Friday, September 3, 2021

"Why Kim’s Convenience Matters"/ "James Corden to change to ‘Spill Your Guts’ segment on ‘The Late Late Show’ amid backlash"

 I'm posting this now in honor of Shang- Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings that opens in theatres today: 


Jun. 2, 2021 "Why Kim’s Convenience Matters": Today I found this article by Brian Ng on Vanity Fair.  This was on my Facebook feed.  When I clicked on the link, Vanity Fair said that this is the one free article I get to read.  I thought this was a well- written article though I only saw the first 2 episodes of this show:


On March 8, the producers of Kim’s Convenience announced that the sitcom’s fifth season—which was then airing in Canada—would be its last. Their announcement apparently blindsided everyone else: The show had already been picked up for a sixth season. 

The cocreators, though, said that they wanted to move on to “other projects”—so their seemingly surprised cast began issuing off-the-cuff goodbyes to their viewers on social media. 

Like fellow Canadian show Schitt’s Creek, Kim’s Convenience had gained a global fan base after being picked up for redistribution by Netflix. That final fifth season begins airing on the platform today, positioning the show to win over even more viewers—even though a last-minute renewal is highly unlikely.

The show started as a play written by cocreator Ins Choi when he wasn’t finding the acting roles he wanted for himself—the classic minority playwright-screenwriter story. He based it on his own experience working at convenience stores when his family first immigrated to Canada from South Korea. 

Paul Sun-Hyung Lee and Jean Yoon play Appa and Umma, the Kim family’s respective father and mother figures (these being their Korean titles). Though they speak English with Korean accents, this is never approached as a punch line. Instead, their Koreanness is treated more as setting: They go to Korean church, eat Korean food, and exclaim “aicham!” in frustration.

The show’s first season was largely focused on the Korean immigrant experience, from Umma looking for a “cool Christian Korean boyfriend” for daughter Janet—played by Andrea Bang—to Appa’s antipathy for Japanese people, and his explaining to a white customer that ginseng is called insam in Korean. 

It delved into the second-generation immigrant experience too: In one episode, Janet tries to speak to a waiter in Korean when out to lunch with her visiting cousin, but can only stammer a broken sentence. 

In another, Janet’s art professor says she was looking for more “struggle” in a photography assignment, hinting that she thought Janet’s parents were refugees because she’s Asian.

 After Appa disciplines the professor’s son for misbehaving in his store, the professor gives Janet a better grade for the “abuse” she’s endured; Janet takes it.

Over time, though, Kim’s Convenience shifted from these sorts of stories to a more general buffoonery—in its final season, Appa and Umma pretend to live in a posh suburb so they can use its nice tennis courts—and universal generational differences, as when Appa reads Janet’s diary. 

Viewers didn’t mind. Kim’s Convenience was never a “struggle” show: The Kim family does not find it hard to maintain social relationships with various kinds of Canadians, and their business appears to be doing well. 

Appa and Umma are also always shown giving their love freely and often to their offspring and are never painted as being stereotypical “tiger parents.” 

The characters’ difficulties, such as Umma’s multiple sclerosis diagnosis, come not from their being Korean, but from the unrelenting course of life.

But while the show is mainly lighthearted, with deeper issues generally getting resolved in a neat and optimistic manner, there’s also a darker strand running through it: Appa’s estrangement with son Jung, played by Simu Liu. 

Jung’s past is drip-fed through the seasons, with more details of situations that eventually landed him in juvenile detention being revealed in the last season. Liu, in his Twitter statement about the show’s abrupt ending, said he was disappointed Jung would not be able to fully realize his growth, nor have a satisfying reconciliation with his father. 

We find out about another dimension of Janet’s character as well, but this reveal is only touched upon—it seems the writers were waiting for the next season to fully flesh it out.

Kim’s Convenience has succeeded because it didn’t do what was obvious, or more specifically, what would have seemed obvious to a white audience; rarely has a show centered an Asian family cast without centering its story lines on being Asian. 

But perhaps what has resonated most with Asian viewers of Kim’s Convenience is that this series—an oasis where integration, not mere tolerance, is standard—exists at a time marked by bleak coverage about the hatred of our community.

