The Demythologizing of The Apartment
It’s 1959. There are 8,420,783 people in New York City. There are 31,259 people working at Consolidated Life Insurance Company. That makes C.C. Baxter little more than a number. Even his name is barely that, no more than a singular letter, doubled. In the realm of big business, that’s the best he can do.
Billy Wilder’s The Apartment is the saddest comedy I’ve ever seen. It carries its discontentment like a heavy burden, but over the decades, it has fermented into a disquieting tragedy. It’s a story filled with abusers—takers, as Shirley MacLaine’s Fran calls them—their victims, the complicit, and those caught in between. It’s the kind of comedy that, even in 1960, uses a story of a failed suicide attempt as a source of levity. Bitter all the way down.
Of all that has been and could be said about The Apartment, what continues to startle me is its bold act of demythologizing. It is no mere satire, but a sharp-toothed tearing down of idols. Much of Wilder’s oeuvre works as a demythologizing project, his own Twilight of the Idols. Alongside The Apartment, Sunset Boulevard and Ace in the Holestand firmly in this camp. But The Apartment sees Wilder set his sights on perhaps his loftiest target: the irreproachable American Dream. In the decades that have passed, it’s clear that his work still isn’t finished. There is still much to be done.
The American Dream has long sung out its siren call to the masses, promising its version of the good life. What is this Dream we chase, this American ephemera? Is there not irony to the fact that our beloved myth of the self-made man so often dead ends in the nameless sea of faces at a Fortune 500 company? And what are we willing to abide in order to realize the myth? When the rat race is said and done, whom have we left behind?
The characters of The Apartment live in a mythic world, even striving to protect their self-delusions. C.C. believes he’s on his way to making it in his company. His neighbors think he’s a playboy with a devil-may-care lifestyle. Fran is convinced that she’s in love, and that that love is reciprocated. Meanwhile, the executives tell themselves they aren’t hurting anybody.
C.C.’s chase for agency leads him to surrender everything to his bosses. His liquor? The bosses’. Better get more vodka and vermouth—not to mention those little cheese crackers. His apartment? Theirs, at any time of night. So careful is C.C. to clear his tissues off of Mr. Sheldrake’s desk, well trained by cleaning so many dishes after the parade of affairs in his apartment. Despite Wilder’s trademark wit and sense of comedic timing, he never lets us forget how tragic these moments actually are, or how fractured the system is that enfolds them. The luxury in which C.C.’s bosses revel juxtaposes his own meager existence: cold nights waiting outside his own apartment. Cold meals. Colds. All of which are met by fake empathy from the higher-ups. In a brief moment of triumph, the score swells with music, only to die as soon as he enters his room. In fact, every triumphant swell of music is undercut within seconds. Wilder doesn’t so much pull back the curtain as he reveals how frayed, torn, and stained the curtain has always been.
We watch as C.C. sacrifices his health, foregoes his sleep, and forsakes his morals. And eventually, begins to climb that cherished ladder. This is, after all, a landscape where casual misogyny and adultery can get you a whole lot further than night school. But what is his prize—to become indistinguishable from his bosses? When others, even he himself, are forced to deal with the consequences of his bosses’ actions, he parrots their feeble justifications. When he gets his first promotion, he’s told “You’re beginning to sound like Mr. Kirkabee already.” To the characters, this may be a compliment, but from Wilder, it’s a condemnation.
Fran has her own delusions, convinced that Mr. Sheldrake is honest when he says he wants to marry her. She is, however, not quite as good at convincing herself of her illusions as C.C. is. “It happens all the time … for a while you try kidding yourself that you’re going with an unmarried man. Then one day he asks if there’s any lipstick showing.” The patterns of discontent engulf her, and she turns to suicide. Even after that, she’s still tempted to believe the lies of the Dream.
Inevitably, the illusions falter for everyone. The siren song which once seemed so sweet turns out to have been a dirge all along. If that Dream is so wonderful, why is it so elusive? Why does its pursuit result in despair and suicide attempts? For C.C. and Fran, the film ends with an uncertainty. They have freed themselves of that illustrious idol, but where do they go from here? Where do we go from here?
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The year is 2020. The population of New York City has actually not changed very much. Neither have certain aspects of corporate life.
