Transcript
Speaker: yeah, what did you think of Clockwatchers? I watched it two nights ago, but i was it was straight after work, ironically. ah it' was completely exhausted and I fell asleep halfway through and woke up to the last scene where she's burning the notebook.
Speaker: So had to rewatch it again today just before this podcast. So yeah, I've just sat down and finished it. And I have to say, I am currently twining bits of straw together to form a rope.
Speaker: And I am tying a noose in said rope and I'm finding a weight bearing beam somewhere in my apartment to sling said rope over. um Yeah, it was an excellent film, artfully shot, really touching, but also incredibly depressing. Yeah. Possibly the most depressing on film I've seen this year.
Speaker: Do you like it more than Office Space? Because i I think it sort of deserves a higher spot than Office Space because it's kind of the same. Yes. Yeah, i think I do like it more than Office Space because I think Office Space offers it. It's like it's a male fantasy, right? Like it's just sort of manifestation of fantasy in the sense that like Office Space is what I imagine I would want to do when I hate work. But probably Clockwatch is as close as reality, right? Yeah.
Speaker: We'll, of course, cover this later. But there, are you know, one attempt at like actual resistance completely crumbles immediately. they They can't even go on their four-person strike. Yes.
Speaker: They wouldn't have even done anything, but nonetheless, they can't even complete the task that would accomplish nothing. But it kind of like its emphasis on kind of like this slightly unmoored, slightly hazy, dreamlike, drifting nature. Yeah, I felt was really sort of impactful when and very scary.
Speaker: ah Well, it it covers why you fell asleep while you tried to watch it for the first time. you know, the sort of the exhaustion that any kind of nine to five sort of imparts to you. For the listeners at home, I have just started a new job and Sam is you know relatively new in a position.
Speaker: so I think both of us feel a particular affinity for this film at this time, even if we're thinking of it as a Gen X movie, because it it really is a movie about like the like even the fact that you find out like a third of the way through that the music you're hearing in the background is diegetic.
Speaker: like they are actually just listening to elevator music in the office all the time. Yeah. I have to say, like it was both very visceral and resonant in the sense that all of my frustrations with the working world and work were represented in the film. But at the same time, I had to sort of take a step back and kind of go, put on my Marxist materialist you know cap and sort of go, well, in some senses, I am like...
Speaker: I am this worker, I am an office worker, i'm a white collar, kind of like yeah working stiff need to far stiff, but at the same time, like I'm sort of like the aristocracy of this this um this cohort, right? Like in the sense that I sort of thought about it and went, yeah, I understand a lot of the frustration, a lot of the boredom, a lot of the sort of like resentment of the absurdity of promotions and the lack of like merit recognition of merit.
Speaker: But at the same time, we'll have to editor, please cut that out. i have a name, you know. Yeah, at the same time, right like I did like check myself and kind of go, well, I don't have a boss like in the office like every single day leaning over my neck. um The work I do is like much more like socially connected to impact.
Speaker: now yeah I can stick headphones in and listen to music or a podcast while I'm working if I want to. I'm much more autonomous in my work. And yet at the same time, it still feel felt viscerally real to me.
Speaker: So I was trying to unpick that throughout the film. Like, is this just like a function of like post-Fordist office work? Yeah. No matter where you lie on the sort of hierarchy of autonomy.
Speaker: Or I guess my question was like, is this this this ah deep sense of ennui and like frustration, just the temps or like, oh, the kind of like executive, junior executives in the corner offices also sort of going through the same thing.
Speaker: Well, that, Death is a Photograph, Culture at the End of History. Co-host Chase Beduzniak here with co-host Sam McAlegan. We were talking clock watchers. You mentioned the fact that there's this post-Fortis thing going on, or like there's this weird... There's a moment early in the movie where they're stapling reports, our main character is stapling reports, and she doesn't do it at the right angle. right She's like, oh no, it has to be perfectly diagonal, right or it doesn't count.
Speaker: as if the guys reading these reports are ever going to pay attention to the way that it's stapled. And I think in a contemporary office, it's sort of difficult to imagine that, which does... Yeah, it creates a very different relationship to work. There's a clear like authoritarian, kind of 1984-style relationship to the bosses in a movie like this that does feel a little out of place for now. We're pre-the Google Reformation, if I can put it in those terms. Yeah, I mean, there's still like an element of the Fordist assembly line. It's sort of transferred from blue-collar manufacturing into the kind of more feminized, white-collar, pink-collar world of like secretarial work, right? Yeah. like it's still very like process orientated. It's like, fill out this form, stamp these forms, put the seal on them, photocopy them 20 times, do it again.
Speaker: So it's, yeah, it's, it's a, it's an interesting my period to like, look at the, the world of work, right? Like, um, in the sense that it's a kind of in a ah period of transition where you start to have like elements of automation, elements of like the internet, but it still kind of feels pre-internet. I mean, this is from 1997, so it is post-internet, but it's it's yet to sort of really catch up.
Speaker: Well, at the very beginning of the movie, Toni Collette, who plays our main character, Iris, who's a temp at this credit company, she comes in ah she's asked to wait quietly until someone tells her what to do, and then she ends up sitting there for two hours,
Speaker: until the mom from that 70s show comes up and is like, why are you sitting here? What's wrong with you? um But the first thing she has to do is transcribe these reports, take these written reports, and enter them into a form that exists. And she's told, you know don't screw them up. The forms are expensive. And of course, she immediately screws them up. But to your point, what does she use? She uses a typewriter two put the reports into the forms, right to to ensure that it's like lined up correctly. Most of the rest the movie, she's using a desktop computer.
Speaker: So even sort of within the world of the office, you can see the transition in the technology happening in real time, where she has access to both the word processor and the old technology. Yeah. i mean i think it's even like the it's it's like pre I think it's interesting in kind of idea the the office space, to to steal the term.
Speaker: Three years later, and they could easily be working in like an open-plan office with beanbags, a ping-pong table, and everyone everyone's in jeans and T-shirts. It's pre-Silicon Valley. It's pre the boomers, the kind of later boomers, people like Steve Jobs, whatever, take really sort of like leaving their mark on the office office culture. like I assume at this point like it's still already dominated by the silent generation at the top level.