It has become impossible to separate watching Kim’s Convenience from the recent rise in anti-Asian racism, not least because members of its cast have done their part by releasing their own PSAs about the issue. 

Liu wrote an op-ed for Variety and Yoon a Twitter thread; both told stories about those who claim anti-Asian racism doesn’t exist while decrying incidents that were making the news at the time—the attack that eventually led to Vicha Ratanapakdee’s death in San Francisco, and the fatal shooting of eight, six of whom were Asian women, in Atlanta-area spas. 

The incidence of anti-Asian hate crimes taking over the news cycle has lessened since March, but that doesn’t mean these crimes aren’t still happening—recent numbers from activist organization Stop AAPI Hate say that reported incidents increased significantly during March 2021.

Kim’s features Asians of every stripe, and from every socioeconomic class. Its cancellation means more than losing another feel-good show—even though cocreator and former Schitt’s Creek writer Kevin White is planning a spinoff show that will focus on Shannon, Jung’s girlfriend and boss. 

That series won’t really be able to replace its predecessor, and not just because it won’t center a fully nonwhite cast. Losing Kim’s Convenience means losing another series, maybe the last one airing with a global audience, where Asian lives are the norm. We can only hope there will be more to come.

Why ‘Kim’s Convenience’ Matters | Vanity Fair


Jun. 28, 2021 "James Corden to change to ‘Spill Your Guts’ segment on ‘The Late Late Show’ amid backlash": Today I found this article by Suzy Byrne on Yahoo News:


James Corden says changes will be made to The Late Late Show's "Spill Your Guts" segment.

For several years viewers have called out the CBS late-night host for the bit — in which celebrities must answer personal questions or eat "disgusting foods," per the show's own description. The criticism is that traditionally Asian foods are being mocked, and it's offensive. 

Change.org petition started by Kim Saira three weeks ago blew up the issue, leading Corden to address the controversy and promise change. However, Saira is "really disappointed" in how Corden addressed the issue, citing his lack of an apology.

"We heard [about the backlash] and the next time we do that bit we absolutely won't use any of those foods," the British TV personality said on The Howard Stern Show. "Our show is a show about joy and light and love. We don't want to make a show that will upset anybody."

Of the criticism, he said, "We completely understand." And while, "I don't know when we're going to do that bit again," he said, "When we do we absolutely won't use any foods [that offend]."

He added, "It's not for us to determine [why] somebody's upset or hurt about something. That's not for us to decide. All we can do is go: Alright, we get it. We hear you. We won't do that."

Corden's response came after Stern criticized the backlash. The shock jock also urged Corden not to give up the bit.

"It couldn't be a more harmless bit" featuring "bizarre food," Stern said. Then, "Outta the blue, I guess some group of people are offended by this because you are serving foods that are popular in their culture — which I don't know where culture this is, but what the f**k. Who the hell is eating this sh** — like 3,000-year-old eggs and all this horrible stuff." 

Saira, whose petition has 45,500 signatures and counting as of Monday afternoon, isn't applauding how Corden has handled the controversy.

"The Late Late Show did not reach out to me about this statement," Saira tells Yahoo Entertainment. "After listening to what he said, to be completely honest with you, I'm really disappointed in this statement, which in my opinion, isn't an apology." 

Saira continued, "In my petition, I specifically asked for [Corden] to publicly apologize on his show, and the reason why I was really specific about that was because I think that it is imperative for his hundreds of thousands of viewers to understand the harm that mocking these foods, rooted in Asian cultures, has on Asian people who still eat them. Besides that, I still think he should be donating to Asian organizations as well."

While Saira is "still looking forward to whether he will address this publicly and apologize," if it doesn't happen, "I'll take it upon myself and the Asian American communities and people who have helped me with this event, to create our own fundraiser to benefit Asian American organizations, since the Late Late Show has just ignored and refused it."

A rep for The Late Late Show hasn't responded to our request for comment.

