Arrested Development and Philosophy, page 9
While the original model home might deceive potential homebuyers into thinking that the Bluth Company builds quality homes, the Bluths engage in a similar form of deception in “The One Where They Build a House,” the episode in which they build a second model home to make it look like the company is doing well. Michael thinks they can build the home within two months, but Gob, who at the time is serving as the president of the company, demands that they do it in just two weeks. Given their severe time constraints, Michael tells his crew of George Michael, Buster, Oscar, and actor Tom Jane from the movies Homeless Dad and Junk (“They Shoot Heroin, Don’t They?”), that the house “doesn’t have to be good, it just has to look good.” All that this inexperienced crew manages to build in two weeks is the outside of the house, which falls down at the ribbon cutting ceremony, revealing that neither the house nor the Bluth Company is “Solid as a Rock” despite what Starla, Gob’s “business model,” suggests.
In “Mr. F,” Gob attempts to fool Japanese investors—who may have heard that the development site has a mole problem—by building a miniature city outside a window of the original model home and telling them that it’s far away. “It’ll look real if you squint,” promises Gob. “God knows they’re squinters.” The Bluths are worried that these badly needed investors will back out once they realize that the company hasn’t built anything. Just as Gob is showing the financiers the fake housing development, Tobias, wearing a mole costume (because he thinks he’s auditioning for a role as a mole) starts rampaging the tiny town in front of the horrified investors. At this point a jetpack-wearing George Michael enters the picture and knocks down the giant mole a few times. “I ache with embarrassment,” says one of the Japanese investors, who were never heard from again.
Treatment of Employees: The Banana Stand and Child Labor
“Family First” is sadly reflected in the company’s treatment of employees. Time and time again we see the Bluth Company treating employees poorly so that the company can make a buck, beginning with Bluth’s Original Frozen Banana Stand. Contrary to the name, the idea for such a stand was not “original” with the Bluths. Although George Sr. started the banana stand in 1953, the series finale reveals that he and Lucille stole the idea from a Korean businessman and had him deported. Annyong, that Korean businessman’s grandson, would later come to live with Lucille, who adopts Annyong because she thinks the company could use some good publicity—and to teach Buster a lesson, because he won’t finish his cottage cheese.
As we know, the banana stand often employs Bluth children. George Michael spends a lot of time there, sometimes with help from his cousin Maeby—who is also later employed as a film executive for Tantamount Studios. In fact, in the pilot George Michael is introduced as “Frozen banana salesman/child.” And Michael often worked at the banana stand as a kid, too. In “Top Banana” we see a clip of hot, overwhelmed, and young Michael apparently working the stand by himself. He has chocolate on his forehead and cheek and sweat pouring down his face; the line of customers is long; and he looks like he desperately needs a break and some help. In that same episode, George Michael tells Michael that he’d like to work more hours at the banana stand. George Michael wants to work more because his attraction to Maeby is dominating his thoughts, and he thinks some time away from her will quell his incestuous desires. Unfortunately for George Michael, his father makes Maeby join him in the banana stand so that she can learn the value of work—something she can’t learn from her unemployed parents. Michael makes George Michael the manager (Mr. Manager, but we just say, “manager” . . .) of the banana stand and offers his son the following advice for managing his new employee: “You stay on top of her, buddy. Do not be afraid to ride her. Hard.”
Besides the fact that working in the banana stand with Maeby makes George Michael uncomfortable, there’s a problem with having children work there at all. Both Michael and Maeby are under sixteen years old, and U.S. child labor laws place significant restrictions on the number of hours they can work.4 The Bluth Company probably violates child labor laws again in “Staff Infection” when Lucille says Annyong—whose “work ethic is unbelievable”—is heading off to work a ten-hour shift at the banana stand. I say “probably” here because no one really knows how old Annyong is. Lucille does call him a “young boy,” however. Perhaps using so much child labor is the reason why at the end of “Top Banana” Michael realizes that the banana stand is the only profitable part of the Bluth Company. And if you’re going to break the law so that the family can make some money, why not put family—especially young family—to work first?
The banana stand isn’t the only money-making venture in which the Bluth Company exploits children, though. In “Making a Stand” we learn that George Sr. provoked his sons to fight one another and then taped these fights—which were popular in Latin America—and sold copies under the name Boyfights. The Boyfights series included the titles “Boyfights: A Day in the Life of American Boys,” with bonus footage of Baby Buster in “I Don’t Want to Go to Bed”; “Boyfights 2: Boys Will Be Boys,” with bonus footage of Baby Buster in “Too Old to Breastfeed”; “A Boyfights Cookout,” featuring “Run for Your Life!” with bonus footage of Baby Buster in “A Fifth Grader Wets His Bed”; and “Backseat Boyfights: The Trip to Uncle Jack’s 70th,” with bonus footage of Crybaby Buster in “I Don’t Want to Be on This Tape!”