Speaker: And yeah, so it's still very hierarchical. Yeah, mean, it'd be interesting sort of compare and contrast to like so many like big films of the 90s feature like The Office, right? Like Office Base, The Matrix, ah Fight Club.
Speaker: It's a kind of abiding motif of this period. I wonder why it's this period in particular of so sort of negatively obsessed with with The Office. Yeah, i well, I think we get some of that or why that becomes a concern in the movie.
Speaker: And I realize we haven't said we're covering um Clock Watchers written and directed by Joel Sprecher, which is a really delightful movie if you haven't seen it. I i really think it it is sort of like the women's experience answer to office space and in some ways much better. But it seems to me the obsession with the office comes from the obsession with work, right? So Toni Kletz, our main character, she meets these other three women, played by Parker Posey, ah Lisa Kudrow, and Alana Ubach is the other one.
Speaker: And their problem is that they're temps, right? they're they They can't actually get permanent jobs because they never stay anywhere long enough to build relationships and get a recommendation to get an actual job, which in itself is very interesting because the idea, like now...
Speaker: The ability to get work experience is the question. you know not Obviously, you assume you'll get a recommendation out of the work experience. But the idea of being stuck in this limbo where you're sort of forced to work but don't get the opportunity to go further because you know the guy in the glass room on the side of the office doesn't give it to you is, think, a little strange. But to your point... Well, it's quite resonant with another so yeah another sector, not the credit card companies, but academia has become kind of the site of this.
Speaker: Yes, that is that is very much true. I mean, I think it's interesting. That's something that I sort of started thinking about almost immediately when you enter the the situation this kind of work structure of tents, right?
Speaker: Whereas in the 90s, it used to be this kind of contingent slice of the labor force, kind of what you might call lower clerical workers, right? Which like they could kind of get away with doing this. It's now become like in the discourse around what you might call zero-hour contracts or ah adjunct professors or whatever, like, ah you know,
Speaker: non-tenure track contracted work that's like not full-time or whatever. Like it's very much become a discourse. It's become a discourse in prestigious cultural industries, academia, film, TV, journalism, less so, because they have the freelance model, but also I guess, I suppose journalism. And it's also become a discourse at the other end, e.g. gig work, right? So like Uber, yeah ah Deliveroo, Just Eat, like fast food delivery, whatever. Yeah.
Speaker: So it's just I just think it's interesting that this kind of model has kind of, eat it like a cancer, has kind of spread to what you might call the elite of professional work and also kind of like the underclass work as well.
Speaker: So it's going to be very much are living all living in the world of temps. Well, and there's there's even this amazing moment early on where they're eating lunch and they realize that she's a temp because she's eat it she's allowed to eat with them.
Speaker: You know, like they they basically say they don't like the permanence in the temps meddling with each other or having anything to do with each other. They're genuinely treated as temporary, of course, in the job sense, but also in the sense that like no one should get to know them because there's no point because they'll all be How do i phrase this? A close friend of mine worked for a prestigious left liberal newspaper in the UK, which shall remain unnamed, for five years as a contract worker.
Speaker: And yeah, he he like lived in this Kafka-esque... He was a temp at this newspaper, effectively, even though he was pulling in like a professional-level salary, like quite a high salary. They refused to give him a contract.
Speaker: And he had to sign in at the door of the office every single day for five years to get into the office. the company forced him to take two months of holiday in a in one block every year because otherwise if he didn't do that, they'd have to give him benefits. oh my god And when they had summer Christmas and summer parties in on the lawn outside their office, they would like point back and refuse invite him and he'd have to like work from his office and watch them all that drinking champagne in the garden. but um So yeah this is this is this is alive and well.
Speaker: Well, then then we can call it sort of a it's a premonition of things to come. But I do think the obsession with work, like as ah as the locus for all these movies, you get a taste of why that is from Tony Kled, our main character, Iris.
Speaker: her father who really wants her to go into sales and she very clearly does not want to go into sales. He's just of sort of death of a salesman type ripoff, isn't he, as a character? Yeah, he just comes in and is like, oh, you know, you got you got that big interview coming up You're going to need the interview suit. You know, what does he call it Like a special suit or a superstar so suit? A power suit.
Speaker: Power suit. going look good in this power suit doll. think that's one of the interesting things about this film is actually, and this is kind of quite Gen X, right, is that we are in a sort of post-second wave feminist moment in the sense that all of the parents of these young women are very, very interested in their careers, are interested in them doing well.
Speaker: Like, there's no sense of like, oh, well, you can just pack pack it in and become a housewife. Like, you can pack yeah you don't need to care about this because you'll be married in two years' time. Like, pretty much everyone in the main female character's parents are like very, very concerned about them being tempted. They want them to have better careers.
Speaker: So and that's an interesting sort of dynamic to the film, right? Well, and the one exception to that is the Jane character who is dating this sort of like He's got a sports car, he's constantly giving her gifts, but also like fails to show up for dates constantly, is like clearly a total shithead. He's seen at one point by Parker Posey's character, Margaret, in a car with another woman. And so the only character who's actually facing marriage, or who has this kind of out into being something like a trophy wife, within the world of the movie, it's very much...
Speaker: a delusion, right? um Like the relationship is sort of a fraud yeah and everyone seems to understand it. Even Jane herself seems to understand it because at the bridal shower we see her sort of like lying in bed in a mirror kind like staring off into the distance while the party is happening, suggesting that she sort of knows she's going through with it because of what it is, but also it represents a kind of escape. It's just a very unsatisfying form of escape, you know, from the workplace.
Speaker: in In a way that You'd expect, i don't know, yeah, you're in in another kind of movie, in a pre-Gen X movie, you'd expect that to be the, you know, you work in the office, and then actually you marry the the boss, you know, the editor, the CFO, whatever, and that gives you your way out, right? But in this, it's someone from outside the company. The one character who does try and kind of butter up someone at the company is Parker Posey, Margaret, who, excuse me, Sam, I don't know if you're a big Parker, I'm a very big Parker Posey fan. I think she is
Speaker: phenomenal. She is so funny in this movie. ah Just the like little things she does with her hands. like She's playing with the breath spray and just starts making a torch out of it with a lighter and spraying it all over the office for fun.