For several years now, people have been calling on Corden to end or change the segment, including in Reddit threads dating back to 2016. In 2018, Andrew Sun wrote a piece for Inkstone News called "James Corden, stop dissing Asian food for laughs", noting how "ingredients that Asians consider prized and expensive delicacies" were being mocked. 

Sun asked, "I want to know which white, European epicurean arbiter decided that fattened duck or goose liver, which sounds better using its French name, foie gras, is gourmet and luxurious, but chicken gizzard and duck tongues are uncivilized and gruesome?"

Saira is the one who escalated it, first in a TikTok video that went viral with 2.8 million views. It showed guest Jimmy Kimmel participating in the segment and the men talking about how "terrible," "horrific" and "really disgusting" the traditionally Asian foods like a thousand-year-old egg, pig blood curd and balut were. 

That was followed by the petition, which noted: "The foods that are presented are meant to be 'gross,' as they are supposed to encourage the guest to answer his questions instead. However, many of the foods that he presents to his guests are actually from different Asian cultures. He's presented foods such as balut, century old eggs and chicken feet, and which are often regularly eaten by Asian people."

It noted, "During these segments, [Corden] openly called these foods 'really disgusting,' and 'horrific.' In the wake of the constant Asian hate crimes that have continuously been occurring, not only is this segment incredibly culturally offensive and insensitive, but it also encourages anti-Asian racism. So many Asian Americans are consistently bullied and mocked for their native foods, and this segment amplifies and encourages it."

The petition called for the segment to be removed or revamped in a non-offensive way, a formal apology on the show and a donation to local Asian American organizations that are working to help Asian-owned restaurants and small businesses.

The show segment has featured a number of big-name stars, including Kendall Jenner, Justin Bieber, Harry Styles, Jimmy Kimmel, Demi Moore and Anna Wintour. Corden told Stern that if they do it again, not giving a date as to when it would be, the food choices will be more like was offered to the Vogue editrix, who was offered a cheeseburger with bacon in a donut, bacon-wrapped pizza and deep-fried butter.

James Corden to change to ‘Spill Your Guts’ segment on ‘The Late Late Show’ amid backlash (yahoo.com)

My opinion: I don't watch his late night show, so I didn't know about this segment at all.  I as an Asian person am not personally offended.

The way to revamp the segment to be not offensive is to know what the celebrity hates to eat.  You may have to do a little research like if a celebrity doesn't like eating seafood, then serve seafood.


This week's theme is about TV and movie articles and race:

"Why did it take so long for Shane Gillis to be fired from SNL?"/ "SNL embraces it's new-found relevance"


Tracy's blog: "Why did it take so long for Shane Gillis to be fired from SNL?"/ "SNL embraces it's new-found relevance" (badcb.blogspot.com)

"Accountant changes careers for a different role- as an actor" (Simu Liu)/ "How movies translate to the workplace"





My week:

Aug. 27, 2021 Canada's 2021 Election: 

"Canada election: Justin Trudeau rally cancelled after angry protests": Today I found this article on Yahoo News:

Justin Trudeau has been forced to cancel an election rally after a crowd of angry protesters ambushed the event.

The Canadian prime minister had been set to address supporters in Bolton, Ontario, but the event was called off over security concerns.

Dozens of protesters gathered at the rally and shouted obscenities before Mr Trudeau could speak.

The 49-year-old said the protests showed how the pandemic had been hard on everyone.

"We all had a difficult year. Those folks out protesting, they had a difficult year too, and I know and I hear the anger, the frustration, perhaps the fear," Mr Trudeau said.

Opposition parties have criticised the Liberals for calling a five-week long campaign during the Covid-19 pandemic's latest wave simply for "political gain".

Canada election: Justin Trudeau rally cancelled after angry protests (yahoo.com)

Aug. 19, 2021  "'I'm pro-choice,' O'Toole says as abortion issue emerges on the campaign trail": Today I found this article by John Paul Tasker on CBC: 

Pushing back against Liberal claims that he's just "pretending" to support a woman's right to choose, Conservative Leader Erin O'Toole said today he's pro-choice and a government led by him would make sure abortion services are available nationwide.

