourage of WB, WFO, IMF, CIA agents mixed along with Mark’s hair dresser, make up artist, and a flock of assistants. When Mark landed, the force of the Whitehouse landed with her.

Enron’s success was masterful dramaturgy in all three Metatheatrical ways (façades to deceive investors, technology to control/motivate employees, and Enron life is theatre). Yet, the Metatheatre interplay of multiple, simultaneous, theatres and stages, disintegrated while its players tried to integrate and control the unraveling dramatis personae of Enron.  Enron did dominate, superstar of the energy markets, its theatre held power, but the TAMARA-esque dynamics, self-organized, and veered Enron into mega-scandal.

My contribution is to invoke Augusto Boal (1979) and Guy Debord (1967) to give Aristotle’s (350 B.C.E.) Poetics a more critical (postmodern) dramaturgy turn.[ix]  Without a critical dramaturgy perspective, a one-sided dramaturgy is likely to end in the kinds of mega-scandal that Best and Kellner (2001) call “megaspectacle” (Rosile, Best, & Boje, 2001). My approach to critical dramaturgy would reinvent Aristotle’s (350 BCE) six Poetics’ elements, and the ‘frame’ (1937) element that Burke (1972: 23) said he always wanted to append to Pentad (1945), and I unbundled two Aristotelian elements (rhythm & dialog) that Burke reduced to agency.  This yields seven dramatis elements (plots, characters, themes, dialogs, rhythms, & spectacles), which I take on a critical postmodern theory turn informed by Boal, Debord, Best, and Kellner (See TAMARA Journal, 2001).[x] My critical postmodern definitions are in the 3rd column of Table 1; some words are the same as Aristotle and Burke, but my Septet meanings are quite different. I prefer a more critical postmodern (Alvesson & Deetz, 1996; Best & Kellner, 2001) approach to dramaturgy that is a complementarity of critical theory and postmodern theory.

Table 1: Poetic, Pentad, and Septet Grammars of Dramatis Personae

Poetic (Aristotle)

Pentad (Burke)

Septet (Boje)

1. Plot (or Fable)

1. Act

1. Plots – have become inter-plots, interconnecting pre-plots in networks, in the middle of being worked out.

2. Character (or Agent)

2. Agent

2. Characters – the cast of characters are in the middle of being enrolled, and characters morph their persona in schizophrenic ways.

3. Theme (or Thought)

3. Purpose

3. Themes – themes of oppression fan out in rhizomatic weaves, and are met by themes of resistance.

4. Dialog (or Diction)

4. Agency

 

4. Dialogs – obfuscating language and double-speak mixed with euphoric testimonials and bland reassurances attain and shed meanings.

5. Rhythm (or Melody)

5. Rhythms – rhythmic resonances self-organize in chaotic patterns that refuse to freeze, and often disintegrate what was just integrated.

6. Spectacle

5. Scene

6. Spectacles – spectacles are intertextual to other spectacles; they embed in socio-economic contexts by decontextualizing and recontextualizing.

* Frame of Mind of spectator

* Frames of Acceptance/Rejection

7. Frames – Frames are ideologies that are in dialectic contest, resisting each other, and refusing to synthesize.

Key: * = Discussed, but not one of their main dramaturgical elements (Source of Table, Boje, 2002c). Appendix A offers re-readings of Aristotle, Burke, Boal, Freire, Debord, Best and Kellner, to set out the new Septet re-definitions.

 

Boal (1979) and Freire (1970), for example, extend critical dramaturgy to a more neo-Marxist critical theory, while Burke (1937, 1945, 1972) uses his Pentad to say that Marx is too focused on grotesque and burlesque frames of rejection; Burke prefers Nietzsche’s (1974/1887) more comedic frame of acceptance (Boje, Rosile, Durant & Luhman, 2002).  Burke is always uncomfortable with Marx’s dialectic, which only analyzes exploitation. Burke’s proposal is dialectic of frames of acceptance against frames of rejection; in frames of acceptance we accept the tragic and comedic circumstances and our powerlessness to change the system; in frames of rejection actively resist what is considered grotesque or burlesque forms of domination. My thesis is the Septet elements refuse to cohere (for long) in Metatheatre, and just will not resolve into narrative closure; the ‘cock-ups’ keep emerging (Gabriel, 2000: 60, 148) into more and more fragmentation. I have developed the Septet thesis elsewhere (Boje, 2002a, b), and will focus here on Metatheatre and its more antenarrative relationships.

I contend that underneath Enron Metatheatre are competing Tamara-esque antenarratives, the stories-a-making, the Septet elements refusing closure. Antenarrative is a bet that a pre-story can be told and theatrically performed that will enroll stakeholders in intertextual ways that transform the world of action into theatrics; at the same time the antenarratives never quite get there. My theory is that for Enron, an antenarrative rhizome process ends up in mega scandals packaged to entertain and re-educate us, but the Septet elements refuse to cohere; the force of Metatheatre to control and instruct in clever dialog and romantic plot is met by a counter-force in Metatheatre to disenroll characters, disintegrate plots into tragic-comedy, surface oppressive counter-themes and frames to the dominant play, and all the multiplicity of the poetic elements create disrupting rhythms, so that the spectacle decontextualizes, veering out of orbit. Metatheatre enrollment in galumphing Enron antenarratives took over a decade; a casting call signed up characters to play roles in eight intertextual antenarrative clusters we will analyze (Table 2); but it was unraveling from the very beginning in ways antenarrative theory makes clear (Figure 1).

Antenarrative theory (Boje, 2001a) is closely tied to Kristeva (1980a: 36) and Bakhtin (1981), who suggest that each text has an intertextual “trajectory” that is historical and social (Boje, 2001a, O’Connor, 2002). And it relates to Fairclough’s (1992) critical discourse analysis, i.e. his advancing the idea that the intertextual trajectory is embedded in hegemonic struggle. Antenarrative shifts the focus narrative analysis from “what’s the story here” to questions of “why and how did this particular story emerge to dominate the stage?” Used as an adverb, "ante" combined with "narrative" or "antenarrative" means earlier than narrative. Story is an account of incidents or events, but narrative comes after and adds, more "plot" and tighter "coherence" to the story line. Antenarratives collect events and characters into their psychic economy. Antenarrative rhizomatic flight continues as long as there is context left to transform (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987). Antenarrative is about ontological ways of being in the world; it is not sensemaking, it is world making; antenarratives feed on new contexts, they consume contexts, they recontextualize. Antenarratives stay in flight until they become domesticated, or become coherent and tamed (Septet elements) within some dominant storyline; but the opposing forces of fragmentation, simultaneous emergences soon unravel what passed for closure. Spreading an antenarrative seems as harmless as sharing a bit of urban legend, or passing along a tasty morsel of gossip. Yet antenarratives threaten to change the world. Antenarratives seduce us into complicity; we feel somehow compelled to pass them along into our personal networks.