Speaker: But she decides she's going to butter up Balaban, another phenomenal character actor who I love seeing and stuff. And he's amazing because all he does is wander around the office totally helplessly. Like just, he's like, I i can't find this thing and I don't know where it is. and then allll Tell my wife that I'm running 15 minutes late and that I've already left, but I haven't. I'm doing it anyway.
Speaker: like does any tell He tells her at one point, he stops in the middle of telling her, like, I need 30 copies of this and my coffee mug where my coffee mug is. And then he stops and is like, oh, your hair looks really nice to ah to another woman. And then he's like, find out what perfume she's wearing and let me know what it is. like Just totally just like super neurotic and stressed, but also like totally incompetent.
Speaker: But it's it's an odd monange of different types of male authority figures because he's he's very much like this nebbish Woody Allen type. But then he's also got like a mug of a sort of woman in a bikini. So you're supposed to kind of think he's a kind of toxic misogynist or whatever. but Well, he's in the birthday book.
Speaker: Huh? He's in the Epstein birthday book. I mean, that's like that's a classic Epstein birthday book guy. You know what i mean? and Yeah, he is giving off Epstein birthday books. Like, he's writing one of those letters, you know? But he... I just wanted to get in there, for those who haven't seen it. Bob Balban, character actor.
Speaker: I think son of a big publishing family, if I remember correctly. But he... directed a movie that I will strongly recommend to everyone out there called Parents, which for a man who has mostly acted as like a nebbishy kind of executive or literary agent sort of person in movies, it is a very bizarre 80s horror movie filmed in a totally surreal style about a kid who becomes convinced that his parents are cannibals.
Speaker: But it's like, that sounds much more slasher-esque or something than the movie is. It's genuinely like him being alone in his room and it's, you know, over lit and really scary.
Speaker: And then i'll just hear like ravenous animal eating sounds and find like a hand in the refrigerator. But then every time he actually tries to check, everything is totally fine. You know, he can never actually prove anything is wrong. So sort of Bo is afraid kind of movie if i had to, ah if i had to pin it as something, but.
Speaker: We're talking about clock watchers, so let let the recommendation be what it is. It was interesting in the way it intersects with the slacker idea as well, right? like None of these characters, apart from him Lisa Kudrow's character, who desperately wants to be an actress,
Speaker: sort of sort of taking her out the picture, of the the other three characters, like it's fairly unclear whether they went to college. None of them really express like high level of ambition. They're they're not strivers, right? Like they're not like, oh, I need to be like a corporate lawyer or I have, or even in a creative sense, they're like, oh, want to be a novelist and I'm just sort of here biding my time. I think lot Hollywood, it's often when they depict these kind of workaday, prosaic, nine to five situations,
Speaker: There's always an out, right? There's always... At least Akudra has that. She's like you know working stiff, but she's just dreaming of being an actress. The rest of them kind of just like want to be made permanent. That's about the limit of their ambitions, which I actually found quite touching. i mean, it was very depressing, the lack of ambition, but also quite touching in the sense that... like in a kind of, um yeah, this, this, this like quite like communitarian sense of the dignity of work, right. That like, you don't, you shouldn't have to have these kind of like transgressive or transcendent ambitions to be afforded dignity and meaning like on an everyday level.
Speaker: um And I, yeah, I kind of appreciated that about the movie that like, you don't, yeah, that characters who lack ambition should still be afforded like dignity and meaning. That's a, I think a very good point. Cause I hadn't,
Speaker: I guess that hadn't occurred to me. i had thought of the movie. i mean, you're completely right. The narrator for the movie is the Iris Toni Collette character, and it's pretty sparse narration, but most of it is about her kind of learning to assert herself at all. She starts off the beginning this looking like sort of a bug person, very frumpy, you know, sort of just like punched in on herself.
Speaker: And it's through her interactions, especially with the margaret with Margaret, the Parker Posey character, that she sort of learns to experiment with her own agency in various situations.
Speaker: So, you know, by the end, as Sam said, she's burning this notebook, which is this symbol for her ability to stand up for herself or break with the past, so on and so forth, because it's her notebook where she's been, you know, basically like ah diary, more or less.
Speaker: And i I hadn't thought of that as ah as a social phenomenon, but you're right. It's sort of How do I, if I'm going to be trapped in this world of work, and I don't seemingly have stronger ambitions than that, the ambition that remains is sort of to be a dignified person who can stand up for themselves, say it is that what they want to say in a given situation, and you know maybe steal the occasional plastic green monkey from the bar.
Speaker: you know just to assert who i am as a person and give myself some individuality well we should we should come to the sort of uh fifth character the sort of the b-track character who sort of could have become one of the gang and doesn't yeah cleo yeah because yeah it's an interesting dynamic the kind of the the quiet acts of resistance in the film to the kind of laboriousness of work right like Yeah, like from Eddie building like a giant elastic band ball to Margaret scratching slogans into her desk. They're all these like kind of quiet... I know, it's art. and Eddie is the mailboy. It's art. Exactly, yeah, yeah. and Well, like yeah Eddie has these small moments too. away He's like wearing Hawaiian shirt and he's kind of like riding the postal cart while like pushing onto to it and like sitting on it. And he's in the Hawaiian shirt and he's like whistling, right? Yeah. These small moments resistance.
Speaker: What is interesting is that the person who takes this to the most extreme level and like seems to like feel the need to ah like quietly assert their presence is the richest that the person who actually doesn't need the job.
Speaker: Yeah, Clio. Which is Clio. So Clio is a temp who is automatically made an executive assistant after one day. Yeah. yeah like For inexplicably arbitrary reasons. Like no one can tell it like she's just given the, which is quite close to real life, I think.
Speaker: Well, she has like two lines in the entire movie. Like most of her communication is her writing notes. She'll say things like, i like your hair or I like your notebook, or she'll put a note down that says, I'm sorry, but she's basically totally silent as a character.
Speaker: Yeah, so she's even more like beaten down and nervous than um the Toni Collette character, Iris. And yeah, Iris, after she discovers c Cleo is the thief, and so there's a sort of B-plot the film is that things are continuously going missing and the temps are the first sort of source of suspicion.
Speaker: They take away their cubicles that they can watch them on a security camera in the middle of the floor. Yeah, it devolves into panopticon style. Who's the utilitarian philosopher? Oh, God. You're thinking of ah Bentham?