O'Toole has been clear that women should be allowed to safely end pregnancies — a position that has drawn the ire of some socially conservative members of his party. His predecessor, Andrew Scheer, described himself as "pro life."

O'Toole also recently voted against a bill introduced by a fellow Conservative caucus member that would have banned "sex-selective" abortions. While most Conservative MPs backed the legislation, O'Toole did not.

"I'm pro-choice and I'm a pro-choice leader, period," O'Toole told reporters today at an Ottawa campaign stop.

"Let me be perfectly clear. As a pro-choice leader of this party, I will make sure that we defend the rights of women to make the choice for themselves with respect to their own health. We will make sure abortion services are available from one ocean to the other."

In a series of social media posts, Liberal incumbent MP Maryam Monsef said O'Toole's pro-choice claims shouldn't be believed.

"Tonight in Quebec, Erin O'Toole pretended to be pro-choice. He did the same thing in his platform. But in reality, he'll let his team bring forward legislation to restrict abortion access. That's the same position as Andrew Scheer," Monsef said, citing a speech O'Toole gave in Quebec last night meant to reassure voters there that he is not anti-abortion.

'I'm pro-choice,' O'Toole says as abortion issue emerges on the campaign trail | CBC News

Aug. 29, 2021 "Who is Jagmeet Singh? A look at how the NDP leader’s past has shaped his campaign": Today I found this article by Christopher Reynolds on Global News.  This is an in-depth article about how he was a lawyer:

But overall, Singh’s achievement chart has notched upward, fuelled by a sense of empathy-infused social justice.

He tapped that resource as a member of provincial parliament between 2011 and 2017, and more recently as federal party leader, to sound off on affordability, universal pharmacare and a tax-the-rich populism.

Who is Jagmeet Singh? A look at how the NDP leader’s past has shaped his campaign - National | Globalnews.ca

My opinion: For the last 6 yrs, Justin Trudeau did an average job as a Prime Minister.  However, I see there are a lot of people who hate him and didn't like that he legalized pot. 

I like that Erin O'Toole is pro-choice.  However, there are people saying he's pretending to be pro-choice.  Is he really pro- choice?

I like the NDP.

Sept. 1, 2021: Trudeau shouldn't have called an election 2 yrs early.  

When I make a big decision, I ask:

1. Do you want to?

2. Do you need to?

3. Do you have to?

He wanted to. He didn't need to or have to.  This campaign and election affects the whole nation. 

Sept. 2, 2021 No TV: I didn't watch any scripted dramas for 5 days in a row.

Self- development videos: If you go on my Facebook page, you can see I have been busy listening to these free online event series:

Reinvent Yourself hosted by Shawn Marshall:

Bret Lockett

 
Bret Lockett is a serial entrepreneur, world-renowned business coach, speaker, and former NFL player. Bret has been featured in media across the globe, including Forbes, CNN, Entrepreneur Magazine, NBC, the Huffington Post, ABC, and the Boston Herald, among others.
 
As an entrepreneur, Bret has been an advid investor and member of several executive teams, which include his company, “M2Jets,” a full-service jet charter and sales company, and Lockett Consulting, a business consulting firm, where he leads business initiatives to help entrepreneurs and companies tackle their most critical challenges.
 
Bret’s passion for helping children and animals has lead to his deep involvement in philanthropy, specifically with the organization People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), as well as several others.


 Amber Dugger

“Security” isn’t actually secure

 
Amber Dugger is the founder of Profit for Keeps™, host of Profit for Joy™ TV, International speaker, and the CEO of Amber Dugger Coaching. We help entrepreneurs around the world become permanently profitable which results in significant increases in both personal and business net worth with a system and strategy that is simple and takes less than 10 minutes a day.



Walk in your Worth hosted by Danielle Schaaf: 

Emily Killeen is sobriety coach, spiritual yoga teacher and a transformational retreat facilitator! She believes that connection, community and accountability along with SOME sort of spirituality and health and wellness are essential for sobriety success!