I prefer to return to Aristotle’s terminology system but give each critical postmodern meaning. Aristotle’s dramaturgy needs revision, it is too linear and its characters are on a single stage, with spectators remaining in their seats, following a coherent plot: “in a play” says Aristotle (350 BCE: 1459b: 5) where “one can not represent an action with a number of parts going on simultaneously; one is limited to the part on the stage and connected with the actor.”  A more critical dramaturgy is like Krizanc’s (1981) play Tamara, which has simultaneous scenes occurring on multiple stages, and where spectators do not stay in their theatre seats, but walk and run to chase the actors from stage to stage in a network of plots and unfolding storylines (Tamara, 2001).  For Krizanc, the spectators, become what Boal (1970) calls ‘spect-actors’ (spectator and actor), and their lesson is how easy it is to be complicit in, yet forget the oppression of fascism, and be distracted in the who-done-it spectacle. We can apply Tamara to Enron, to critically investigate a network of emergent dramaturgical spectacles, where spectators chase spectacles from trading floor to boardroom to the meeting rooms of congressional, SEC, and Justice Department hearings, without addressing their own complicity in the spectacle of predatory capitalism, with its Metatheatre run amuck.

Spectacles are one of the Poetic elements. For Aristotle (350 BCE), spectacle was the least important of six elements (Table 1). Burke’s (1945) dramatism translated spectacle into scene. To me, it is much more. Metatheatre of capitalism is an intertextuality of four types of spectacles (Boje, 2002a) listed in Appendix B (concentrated, diffuse, integrated, and mega). Spectacles are one of the Septet elements.

The contribution of Septet to critical dramaturgy is to analyze the Tamara of Enron Metatheatre by tracing its antenarrative complexity, networking, and hegemonic-complicity across multiple and simultaneous stages. I assume that contemporary organizations produce, distribute, and consume spectacle Metatheatrics, yet the dialectic of disintegration opposes the integrative attempts by executive players to control the global stage. Antenarrative plays a special role in the oscillating, contending, and morphing metascripting of Metatheatre.

Metascript is defined as the multiplicity of scripts, mostly unwritten ones, that constitute the micro (utterances) and macro (inferences), the structure, behavior, social dysfunctions, and hidden costs/revenues, and the potential and complicity of the socio-economic performance of Metatheatrics of complex organizations (Boje & Rosile, 2002a, b). Organizations do not have one script, they have a plethora of scripts: talking notes by executives; strategic plans, customer service dialog, what to say at your performance review, etc. Most of life is scripted, and we are suspended in networks of scripts.  Metascript is this multiplicity of scripts that define our field of actions in Septet ways, where strategies are plotted, rhythms find their time patterns, characters get trained in their lines, and many feel con-scripted and imprisoned in their character roles and dialog; there are themes of working conditions for on and off stage performers, and some of the mindsets are incommensurate with other mindsets; a mess of directors, script editors, and characters learning and refusing their scripted lines compete for time on the center stage. Metascript is what Foucault (1970) would call the carceral, since even executives follow scripts, though they have a hand in writing and directing scripts for most of the cast of characters assembled in Metatheatre. Yet, metascripts unravel, decompose, and people forget why 40 versions of a form are used, or how the official script got to center stage.  The raveling unraveling is an antenarrative and highly rhizomatic process.

We shall explore, for example, how the latest scandals repeat many antenarrative elements of Enron spectacles enacted 15 years earlier.  The explanation for megaspectacle, in antenarrative theory, is the ways the multiplicity of pre-stories, fragmented stories, and the non-closure of attempts at concentrated, diffuse and integrated spectacle, destroys emerging grand narratives (Boje, 2001a). In sum, the theatrics of capitalism is a process of antenarrating, a way to cultivate mass hyper-illusion, even fraud out of a pre-narrative broth and some dramatic show-person-ship.  Table 2 summarizes eight antenarrative clusters, sorted by spectacle that we will explore. It also provides a breakdown of how the Septet elements (from Table 1 & Appendix A) are used to analyze eight antenarrative clusters. The antenarrative clusters form intertextual networks that territorialize and deterritorialize the world of Enron in rhizomatic lines that “are constantly crossing, intersecting for a moment following one another” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987: 203). The antenarrative clusters can interconnect and in an instant take off in new directions (p. 505) as presented in Figure 1. Antenarratives are “in the middle,” and “in-between” (p. 293) refusing to attach the beginnings and endings needed to achieve narrative closure (Gabriel, 2000).[xi]  The nature of the Metatheatre world is the dialectic multiplicity, fragmentation, decomposition, and disintegration of antenarrative clusters.

Table 2: Eight Enron Antenarrative Clusters sorted by Spectacle type

CONCENTRATED SPECTACLES

A. Enteron 1986

 

At least 5 antenarrative version contend, as the legend of the Enteron continues to unfold

B. Vader’s ‘Gas Bank’ 1990-2001

There is disputed ownership of the Gas Bank idea; the idea morphs into the trading floor concept; it is a way to not repeat G, but does.

DIFFUSE SPECTACLES

C. ‘Near Death’ Greenmail 1987

 

Jacobs & Leucadia could have liquidated Enron with a successful takeover, but Milken of Drexel Burnham Lambert intervened.

D. ‘Mark the Shark’ builds Global Empire 1991-2000

Stories of oppression, the beating of villagers in India, and other antenarrative tales of resistance never pierce the charade of globalization-success; Mark is Skilling’s rival, until he forces here out (a scenario he denies).

INTEGRATED SPECTACLES

E. Cowboy Capitalism 1985-2001

 

 

Antenarratively connected to G (Valhalla Rogue Traders) and morphs into F (Masters of the Universe).

F. Masters of the Universe 1998-2001

Appears to mimic Bonfire of the Vanities, ostentatious gala events and life styles of the rich and famous.

MEGA SPECTACLES

G. Valhalla Rouge Traders 1985-1987

 

Before there was Enteron or Enron, in the formative days of the Houston Natural Gas merger with InterNorth, a third “rogue” entity sold oil futures in a city called Valhalla.