Speaker: Yes, but yeah, it turns into a Bumphamite panopticon. But yeah, so Cleo is the one who, eventually Iris discovers that Cleo is the one stealing, which Margaret, of course, is like, knows from the the get-go.
Speaker: But she also is the one everyone suspects, because she is actually always stealing stuff, she's just not like a kleptomaniac. Like, she's, you know, taking, like, ah some things from the bar they go to, and, you know, she sort of is so passionate and sort of all over the place that She just like decides, like the Jane character says she wants these shot glasses for her wedding. She's like, I need to buy them.
Speaker: And then Margaret's like, oh yeah, sure, just I can hand me your purse real quick. And she just shoves a bunch of shot glasses into the purse. like yeah Everyone, of course, thinks it's her, but she's the only one who realizes who it actually is.
Speaker: Yeah, but so Iris follows Cleo back from her work commute and discovers that she lives in an absolutely stonkingly massive mansion. With a doorman. Yeah, we were like a maid who welcomes her in. so I presume it's her parents' house. We should clarify these characters are probably between about 25 and 35. Yeah, they're they're pretty young.
Speaker: But it's interesting that yeah the the person who feels the sort of the strongest need or the strongest desire to sort of quietly assert their autonomy, their sense of self, is the person who could quit at any moment. but yeah She clearly doesn't need the job.
Speaker: No, it's it's funny because, well, so just to describe Cleo a little bit for those who seen, she has these like gigantic Coke bottle lens glasses that give her these, like, like no character has ever been mousier in any film that's ever been made than the c Cleo character. She sort of is, like, bunched into herself, giant glasses, um really brazen. Like, there's a point where the matching umbrella, Iris' matching blue umbrella goes missing. And in the scene you're talking about where Iris follows Cleo home,
Speaker: Iris is wearing the rain jacket pulled over her head because her umbrella has been taken. And then Claire is just walking ahead with the umbrella, like with the umbrella that clearly has been stolen from her. um So she's, you know, she's sort of really mousy, really kind of crunched in on herself.
Speaker: And as a character, it's not even really clear like what she does. like only ever I mean, she's an assistant. Yes, we understand this. But she kind of just like walks around like they do. She comes to their desks and like shoots them sideways glances. She eats completely by herself.
Speaker: like It's not clear what she's getting out of the job, except for the fact that she goes to the job. Not only does she not need money, but the job itself is taking like what recognition maybe she could have ah received outside of the job. So we're kind of left at top. Yeah, it seems like she's there for some kind of like odd social, like it's a third but kind of third space to her.
Speaker: Because when we're introduced to her, she sort of makes these kind of small desperate bids for connection with the Iris character, right? yeah and Yeah. But I just, you know, it's sort of like, I like your hair, I like your shoes or whatever. Yeah.
Speaker: I think there's one point where Iris buys a very expensive cardigan and then the next day Cleo is also wearing it. The same, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so in a way the theft seems like a bid for connection, but it's just, it's odd that the kind of characters that are in the most desperate straits, the ones who really can't lose their jobs, the ones who really are, there's no background support for them to self-actualize, like this is it.
Speaker: they're not the ones leaving. I think it's interesting. No, no it it I think it is an interesting point because part of what makes this the movie so effective to me is its total inability to tell you anything. What I mean by that is that we didn't have to get that shot of Cleo going home, right, and seeing where Cleo lives.
Speaker: We're kind of just presented with that for one second and left to kind of make our own decisions. How to frame this? I do think that we get an interesting line at the end, right? So once Cleo is found out,
Speaker: All of the other girls have left except for Iris. She's the only one who's still in the office. Margaret is escorted out by the police, even though they can't, all they find at her desk is a bunch of nips, like little little liquor bottles because she's an alcoholic.
Speaker: well We'll get to this, but each of the women sort of has their own personal problems that seem to be inhibiting their growth alongside you know the job. And Margaret says that she's just a full-blown alcoholic. There's an amazing scene where she invites Iris over for drinks in her apartment. And she's like, oh, I'll fix us something. And she comes back with two tiny bottles of rum, of Bacardi rum. And they just sit there drinking them as if she's made mixed drinks or something. But they search through a desk. They find nothing except for these liquor bottles, you know tiny, tiny liquor bottles.
Speaker: And she's still escorted out. And what is it that she says as she's pulled out of the office? She's like, to the that 70s mom, ah who's her boss. She says, you don't even know my name.
Speaker: It's Margaret. It's Margaret. And, you know, she sort of is then pushed out of the office. um In the end, You get the voiceover from the Iris character, and it ends with this oddly sympathetic posture towards Cleo, where she says, you know, she was also one of us, looking essentially for recognition in the way that you're talking about, which for me, the first time I watched it was sort of a revelation, because...
Speaker: but we we inhabit these main characters. So Cleo is sort of on the outside. We don't get her perspective. I just been thinking of as like a kleptomaniac, you know, sort of don't know, Winona Ryder situation, like someone who doesn't really need it, but just compulsively steals for some sort of nebulous, unconscious reason.
Speaker: But in the end, it seems that even Iris has come to the conclusion that, in fact, Cleo was just like them and just had the the blessing, if you want to put it that way, of being made permanent.
Speaker: But that didn't actually solve her problems. And that actually seems like it might help Iris in her journey of self-discovery at the end, where she realizes sort of like, even if I'd been made permanent, you know, would I still be Cleo?
Speaker: Yeah, and know there is like a small act of solidarity at the end, right, isn't there, where she she asked for a letter of recommendation from this very like yuppie-looking, centre-parted, good-looking boss that she has. um but And she pre-writes a letter of recommendation because he's clearly slightly lazy and just goes, can you sign it? He's like, yeah, sure, whatever.
Speaker: And obviously he doesn't actually know what her name is because they treat the temps terribly. So at the end she goes, my name is Margaret. so Yeah. Yeah. And then she sends this letter of recommendation to Margaret who's been fired.
Speaker: this is kind of... It's just, we never finished that week. To clarify this, we should say that Margaret earlier mentioned her boss, Bob Balaban. She's really trying to butter him to get a recommendation. Then he just dies of a heart attack and doesn't show up to work one day. so her whole chance of getting the whole reason that she put up with all of it is gone. So that recommendation. And it's also foregrounded that she's spent three or four years as a temper at at another ah company prior to this.