I, like C.C. Baxter, work at one of those “top companies.” When I was hired, I was given a number. In case I had any misplaced notions of individuality, it was seven digits long. Through well-spoken recruiters and signing bonuses, big business may flatter individuality, but the promises it makes are all the same in the end. Work hard and get that promotion! Great job, you did it—but don’t stop now, or you’ll fall behind your peers, don’t you want that next opportunity? Don’t forget to build a career plan! That way you will always know you haven’t quite gotten there yet; that next step on the ladder will always lead to another. You’ll always be chasing that dream, never waking up to its reality.
Watching The Apartment as a corporate employee in 2020 is a near-harrowing experience. You don’t settle in to it like Office Space, chuckling along with the jokes as you’re gently reminded of the monotony of your own work. No, it makes you pointedly uncomfortable. Movies like Office Space are wish fulfillment, giving you the chance to revel in all the workday dreams: destroying the annoying printer, deciding the best attitude toward work is “screw it” and having no one notice. The Apartment, however, is like a nightmare come to life. It makes you contemplate whether things have really changed. Then, with growing discomfort, you realize how much they haven’t.
The gender pay gap persists throughout businesses, particularly for women of color. Misogyny has hardly slowed, as the #MeToo movement has made painfully clear. Racial disparities persist, as well. Recent Pew Research polls of STEM fields show that over 75 percent of women in majority-male workplaces have experienced discrimination, and over a quarter have experienced sexual harassment. Likewise, a majority of Black people have experienced race-based discrimination in their career. Meanwhile, only 15 percent of white respondents said that their company doesn’t pay enough attention to increasing racial and ethnic diversity. In and through it all, it’s far too easy to let the Dream’s siren song deafen the laments of those treated inequitably. As a white male, I’m tempted to fall into the same comfort trap as C.C., accepting with idealistic trust the soothing promises of corporate slogans. After all, this is a system built to serve me—and if I’ve got that backward, well, that’s only until I get that promotion. All the while I’m focused on my career, the systemic disparities remain unchanged.
How do I respond when a film confronts me with the truth about cultural myths? How am I to reckon with The Apartment? Yes, the film is a masterwork from one of the greatest, filled with wit and craft and snappy dialogue, catharsis and tension, delayed hope and grief and relief. But what sticks with me is the image of C.C. sitting at his desk amid the endless array of identical employees, all numbered and in a row. Or the image of him pacing repeatedly in the cold outside his apartment, all for the sake of a promotion. What I feel most is the punch in the gut as he echoes the excuses of his bosses, words that were unconvincing originally, but fall even flatter coming from C.C.
Will that be me? In my career, all of my managers have been white men. All but one of my supervisors, too. I’ve seen the diversity of departments grow within the last few years, but it’s certainly not at a proportional level, and many groups remain underrepresented. As I continue my career, it would be far too easy to buy in to that Dream, to breathlessly race up rung after rung, making whatever moral sacrifices are required of me. It would be easy to ignore the fact of my privilege as I do so, to parrot corporate jargon about being “the right man for the job” while only protecting the flawed corporate culture that has—frighteningly—changed very little since Wilder took it to task.
I can’t pretend that the allure of the American Dream isn’t tempting. Wealth and power have always dominated imaginations, and the individualism that our culture binds to those dreams is hard to move past. It’s easy to let the day-in and day-out of work and the dopamine hit of the next paycheck quiet the questions. But if we only look under the surface of corporate culture, we will see what monsters lurk therein. I, and so many of us, need to be woken up from the Dream. Thankfully, Wilder is here to help. Watching The Apartment sixty years on is to confront the falsehood of the American Dream and to question its corporate priesthood. It is to participate in this pained act of demythologization alongside C.C. and Fran. It is to be reminded that money is a meager substitute for morals. The promises of the American Dream may glitter, but they are far from gold.
This demythologizing requires a continual questioning of the Dream, as well as of my motives. If a promotion arises, will I claw for it at the expense of others? I hope, instead, that I will step back and consider others who are deserving, especially those who are often overlooked. Will I blindly trust the corporate promises of diversity? I hope that I will actively hold them to their words, that I will push for equity, and that I will foster change where I can. And, every so often, I will return to The Apartment, allowing it to trouble me and to shake me rudely from that terrible, illustrious Dream.
The sadness of The Apartment seeps forth from the fractures of the American Dream. Wilder knows that to confront these fractures is a serious, vital task. As always, he puts it best himself. At a crucial moment, Mr. Sheldrake tells Fran, “You’re not being funny.”
Her response? “I wasn’t trying.”