H. Greek Mega-Tragedy 2001-2002

A through G are intertextual to the succession of Greek (and Shakespearean) tragedies that become antenarratives of the collapse of Enrononomics.

 

Figure 1 provides a graphic depiction of the intertextuality among the antenarrative clusters. The idea is the antenarratives of one cluster migrate and interpenetrate with those of other clusters.  The Key at the bottom of Figure 1 gives examples of antenarratives that move in-between the clusters listed in Table 1.  Figure 1 suggests many of the pieces of “H” (Greek Mega Tragedy) of the Enron collapse were present in antenarrative clusters, such as “G” (Valhalla Rogues), the oil traders of 1985-1987 who brought about an SEC investigation, Andersen Audits, off-shore accounts, creative accounting processes, and scandal. To take another example, pre and post to the “A” (Enteron) cluster, George Bush Jr.’s spectrum 7 oil company had Enteron partnerships (1985 & 1986); in other words George Bush did not just begin Enron-relations with corporate and executive contributions to his gubernatorial or presidential campaigns.

Figure 1: Enron Intertextuality among Antenarrative Clusters

KEY:

 

A:H Renaming game recommences after collapse of Enron.

E:(D:F) Cowboy Capitalism combines with Mark the Shark globe hopping strategy

E:H Houston galas play & morph into White House scandals

B:H Offshore accounts, fake records, and Arthur Andersen  of B repeat in H.

B:D  Skilling’s 10 year war to oust Rebecca Mark (‘the Shark’)

F:H Bonfire of the Vanities interpenetrates with White House, Congress, & UK elite appointments to Enron boards and committees

C:H As in C, shareholders in H seek control and liquidation of Enron

G:B Valhalla Rogues resurfaces in Gas Bank

G:E Valhalla Rogues merges with Cowboy Capitalism

G:H  Off-balance-sheet accounts and offshore banking & Arthur Andersen repeat from G to H

D:H Oppressive tales of villagers in India do not play on center stage until collapse

D:F Mark’s global capitalism plays into Masters of the Universe

H  Each of the antenarrative clusters reemerges in post-collapse inquiries

 

 

There are antenarrative relations before the megaspectacle “H” became a ground zero and it became fashionable for reporters to research trials of campaign contributions. Each of the antenarrative clusters in Figure 1 is part of rhizomatic relations between the clusters. The structure of the presentation is, to use critical dramaturgy theory to analyze eight antenarrative clusters. I present and order them by their type of spectacle, rather than trap them in a linear chronology (See Appendix B for definitions). The point is not the chronology, but the intertextual weave across the antenarrative clusters, how early ones seems to go dormant and achieve resolve, only to re-appear again as ghostly characters, themes, and frames thought to be dead and buried. We begin with two concentrated spectacles (weaving them to others as we go).

 

Act II: Scene 1 CONCENTRATED SPECTACLES

 

How could Enron-collapse have happened? I believe that antenarrative (rhizomatic) assemblages constitute two concentrated spectacles, Enteron and Vader’s Gas Bank, and these resurface in the other types of spectacles. Enteron exhibits concentrated spectacles in its bureaucratic self-portraits of power. The second spectacle, the Gas Bank, players seek to transform the bureaucratic ideology of the merger to a more post-bureaucratic market forces entity, a virtuality of lite-assets. In this first one, the very naming of the new merger is an emerging concentrated spectacle out of a set of very opposed characters, who refuse to get it together, then find scandal as their reward for cooperation (and this will come back in subsequent spectacles as a haunting ghost).

A-Enteron antenarrative cluster – Enter stage left, CEO Kenneth Lay, and from stage right, his feuding six board members, evenly split between the three from Houston Natural Gas and three from the much larger, InterNorth Inc. (from Omaha, not Houston, not even Texans). The merger-naming process is a simple example of antenarrating, a comical pre-story of what could be.  Please do not dismiss this first cluster as a trivial account, for there is something instructive about its antenarrative process. In 1985 Lay made an antenarrative bet that the energy industry could be re-ordered through “strategic narration” into a new plot (Barry & Elmes, 1997: 430); yet, even in the beginning the plot kept unraveling, and off-stage are other plotters, engaged in megaspectacle (#G in Table 2), while these players do the name game.

Lay’s company was seriously burdened with $4.3 billion in debt, incurred by the merger. The scene stretches between 1985 and May 1986 board meetings; Lay is playing the showman each time. “Why isn’t InterNorth ahead in the name; why put Houston Natural Gas first?” asks one InterNorth board member. Lay breaks the tie vote, and settles on the name, ‘Houston Natural Gas/InterNorth Inc.’ The name is quite boring, and too long. So in yet another meeting they agree to shorten it to ‘HNG/InterNorth.’ But it still was not very “cool” as names go. Lay thought it an entirely forgettable name, and still too long; it was just too plain and ordinary, not suitable at all for the biggest natural gas pipeline system operator in the U.S. The board shortened the name, again, to the unmelodious "HNG/INI" (ironically, each side of this split board had three letters). 

Lay was still disappointed, and sought the help of a public relations firm, Lippincott & Margulies, to craft yet another name.  The consultants, after hearing Lay had once worked for Exxon (now there’s a name), drew logos with pipelines and gas jets, and conducted multilingual database and focus group research, proposed their PR solution, the Greek word, “Enteron” (King, 2002).  “Enteron,” was defined by the PR consulting-rhetors as the first syllable of "energy" and by splicing “ter” to the slick, with-it “on” to its end (as in “Energy - right on”). Enteron is “a pipeline system transmitting nourishment," surely the PR hacks said that (Saffire, 2002). So the merger began life as Enteron.

So then why did Lay and the “Enteron” Board decide against the name? Indeed, their name choice turned into a mini-scandal. There are competing antenarrative versions. Even in such a simple decision, competing antenarratives vie for realization, and dominance, and a rhizome of pre-stories never quite sorts out one version to satisfy the historians. This is more than just PR; it is about selling the merger on the global stage, how to enroll investors and how to achieve closure in all the Septet elements. It is about naming the Metatheatre, and putting bits and piece into metascript. There are five inter-weaving antenarratives in this cluster, and together they dissolve the attempt at closure.