Speaker: And then it just got laid off with like zero recognition after like three years of service. Yes. I like putting it in service because it makes me – so first of all, earlier when you mentioned Bentham, i you know his body is stuffed, I think, at Cambridge and like held in a big case. UCL, but yeah. Oh, UCL. Yeah, you're right, you're right. I was just imagining you know him in the corner. like They move in the security cameras and then also the Bentham body to watch over you.
Speaker: And then in this case, years of service, I'm imagining her. She's in a cavalry regiment in the British Army, you circle World War II. Yeah, she's like a corporal or something, yeah. Actually, I was on the Western Front. Definitely trying to make sergeant. I was in the art end. I know what it was like. But you're right. We get this sense that all of them are stuck in this cycle where they get these temporary bits of employment, but they never quite move to the next level. So it remains kind of totally horizontal. And in the case of Lisa Kudrow's character, was kind of fascinated by her. hadn't really thought about this until this time. But as you said earlier, she wants to be an actress, right?
Speaker: She lies constantly. I think she is the saddest character in the movie because there's a very funny but very sad scene where she's on the bus with Iris and she's doing the faces that she's going to do for her auditions to demonstrate emotions. And it's just like the most overwrought, ridiculous, you know, smile. she You know, she'll like smile ear to ear and grin and look sort of like.
Speaker: you know i don't know, the kid from the Mad Magazine covers or whatever. And then you know Iris will like clap her hands and go like, oh, happy. And then she'll frown really hard. She'll be like, oh, it's sad. And then the one that she doesn't get is angry when she's trying to be angry and Iris can't get it. And she's it was angry. I was doing angry. And she's like, oh, of course.
Speaker: And it's I feel like in that moment, because none of them actually know how to channel their anger. So the Lisa Kudrow character is the saddest because she actually is a really good actor. She is successfully lying to all of her friends all the time. She's saying, oh, I got a minor part in this show.
Speaker: And we i would say very quickly realize like she's not getting parts in any shows. There's a reason that they're never invited to the show. She gets parts. I think it's super an interesting as well that. the sort of other sort of defining work films or work-related films of the era, right like ah Office Base especially and Fight Club, are all about expressing anger.
Speaker: Yes. no Yeah, it's totally repressed in this movie. And that's why Margaret, who, again, Park Posey, just stunning performance. There's another great moment where she kicks back in a chair with crumpled up papers in her hands, and then she gets behind the cubicle, and you see her just throw it up like it's confetti.
Speaker: She's in like one fluid motion. She kicks across the floor and just party-style chucks it up. But the rest of them are like basically incapable of expressing emotion. like In a certain sense, this movie has more of the sort of stoic Gen X affect than most of what we've watched up to this point. like These characters are so repressed that they end up having to express their emotions in these very, very harmful ways. like Lisa Kudrow, they never come out and say it, but to me it seems pretty clear that she's bulimic yeah because she keeps she's throwing up in the stalls.
Speaker: ah She tells Iris she's pregnant, and then you know magically the next day she's like, oh, ah the doctor's appointment? Yeah, it went fine. It turns out i'm not pregnant anymore. And so you know you're left to imagine either she got an abortion, which is unlikely because we see her vomiting at the beginning of the movie as well months earlier, or yeah, she's just bulimic.
Speaker: So all of this rage that is clearly there gets channeled into you know, drinking out of these little bottles, being in an incredibly toxic relationship with a total shithead, and vomiting. And maybe the worst part is that Iris admires all of them. Because, like, she sort of is like, oh, i need to be more like these people.
Speaker: Well, I suppose that, like, they might have dysfunctional outlets, but at least they have outlets, right? Whereas, like, Iris, like, effectively seems to, like, have no outlet for whatever it is she's feeling.
Speaker: Well, that's what makes it such a good end-of-history movie, because... There's a degree to which none, because none of the characters have ambition or imagining anything, they sort of just want to get over this line towards permanence.
Speaker: they have nowhere to displace the feelings. And so in a world where 80% of people can't even feel or or or experience any kind of outlet, the characters who are bulimic all of a sudden look look exciting because at least they've found some place to store those emotions, even if it's this like awful thing. And I don't think the movie is saying that Lisa Kudrow is a good, well-adjusted character. It is not. She is the saddest character.
Speaker: But if you see it from the perspective of Iris, You're right. At least, you know, they go out for drinks after work. At least they, you know, have some place to put all this discontent they have.
Speaker: All Iris has are these, you know, endless conversations with her father where he comes in, you know, yeah, like a character straight out of like a 50s movie about like a, you know kind of old Gil from the Simpsons, basically, or, you know. he' He's very old Gil. Like, we should say that her father is like, like kind of like slightly bloated, alcoholic looking, kindly old but he's got like a trilby and like rolled up sleeves.
Speaker: And he says things like, you know, you know, a salesman, a salesman is a mate, a salesman is born and you're lucky because you got my genes or something like that, where it's like, you just know you're tied. It's very Arthur, it's very Arthur Miller, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, well, and he... It's interesting. We should talk about the parents because he is this amazing figure because he is genuinely very nice. like He never yells at her He's very generally supportive. He just can't imagine she would want to do anything but sales. like There's this weird, almost like sanguinary emphasis where it's like, no, no, we're old-fashioned enough that what we do is you go into the profession that I went into because we're good at it and therefore you should do it.
Speaker: Yeah, but at the same time, liberal enough that he would assume his daughter would... work and not just become a housewife, which is quite an end of history moment in and of itself, like that you're in between this this transition where like period where women are fully in the workforce. Like we've gone through the 60s and the 70s, but we're not quite at the era of complete atomization, right?
Speaker: Like there's still a sense of ah you ah work can be passed down or somehow. Yeah, it's like ah a medieval guild or something where it's like, well I'm a master in the salesman's guild. You know it's funny. I also think the other parents that we meet in the movie are or We don't meet them, but they're they're talked about at some length.
Speaker: It's Parker Posey, Margaret's parents, who come and she just lies to them and tells them that she's been made permanent because she knows that they'll be totally disappointed and bother her in the event that she tells the truth, which is the more sort of like classic 90s, 2000 archetype. The sort of parents who simultaneously obviously didn't do a good good enough job of raising you, but also have these expectations at the same time, right? They're they're away, they're apart, but also like, oh, you you better be getting on that job and you know I'm going to kind of come down on you if you don't. So we get
Speaker: I don't know the two styles of latchkey parent. Cause we imagine that old Gil was away all the time when she was a kid doing sales trips, you know, like he was not, he was not like a presence in that household outside of giving gifts when he got back in Calgary or whatever, whatever you know?