Treatment of Employees: The Office and the Construction Site
The Bluth Company’s poor treatment of employees using the “Family First” motto isn’t limited to the banana stand—it permeates every aspect of the company, including the office and the construction site. In the realm of the office, consider Gob at the company Christmas party in “Afternoon Delight,” in which he alienates employees by constantly referring to his expensive suit, which, he tells different people at various points in the episode, is valued at $3,000, $4,000, $5,000, $6,300, and finally $3,600 (for the pants alone). Then, at the Christmas party, Gob fires all of the employees for laughing when Tom—whom George Sr. had once fired at a previous Christmas party for joking that the company’s numbers haven’t been adding up because “George has been into the kitty” (an obvious reference to George’s Sr. affair with his secretary Kitty)—toasts Gob by reluctantly saying that “Gob seems like he’d be a really smart boss” and that “he’s a great magician.” As some consolation, the next day Michael throws another Christmas party for the employees at the banana stand to assure them that they have not really been fired.
The Bluth Company motto of “Family First” is also illustrated in “Staff Infection” when Michael wants construction site workers to work without pay. The company is behind on payroll and won’t have any money to pay its employees until the zoning committee gives its approval to the Bluth Company’s plans for a new subdivision. It’s a Saturday, and Michael advises the foreman to “keep [his] head down, power through, you know, and sacrifice.” Because the Bluth Company puts “Family First,” Michael has no qualms about making employees sacrifice on a sunny weekend for the sake of the family.
International Business: “Light” Treason
The Bluth Company’s “Family First” motto gets them into trouble with the CIA—well, at least the CIA East—when George Sr. makes a deal to build homes in Iraq. Because U.S. corporations have been prohibited from doing business with Iraq since the early 1990s, George Sr. says that he may be guilty of some “light” treason. In “Exit Strategy” we learn that, unbeknownst to the CIA East, the CIA West—which shares the other side of a cubicle with the CIA East—had helped set up a deal in which the Bluth Company built homes in Iraq for Saddam Hussein. The CIA West arranged this so that they could wire the homes with listening devices in the hopes of learning if and where Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. The Bluths, CIA East agent Richard Shaw says, are “unintentional operations victims.” “We feel terrible,” he later adds, “because this is really our mistake.”
Of course, the Bluth-built Iraqi homes have some of the same problems as the shoddily built U.S. model home. In “Let ‘Em Eat Cake” a television reporter in Iraq reports from one of Saddam’s mini-palaces; the palace looks just like the “Seawind unit” the Bluths live in and even has some of the same furnishings. As the reporter is explaining that U.S. troops are living in some of these houses, a soldier knocks off the same part of the balcony railing that George Michael did in the U.S. model home earlier in the episode. The reporter notes that the home has sustained a lot of damage, but that most of it is due to “shoddy workmanship.”
Moral Development Arrested
By putting themselves before the people who use their products, their employees, and their community, the Bluth Company often makes unethical decisions at the expense of others. Typically, their immoral behavior results in only a short-term benefit, which is soon wiped out by the long-term consequences created by the same behavior. Although it turns out that George Sr. is not guilty of treason—light or otherwise—the company has other problems concerning shady bookkeeping and defrauding investors. While George Sr. is innocent of wrongdoing in building homes in Iraq, he appears guilty of various SEC violations. Seeing the authorities coming to get him, George Sr. calls the office and tells them to “empty the account” and start shredding documents. He later tells Michael that the SEC has been after him for years. From watching the pilot alone we can see why someone might have tipped off the SEC about the Bluth Company—most of the Bluth family uses the company’s bank account as their own.
In the series finale “Development Arrested,” we learn that even though George Sr. is not innocent, the embezzlement and pension robbing charges against him, like the treason charges, have been dropped. Just when it appears that the Bluth Company’s unethical ways are going to go unpunished, the SEC swoops in again. This time the charges are against Lucille, who was named CEO of the Bluth Company in the pilot. While George Sr. has been in prison, Annyong has been amassing evidence of Lucille’s wrongdoing in an attempt to bring down the Bluth family and exact revenge for his deported grandfather.
Throughout the series, Michael knows that the family’s business philosophy is seriously flawed, but he never follows through with his repeated threats to leave the family and the company because he desperately seeks his father’s approval. In “S.O.B.s” the family throws a Save Our Bluths legal defense fundraiser. During a speech at the event Michael admits that “maybe the Bluths aren’t worth saving” and that they’re “very self-centered.” “Anyway,” he concludes, “here’s my advice to you. Go ahead and take yourself a goody bag and get out of here while you still can.” If Michael really wanted to run an ethical business—as he professes a number of times that he does—he should’ve heeded his own advice or modified the family motto. Following the Bluth Company’s “Family First” credo only results in having one’s moral development arrested. In short, what we learn from the Bluth Company is how not to run a business.
NOTES
1. For a defense of the classical model of social responsibility, see Milton Friedman’s “The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits,” in The New York Times Magazine (September 13, 1970). Milton’s article is also reprinted in Contemporary Issues in Business Ethics. 4th ed. Edited by Joseph R. DesJardins and John McCall (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing, 2000), p. 9.
2. Further explanation of the stakeholder model is provided by R. Edward Freeman’s Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach (Marshfield, MA: Pitman, 1984).