One antenarrative accounts for the demise in a tale that a nameless employee, hearing they were working at a company called Enteron, uncovered a definition that had something to do with “intestines” (Cobb, 2002, Ahrens, 2002). Second is the version that says the soon to be Enteron board member grabbed their dictionary, and reported Enteron, was some kind of digestive tube (‘enteric canal’), and was just not a proper logo to typify the merger of two old, but respectable bureaucratic firms (Ackman, 2001).  Upon hearing the bally hoot, the consultants, no doubt, said that the ‘enteric canal’ represented Omaha pipelines; did that mean HNG was the fetus coming through the alimentary pipeline? Third, is the version about a resourceful news reporter who uncovered that the word meant "intestinal.”[xii] A fourth version is one board member shared the name with shareholders, but got a reply, ‘what did utilities and pipelines have to do with fecal and digestive undertones?’  A fifth antenarrative version is that “an impertinent classics professor down the road at Rice U. -- pointed out that the high-dollar consultants had somehow managed to select the Greek word related to Enteropathy, some kind of disease of the intestines (King, 2002).[xiii]  Antenarratives have a lot of trouble pinning down their narrative coherence, their main characters and plots, but here the themes converge, and the dialogs about meanings are part of the Septet-dynamics.

Whatever antenarrative version you choose, it is clear that some unnamed person found a definition like this one completely out of the question: “Enteron, the body cavity of the coelenterates, which has one opening functioning both as mouth and anus.”[xiv] A sequel to this antenarrative cluster, says the ‘Enteron’ board gave the PR firm of Lippincott & Margulies 24 hours to get a respectable name or not be paid (Saffire, 2002).[xv]  Another version of the sequel is the enterprise remained Enteron for the three days it took to find a better name (Hammel, 1997).[xvi] Another is that before the official announcement, the renaming took place at the March 6, 1986 board meeting.  From a narrative point of view, rejecting Enteron as a name choice is now antenarrative legend.

At the March 6th 1986 board meeting, a revision to the ‘Enteron’ moniker was motioned, seconded, and voted into being; ‘Enron’ succeeded the Enteron antenarrative expulsion.[xvii] Enron’s expensive consultants truncated the name, keeping the "En-" prefix to Enteron, still denoting "energy," tossing out the intestinal-“ter,” and retaining the "-ron" suffix, which meant to express vigor of people named “Ron” (as in Ron-ald Reagan?).[xviii] And Enron was a new bet that characters would enroll in the debt-saddled enterprise. Still, “in hindsight, Enteron seems right for a company of such ungoverned appetites” (Keller, 2002). Enteron is also an apt antenarrative derivative meaning to Enron, the implosion of the guts and intestines, of mouth fused to anus, in the so-called ‘New Economy.’[xix]

Enron is not yet; it is not a very “concentrated spectacle,” still needing rehearsal to find a coherent Metatheatre. Yet there are the beginnings of Metatheatre, performances staged badly to sustain a public image in the midst of crisis. There is also an Enteron-Bush connection (Re-enter David’s Ghostly father). George W. Bush's Spectrum 7 oil company had a partnership (18.75% interest) in May of 1985 with InterNorth in Martin County Texas oil drilling. That same month, InterNorth merged with Houston Natural Gas (HNG)--which gave birth to Enteron. Bush’s Spectrum 7 entered into a second deal, this time with newly named Enron, in October of 1986 until bush sold his company a month or so later.[xx] The Bush relationship to Enron began in 1985 and 1986 oil deals, continued with gubernatorial campaign contributions, then to presidential contributions.

B. Vader’s Gas Bank - A second concentrated spectacle was being reshaped within the ever-transforming Enteron-Enron enterprise. Skilling was known at the Harvard B-School to be “capable of some of the most extraordinary drama” says Jeffrey Schoenfeld, Associate Dean of Yale School of Management, who knew Skilling at Harvard (Schwartz, 2002: 1). 

Management consultant Tom Peters, who helped train Skilling at McKinsey in the late 1970s, remembers him as intelligent, determined and charismatic.  “I saw a shockingly bright guy, Peters says. “He is the classic example of a person capable of selling ice to Eskimos” (Steffy & Levy, 2002: 33).

Skilling was known as Darth Vader, a charismatic-character image he enjoyed, to the point of dressing as Vader at company functions, referring to his traders as the “storm troopers” and decorating his mansion in the black and white Enron colors, which were also Vader’s colors. Skilling was also known as “The Prince” a reference to Machiavelli. New hires were told to read “The Prince” cover to cover or be eaten alive (Schwartz, 2002: 1).  One executive reported this passage described Skilling well: "It is much safer to be feared than loved, when, of the two, either must be dispensed with" (Schwartz, 2002: 1). I have a key informant inside Enron, who has contributed to ideas I develop here.  In particular the difference between Enron front stage and back stage. My insider informant contrasted Skilling and Lay this way:

If you got into an elevator with Ken Lay, he would introduce himself. Even though everyone in the elevator knew who he was. He would reach over and shake your hand, give you an opportunity to introduce yourself. He created a caring environment.

 

When I got in the elevator with Skilling. I never once saw Skilling say anything to anyone to anybody or me on an elevator ride. It was not his way; he did not care about people (Interview, April 25, 2002).

One antenarrative is that Jeffrey Skilling came up with the “Gas Bank” strategy in 1989, while still working as a senior partner for McKinsey and Company in Houston (Kaminski & Martin, 2001: 43-44; Steffy & Levy, 2002: 32). Gerald Bennett, however, has a different pre-story; Bennett was in charge of Enron’s intrastate pipelines in 1989, and says it was his idea; Skilling grabbed idea and credit (Barnes, Barnett, & Schmitt, 2002).  Who done it, we can no longer determine.

But, whom ever the author, the dialog and emplotment  (Ricoeur, 1984) went like this: Enron would be intermediary between buys and sellers of natural gas, exploiting the spread between the buying and selling price. In this “Gas Bank” antenarrative, “gas producers” were “depositors” in the “commercial bank” and the “consumers” were the “borrowers”; “Enron” was the “bank” that “pooled the deposits” (i.e. the supply commitments) to fund long-term (15 year or more) commitment to gas buyers (the borrowers).  What happened with the Gas Bank idea is also unsettled. In one version, when Skilling presented his “Gas Bank” antenarrative to the assembled Enron Board and executives, the idea was soundly rejected.  However, in yet another version, Kenneth Lay himself decided to ignore their advice, and give Skilling a chance to make it work. Others say it was Richard Kinder, Enron's president, (and not Kenneth lay) who asked Skilling to join the company to run the new Gas Bank adventure (Barnes, Barnett, & Schmitt, 2002). Most storytellers agree that on June 29, 1990 Skilling left McKinsey to join Enron. Skilling described Enron’s Gas Bank strategy as, “get in early, push to open markets, position ourselves to compete, and compete hard when the opening comes” (Kaminski & Martin, 2001). 

