Can a great man be a good man? - Martijntje Smits
A short introduction to ‘ Steve Jobs’, the film released in 2015, named after the
late Steve Jobs, directed by Danny Boyle with a screenplay by author Aaron
Sorkin, given at the Corporate Bodies festival in The Hague, 11 and 12 February
2016
The Macintosh computer, introduced in 1984, was more or less the very first
personal computer with a mouse and a graphic design. It was launched with a
short advertisement that has become famous as a ´masterpiece in advertising´,
on the top of the list of 50 greatest commercials ever.
In the commercial we see a dystopic, industrial setting with blue and gray
uniform people slowly marching like slaves through a long tunnel; the whole
atmosphere is clearly grim and saddening. Then a young colourful woman,
dressed in white and orange appears, running through the slow, uniform
masses and she carries a large hammer. She races towards a large screen with
the image of a Big Brother-like figure and hurls the hammer towards it. The
screen is blown apart and in the following smother the commercial ends with
the text: "On January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And
you'll see why 1984 won't be like Nineteen Eighty-Four." The ad of course
alludes to George Orwell's dystopian novel. And the symbolism is obvious:
mankind should be saved from conformity.
Conformity - that was IBM, at that time the biggest and most powerful
computer firm, whilst of course Apple was the young and competitive runner,
the underdog that had to fight the giant to possibly liberate mankind. Well,
after all, it needs no further prove that Apple succeeded to escape its underdog
position. But did it indeed herald a new era of liberation? I think today, the
irony of this all is clear. Apple today might be like IBM of 1984: The king is
dead, long live the king!
Why a film on Steve Jobs, why numeorus books, biographies, documentaries,
and now a third film (the predecessor of 2013 being a flop). Why all the
fascination for this man?
I like to confess that I am not one of those fanatic Apple addicts, those people
powered by a religious conviction that Apple products are just more beautiful,
smooth, ingenious, luxurious, or just better than the computer products from
other firms. So I am not the happy possessor of an Apple watch, an IPad, an
IPod, or even not of an I Phone or an I Mac, and I never had a Macintosh,
though I had an early experience with it during an internship in 1989 – and at
that time there were already Apple addicts, strangely swearing on those
underperforming primitive computers, and I didn’t understand those fanatics
at all, for I only remember the quite inconvenient property of Apple computers
that they were all the time “incompatible” with other systems, and
intentionally so. So that I couldn’t use my software and files from other
systems, which was quite annoying. So, I just liked to say, it is not my special
my Apple affiliation that makes me introduce this film on the late Steve Jobs.
And there is a second confession to make, maybe a more embarrassing one. I
have to confess that unlike everybody else, so it seems, that I, before 2011, the
year of his death, I had never realized that this man, Steve Jobs, had already
gained such a highly iconic, heroic status in this part of the world, the status of
a super genius, a visionary, a source of inspiration, a hero of our time. I was
indeed quite surprised when his death was met with spectacular expressions
of grief; that he was mourned so much in the media when he died in 2011,
maybe even more than a popstar, so much that even those Apple addicts
worldwide at that time burn candles in the form of an Apple for him before the
Apple shops. Had I missed something very obvious?
So this was in fact the first time I started to wonder about Steve Jobs. Why all
this grief, what was it all about? Wasn’t he just another CEO from a big
company, bringing about new, absurdly over-priced gadgets that become
obsolete long before their technical liftetime, a firm constantly and annoyingly
renewing its products to gain more money, with all kinds of commercial tricks
and sophisticated commercials to let you become loyal and pay too much,
wasn’t this Steve Jobs just another villain of the big companies, exploiting poor
workers, in particular the pitiable Foxxcon employees in China, whilst himself
earning astronomic salaries in neoliberal economy? Why had he gotten so
saint-like famous and heroic, beside just pioneering the computer industry,
besides being innovative which he seemed to have in common with many other
inventors, though none of them I had mourned before?
Is it because of the exceptionality of those specific gadgets? Some indeed say
so. After his death, many people declared that Apple deeply had influenced
their lives, using its products on a daily base, having them constantly around.
So these gadgets took a vital, indispensable place in the lives of many of those,
often young people, often in combination with social media. “He changed our
way of living!”, they cried.
But let’s get real. There are other indispensable products, probably much more
indispensable, like medicine, antibiotics, electricity generators, solar cells, clean
water technology, and did we ever mourn their makers? And still, even if these
gadgets would have been miraculous saviours of the pains and flaws of our
world, why would we worship its makers? And besides, Steve Jobs obviously is
not the only maker of these products. All the time he was surrounded by many
other geniuses and dedicated geeks playing key roles, for example by his youth
friend Steve Wozniak also figuring also in the film, pioneers that maybe just
differed form him by being less inclined to step on the front stage.
Further, as the innovation economist Marian Mazzucato has pointed out (in her
book the Entrepreneurial State) , it is certainly not just Jobs, or Apple, that
invented and brought about all these interesting products out of the blue, so
why should Jobs (or Apple) get all of the credits? Mazzucato shows that the
technological basis of them was entirely developed in the public sector, with
public money. The click wheel, microprocessor, micro hard drive, liquid crystal
display, signal compression and lithium ion batteries that went into the firstgeneration iPod were all developed by employees of the US government, in the
department of energy or the department of defence. The internet,
touchscreen, GPS, Siri and cellular technology that went into the iPhone and
iPad were all developed by the state.
Thus Apple, just like Microsoft before it, has taken public property and
commodified it. Apple has patented as much of its product as possible to
prevent competitors from producing it and to keep up the prices. Again, it is
not Jobs or Apple that should have the credits, solely. So again: why being so
famous?
It even might be not his lofty language, his famous campaigns and slogans like
“Think Differently” (1997), his fine quotes, like the famous one about death,
telling: “Death is very likely the single best invention of Life”? It might not be
his visionary blending of technology with calligraphy – the only course he took
at University.
Slowly I became more and more curious about this Mister Jobs and his fame.
And then I discovered something else, another aspect that maybe gives a more
satisfactory explanation. . He is not just seen as a saint, of Nelson Mandela or
Malala like proportions, but there also seemed to be a lot of ambiguity about
him. Precisely that mostly triggers my fascination, I think. Interesting is that
he, on second face, was not at all the obvious neoliberal “corporate body” (the
title of the festival we’re in). Being the biological son of a Syrian refugee, being
adopted by a poor family, being an early drop –out of school, he had everything
that could have kept him in the lower parts of the social ladder. Other
contradictions are there as well, being a counterculture rebel, rebelling against
the state and against big powerful companies like IBM in the 70s nd 80s; a
vegan, a disciple of Zen Buddism, etcetera. Or isn’t there a contradiction?
Probably we should look at him as a supreme incarnation of neoliberal
Zeitgeist. ; a so-called countercultural rebel, competing like neoliberal
economists and politicians against the ' state' (and the IBM's of this world) and
then founds his own monolithic state.
So Jobs is not just loved, but also fiercely criticized. I found designations like
“he was the epitome of cool captitalism”; having a mix between Michelangelo,
Mies van der Rohe and Henry Ford—with some John McEnroe and Machiavelli
thrown in. A former friend calls him an abrasive, condescending personality,
with a ballistic temper.
Can a great man be a good man? That is the question the film deals with. The
film is split up in three acts around three product launches and we’ll follow
Steve Jobs in the last minutes before he climbs the stage, meanwhile having
confronting discussions with all of the important persons in his life. I hope that
after viewing the film, you can understand my fascination for this complex,
ambiguous icon of our times, Steve Jobs.