3. Johnson & Johnson’s credo can be viewed online at http://www.jnj.com/wps/wcm/connect/30e290804ae70eb4bc4afc0f0a50cff8/our-credo.pdf?MOD=AJPERES (accessed June 30, 2009).
4. According to U.S. child labor laws, fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds can only work outside of school hours from 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. From June 1 through Labor Day, though, they can work until 9:00 P.M. Fourteen- and fifteen-year-old workers can also work no more than three hours on a school day, eighteen hours in a school week, eight hours on a non-school day, and forty hours in a non-school week. There are no restrictions on the work hours of those sixteen years old and older, however. They can work any day, any time of day, and for any number of hours. For more information about U.S. child labor laws, see the Department of Labor’s website, especially the page found at http://www.youthrules.dol.gov/hours.htm.
Chapter 7
BOURGEOIS BLUTHS
Arrested Development and Class Status
Rachel McKinney
From yachts to designer clothes, from private schools to lavishly catered parties, the Bluths lead privileged lives. Indeed, the excesses of American capitalism are one of the main targets of Arrested Development’s satire. But how exactly does the show represent socioeconomic class as a social category? What can we learn about class status, anxiety, consumption, labor, and the family by inquiring into the politics of our favorite dysfunctional clan? What does it mean to be bourgeois and a Bluth?
Your Uncle Doesn’t Not Work Here Anymore: Marx, Labor, and Capital
To begin, a crash course in terminology might be helpful. For Karl Marx (1818–1883), under conditions of capitalism, society is divided into two main social groups: those who own and control the means of production (the bourgeoisie) and those whose labor fuels this production (the proletariat). Under capitalism, labor becomes a commodity to be bought and sold in the marketplace. Because the only thing available to members of the proletariat is their own labor, the only option available for subsistence for the working class is the sale of this labor for wages. This labor is then converted into more capital as the worker produces goods and services. The bourgeoisie then sells the products of this labor in the marketplace, making a substantial profit. By keeping wages low, the owners of the means of production can pay workers just enough for basic necessities—in the traditional formulation, enough for the head of household to sustain his home life and provide for the next generation of workers, his children. The bourgeoisie take surplus value from sales of the goods and services and either reinvests the profits or uses them for their own purposes.
Marx’s two-category taxonomy doesn’t easily map on to our contemporary American English use of terms categorizing social class. In casual conversation, the terms bourgeois, poor, and middle-class pick out lots of different things. In addition to a person’s relationship to the means of production (what Marx was primarily interested in), we track social practices, social position, wealth, education, access to resources, and even geographical location. While it’s true that the Bluths do own the means of production—the process of producing McMansions for wealthy southern Californian suburbanites—they are situated as “bourgeois” beyond this mere fact. Their status, wealth, and practical activities all serve to make them recognizably members of the bourgeoisie. Because of these factors, I’ll be taking a wide scope when using the term bourgeois, discussing several factors of the Bluth’s lives that situate them as members of a capital-owning elite.
It’s a Gaming Ship: Consumption and Leisure
While for Marx bourgeois identity is primarily marked by one’s status as a member of a capital-owning class, within the world of the Bluths we see bourgeois identity in the practices of consumption and leisure. What the Bluths buy—expensive conditioner and diamond dust crème (Lindsay), furs and jewelry (Lucille), $5000 suits—C’mon! (George Sr. and later Gob)—as well as how they buy it (at expensive boutiques, the most exclusive hotels and restaurants)—are a means of making visible the wealth (or illusion of wealth) they have. Indeed, their consumption reveals a preoccupation with frivolity: the Bluths, in the words of Dorothy Parker (1893–1967), are only interested in taking care of the luxuries and expect the necessities to take care of themselves.
The Bluths are masters at offering reasonable-sounding justifications for their unreasonable purchases. When George Sr. buys a hot tub for the attic, both for his aches and to provide a method for cooking dinner, he can’t fathom that this purchase might be a poor, short-sighted investment. Indeed, the attic didn’t turn out to be the “party hang-out” that he had envisioned.
The way the Bluths spend their time also identifies their class status. While daily work clutters our lives, the Bluths’ days are filled with leisure. Constant parties at Lucille’s townhouse that celebrate events not worth celebrating (“You’re killing me, buster”), Spring Breaking for weeks at a time (and referring to this time of year as “the holidays”), shopping sprees and fancy restaurants, all these things contribute to a life spent playing hard rather than working hard. Indeed, even the Bluths’ labor practices (what they do for work) look like leisure practices (what the rest of us do for play). Tobias’s acting career, Buster’s years as a graduate student and areas of study (cartography? Native American tribal ceremonies?), and Gob’s magic tricks (or rather, illusions) don’t really provide a wage or fulfill a social need. The Bluths engage in low-stakes, low-responsibility activity subsidized by the family’s considerable assets. To top it off, many times these activities are illegal (the family’s shoplifting in “Not Without My Daughter”), destructive (Gob blowing up the yacht in “Missing Kitty”), and immoral (just think of all the doves, rabbits, and chickens who have sacrificed their lives for Gob’s magic shows).
