Do we really need yet another Hollywood biopic about Steve Jobs? Granted, the life of a responsibility-shirking geek tyrant can be a hard sell. So it's no wonder that the 2013 "Jobs" biopic — starring Ashton Kutcher — appeared little more a sunshine-infused excuse to follow the barefoot meanderings of an affable genius who picked up his not-quite-as-brilliant female counterparts when he wasn't being charmingly misunderstood. (Surely, Steve Jobs had many gifts, but among them was definitively not sex appeal.) In a purportedly more balanced portrayal, the trailer for Aaron Sorkin's "Steve Jobs," which went into wide release last week, highlights Jobs’ human factor, disclosing his rather dysfunctional human relationships while still managing to idolize him as a tech giant.
During the 30 minutes of screen time that Jobs (Michael Fassbender) spends obsessively trying to get his prototype to say “Hello” during a keynote speech, we are intermittently treated to flashbacks of him disavowing paternity of his daughter Lisa, publicly humiliating her mother (Katherine Waterston) — who denounces him for making them live on welfare while he makes millions — and basically pissing everyone off, including his boss (Jeff Daniels) to his best friend, the better coder and infinitely nicer Steve Wozniak (Seth Rogen).
At one point, after rightfully accusing Jobs of refusing to publicly credit him as part of the team behind the Apple II computer — still the company’s biggest moneymaker – Rogen demands, “What do you do?” Fassbender loftily replies, “Musicians play their instruments. I play the orchestra.” Similarly in the film, he justifies the potentially fatal overcrowding of his audience with transcendent hubris: “If a fire causes a stampede at unmarked exits, it will have been well worth it for those who survive.”
Our movies on Jobs reveal how we refuse to see the real man behind the machine - it’s precisely Jobs' inhumanity that seems to fascinate and appeal to us most, whether vaunted in the light of an unscrupulously self-made billionaire or hippie entrepreneur, idealistic visionary or megalomaniacal crusader. If anything, our contradictory collective fantasies around someone like Jobs seem symptoms of a moral malaise in our society, if not the ruthlessly aggressive individualist core driving our late capitalist culture.
No doubt, Jobs was a genius. But does his life really merit no less than twelve films — and a play, messianically entitled "The Agony and The Ecstasy of Steve Jobs?" America loves a comeback kid, and the dubiously mythologized deification of Jobs — from his choice to dress as Jesus for Halloween to his “resurrection” after being fired from Apple — doesn’t stop there. "The Second Coming of Steve Jobs" is just one of fourteen biographies written on the Apple founder, with "The Zen of Steve Jobs" also dedicated to his life and philosophy.
Four years after Jobs’ death, why can't we stop obsessively worshipping at the altar of Apple, and more worrisomely, why do we hold him up as some sort of shining — if not sociopathic — example of success for the younger generation to aspire to? Why, for so many, does Steve Jobs' legacy embody the American Dream?
For Generation Apple, Jobs symbolizes the call of a nonconformist freedom, the hippie-in-the-garage as a new breed of virtual pioneer, bequeathing humanity with iPads in the name of progress. But the real Jobs was totally indifferent to human rights, much less individual liberty. In fact, in Apple's early days, he cut the company's philanthropic programs, and worse, his estimated $7 billion empire was built on the backs of Chinese children in sweat shops, according to Apple's own 2010 report about its factories and a Daily Mail undercover story. Housed in cramped, cockroach-infested dormitories, these underaged workers rise from bamboo mats every morning, only to be brainwashed by loudspeakers blaring the Chinese national anthem and work-related propaganda before they can start their “grueling” 15-hour shifts.
In fact, not only does Job’s App store limit self-expression on the Internet, it also aggressively censors America’s most popular platform for handheld computers. Jobs banned everything from gay travel guides to political caricatures -— and of course, systems invented by the opposition. More egregiously un-American in flavor, Apple’s Gestapo “Worldwide Loyalty Team” has been responsible for hunting down leakers, confiscating mobile phones, searching computers, and using coercive tactics against the press. Apple’s legal team sued a 19-year-old blogger in 2005 for reporting the existence of the Mac Mini, and last year, a complaint to law enforcement led to the raid of a Gizmodo editor’s home. But perhaps the freakiest example of Apple's threat to civil liberty is when two of their security agents searched the home of a San Francisco man and threatened him and his family with immigration problems. Accompanied by plainclothes policemen, Apple's security crew failed to identify themselves as private citizens, which led to the false impression that they were law enforcement officers.
Jobs represents the ultimate freedom to be a jerk. As one Forbes blogger claims: “Good for him...Those that have the confidence to be jerks, like Jobs, are the ones that give themselves more opportunities to succeed... And nice guys often do finish last.” As a businessman, Jobs did know how to keep costs to a minimum: when he had to make cutbacks at Pixar, he fired people and didn't provide any severance pay. Jobs also had a penchant for parking in handicapped zones, as well as verbally abusing his Apple underlings until they reached their breaking point.
So what would a city of Steve Jobs wannabes, a.k.a. jerks and “Stanford assholes,” look like? Well, take a good look at San Francisco, once a flourishing epicentre of American counterculture, and now a self-absorbed corporate colony for the 1 percent. Only 14 percent of homes are affordable to the middle class as the city's housing prices, the highest in the nation, scream inequality; just like the fleet of private buses that provide cushy bubbled commutes for Google techies.
It’s also worth noting that what is also not expressly shown in Sorkin and director Danny Boyle's biopic is the fact that Jobs stole the profits of the breakthrough game Atari from his less-lauded Apple partner and co-founder Steve. But thankfully, after Jobs repeatedly denies any wrongdoing in the film, Woz sets him straight: ““You can be decent and gifted at the same time.” Maybe that's the life lesson that Jobs should have mentioned in his infamous Stanford commencement speech instead.
If there is one overriding perception of the millennial generation, it’s that they often have magnificently self-delusional expectations. And why shouldn't they, if they follow in Steve Jobs' footsteps? If Steve Jobs is the future role model, than it's no wonder that today's youth are accused of being overly narcissistic and isolated; that they believe that the new digital rich are exempt from a personal responsibility to justice and equality; that being smarter fundamentally entitles you to treat other people like shit. I enjoy the privileges and apps of my iPhone as much as the next person, but the price of “progress” is simply too damn high when — like Steve Jobs — we begin to pay with our humanity and our compassion.
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