Speaker: Uh, So there is that parental Gen X dimension as well, I think, in in the movie. The sense of like deep repression and like nervousness and timidity is... i just did This film put me in mind of another film from a a few years later, which is Secretary, which is 2002.
Speaker: You mentioned it earlier, but the the form of the movie or the way it's shot is very important for this because it's a lot of these like static shots of what we would now, probably if I were like a Twitter meme account, and I... you know And I believed that like Charlie Kirk were assassinated by a a trans woman or something. We call them liminal spaces, right? Like these, these places.
Speaker: well i mean, I think we all know what that means, but in the world of the movie, The kind of static camera work with the constant Muzak playing in the background, you know, the like easy listening just kind of everywhere. People moving in and out of the shots quickly, pushing mail carts, doing nothing. This is thing that comes up over and over again that none of them are doing anything most of the time. The hardest part of the job, as Margaret says, is to look busy.
Speaker: So these static shots sort of reinforce or kind of ground us in how static the work is, even though everyone has to be moving all the time. You know, there's a point where Margaret is just etching, i was never here into her desk.
Speaker: Like she's just, she's just taking, like the job that she is doing is just leaving the mark that she was not there on her own desk. And so, Jill Sprecher's camera, always brings us back to the fact that nothing is happening. There's nothing fast-paced about this environment. This is not a Michael Bay film.
Speaker: This is Ozu, basically, in terms of the the pace at which things are going to happen, which is how office work can often feel, so I'm told. Well, I think this is the the other... The way the films are really a relic of this era is that the kind of amorphous corporate finance...
Speaker: But it's like it's not high for it's not like Wall Street. it's not like it's First, I'll say is it's kind of ambiguous to where it's set. right like it's iish It kind of feels like it's New York. but Yeah, it feels smaller time than that. like There is a city element, but it it feels like a mid-sized American city to me. like We're in like Buffalo or like Columbus, Ohio or something. Yeah, that's what was going to say. like it's It's kind of ambiguous where it's. It feels urban yet at the same time.
Speaker: the the sort of female, the temp, they have like, their social life is so like restrained and kind of boring. They're like, you can't really imagine it being like New York or a LA or Chicago.
Speaker: But yeah, it's this, it's this company called, it's called like Credit Union or something. um Credit Global, I think. credit And you see this in like all of these films, like Office Space is a kind of amorphous kind of software company.
Speaker: Fight Club, he works for an insurance firm. They're all kind of these like weird, mid-sized, I'm guessing 500 people-sized companies. And it just feels like a relic of this era, right? like the These kind of companies no longer exist in some way.
Speaker: You haven't had... like you know Private equity has not yet completed its full takeover of the corporations that successfully... absorbed a lot of these smaller branches, right? So like, in my mind, what happens in this movie is this company overextends and is like, you know, backing up the dot-com bubble. And by like 2001, this company is gone. You know what i mean? Like it feels totally stable in 1997 then, you know, bubble pops and, you know, even the permanents are back on the streets. That's sort of my like headcanon for what goes on after this movie is over.
Speaker: Yeah, and I mean, it perhaps like ah speaks to the kind of our positions in society or in the labor force. But like yeah, it just if these these kind of companies just feel like they don't exist anymore. I've never been in one or seen one.
Speaker: It's funny you mention this because on in my area, there are these two office buildings that I sort of find almost like charming. They feel almost fey to me because they're both these like weird like,
Speaker: ah sixty s like office chic. One of them looks sort of like that famous mosque from Mali. Do you know what I'm talking about? The like medieval mosque where it's like spikes all around it.
Speaker: It's this weird building that has these like like latches. That's not the word I want, but these, not columns, but they look almost like manila folders as columns across the facade of the building.
Speaker: So you're looking into these windows that are totally intersected by these ah vertical beams, but it's all in the style of a very, like, it's not super metallic or glass or something. It feels like it's made out of the material that cubicles are made out of like that almost cork board looking stuff.
Speaker: And then the one across the street is just a giant black and white box, all glass. Like the bottom floors are white. The top floors are completely black. And whenever, uh, my wife and I pass them, first of all, I'm always just like,
Speaker: what I would give to work in there. like They just represent stability. like I have no idea what goes on in them, but they're such a relic of this moment. But at the same time, if I had seen them 15 years ago, i would have been like, oh, fuck these places, man. like I'm not looking to work in one of these damn stupid office jobs. like Fuck that.
Speaker: When in reality, I'm like, maybe people in there, maybe they're making $80,000, $90,000 a year. They're sitting at their desks. They're doing what they got to do. And somebody's you know somebody's credit report on their like Chinese phishing venture will be you know successfully completed.
Speaker: And that doesn't sound so bad. i it Yeah, I mean, I get the feeling that people either work in companies, corporations that are so big now that you wouldn't know what your you wouldn't know the CEO's name or they wouldn't know you by by face.
Speaker: yeah Or you work in a yeah the sprawling bureaucracy where like, yeah Again, like yeah there is no corner office with a boss in it because it's just too big for that, really. Or you're working in like tiny startups or kind of like scrappy post-2008 things, which are very sort of Mark Zuckerberg's aesthetics and co-working spaces, etc. etc etc But this kind of mid-sized 500 to maybe 1,000 people, you know you you know the boss kind of comes and shakes your hand on your work anniversary, it gives you a gold watch when leave.
Speaker: Yeah, just maybe they do exist, but I like I just I even though the sort of element of temping, right? Like it I don't know anyone who's ever like, is that a thing still? It's still a thing, but it's definitely not what it was in the 90s. Yeah, it does exist. But like I have killed for like anodyne fairly well paid office for white collar office work, clerical office work when I was like 22, 23. couldn't fucking it.
Speaker: i can' fucking get it Well, a couple of things. First of all, if you are a listener and you work at one of these midsize companies in Columbus, Ohio, maybe Reno, Nevada, write us at deathphotopod at gmail.com. We want to know, what is it like? Does your boss shake your hand?