In 1989, Skilling (or Bennett) also came up with a “Gas Swap” strategy, to remedy failed negotiations between Enron and a Louisiana aluminum company; Enron could not physically transport gas from its own facilities and make the Louisiana deal profitable (Kaminski & Martin, 2001). That Gas Swap strategy “called for the customer to buy gas locally, paying a floating price, and simultaneously purchase a swap from Enron in which Enron would pay the producer's floating rates and the producer would pay Enron a fixed rate” (Kaminski & Martin, 2001: 44).  The Gas Swap was a metascript-fix to the Gas Bank antenarrative; as in a commercial bank model, the Gas Swap would be equivalent to a “deposit guarantee system.”  There were glitches to the plot. The initial Gas Bank plan did not persuade gas producers to sell Enron their reserves. Enron decided to offer money upfront to entice gas producers to deliver gas, later on, at the pre-agreed price. The problem was where to get the money? 

“Be thy intents wicked or charitable?” (Hamlet’s ghost, scene IV). Enter Andrew Fastow, a finance whiz kid from Continental Bank in Chicago, who moves to Houston (which made his wife much happier, since Houston is the home of her prominent family).  In 1991, Fastow comes up with a way to get the money, a ‘partnership strategy’ called “Cactus.” Cactus partnerships took in money from banks and lent it to “energy producers energy producers in return for a portion of their existing gas reserves” (Barnes, Barnett, & Schmitt, 2002). Like the Gas Bank antenarrative, the Cactus re-scripting has disputed beginnings.[xxi] Fastow would become instrumental in the hundreds of of-the-balance-sheet partnerships the would become the Achilles heel of Enron by 2001 (See Figure 1). Fastow had a reputation as a mean-spirited manager; he was Vader’s lieutenant, and would bear down on subordinates; the other side of Fastow’s character was known among the Houston social circle set, a benefactor to the arts (along with his wife). An important antenarrative is forming at this phase of the concentrated spectacle formation; financial wizards can keep the Gas Bank alive, and stop the kind of rogue trading that the Valhalla high-stakes gamblers pioneered in 1985 (see antenarrative cluster G below).

“If you ask an outsider what industry Enron is in they will say energy. If you ask an insider they will tell you that we are in the risk management business. We provide certainty of delivery and certainty of price,” Andrew Fastow, CFO, Enron Corp (cited in Kaminski & Martin, 2001: 44).

 

Skilling and Fastow implemented a ‘Market Forward Price Curve’ method, based upon Enron’s unique knowledge of price information (from Gas depositors and customers).  Each day, every commodity-trading desk posts a single forward price curve, calculated directly from gas market prices (and used to predict the future price of gas or some other commodity).[xxii]

There were four significant changes to Enron by 1991 when Skilling and Fastow developed Gas Bank into the pre-cursor to the Energy Bank and Trading Floors. First, the bureaucratic organizational structure inherited from the Enteron (HNG/InterNorth) merger had to be reengineered; it was reduced from 15 layers of management to 4, thereby moving decision authority closer to people who possessed the knowledge. Second, Skilling changed the HRM performance review policy, to implement his infamous rank and yank system (the goal was to remove the 20% lowest performers each year).  Third, management and trading talent were recruited, primarily from Harvard and Stanford B-schools’ top graduates (luring graduates with $20,000 signing bonuses, $80 K salaries, and annual bonuses of up to 100 percent). Fourth, the risk management strategy for gas trades was changed from “experience, intuition, and estimates of potential losses” to a one-unit-sensitivity-risk analysis (for example, one basis point movement in interest rates, or one dollar move in the price of crude oil), and finally to a more sophisticated value-at-risk (VaR) approach at the portfolio level (Kaminski & Martin, 2001).[xxiii] This philosophy was combined with recruiting only those B-school grads who were high risk-takers. As we shall see, (Antenarrative Clusters E, F, and H), declining energy market fortunes by 2000, coupled with the rank-and-yank performance system, and adding the CIA/FBI spying email monitoring by the late 1990s, together with Skilling’s Machiavellian strategies and Fastow’s aggressive personality installs a macho risk-taking Enron corporate culture, and despite the ratings by Fortune, this “best place to work in America,” is back-stage, the most oppressive places to work in America.

Enron’s Gas Bank morphed in deals such as ‘Jedi LP.’ JEDI is Enron-speak for “Joint Energy Development Investments.” Jedi began in 1993 as a partnership of Enron and the California Public Employees Retirement System (Calpers), to invest in natural gas projects and assets; CalPERS invested $250 million in a partnership. In 1997, Enron bought back its stake in JEDI from CalPERS for $383 million and immediately sold it to another limited partnership called Chewco, named after the Chewbacca character in "Star Wars." Chewco was run by a former Enron executive. Then came other partnerships called LJM1 and LJM2 (both run by Mr. Fastow).   On Oct. 24 that Fastow ($30 million richer) had been replaced as CFO and put on leave. On Nov. 8th 2001 Enron decided Chewco, LJM1, & LJM2 should have been consolidated on their books since 1997, which reduced prior reported net income by $586 million. The Securities and Exchange Commission began to investigate. Enron wrote down shareholder equity by $1.2 billion when it closed out its relationships with the LJM partnerships.  There is also Kenobe Inc and Obi-1 Holdings. Off-the-balance sheet partnerships helped to hide losses of $ 2 billion each in the water and telecommunications businesses, another $ 2 billion lost in a Brazilian utility investment, and an additional $ 1 billion lost on an electricity-generating plant in India.

To summarize, we are tracing the antenarrative versions, the competing pre-stories, and in the contested, unresolved histories, to see what patterns appear.  There are emerging concentrated (Enteron and Gas Bank) spectacles, which have yet to marry with more diffuse spectacles (in the next section), and then into more integrated spectacles. There are also early, tamer versions of megaspectacle scandals (Fastow’s Cactus and Skilling’s Gas Bank try to resist being #G “Valhalla rogue oil traders” but, as we shall see, the off shore accounts and accounting practices of the rogues returns again and again to haunt Enron). Finally, in these antenarratives, there is stagecraft, showmanship, front and back stage plots and counter-plots, and the assembling of the cast of characters for a set of scripts which is still opposed by the builders of pipelines and utility buildings (see #D Mark the Shark and the building of Empire). We have only begun to describe the Metatheatre stages and players.

