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At the start of HBO Industry, there’s an extremely familiar scene: a boss addresses a room of young recruits and tells them that only half of them will be successful and that they should do whatever they can to be one of the last to stand. And so, another group of promising young people are setting their lives on fire in the service of an exploitative industry, with the promise of money as the light at the end of the tunnel.
Industry – created by Mickey Down and Konrad Kay, with a pilot led by Lena Dunham – takes place in the London world of high-stakes investment banking, and it follows a diverse group of young graduates who are the latest recruits to the fictional Pierpoint & Co. Cliché abounds, especially in how young recruits are scrambled and degraded by their superiors. The bottom line is that coffee and lunch groceries are as vital to their jobs as the agonizing paperwork that no one else wants to do.
And so young men endure jokes about wearing black suits (“You look like the fucking Undertaker, Attitude Era”) or shirts with pockets (“You’re not here to fix blisters”), while women are reprimanded for not talking enough or not talking to the right people. But they take it because they’re told if things work out for them, the feeling is worth it. And it does look Is it worth it. Gain in Industry Owns: You hook up with hot strangers in the club’s bathrooms and book nights in penthouse suites. The consequences are never out of sight, but staying ahead of them? It’s part of the excitement – and it’s part of being a great employee. And the series rookies want nothing more than to be good employees.
This is why Hari Dhar (Nabhaan Rizwan), a hardworking immigrant child, sleeps in the bathroom and takes pills to work around the clock or why Harper Stern (Myha’la Herrold), a black transplant from New York, does her best to shrug. the sexual advances of a client in a taxi and the verbal harassment of his colleagues. At the end of the day, they believe that these regular humiliations are worth it if they win the game they think they’re playing. Winning means money, but like Succession, another HBO show that traffics in the concerns of the rich, money is almost irrelevant. The real pleasure is to dominate, to bend others to your will.
Which makes Industry compelling is the way he paints a Narnia of daytime phone banks and nighttime hedonism through broad, familiar strokes. Like the fantastic realm of CS Lewis, IndustryThe world seems cyclical and self-sufficient, with its own clear moral universe. Everything that is done in the service of Pierpoint is good. Spending your time – even free time – on something else is bad. Nothing else matters. If the actions in Pierpont’s conference rooms have an impact on the world, no one cares. Why should they? There is money to be made.
IndustryThe cast of hopes has a somewhat stored YA-ish biography. Harper, for example, seems to have lied about where she graduated from, if she graduated. Robert, one of his peers, is the white working class who is eager to please, but sadly oblivious to the change in social mores that comes with proximity to wealth. Everyone wants to identify with their bosses, who seem to have all the money and power in the world. Proximity is good, but being in charge is better.
Toxic institutions demand that each wave of recruits become complicit in greater abuse, which is why on shows like this – and in the real world – they are immediately pitted against each other. Mercy means traditions can be upheld, no doubt. But in IndustryThere is also a catch: for these young recruits, wanting to please means that they must make themselves vulnerable, open to being shot down by their peers or sacrificed by their superiors in case of consequences.
In a system like this, diversity is a safeguard against real change. Because in the world of Pierpont & Co, meritocracy is real: An opportunity awaits anyone who wants to ignite their life for the company. You can have a better life, it just won’t be the one you recognize.
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