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I.
The Good Wife. Grey’s Anatomy. Parks and Recreation. How To Get Away With Murder. At first glance, these television shows don’t seem to have a lot in common: they’re set in different cities, take place in different times, and follow completely different characters. But if we look closely, we can see they all follow a fairly similar formula. We focus on an ambitious protagonist, usually a woman, who is at the top of her highly competitive professional field. The show has one main setting where most scenes take place, like an office, a hospital, or a court of law, to establish that this character’s job is the most important component of their identity. Most of the protagonist’s friends and love interests also come out of their work––perhaps she starts dating a patient or sleeping with her private investigator––illustrating the character’s belief that a shared profession brings together like minded people, that one can find friendship, great sex, or even love if they commit enough to their job. Over the years, this formula has been tweaked and modified to fit a wide variety of popular shows such as The Office, Private Practice, Sex And The City, Succession, and more.
What brings these programs together is not plot or character but ideology: that labor is a fun, fulfilling, even entertaining experience. This messaging from popular culture starts at a young age and continues well into adulthood. Many popular television shows targeted towards teenagers completely center around school, devoting plot lines to homework assignments, college essays, and the occasional detention. Some, like Gossip Girl and Gilmore Girls, focus entire seasons on the protagonist’s desire to attend an elite university. Others, like Pretty Little Liars, take the focus on school in an even darker direction, by normalising student-teacher relationships and blurring the lines of sexual consent. On the one hand, it could be argued that these television shows are realistic––most young people do spend a good portion of their lives in school, and it’s not the worst thing that television reflects this. But, like their more adult counter parts, these programs are dangerous and manipulative in more subtle ways: in asking us to consume workplace or school-driven content even during times of leisure, pop culture has convinced us that working should consume our every thought, that all the good parts of our lives––friendship, fulfillment, sex, love––can only be byproducts of labor.
While this genre of television and film portrays a 40-hour work or school week as fun or glamorous, anyone who has actually worked for forty hours in one week would know this not to be the case. Just the other day, I was chatting with my friend Zoya, who told me she had taken to rewatching Grey’s Anatomy, a critically acclaimed medical drama following a group of chaotic yet fiercely dedicated surgeons, to unwind from studying for her MCAT. “This show is just so unrealistic,” she said. “How does Derek have time for a wife and a girlfriend and a career? It just makes no sense.” I sympathized. In high school, I watched re-runs of HBO’s Sex And The City, dreaming of the day I would move to New York City and start my own column, writing feverishly into the night after long days of shopping, fancy diners, and adventures with friends. As a writer today, scarfing down pretzels in my pajamas while desperately trying to finish too many assignments that barely pay the bills, I know that this could never be my lifestyle.
Despite the clear misrepresentation of working in popular culture, I’d be lying if I said I was never moved, comforted, or inspired by these labor narratives while watching television as a kid or an adult. Annalise Keating from How To Get Away With Murder showed me at age 14 that a Black woman could be the smartest person in every room she walked into; Daria made me feel better about being a quiet, bookish nerd. Today, as our economy crumbles and young people, myself included, become increasingly disillusioned by the idea of full-time work, I’m torn between two conflicting thoughts: has television inspired me to become the dedicated writer I am today, or has it limited my imagination of who and what I can be without labor?
II.
Historically, much of this work-centered film and television content followed a male protagonist, just as most media has followed male protagonists throughout history. Throughout the 1900s, classic films such as Woody Allen’s Manhattan, Fargo, and A Few Good Men glorified the male writer, cop, and lawyer respectively, bestowing glamour and importance upon the protagonist’s lives and careers. In more recent years, however, there has been an explosion of television shows and movies following women in the workplace. In the 90’s, films like Nine To Five and The First Wives Club broke the mold by normalizing the narrative of the working wife or mother. In the 2010s, television shows like Grey’s Anatomy, The Good Wife, and How To Get Away With Murder championed ambitious, power-hungry female protagonists and fed into the “girl-boss” narrative of a woman who could truly have it all: a satisfying love life, a supportive family and friends, and of course, a skyrocketing career. Importantly, in all of these shows, the protagonist gained “it all” because of her job: Keating found her love interest through work, and Grey’s Anatomy’s Meredith Grey and Christina Yang became best friends while working 48-hour shifts together as first-year medical residents.