 

Act 2: Scene 2: DIFFUSE SPECTACLES

 

            Spectacle, in its technical definition, is oftentimes a theatric performance that as it diffuses legitimates, rationalizes, and camouflages violent and predatory production and consumption (Boje, 2001b, c, d, 2002: Scene 12; Best & Kellner, 1997 & 2000; Firat & Dholakia, 1998).

            C- Greenmail antenarrative – Taking the show on the road is a more diffuse spectacle that can draw negative revue. For example, Chairman and Founder Lay, on October 21, 1986, discovered that he had to fend off a greenmail attack of notorious Irwin Jacobs. Jacobs had invested substantial sums since 1985 in HNG/InterNorth.  This cost Enteron, make that Enron, $13 million (U.S.) premium above the stock price for his 5.1 million shares, to make Jacobs disappear. Another fellow named Leucadia amassed another 2.3 million shares. The Jacobs and Leucadia combined shares represented 16.4% of Enron’s stock. Enron paid the green mailers $47 a share; $357 million was paid to buy back a total of 7.6 million shares (paying 6% above market value and borrowing $100 million from Citibank). Michael Milken’s bond unit at Drexel Burnham Lambert arranged the financing.[xxiv] This was the beginning of many transactions with Citibank, including the financing of a power plant in India. Enron’s board sold its greenmail shares to a new employee stock ownership plan. T. Boone Pickens, Chairman of Mesa Petroleum, said a week after the buy back, “Greenmail is a symptom of weak management, and Enron's executives have folded in a big way” (cited in McGeehan, 2002).

            This is a pre-death event, a foretelling of the mega-collapse. This pre-death is a special pre-narrative, a combination of events such as changes in deregulation laws, the hostile take over by Leucadia and Jacobs, the nationalization of a Peruvian pipeline, $4.3 billon in merger debt,  and losses from Enron’s oil trading activities (i.e. in 1987 the price of natural gas was falling reacting to declining oil prices, which combined to drastically cut Enron's income). Enron reported a loss in 1987 of $29.3 million on revenue of $5.9 billion. It was this emplotment of events, a reversal of fortune, that led Enron’s management to decide their future depended upon launching new unregulated businesses. They began to listen to their consultant Jeffrey Skilling, and the more concentrated Enron spectacle script came into being. Skilling and Lay were key showmen in Enron metatheatre. It is theoretically interesting to note that, the concentrated, diffuse, integrated, and megaspectacle, each have their antenarrative tracings during this time period; in other words, they are not a linear sequence of spectacle transformations, nor are they additive; each has its own roots.

            I will make the case that the 1987 scandal is an antenarrative becomes dormant, then re-erupts in late 2001, a tragic flaw that just never quite goes away; a corporate culture that is hubris, bent on breaking the rules and misleading investors in elaborate masquerades (sometimes frauds). For example, Enron’s megaspectacle congressional hearings, SEC and Justice Department hearings, following Enron’s December 2001 bankruptcy, is pre-saged by this slightly less spectacular 1987 scandal. Unlike the 2001-2002 megaspectacle sandals, Lay was able to handle the 1987 trading scandal at a time when public attention was elsewhere (i.e. the October 1987 stock market crash).

            D- ‘Mark the Shark’ builds Global Empire Rebecca Mark (dubbed ‘Mark the Shark’) is described as “blond and tall and tone, she was sleek and fast and know how to bite” (Peraino, Murr and Gesalman (2002: 24). Wearing stiletto heels and tightly tailored size-6 Escada suits, Mark used her “Sex in the City outfits,” “her femininity” and “Harvard-honed… no-nonsense manner” and “powerful mentors” like Henry Kissinger,  “to disarm, then buffalo the men sitting across the table” (Peraino, Murr and Gesalman, 2002: 25).  Hired in 1991 as CEO of Enron Development Corporation, ‘Mark the Shark’ would become the most powerful woman in America by 1998 (age 41).

Mark the Shark used theatre to keep her image up at in Houston. She was away several months out of the year, and therefore, at least twice a year, flew home (in style) in the Enron jet, then depending upon theme, she would costume, in leather and ride in on the back of a Harley, or dress as Santa for the annual Christmas event, or ride in on an elephant, as part of a professionally scripted skit to promote her India conquests (Frey, 2002: C01). Mark, like Lay and Skilling, used Metatheatre in more ways than this.

She played her role on the global stage. Mark was tight with the World Bank, IMF, and WTO (they financed many Enron utility and pipeline deals, getting countries such as China to build pipelines and plants with special loans). While Mark courted the World Bank for support for her $2.4 billion liquefied natural gas power plant in Dabhol India, Kenneth Lay treated government politicians to gala events, and Jeffrey Skilling revved up the Mighty Man (storm trooper) force to make aggressive energy trading deals.[xxv]  These separate theatres intermingle as Enron Metatheatre.

 It is ironic that Enron, which maneuvers to pay no tax in the U.S. (four of the last five years), has their commercial interests placed at the very heart of U.S. foreign policy. A report by SEEN Sustainable Energy & Economy Network, 2002: 3), for example, documents how 21 U.S. government agencies, multilateral development banks, and other national governments gave Enron (and Mark) some very deep pockets. $7.219 billion financing toward 38 projects in 29 countries facilitated their global reach. Enron’s ties to the World Bank from 1992 to 2001 provided $761 million (tax payer dollars) in Enron support and political pressure for countries to get with Enron programs, and loss aid. Together with the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank pressured the world’s government to pursue deregulation and privatization of the power and energy sectors of the global economy. 

“She refused to fly commercial. Instead, she'd glide into Third World outposts on the Enron private jet with a retinue that included a personal hairdresser and makeup assistant” (2002: 25). The Shark devoured energy utilities and pipelines around the globe. And her tactics involved force. While U.S. news reporters gave only heroic details of Enron performance, the world press was less congratulatory.

In the Dominican Republic, eight people were killed when police were brought in to quell riots after blackouts lasing up to 20 hours followed a power price hike that Enron and other private firms initiated. The local population was further enraged by allegations that a local affiliate of Arthur Andersen had undervalued the newly privatized utility by almost $1billion, reaping enormous profits for Enron (SEEN, 2002: 3-4).

