Air (2023 movie) Artifact

Air definitely brought up some interesting ideas about company culture and ownership (of ideas, identity, and brand). Also in the experience of watching it, I discovered that Amazon Prime (like Hulu and Netflix) has added ads to the first tier. Throughout the movie a list of Nike’s principles was emphasized, but I had difficulty determining if they were meant to be positive or negative. The emphasis on perfection and the attitude encouraged seems like a lot of pressure. Ownership of ideas as a theme of this movie first stood out to me when Sonny and Phil are arguing about Sonny’s role and contribution at Nike, and Phil accuses Sonny of feeling ownership over his ideas, which he frames as negative. 

The idea of a product as a representation of an influential individual rather than the influencer representing the corporate entity feels kind of obvious nowadays (though it does still happen both ways), but I suppose it had to start somewhere. It seems very logical, (and I admired Mrs. Jordan for fighting for) the person creating the meaning of products, with their name on it to have some ownership over it and get a share of the revenue share. I was also glad to learn that this deal and Sonny’s work led to athletes being compensated for the use of their image (2014 O’bannon vs NCAA class action lawsuit). Mrs. Jordan’s speech about what would get poor kids to work and save to buy the shoes also reminded me of the Macklemore song Wings, and made me wonder how Nike rates ethically these days.

I was also interested in the origin of the name of the shoes, “Air Jordan.” Both the agent Falk and the designer Peter are shown to have come up with the name separately, but both heard by Sonny. There was some emphasis placed on this, which made me wonder if it would cause any problems about ownership over the name. I am also curious whose permission was needed to tell this story, and whose version of the story it tells, who got to decide whose story to tell? It looks like lots of different people take credit for getting Jordan to accept the deal as well.