Speaker: Do you have these meetings like we see in the movie where they're essentially accusing the temps of stealing, but they do it by gathering everyone who works on the floor around a big conference table. And they're all at the very end. And Cleo is sitting next to the boss on the sort of like safe side.
Speaker: He's like, you know, we're really a family here. So, you know, what a family doesn't steal from family, you know? So if you, what do they say? If you, and if you're having financial distress, you know, just let us know. Like what, they're going to give you a ah payout when they find out you're stealing to be like, here's the monies that you don't have to worry about stealing anymore. Like, no, that's not what's going to happen. It's this amazing scene of like,
Speaker: The faux familiarity that has now become so, so common and certainly had rooted itself in the 90s to a certain extent, mixed with what you just know is the the sort of draconian treatment that we've seen throughout the entire movie up to that point.
Speaker: And it does capture sort of the truth behind the beanbag chair, um pool table, you know ping pong table, cafeteria, Silicon Valley company.
Speaker: Notably, of course, this office does have a cafeteria. Which itself is kind of odd, because at this point I think you only get that if you're working at like a really Google-style sort of place. like Everyone wants their sweet grain milk. Yeah, or you're like working for like a German car manufacturer or something thing and like in Wittelbund, Bergstadt. If we have any listeners in Wittelburg-Bahnstadt, please let me know. you are a proud member of the Mittelstadt.
Speaker: If you're one of Hegel's ah citizens who make up the rational state, please do let us know. yeah this is This is kind of the American Mittelstadt, right? list to These kind of companies. um but No, you're right. yeah Actually, it's a very interesting point because, like, okay, 97, we are in Clinton's second term. Like, it does not get more end of history than this. yeah this is This is Cool Britannia, baby. this is ah A new dawn is broken, has it not? the You know, we're we're in the this yeah sort of the moment in American history where at least in the broader world, there's supposed to be kind of hope, right? Like the young Arkansian has defeated, ah you know, Bob Dole, the sort of self-referential World War II relic, you know, greatest generation
Speaker: kansan for control of the United States. And now we're going to have, you know, lower taxes. We're going to maybe like gay people a little bit more, although we're still doing Don't Ask, Don't Tell. We're going to have a, you know, we're going to we're going to be liberated.
Speaker: And then you get this movie that is essentially about the impossibility of liberation under the current social conditions, in the sense that, you know, everything we said earlier, there's nowhere to locate agency. The only place you can express yourself is smoking in the bathroom or vomiting in the bathroom. Like you you can choose Yeah, well, it's it's very interesting that the male-centered films set in this period all about like liberation, right?
Speaker: In some sense. like ah Whether that be a very small scale, like smashing up a photocopy with baseball bats and trying to do financial crime, or you know entirely exiting the matrix at the top level.
Speaker: um They're all about liberation in some sense. It was like Fight Club sitting somewhere in the middle, I suppose. But like yeah, this film is very much... nihilistic, I think. is it's There are small acts of solidarity, but those small acts of solidarity don't necessarily change anything, right? just there to make you feel better, to express your your your humanity.
Speaker: I would say like individualistic, in the sense that even in a movie like Office Space, They gather together, work on a plan, they destroy the copier. they i mean, their plan falls apart immediately. But like they they make this kind of earnest attempt to do this sort of like Blanquist takeover of the company, ah building their little vanguard party. And obviously, The Matrix is about like the liberation of everyone, right? like Everyone is hooked in, and you're supposed to get out and work on getting everybody else out.
Speaker: And Fight Club, of course, is about a fight club. like It's about drawing in more men. In this movie, it really is just Iris, this Tony Clark character, her learning from the other three slowly how to speak up for herself more, how to you know not get mansplained too. And like that is sort of the limit of liberation, is like finding your own way of not even resisting, because you're not even trying to get fired, but just like becoming the cool Kurt Cobain cynical character who's able to say that it's all bullshit, because you weren't even able to say that at the beginning of the movie.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah, it's a very like low ceiling of um agency in some ways in this film. But it's almost sadder than nihilism in a way. like yeah What I mean by that is, you know, a nihilistic movie, I guess you can imagine a certain kind of fun. Like, I would say by the end of this movie, Margaret has embraced a certain kind of nihilism where she's just screaming and being let out of the office and no longer gives a shit about anything.
Speaker: But for Iris... it is still about kind of like being a worker drone who learns how to push the right buttons. You know what i mean? And like sort of stand up in just the right ways, but she never quite makes a break with the system. There's nothing political there, even in this. Yeah. I mean, she embodies like that the, you know, the term like managing up. No. You have to like manage up.
Speaker: That just means like appealing to your bosses. Yeah. Effectively. Yeah. It's like how to be agentic or sort of a you know like independent, but in a way that's very pliable and placid and sort of like isn't going to get you fired.
Speaker: ah I think I've been trying to do that without knowing what it was called. So thank you for ah you know naming. Yeah, it's it's the lean in. Iris is the lean in character. This might actually be a lean in film in some sort senses.
Speaker: Say what you mean for the for the give the audience. Lean In yeah is a book from, is it like 2010 by, I'm trying to remember now. Lean In, Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, 2013. A book encouraging women to assert themselves at work and at home. Co-written by business executive Sheryl Sandberg and media writer Nell Scovel.
Speaker: Now, is Sheryl Sandberg a Gen Xer? Oh my God, yes, she is. She was born in 1960. Perfect. Perfect. She was at Google, right? She's the Google CFO or something? ah Meta, yeah. Chief of Marketing Officer COO for Meta.
Speaker: Oh, Facebook, not Google. Okay. Yeah, I mean, like you could in some way see a sort of like, you know, ah if Iris had been born a few rungs up the class ladder, it could easily be a kind of Sheryl Sandberg character 20, 30 years down the line, right?
Speaker: Or a movie that's like this, but that takes you know that's made a few years later. Maybe you get the same story, but in that movie, maybe the sort of tragic irony is that she succeeds in becoming a permanent, but becomes Sheryl Sandberg. You know what i mean? like She uses the lesson she's learned from Margaret not to like impart liberation to anyone, but to you know become this kind of executive who then...
Speaker: makes you go to like training seminars where you learn how to assert yourself in front of your colleagues or hit each other with like foam bats or something like that. like That would sort of be the horror movie version. Like if Ari Aster had made this movie in 2017 or something.