 

In India, police hired by the power consortium of which Enron was a part beat non-violent protestors who challenged the $30 billion agreement – the largest deal in Indian history – struck between local politicians and Enron (SEEN, 2002: 3). Enron’s 2,184-megawatt Dabhol power plant since 1992 has been resisted. "Free us from Enron" reads one report (Dugger, 2001: 1). Said to be the largest the largest gas-fired plant in the world has produced many anti-Enron crusaders. The Dabhol plant produced electricity that cost three times as much as competitor’s prices, and six times more than the coal-fired plant it replaced.

Enron outside the U.S. has long been a target for the forces of anti-globalization. In countries around the world, Enron was seen as a Darth Vader force (and the Shark), whose energy force came with price hikes, blackouts and sometimes brutality to repress any protestors. Despite the ‘deregulation’ means ‘market efficiency’ sloganing, in country after country, when Enron took over the market, rates for electricity skyrocketed (in Bolivia 51 to 100% or more), and countries with loans for the World Bank for Enron energy projects found their debt climbing. And Enron just hired its military security forces, or contributed more to a country’s politicians wherever they were needed to quell local rebellion. To Enron, governments and military security forces were convenient pawns in the diffuse spectacle of the globalization game. “So linked was Enron with the U.S. Government in many people’s minds that they assumed, as the late Croatian strongman Franjo Tjadman did, that pleasing Enron meant pleasing the White House” (SEEN, 2002: 3).

Enron Metatheatrics succeeded in keeping transparency, accountability, and oversight at bay. Singing their motto “world’s leading energy company,” wrapped in the U.S. flag, and supported by the World Bank, WTO, IMF, and 21 U.S. government Agencies, when Enron came calling, nations around the world beheld a diffuse spectacle mush more powerful than the pre-modern East India Tea Company. In 1996 Lay and Mark pleaded the Enron case before the World Bank annual meeting, where no poor person was invited to reply (SEEN, 2002: 11). 

I theorize that Enron’s Darth Vader corporate culture integrated with their Shark-reputation as a global trading company. In 1999, Human Rights Watch charged in a 166-page report, "The Enron Corporation: Corporate Complicity in Human Rights Violations," that Enron subsidiaries paid local law enforcement to suppress opposition to its power plant south of Bombay.[xxvi] That is the cry of Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh, the top politician in Maharashtra, one of India's most industrialized states and home to Bombay, the nation's financial capital.”  Protestors such as, Pradyumna Kaul and novelist Arundhati Roy, say the Enron deal with India was meant to generate not just power, but bribes for corrupt politicians, and that the higher rates do not benefit the public (Dugger, 2001: 1). 

Enron also built its empire abusing local people’s rights. In India, Enron hired state security forces to beat peaceful protestors, make mass arrests, prevented free assembly, and even round up suspected protestors in advance of an anticipated demonstration (Raddock, 2000).  Enron contractors systematically harassed Veldur villagers on a new construction site, calling in security and police to drag peaceful protesting women by their hair into police vans.[xxvii] Protestors in the mid to late 1990s were asking for accounting transparency, an end to bribes to politicians, and ceasing projects with demonstrated environmental damage.  The storm trooper-security forces “beat people, detained them for further physical abuse, made mass arrests, usually arbitrarily; except for a couple of minor pieces of sabotage, such demonstrations were believed to be peaceful” (Raddock, 2000). This way the protestors voice of resistance was silenced, so except few reports countered Enron’s diffusing spectacle message of ‘greatest energy company in the world.’

The Shark’s way of diffusing Enron into the global empire, did not sit will with Vader’s “Gas Bank” script for expanding the Enron empire; Mark’s plot was to construct pipelines and build power plants, including a $3 billion plant India, and smaller ones in the Dominican Republic. By 1996 Enron had $19 billion worth of power plants in over two-dozen countries.

Enron diffused and grew strong as Mark and Skilling build the two sides of Enron.  But, Mark the Shark and Skilling the Vader had a 10-year Metatheatre rivalry that some say led to the ruination of Enron by 2000; their “brutal competition” between two top executives mixed “hubris” with “pride” and “lust” that “ultimately wrecked” Enron (Peraino, Murr and Gesalman, 2002: 22, 24). This is one theory, but to me, all eight clusters in Figure 1 started to gyrate in ways that cracked the crooked E.

 Mark had a plot for Enron to be an asset-based business. Skilling preferred "asset-lite" energy trading emplotment. Skilling wanted to wipe out not just the competitions, but also his internal rivals on the stage, which included ‘Mark the Shark.’  Mark responded by making bigger deals in more countries. They represented two distinct visions of how to build Enron; each tried to impress the Enron (Star Wars) emperor, Kenneth Lay; he cleverly gave them both the green light. 

While the Shark was flying from country to country to make pipeline and utility deals, Vader slowly filled Enron headquarters with his Storm troopers. Ken Rice was one of Skilling’s top executives. Rice was having an ‘office romance’ with Amanda Martin; she was reassigned to Mark’s operation to be her aid and assistant.  Some of Mark’s colleagues suspected that Amanda was a spy for Skilling.  This suspicion was born out, when Amanda blew the whistle on Mark for overpaying for a UK water utility company, run by Mark’s fiancé.  Amanda the whistle-blower, urged Enron’s legal counsel to probe into Mark’s conflict of interest; the deal was blown. Another version, is, “according to a person close to Mark, it was Mark herself who decided to kill it (Peraino, Murr and Gesalman (2002: 28). In any event, Mark was forced out in August 2000, at a time when Enron stock was it its highest price $90.56 a share. Mark's smartest move was getting fired before the collapse. She received $82.5 million from the sale of stock.[xxviii] Skilling had won; after Mark left, water commodities, and energy plants and pipelines – hard assets – no longer fit Enron’s definition of being a virtual global trading conglomerate.

 

Act 2: Scene 3: INTEGRATED SPECTACLES

 

            In the last decade Enron’s concentrated spectacles diffused globally into more integrated spectacles, as Enron became the poster boy of deregulation (in country after country) and the heroic virtual energy-trading-corporation ruling the New Economy on the global stage. The integrated spectacle combines aspects of concentrated and diffuse spectacle (e.g. concentrated spectacle of Gas Bank and diffusion of Enron empire integrate, even after Mark departs).  Enron continues to diffuse and integrate by buying political influence, plundering world energy resources from Nicaragua to India, while presenting its corporate dramatis personae on the global stage as the New Economy-making entrepreneur and role model of environmental social responsibility, and philanthropy. It is Metatheatre at its finest. Enron's internally (not professionally) choreographed Metatheatre shows integration of its concentrated Darth Vader corporate culture with its diffuse (Shark) spectacles of Global Empire Building. “That which asserted its definitive excellence with perfect impudence nevertheless changes, both in the diffuse and the concentrated spectacle, and it is the system alone which must continue” (Debord, 1967: #70).  Here we explore two antenarrative clusters, key to Enron’s integrated spectacles: Cowboy Capitalism and Master of the Universe.