After 15 years of bouncing in and out of recovery she’s finally found so much freedom, abundance and joy in sobriety and is on a mission to help others discover their own path to recovery to experience the gifts of living an amazing sober life! Emily created Recovery Revival which is a 3 Month Sobriety Group Coaching Journey for women and also hosts a FREE Sober Girls Book Club on Tuesday nights which is open to the public and held on zoom of course! In addition she opened an off-grid, alcohol-free wedding venue called Ananda Retreat with her husband in Northern Arizona and soon it will be a wellness retreat as well!


 https://www.walkinyourworthseries.com/speakerpage-emilykilleen

Sept. 3, 2021 Staples: Last night I recycled my pens, batteries, calculators, and 2 computer mice that don't work.  I looked around the store.  I asked a sales woman at the printer area if I can have scrap paper like of people who accidentally print the wrong things.  She says she can't give me that and the sales people don't access that.  I was saving the environment by reusing scrap paper.

Screenwriter's Meetup: I then walked over to Second Cup where this was held. There was a good turn out, 9 people including me.  I was the only woman.  I met 2 new people like the writer who wrote the screenplay we were to all critique.  Dan L. also came and he brought his friend who is the other guy I met.


"Accountant changes careers for a different role- as an actor" (Simu Liu)/ "How movies translate to the workplace"

I'm posting this now in honor of Shang- Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings that opens in theatres today: 


Jul. 15, 2017 "Accountant changes careers for a different role- as an actor": Today I found this article by Guy Dixon in the Globe and Mail.  He profiled Simu Liu.  I saw the first 2 episodes of Kim's Convenience when it came out:


This story is the 13th in a series that features students and graduates who are using their business degrees in nontraditional fields.

Actor Simu Liu is the shining example of using a business degree toward a creative and very unexpected end, not toward a career in accounting.

The rising Canadian actor, most recognizable for his role as the son, Jung, in the CBC-TV sitcom Kim’s Convenience, fell into acting after jettisoning accounting and a corporate path which he had been following without much gumption.

After relocating to Canada from China and growing up in Mississauga, his parents would have liked him to become a doctor, engineer or lawyer, basically anything professionally minded. Accounting fit the bill.

Yet, “I was very unfocused when I was little,” he says.

Mr. Liu attended the University of Toronto Schools, a private secondary school affiliated with the university, and then received an honours business administration (HBA) degree from the University of Western Ontario’s Ivey Business School. The degree allows undergrads to enter the business stream midway through their undergraduate studies.

But then he found himself on a path that wasn’t for him. Not graduating near the top of the class, he felt that the higher rungs of Bay Street weren’t attainable. His marks were “middle/middle-bottom, so my option was basically accounting,” he says. This led to a job working for accounting giant Deloitte in downtown Toronto, but Mr. Liu didn’t feel he was a good fit.

“Evidently they didn’t think I was either. Eight months in, they laid me off. The first round of cuts, and I was right out,” he says. There is no hint of sour grapes in the retelling.

“Something was telling me I should probably take some time and pursue something that I hadn’t before, maybe just to try it. I had been so miserable as an accountant, at least take a few months and do something cool with your life,” he says. “That was the original plan.”

Then, as he remembers it, a new calling arose, wrapped up in a deep interest in film and television. “I was raised as an only child. My parents worked a lot. I was basically raised on TV and movies. They would drop me off at a movie theatre on a Saturday morning and say, ‘Here’s $20, knock yourself out,’” he says. “And so I would often times watch four or five movies every weekend. I had always been curious and enamoured with that whole industry.”

Then came the pivotal point.

On Craigslist, he answered an online call for extras on the set of the big-budget, effects-laden, Earth-in-peril, giant-robots-versus-giant-alien-monsters action epic Pacific Rim, being shot in Toronto and directed by Guillermo del Toro. It was a little different than Bay Street life.

“It was the first time I had ever set foot on a set,” he says. “I’d show up at 4 in the morning, getting paid $11 an hour, significantly less than I was as an accountant.

“But I fell in love with the whole thing. The set was so big and intricate. I was surrounded by not just working actors, but also everybody from the grips to the gaffers to the ADs [assistant directors]. It felt to me like everybody was so passionate about what they were doing, so focused. It was a totally different world.”

