by Jacob Rose.
Looking for a film career? Sure. We all know the comments of ‘Networking Networking Networking’ and getting your foot in the door until it bleeds and swells up from the amount of times its been crushed.
Looking for a ‘Film Career’ though? You’ve got a whole new area to look into.
The jobs that our favourite film characters hold might not be what pulls us in. Somehow, I don’t think we’d be queueing up outside the cinemas if Dicaprio’s character had to work in a Mcdonalds for half the runtime to afford his habits.
That being said, they do hold an important role, don’t they? Without them, those fun characters become some trust-fund raised gods, free to enact all desires with no work. Considering we already have those types of people in our lives (your assumption as to who will almost certainly be correct), it’s not too much of an escape.
So, how do we confront our own working lives in the films we see?
In this article, we’ll attempt to decipher this riddle, mainly focusing on the balance between two sides of the debate of what work ‘is’. Both Hating and Loving your job too much within this media can be seen to have adverse effects on representation, which must be confronted in order to find a more ‘realistic’ representation of our work.
We’re all familiar with the feeling of being drained by work, being trapped in that system. The classic image is that of the 9 to 5 office job, hunched workers typing away - clearly not a utopia to want yourself in.
A trademark of the fictional career is to amplify this feeling of boredom. The character at work becomes almost chained by their collar and their desk. It is automatically that dead end job that you fear you’ll get at 30 where you have casual fridays (t shirts not allowed) and a boss whose voice simultaneously sends you to sleep and boils your blood.
This kind of mundane hell acts as a springboard. The arrow can only go back so far before it bursts from its holding place, right into the action we want just as much as the protagonist. The latest hit Everything Everywhere All at Once (Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, 2022) even centres its opening act around the tax issues of a laundromat, as a placeholder for its bright absurdism to burst through.
It’s quite a surprise, at least personally, that we’re allowed the luxury to hate our jobs. When it’s placed in cinematic perspective, the reflection of mundanity surely paints a bleaker picture for those living in similar situations, without Laurence Fishburne to guide them into a new life. is it allowed by such big production companies purely because we expect it not to impact us? Is it expected to hate your career, with the delights of potential exciting extracurricular activities being what helps us grind through it?
While the presence of the white-collar job in our media can help display a key feeling within people’s lives, it hardly ever does much with it. It’s a backdrop for something fresh to happen, leaving all those who live in these settings behind - part of the background. Left behind.
The capitalist mantra of just grinding through your mundane work life does have an opposing mantra. After all, some people just adore their jobs. Some people can’t get enough of it, in fact.
Our main symbol of the loving workforce in films are figures of authority. With the onslaught of hits like James Bond , the “Has Fallen” series or Marvel films , we view figures with the ability to act freely to ‘efficiently’ do their jobs. They work outside of their payroll to do what they can, and won’t let any filthy slackers get in their way. They save people after all! How could you hate this policeman? He’s saving lives!!
This line of work, in the lens of a cinema camera, seems to sideline any adverse effects of work. It wouldn’t make a great story, after all, if the bomb defusal expert sat by to think of himself instead of following that lead to foil the Foreigners. ‘Lazy’ co-workers, usually while eating a mar bar, will act as the voice of this style of comfort, telling our heroes to just go home. In the face of their duty, though? These heroes could never.
Trauma, injury and exhaustion do bare their teeth in army films, police thrillers and the like, but they are overcome for the job. Personally (and I hope not just personally), this seems to speak to the image of masculinity that prioritises physicality over mentality. The ‘job’ takes an abstract authority, dictating the laws of when to stop (if ever) and when to push further, hoping to get that one step further to solve their job. They are almost perpetuated by themselves, the last Policeman saving a child inspiring the next Policeman to save that child.
Our perspectives on what it feels like to have these careers, sadly, mostly comes through this kind of media. Real voices are hardly heard because of the authority these roles are expected to uphold. Instead, we see the failures. The children lost to the poor actions of people filling these roles.
Events displaying the dangers of humans in positions of authority sting more in contrast to the depictions of workers (usually men) who let their work define them. Their lives, their biases in racial and sexual contexts, their failures, are hardly lingered on. Instead, their determination is rewarded with success. That abstract authority proves itself correct.
It’s a true shame that, due to its position as an action staple, we haven’t breached this trope, at least in the mainstream light, yet. With any film that features the US army, for example, the overseeing control that certain divisions place on maintaining a ‘good light’ reduces this ability piece by piece. Failure can’t fit within a goal of recruitment.
In discussing two instances of worklife being portrayed in ways that damage and bleakly reflect our own life, it’s only fair to turn the tables.
Tommy Wiseau’s The Room (Tommy Wiseau, 2003) has a bad reputation. I get it. I don’t think I need to say I get it. But one thing I think it does amazingly is depict the lead’s job.
He isn’t shown at work, in a bank, at all. But we hear it in some awfully great lines. A story he tells about his experience moving to San Francisco deviates into a minor explanation of his cheque knowledge. His discussion of his day delves into client confidentiality. It’s weird. It’s awkward. It’s also, kind of, life.
In some potentially better examples, Wim Wenders has consistently knocked it out of the park when it comes to presenting careers. Two shining examples come from An American Friend (Wim Wenders, 1977) and Paris, Texas (Wim Wenders, 1984) .
The former depicts Bruno Ganz as a frame-maker. Art is always near, always nicely desired, but never made personally. His closeness to his career is close enough to be physical, being a few corridors away from his bed, but it certainly isn’t skintight. It doesn’t eliminate the need for more in this world, with monetary and mortal influence creating a push for the classic alternative career of murder.
The latter film depicts Dean Stockwell, main male support, at work in the delightful tropic. At least until the billboard is moved from behind him, demonstrating his true role as head of a billboard manufacturing company. This classic little trick does set a nice image of this career, always in the presence of some grand attempt to pull the eye. It doesn’t magically come to help him or his brother in rediscovering those absent from their lives; instead, it’s just there. It is a setting that can’t be ignored for the goals of the film, because it is both a mundane and important feature of life. It’s work.
In capturing this side of life realistically, even when choosing the more…niche…of career paths, all three films demonstrate how work as a continuous, constant experience affects us. It isn’t really a positive - there’s never a moment where they drain themselves of life to fulfil a bank client’s wishes - but it remains. Their journeys are weighed down by the time they must spend in these places to live. No matter how closely they admire the fruits of their labour, it’s still labour. It’s still affective.
Realistic depictions of work may not seem too necessary. They might seem to get in the way of what really needs to be told for the sake of story. It’s true that they wouldn’t work in every film, but they do set a precedent. A balance between the dialled up mundanity and overt determination shows more than anything (especially more than this article) the flaws in maintaining these extremes.
Especially when we’re all worn out by work, exhausted by labour and mental strain, our media - our form of, for a lot of the public, escape - has an important role when it comes to representing an attached feature of life. As we move from working against the clock, we can hope to find ourselves enjoying reflections of our lives, rather than fearing what they might hide.
by Jacob Rose, June 2022.