E-Cowboy Capitalism “Think strip clubs and Ferraris. Think bigger houses, better boats, and new wives. Think custom-designed vacations packaged by a company that does trips for the likes of Lyle Lovett and "Survivor II's" Keith Famie” (Frey, 2002: C01). Peraino, Murr and Gesalman (2002: 27-28) reported that Enron executives frequented Treasures, a “gentleman’s club” in Houston, and put their lap dance and drink charges on Enron credit cards. “Enron traders on their lunch break would buy a bottle of Cristal champagne (put to $575) and repair upstairs to the “VIP Room” (p. 27). Were there any sexual favors? “Said a stripper: “If a guy’s going to pay you $1,000, use your imagination” (p. 27).  In the two-tier Enron cowboy culture, executives just charged their strip club outings, while employees hid them in other accounts.[xxix]  There is a UK example of the Cowboy Capitalism cluster of antenarratives:

“ Greenwich, which became part of Royal Bank of Scotland after the takeover of NatWest… paid to take Enron executives to a Houston strip club… The bankers spent lavishly, entertaining Enron executives at venues including Treasures, Houston's largest lap-dancing club. "They took all the Enron guys. It was the way the town worked," said the former employee.  Greenwich NatWest was invited to be a founding partner of LJM Cayman --- NatWest invested $ 7.5m in LJM in June 1999 (Durman & Helen, 2002).

 

Former Enron executive Lou Pai, met his second wife in a strip club; he also cashed in his Enron stock for $270 million. Pai indulged his new wife in fine horses, purchasing a 77,500-acre ranch in Colorado. Pai was last seen trying to duck an ABC News reporter while denying that he had brought dancers from "a top Houston strip club" into Enron headquarters (Rich, 2002).

            Secretaries who traded sexual favors for positions nearer the top, were known as “French Lieutenant’s Women” Peraino, Murr and Gesalman (2002: 27).  Rebecca Mark had an affair with John Wing when he was her boss at Enron International. Skilling and Lay both divorced their first wives and married Enron secretaries. One Enron vice president told Marie Brenner, who writes in the new Vanity Fair (March, 2002), that he openly displayed at Enron headquarters, a "hottie board" to rank the sexual allure of Enron women.[xxx] Skilling got permission from the Enron Board of Directors in 1998 to date an Enron secretary, Rebecca Carter, whom insiders called “Va Voom” behind her back.  Carter was quickly promoted to executive secretary to Enron’s board of directors; her salary was raised to $600,000. Skilling married Carter in March 2002.

Skilling, Lay, and Mark built a cowboy corporate culture, one where hyper-competition reined supreme; where Skilling’s ‘Mighty Man’ force of Harvard and Stanford MBAs ruled. Hyper competition is winning by doing in your rivals so they cannot compete again. The Enron headquarters recruits dubbed their corporate culture socialization process, “Enronizing.” “Family time? Quality of life? Forget it. Anybody who did not embrace the elbows-out culture ‘didn’t get it.’  They were ‘damaged goods’ and ‘ship-wrecks,’ likely to be fired by their bosses at blistering annual job reviews know as rank-and-yank sessions” (Peraino, Murr and Gesalman (2002: 26). Skilling’s performance review committees earmarked the top 5% and the bottom 5% performers in each division (on a scale from 1 to 5). 15% of the workers each year from the “bottom” were fired each year. This is a system that inspired all kinds of concentrated spectacle, and drama. The bottom 5% who survived the rating game were sent to the Redeployment Office, known as the ‘office of shame.” They got a phone, a desk, and a chance to be rehired by some other division. To top 5% got to participate in Bonus Day, also known as Car Day, since lines of flashy sports cars were their prizes. They were invited to Mexico to race motorcycles in the famed Baja 1000, or Australia for a SUV outdoor adventure, or to Aspen for skiing. The Harvard and Stanford Ivy Leaguers believed they had made the big time with their “freewheeling” wilder the better deals; they were rewarded with bonuses “as high as $1 million” and they believed “they could reinvent not just the energy business buy the American business Model” and they thought they could “Change the World” (Frey & Rosin, 2002: C01).

In sum, it was a cowboy corporate culture that recruited the best MBAs (accounting and finance majors) from Harvard, Stanford and other Ivy League schools to become traders, accountants, and consultants; they were Enronized into the fraternity-like corporate values and norms in a winner-takes-all hyper-competitive culture. Many believed the hype of the corporate Metatheatrics. The moans of the villagers were ignored until the collapse.

            F- Masters of the Universe Enron has assembled its stages, fine-tuned its plots, integrated its spectacles, and seeks to cover over its cowboy-playboy spectacle with a mimetic of the lifestyles it imagines that the rich and the famous enjoy. Enron is being widely described as just another example of the "masters of the universe" hubris that Tom Wolfe pillories in his 1980s novel, The Bonfire of the Vanities (Broughton, 2002; Farhi, 2002; Shapiro, 2002; Williamson, 2002). Indeed, in their quest to dominate Metatheatre, and stay in the spotlight in Houston and on the global stage, Enron executives built their own Bonfire of The Vanities. It all appeared under control, and everyone wanted to feel its warmth. Enron gala events “were suitably imperial demonstrations of power, with “Tiffany glassware as door prizes and waiters standing by at all times with flutes of champagne” (Peraino, Murr and Gesalman (2002: 27). Greed is the shouting in the bond-trading room described by Wolfe as "the sound of well-educated young white men baying for money" in games of high-stakes gambling” (Wolfe quoted in Farhi, 2002). The Metatheatre played on virtual screens, but off stage and around the world, other scripts wanted to topple these Houston-stars. I want to review several fragments, then show how the attempts to integrate them unraveled.

Enron played its commercials on TV; in one a “clever young executive punctured the pretensions of a panel of windbag politicians with a single sharp word: ‘Why?’ It was supposed to be a thirty-second demonstration of the populist wisdom of electricity deregulation: Anyone could see that our legislators were arrogant fogies who kept us from having economic ‘choices’ simply because they thought they knew better than the people.”