He adds: “Guillermo del Toro notoriously pays attention to detail that he puts into a world visually. So, of course, stepping in, I was, oh my god, this is so cool?”

This led to more shoots, a music video here or there, sometimes working for $50 or $100 a day, sometimes free. “The goal was getting that experience, finding my footing in the industry,” Mr. Liu says. 

“And then I started to realize, as an Asian performer, I was getting a lot of opportunities ahead of my pay grade, ahead of my experience, because the talent pool is not big enough.

“So, I was, like, oh that’s interesting. There’s an opportunity here. It’s not just something I can do because I’m passionate about it.”

Bigger roles came, and more of them, “and all that was missing now was for me to up my skill level. That meant taking acting night classes and building experience that way.”

In retrospect, it wasn’t entirely a new discovery, but a rediscovery of an interest he had blocked himself from pursuing. 

He hadn’t participated in theatre at school. “I never really gave myself the permission. I couldn’t say I wasn’t interested, but I didn’t know what it would be like broaching the subject with my parents, who were very, ‘Get a technical degree, get a stable job.’ Acting seemed to fly in the face of all of that.”

It only really came to him after he “lost kind of everything,” after leaving an accounting career. Yet the business education helped, Mr. Liu says, with personal skills, networking, all of the soft skills that business people and actors share, plus a later appreciation of how the film industry works business-wise.

Just don’t equate the happiness that Mr. Liu’s character shows on Kim’s Convenience for office work with Mr. Liu’s own career experience.

The chance of returning to accounting is “infinitesimally small. I’m such a different person now. My mind has been opened in so many ways, it would be impossible to pigeonhole me back into that.”


2 comments:

FakePM
16 days ago

Very few people are born accountants. Most fall down the rabbit hole and never climb out for the secure job aspect. Many do find their way out of the Matrix. Nice to see when it happens. I hope a lot of accountants are out there reading this.


User profile image
Andrew from Toronto
18 days ago


“And then I started to realize, as an Asian performer, I was getting a lot of opportunities ahead of my pay grade, ahead of my experience, because the talent pool is not big enough.”

This is interesting. Conventional wisdom is that non-white actors have more trouble getting roles, since there are fewer roles written for non-whites. Still, there were roles out there, including the play Banana Boys (2015) and the TV series Blood and Water (season 1). From the point of view of someone with a business degree, both roles had some form of businessman in them.

My opinion: Yeah, I was thinking the same thing too as Andrew said.

However, times are changing and I am seeing more ethnic diversity on TV. 

This is a flashback of 2007 and I was watching The Young and the Restless during the summer time when I had more free time.  I went on twop.com to make my comment:

"Did you notice the ethnic diversity on this show?  There are African- Americans playing the doctors and Asian women playing Bardwell's physical therapist and the woman who worked at the morgue."

Then someone on twop.com said: "I didn't notice that until you pointed it out." 



Sept. 7, 2018 "How movies translate to the workplace": Today I found this article by Harvey Schachter in the Globe and Mail:

A lot of the fiction I have encountered about business and the workplace has a negative cast. Novelists are outsiders, jaundiced critics, and their work tends to reflect that perspective. So it was a surprise to find a recent extensive look at business narratives in novels, biographies, memoirs, films and TV found that a dominant category is positive, to the point of effusive.

This is important not just because it proves me wrong – that happens all the time – but because the narratives we carry in our head can influence us

We can emulate the heroes (or villains) of books. We can also choose our careers based on these stories. 

“The narratives we read and watch about business affect how we perceive, understand or respond to business,” says Sandford Borins, a professor of strategic management at the University of Toronto.

Along with his wife Beth Herst, who has a background in literature and playwriting, they found 63 texts from the past 35 years to study, focusing on three industries – IT, auto manufacturing and financial trading – since that might reveal whether the dominant narratives vary by sector, which in fact they do.