Figures like Annalise Keating or The Good Wife’s Alicia Florrick are often fed as inspirational icons to their female audience, a reminder of the political, economic, and even social goods that will befall upon women who commit to their career. Despite the ubiquity of this girl boss image of a woman seamlessly balancing friends, a love life, and a job, relationships that fulfill both professional and personal needs do not exist in reality nearly as much as television would like us to think. A 2019 study from Olivet University on workplace relationships found that when asked to place people they worked with into different categories, 41% of respondents said “coworkers”, 22% said “strangers”, and only 15% said “real friends.” What’s more, people in more traditionally “high power” careers such as law or healthcare reported to have less friends at work overall due to the long hours and increased stress, indicating that Meredith and Christina’s friendship, though adorable, would likely not translate into reality.
Despite how exhausting and isolating this work-life balancing act can be, Hollywood tends to make this struggle for balance seem not only normal, but fun. In the classic 2001 film Legally Blonde, for example, the protagonist Elle, a sorority girl with no previous academic endeavors, works day in and out to get into Harvard Law School so that she can win back her ex-boyfriend Warner. After weeks of non-stop studying, Elle gets into Harvard with a 179 on her LSAT, prompting her iconic line, “what, like it’s hard?” after Warner’s incredulous response. Though Legally Blonde is a comedy, the film still pushes forth a dangerous mindset, suggesting that a woman undergoing intense labor for romantic or sexual gratification is not only acceptable, but entertaining. Elle’s flippant response that studying for her LSAT wasn’t hard too illustrates how extreme labor should come naturally to us. In the end, Elle does not end up with Warner but instead becomes engaged to another man she meets at Harvard, once more demonstrating Hollywood’s insistence that commitment to school or work can fulfill other aspects of our lives, such as romance. Amazingly, Legally Blonde reportedly inspired many women to become lawyers in the early 2000s, illustrating again the profound effect that labor narratives can have on the public.
Just as labor narratives in popular culture tend to gloss over the nuances of being a working woman, they similarly disservice the realities of race and class. While many television shows spend an inordinate amount of time focusing on and glorifying working, they have an unrealistic depiction of how working professionals earn or spend money. In Friends, Monica, a chef, and Rachel, a part-time waitress, share a beautiful, spacious two bedroom apartment in downtown Manhattan. In Sex And The City, Carrie, a weekly columnist, has a one-bedroom apartment in New York. Both shows found a quick work around to briefly and quietly address the improbability of these living situations––Monica inherited her apartment from her grandmother, and Carrie’s apartment is, blessedly, rent-controlled. In both cases, the television show made a point to glamorize labor while conveniently sidestepping the realities of rent and other expenses under capitalism.
Television is further committed to a demonization of working class professions or lifestyles such as drug use or the sale of sex. Throughout the late 1900s and early 2000s, media often whitewashed or vilified those who sold drugs or sex for a living, reflecting commonly accepted societal norms. More recently, contemporary shows like Broad City, which follows two best friends’ comedic hijinks in Brooklyn, and High Maintenance, which chronicles the life of a loveable weed dealer in New York City, refreshingly side step an obsession with traditional professionalism and opt instead to commending hedonism, portraying a slower pace of life and the protagonist’s constant desire for fun and adventure. Both shows also highlight nontraditional jobs and lifestyles: Abbi on Broad City is an artist and High Maintenance focuses on a drug dealer, two professions which, like sex work, are often devalued under capitalism as they allow for the monetization of pleasure. As a viewer, I appreciate both program’s ability to provide highly compelling narratives without focusing on a particular career. However, I can’t help but feel irked by the archetype of the goofy, white characters who are allowed to roam free without devoting their lives to labor––I doubt HBO would happily greenlight a TV show following a Black drug dealer, for instance. Though they represent progress, Broad City and High Maintenance are also proof that even in its most progressive form, pop culture reproduces the narratives that Black bodies are only as valuable as the labor they can produce.
III.
By now we’ve established a clear correlation between cultural norms around work and the way they are represented in popular media. But a deeper examination helps illuminate how television not only reflects our societal norms, but helps create them. Hollywood has been invested in shaping our cultural consciousness for decades, both outwardly and in secret. During World War II, the U.S. Office of War Information had a unit dedicated exclusively to Hollywood, and between 1942 and 1945, the Bureau of Motion Pictures reviewed 1,652 scripts, revising or discarding anything that portrayed the U.S. unfavourably. Notably, the 1942 classic film Casablanca was one of such films that passed the inspection. There are also several recorded instances where a government official had a direct hand in green-lighting or shaping a political film: in 1940, President Franklin Roosevelt urged comedian Charlie Chaplin to direct and star in The Great Dictator, a comedy that satirized and greatly downplayed the violence of Adolph Hitler. While these heavy handed moves can qualify as propaganda, Hollywood has also used more subtle tactics, such as subliminal messaging, to get their points across. In 1957, a movie theater in New York repeatedly flashed the slogans "drink Coca-Cola" and "eat popcorn" throughout a movie too fast for conscious perception by the human eye and later reported an 18.1% increase in popcorn sales and a 57.7% increase in Coke sales as a result. Though audiences might not know they were being advertised to, Hollywood was fully aware of its affect: Elmer Davis, who ran the Office of War Information during World War II, was once quoted as saying, “the easiest way to inject a propaganda idea into most people's minds is to let it go through the medium of an entertainment picture when they do not realize they're being propagandized,” according to CBC.
