| Jobs 4 |
June 6, 2019
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| When he was watching the movie 'The Apartment' on DVD, he realized that the working situation in the past was not so different from the present. 'The Apartment' was a black and white movie made in 1960. It was directed by Billy Wilder, a master director, and starred Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine, two popular actors. It took three Academy Awards for Best Film, Best Director, and Best Screen Play (Billy Wilder wrote it.). He first watched this movie when he was a high school student. After growing up, he bought the DVD, as he knew this movie was great. This time, maybe for the fourth time or so, he wanted to re-watch the movie to think about jobs in the past. The setting was in New York Jack Lemmon, a young worker, worked for a big insurance company with more than 30,000 workers. He was working on the 19th floor where there were more than a hundred identical desks lined up, each equipped with a phone and a typewriter, respectively. It was like a factory. Each floor changed their working hours to avoid a rush at the starting and ending times. His floor started at 8:50, and ended at 5:20 pm. In one scene which depicted the end of the whole day at 5:20, all the workers left their desks simultaneously. In his country, the government recently set 'Premium  Friday' to encourage companies and workers to leave their office earlier and enjoy their private time. Maybe it was 70 years behind the movie, he thought. Jack Lemon was the only person who remained in the office. He couldn't return to his apartment because he let some of the executives of the company use his apartment for their extra-marital affairs. He was hoping for a promotion. Billy Wilder was an elaborate scenario writer: The floors were used to emphasize the difference between regular workers and the executives ~the higher the floor, the higher the rank. Shirley MacLaine played an elevator girl, which was symbolic of the rise and fall of Jack Lemon's career. The director was also a genius in using material items as symbols. The key of his apartment was the most symbolic. He lent the key to his bosses, which looked like the way in which he would succeed them. While watching the movie, he was thinking about things in the past, 70 years ago, and as well recently. Of course, elevator girls and telephone operators (they were important in the movie) disappeared. But even so, he had to say that on the whole, things that had changed were trivial. Record discs became CDs. Typewriters became PCs. Phones became wireless. Black and white TV became color. There were also many things that didn't change, especially the system. People use taxies, live in apartments, work for companies, have holidays, enjoy alcohol and food. Thinking about when the internet appeared, one idea that was believed: working at home would become main stream in the future. People who lived in the suburbs, or even in the countryside, could work at home via the internet. In this argument, commuting was a waste of time and energy for workers and transporters. People could use their time more efficiently, and their lives would become richer. But it didn't happen. Even progressive IT related companies like Amazon were looking for their second headquarters. He had read that now more and more people tend to live in cities, especially big cities in the world. Although there appeared a lot of innovations, but the main system hadn't changed. He thought, "From this point of view, an AI world wouldn't be so different from the present?" In the movie, Jack Lemon was about to be promoted to one of the highest positions in the company due to his lending out of the key to his apartment, but he started to rethink what his real goal in life was. Shirley MacLaine started to rethink about who really loved her. Maybe as long as people were pursuing important things, AI wouldn't be a big problem, he thought. (To be continued ...) |
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*star :出演させる
*identical :同一の
*equip :備えつける
*respectively :めいめい*simultaneously :一斉に
*extra-marital :婚姻外の
*affair :情事
*succeed :継承する
*trivial :ささいな
*via :経由の
*progressive :成長の
*due to :ために