Speaker: I think that's what we would have. It would be mid-summer, but in the office space. Yeah, it would just end with an endless team-building exercise at another end. Which, before we go, we should say something about that. but like I know there are temps, so we wouldn't necessarily see this, but it is astonishing how there is no attempt to build solidarity outside of the very basics. like We don't get the like enforced birthday party of office space. like This is truly the you know you are going to work, you're going to do it, you're going to get along through like
Speaker: making sure you put money into the tip jar next to the coffee pot, which the one character is very obsessed with. Like that is the extent of the workplace solidarity that they are interested in creating there.
Speaker: You know, they, there's no like sensitivity training seminar or, you know, synergy building seminar or anything like that at any point during the movie. Yeah. There's no like team dinners or yeah. No, they, they do it after work. Like they go alone for drinks and get really, there's another, sorry, just, you know, I got to hit everybody with the Parker Posey moments cause they're so good.
Speaker: where um they're waiting on their waitress. And of course, Margaret is such an alcoholic that the waitress is flirting with the guys at the other end of the of the bar. And she's like, she's talking to the men. And on ladies' night of all nights, and then she catches the waitress' attention and just like throws her hand up and starts waving around like a crate, like one of those inflatable arm-filling tube men to get the waitress' attention.
Speaker: You know, there's a sense in which even outside of the office, they're not getting recognition. But the only team building that happens is them on their own time doing things like going to one of those old-timey photo booths and like printing out a little film of all their faces, which then Iris will keep on her desk for most of the rest of the movie as a reminder of like... Yeah, I mean, it's it's a for a film that is described, I think, as like a comedy drama slash chick flick.
Speaker: It's like incredibly, don't know, flat in affect around romance. Yeah. Like obviously the Ilana Ubat character is a Jane. Yeah, Jane. has like a shitty boyfriend who she's going to marry.
Speaker: Lisa Kudrow's character Paula is kind of like this kind of, she's a bit too young to be a cougar exactly, but she's kind of got this cougar energy where she's kind of like constantly hitting on men, but nothing comes of it. And then Iris and Margaret, there's like nothing.
Speaker: No. There's like no, there's not even like, there's no interest in anything in terms of like sexuality or romance. Like it's, it's, they're just completely like checked out. Well, this is part of what makes the Lisa Kudrow character so sad, because for any listeners who've seen Robert Altman's Three Women with Shelley Duvall and Sissy Spacek, and Janice Rule, I think, plays the third lady, the third woman, if you will, the Millie character in that movie is basically Lisa Kudrow in this movie, where she's constantly hitting on men. She's acting like she's having dates all the time, but every time we see an interaction with a man...
Speaker: The man is either using her or deeply, deeply disinterested. Like another great Margaret scene, a guy comes up and hits on Lisa Kudrow, then is clearly making fun of her when he gets back to his friends and has all these business cards he's handing out to different women.
Speaker: Margaret screams his name across the bar and then burns his business card in front of him to basically say, you know, screw you, you're not going to treat my friend that way. So the the romantic prospects are not just sort of like dire, but they come with this deep air of impossibility and sadness like Jane's wedding is not you know the marriage is not going to be good and Lisa Kudrow is like you know um seems like she's going to be 45 years old until desperately trying to get married so that she can have a child or something like that you know that sort of the fivebe yeah i mean it's interesting that Iris doesn't even get invited right she goes it was a beautiful wedding I read about it in the newspapers
Speaker: I forgot about that. Yeah. and At the end, we find out she gets married after she leaves when she gets, because, because she can, doesn't have to work anymore. You know, that's sort of the implication, um that she can just go be with, but I find it interesting that she would, she'd like, you that there was the the lack of solidarity almost goes down to a personal level where like, she doesn't even bother to invite Iris to the wedding.
Speaker: Yeah. I will say, ah final thoughts, cause we're coming up on, on, on time here. So final thoughts on clock watchers. um It's good. You should watch. i Genuinely, I'm like an evangelist for this movie because... It's a great film. I thought it was an excellent film. um It had a bit of a sort of tonal resonance to Punch Drunk Love, weirdly. Yeah.
Speaker: I have found them to be similar films in some way. They're kind of like... That kind of a wistful, slightly nostalgic, pained sadness that's sort of bittersweet that you get when you're walking down, I don't know, like a park full of autumn leaves.
Speaker: Does that make sense? No, it does. no it does because it's yeah My final thought will be it is we've talked about how depressing it is, and it is a sad movie, but it's also very funny and very sweet. It sort of manages to create this witch's brew that I found quite palatable.
Speaker: And i I love telling people to watch it because, as you've mentioned several times, Sam, like the workplace movie is such a 90s, early 2000s staple, and this one just fell through the cracks. Despite, I think, capturing aspects of office work that are are are too often left to the side or not explored in sort of a, ah so not quite a, I don't mean serious, but they're not given their due. You know, in Office Space, their boss, Bill Lumberg, is played purely for laughs as this sort of like bumbling weirdo, basically. Whereas in this movie, it's a little more grounded and real.
Speaker: The characters are absurd to a certain extent, but at the end of the day, i don't know that any of them are so absurd that you can't imagine actually working with them. And that groundedness does, I mean, Margaret is maybe a little off the wall, but yeah. All right. With that, ah I'm going to consider this our pivot to the conclusion for editorial purposes.
Speaker: ah sam how are you feeling? ah I've got the Sunday Scaries, Jess. Oh, me too. Me too. I have. I said this um you know ah to Sam off mic, but you know those of you listening later, where this is being recorded the week of the Charlie Kirk assassination. ah you know St. Charlie Kirk, as some deluded Catholics are calling him. And I had ah one of my students come to me and say, do you hear that guy got shot?
Speaker: do you know Do you hear they killed that guy, is what she said to me. So um I've got the the Sunday scaries for returning to that environment where ah it will just be me and the children. Loving in the job so far, but deeply, deeply exhausted. Yeah.
Speaker: With that, this has been Death is a Photograph. Like, subscribe, all of the places that we are available, Spotify, Apple Podcasts. Again, not Stitcher. Please don't try it. It's been made defunct. Here, if you're listening, write us at deathphotopod at gmail.com. And don't forget to subscribe.
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