Work-humping at the movies: The Pursuit of Happyness is outright disturbing
That time Will Smith gave managers a horror film to coerce you with
Big Quit Energy has begun dabbling in video content! Up first, an 8-minute analysis of The Pursuit of Happyness, one of the most maddening (if well-made) films for anyone who doesn’t want to be worked to death. I hope you enjoy it.
For those who prefer reading, I’ve written a transcript of the VO below.
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Some movies that you like when you’re young and stupid stand the test of time. Others, you rewatch and realize were actually pretty bad. But other still, you admit are pretty well-made, but end up being a lot more fucked up than you thought.
Will Smith’s 2006 The Pursuit of Happyness falls squarely into the third category. I rewatched recently and realized that it might be the most disturbing management coercion tool HORROR movie that I’ve ever seen.
Not simply glorifying bankers or dated racial tropes
Time makes any movie feel quaint eventually, and The Pursuit of Happyness is an especially funny example, being the last brazenly pro-bank movie before the 2008 recession cast that entire industry into villainy for all eternity.
It’s very weird in 2022 to see I-bankers cast as kind and inspirational figures, or to see the financial district washed in bright colors and draped in American flags. Especially compared to Will Smith’s green, drab neighborhood, where for some reason everybody’s clothes are always wrinkly.
And in that vein, the film does feel dated in just how much it leans into some of those racial tropes that I hope it wouldn’t be able to get away with today, such as:
A little broken-windows theory from the get-go with the graffiti on the mural grievance
The misspelling of “happyness” with its weird undertones of there being something wrong with the “culture” of the community, if you know what I mean
I also laughed out loud when the protagonist’s first line in the movie was him introducing himself as the son of an absentee father
Yes, this is what’s keeping us all poor
But it’s not just some antiquated details that we’re talking about here: the very core of this movie should feel horrifying now, and should have felt that way back then too.
Reminder: this is the story of a guy who was ROBBED of six months of his labor, was treated horribly for his troubles, and was broken into ending up GRATEFUL for it
Ah, the glorification of unpaid internships! Sure, the protagonist does bitch a bit about it at the beginning, but from the film’s point of view, that may be his only character flaw: that he dared to want money for his work, that he dared to try to set a minimal boundary.
After he finally “man’s up” and gets over his doubts, the film doubles as a handbook of easy clichés about work ethic, with cute productivity hacks such as not drinking any water so you don’t have to go to the bathroom. Or, if nothing else works, selling pints of your own blood to make ends meet.
The most terrifying image to show a worker
But of course, at one point nothing does work, allowing the movie to have its iconic scene, the one that makes it favored viewing for first-day orientations at jobs everywhere.
Who doesn’t fear ending destitute and poor, steeped in their failure, dumped by their wife, their kid sleeping in a bathroom, paying for their lack of market value?
And why are we supposed to love the protagonist? Because he internalizes his misfortunes. I mean, they went 1700s on dude at one point and threw him into debtor’s prison, but he still refuses who blame the system for any of it. He even writes little reverse-affirmations to remind himself of who’s really to blame.
A telling choice of “enemies”
Look, focusing on what you can control is good advice. But this movie is ridiculous in how much it papers over any and all issues of systemic power and inequality in the choices is makes.
Think about who it casts as “villains” to Will Smith’s Chris Gardner:
Homeless people
Street performers reminiscent of 1960s hippies and activists
A neighbor who owes him fourteen dollars (again, Chris has been producing millions of dollars in value for employers who don’t pay him, but somehow it’s his neighbor who’s the problem here)
His possibly mentally-ill wife
Shoddy, Chinese daycare workers
All of them people who are just as powerless as him (the only exception is the IRS, because you gotta hate the Tax Man).
Definitely NOT villains, however, are his employers who exploit him and treat him like an errand boy. Sending him to get donuts, fetch coffee, park their cars…come on, these are just training techniques! Tough love from wise, White, rich benefactors who know better.
The most criminal element is the music
For most of this film, you might find yourself cheerily nodding your head to upbeat Motown as you watch this poor man miss the bus, get robbed, or get hit by a freakin’ car. And leading up to the aforementioned low-point bathroom scene, does the movie let you fully sit with his pain? Shockingly, it does not. It blunts it with inspirational music.
(Not to mention that cute little game they play…our #1 tip for easing your kid into sleeping in a public bathroom? Gamify it!)
And then there’s the last scene, where they tell him that he can finally suffer these indignities for a paycheck instead of pro-bono. This is easily the scariest scene in the whole movie, but you wouldn’t know it because the music insists otherwise.
Here’s what that scene is like without any music:
That is uncut trauma right there. He’s broken, man. They made him into the perfect terrified worker. And how haunting is that last line?
It’s actually ironic that the title of the movie is happiness misspelled, given the super-distorted definition that they try to push….wait a minute. Was this on purpose? Did Will Smith secretly disguise a rally against work in what’s superficially a fluff piece about unpaid labor?
EITHER WAY: get inspired at your own risk
If you’re unlucky enough to watch The Pursuit of Happyness uncritically, or at a formative and/or vulnerable time in your life, it will definitely wire you to be a self-hating, self-blaming workaholic.
Just the way the bosses love it.