Whether it’s outright or subliminal, messaging from television and film can greatly contribute to our cultural and societal perception. This explains why many marginalized groups, such as Black people, queer people, and mentally ill people, have fought so hard for more representation on TV; when a specific group is painted in a favorable light in television, this image becomes normalized in reality as well. But just as Hollywood can normalize things for good, pop culture often wields its power to make bigotry, cruelty, or violence appear normal. In recent months, we’ve seen an uproar at the decades-long epidemic of “copaganda”, or the normalization and glorification of police officers in popular televisions shows like Brooklyn 99, Chicago PD, Blue Bloods, and Law and Order. Recent data from The Hollywood Reporter indicates that in 2019-20, there were 19 crime shows on the broadcast networks, representing just under 20 percent of the 97 scripted shows that aired during the September-to-May season, illustrating how pervasive this pro-cop messaging has become. Just as copaganda from Hollywood contributes to a pro-cop societal narrative, media that promotes or glorifies working similarly diminishes public imagination on what a joyful or fulfilling life could look like without labor. Shows with labor-focused narratives, such as The Big Bang Theory, tend to be the most successful on network television, demonstrating the scale of Hollywood’s influence.
Just as television contributes to a pro-labor or pro-police mentality, it also invests in disparaging those who are vocally oppositional towards our government or other powerful institutions. Alarmingly, this anti-radical messaging is hyper-present in media that is targeted towards young people. In grade school, I remember watching the cult-classic 2000s sitcom That 70’s Show almost every afternoon and feeling most drawn to the character of Stephen Hyde, an anarchist and political contrarian known for one liners like “fuck the US government” or “the Feds are probably listening in,” and who once proclaimed the “real three branches of the US government” to be “military, corporate, and Hollywood.” Despite Stephen’s strong beliefs, the show often used him as a prop or the butt of a joke, weaponizing his age, low level of education, and drug use to discredit his political ideals. At the time, I internalized this message, believing that if I expressed controversial political views, I too would be made fun of, or thought of as uneducated. While That 70’s Show’s treatment of Stephen could perhaps be written off as harmless, it also has impact, especially on children, the target audience of the show. According to a 2017 study from Yale University, media that young people consume can greatly affect many decisions they make during adolescence including what products to buy, what political beliefs to align with, and what age they decide to begin partaking in drugs or having sex. Hollywood’s portrayal of anarchists as stupid, lazy, or conspiracy theorists, particularly in media for younger audiences, is intentional: it furthers the narrative that labor should drive every facet of our life, and anyone who opposes this system is an unfit or unproductive member of society.
IV.
Whether by choice or by design of the failings of capitalism, we are currently entering an anti-work moment unencountered in America’s recent history. At its peak, the national unemployment rate was 16%, even higher than during the Great Depression, and even for those who are currently working, the conditions look drastically different: as work from home becomes the norm, fewer people are working in offices, causing workplace culture to dramatically change. These are labor conditions that popular culture did not prepare us for. Without steady employment or the reliable backdrop of a cubicle, we are suddenly being forced to ask ourselves questions the likes of Meredith Grey and Carrie Bradshaw never had to think of: who am I aside from my job? How can I find friends, love, and fulfillment outside of my employment? How can I be happy?
We often talk about representation on TV in the same way we speak about representation in politics: flimsily, or as an acceptance of symbolism rather than actual progress. Even my favorite Black TV shows that I love and appreciate––Living Single, Insecure, Dear White People, and more––still adhere to an inherently capitalist value system, celebrating the protagonist’s ability to enter or thrive in white spaces and emphasizing each character’s desire to advance academically and professionally. For me, real representation on television would include characters who oppose capitalism, who are anti-work, and who are actively seeking joy, love, and fulfillment outside of labor or any traditional markers of professionalism. In a way, my frustration with Carrie’s lifestyle on Sex And The City is also an aspiration: a hope that one day, I too can live off one article a week, and spend the rest of my time with loved ones, in nature, making art, and in rest.
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