Over all, two types of narratives are the biggies, and they are opposites:
  • Corporate Nirvana, in which the protagonists, along with their shareholders and other backers, benefit financially, and societal benefits accrue to employees and customers with that spreading through a multiplier effect more broadly. Books and films on Apple’s Steve Jobs and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg are prime examples.
  • Corporate Nightmare, in which senior executives’ malfeasance bankrupts the company, destroys their careers and reputations, and sends shockwaves through the broader community, with significant collateral damage. The financial implosion a decade ago added to this genre.
Between those two black-and-white narratives are two others in which someone fights the corporate entity on behalf of the larger social good. In the Defeated Critic category, the whistleblower or external critic fails, and society continues to suffer while the company continues to profit.

 Michael Moore’s Roger and Me was very popular, boosting the filmmaker’s career, but it didn’t change General Motors so it falls into this category, along with the documentary Who Killed the Electric Car? 

In the Triumphant Critic category, the individual uses insider knowledge or external expertise to bring a socially irresponsible corporation to heel, as depicted in the docudramas Erin Brockovich and The Insider.

Those four scenarios probably resonate with you because they capture important themes and you have encountered them in narratives. The four other categories also may seem familiar: 

Sacrificial/Thrown Out, in which a founder is pushed out or someone’s intellectual property is exploited by others;

 Retributive fables, in which social institutions such as the media, courts or citizen activists obtain retribution for corporate wrongdoing;

 Corporate Rip-Off, in which the protagonist and corporation benefit at high social cost; 

and, finally, Inside Job, in which corporate insiders through perverse incentives benefit themselves through actions detrimental to their firm’s long-term success.

The insanely great fable dominates the literature and films we see about IT. 

Corporate Nirvana is also dominant in auto manufacturing, but with a cult of personality flavour over the years, be it My Life and Work by Henry Ford in 1922, the 1980s best seller Iacocca or, more recently, Ashlee Vance’s book, Elon Musk

Financial trading is dominated by Corporate Nightmares, be it the chronicles of Enron or movies such as Wall Street or Wolf of Wall Street.

“The biggest decisions that millennials are making in their lives is who to work for – which industries. These stories influence those choices. So lots of millennials who identify with the heroes in the corporate start-up fable want to be that person,” Mr. Borins says. 

They are fooling themselves. Whereas 90 per cent of IT stories are of the corporate nirvana variety and the remaining 10 per cent describing failures, he guesses in the real world the numbers are exactly the opposite.

Many of his students have entered the financial world after watching the movies Wall Street and Wolf of Wall Street, dreaming of enormous wealth and missing the fact that those are meant to be cautionary tales. “They figure they will be like Gordon Gekko, only smarter and not be caught,” he says.

So next time you read a book or watch a film on business, consider how it may be playing with your mind. And it’s more than choosing a career.


We want to be the leaders we see in movies, steadfast and dominant, but real life can require a quite different flavour.

Cannonballs

Here are Sandford Borins’ top-10 business movies (chronologically):
  • The Big Short (2015): Adam McKay’s depiction of the financial crisis for fun and profit, with a reminder of the human cost.
  • Margin Call (2011): J.C. Chandor’s directorial debut imagining the financial crisis as a disaster thriller.
  • Revenge of the Electric Car (2011): Chris Paine’s in-the-moment documentary about the commercialization of the electric car.
  • The Social Network (2010): Aaron Sorkin’s screenplay about the creation of Facebook from the dueling perspectives of Mark Zuckerberg and the partners who were thrown under the bus.
  • Inside Job (2010): Charles Ferguson’s Academy Award-winning documentary about the causes and culprits of the financial crisis.
  • Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005): Alex Gibney’s documentary about how the energy trading firm Enron went big and then went bust.
  • Startup.com (2000): Jehane Noujaim’s fly-on-the-wall documentary about a startup that crashed on the launch-pad.
  • Pirates of Silicon Valley (1999): Martyn Burke’s docudrama about Steve Jobs/Apple and Bill Gates/Microsoft as necessary frenemies.
  • Roger & Me (1989): Michael Moore’s career-launching documentary about a beleaguered GM’s impact on its community ecosystem.
  • Wall Street (1987): Michael Douglas’s Academy Award-winning performance as a corporate raider/inside trader that inspired thousands of wannabes.