Arrested Development and Philosophy (9 page)

The Bluth Company motto of “Family First” is also illustrated in “Staff Infection” when Michael wants construction site workers to work without pay. The company is behind on payroll and won’t have any money to pay its employees until the zoning committee gives its approval to the Bluth Company’s plans for a new subdivision. It’s a Saturday, and Michael advises the foreman to “keep [his] head down, power through, you know, and sacrifice.” Because the Bluth Company puts “Family First,” Michael has no qualms about making employees sacrifice on a sunny weekend for the sake of the family.

International Business: “Light” Treason

The Bluth Company’s “Family First” motto gets them into trouble with the CIA—well, at least the CIA East—when George Sr. makes a deal to build homes in Iraq. Because U.S. corporations have been prohibited from doing business with Iraq since the early 1990s, George Sr. says that he may be guilty of some “light” treason. In “Exit Strategy” we learn that, unbeknownst to the CIA East, the CIA West—which shares the other side of a cubicle with the CIA East—had helped set up a deal in which the Bluth Company built homes in Iraq for Saddam Hussein. The CIA West arranged this so that they could wire the homes with listening devices in the hopes of learning if and where Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. The Bluths, CIA East agent Richard Shaw says, are “unintentional operations victims.” “We feel terrible,” he later adds, “because this is really our mistake.”

Of course, the Bluth-built Iraqi homes have some of the same problems as the shoddily built U.S. model home. In “Let ‘Em Eat Cake” a television reporter in Iraq reports from one of Saddam’s mini-palaces; the palace looks just like the “Seawind unit” the Bluths live in and even has some of the same furnishings. As the reporter is explaining that U.S. troops are living in some of these houses, a soldier knocks off the same part of the balcony railing that George Michael did in the U.S. model home earlier in the episode. The reporter notes that the home has sustained a lot of damage, but that most of it is due to “shoddy workmanship.”

Moral Development Arrested

By putting themselves before the people who use their products, their employees, and their community, the Bluth Company often makes unethical decisions at the expense of others. Typically, their immoral behavior results in only a short-term benefit, which is soon wiped out by the long-term consequences created by the same behavior. Although it turns out that George Sr. is not guilty of treason—light or otherwise—the company has other problems concerning shady bookkeeping and defrauding investors. While George Sr. is innocent of wrongdoing in building homes in Iraq, he appears guilty of various SEC violations. Seeing the authorities coming to get him, George Sr. calls the office and tells them to “empty the account” and start shredding documents. He later tells Michael that the SEC has been after him for years. From watching the pilot alone we can see why someone might have tipped off the SEC about the Bluth Company—most of the Bluth family uses the company’s bank account as their own.

In the series finale “Development Arrested,” we learn that even though George Sr. is not innocent, the embezzlement and pension robbing charges against him, like the treason charges, have been dropped. Just when it appears that the Bluth Company’s unethical ways are going to go unpunished, the SEC swoops in again. This time the charges are against Lucille, who was named CEO of the Bluth Company in the pilot. While George Sr. has been in prison, Annyong has been amassing evidence of Lucille’s wrongdoing in an attempt to bring down the Bluth family and exact revenge for his deported grandfather.

Throughout the series, Michael knows that the family’s business philosophy is seriously flawed, but he never follows through with his repeated threats to leave the family and the company because he desperately seeks his father’s approval. In “S.O.B.s” the family throws a Save Our Bluths legal defense fundraiser. During a speech at the event Michael admits that “maybe the Bluths aren’t worth saving” and that they’re “very self-centered.” “Anyway,” he concludes, “here’s my advice to you. Go ahead and take yourself a goody bag and get out of here while you still can.” If Michael really wanted to run an ethical business—as he professes a number of times that he does—he should’ve heeded his own advice or modified the family motto. Following the Bluth Company’s “Family First” credo only results in having one’s moral development arrested. In short, what we learn from the Bluth Company is how
not
to run a business.

NOTES

1.
For a defense of the classical model of social responsibility, see Milton Friedman’s “The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits,” in
The New York Times Magazine
(September 13, 1970). Milton’s article is also reprinted in
Contemporary Issues in Business Ethics.
4
th
ed. Edited by Joseph R. DesJardins and John McCall (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing, 2000), p. 9.

2.
Further explanation of the stakeholder model is provided by R. Edward Freeman’s
Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach
(Marshfield, MA: Pitman, 1984).

3.
Johnson & Johnson’s credo can be viewed online at
http://www.jnj.com/wps/wcm/connect/30e290804ae70eb4bc4afc0f0a50cff8/our-credo.pdf?MOD=AJPERES
(accessed June 30, 2009).

4.
According to U.S. child labor laws, fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds can only work outside of school hours from 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. From June 1 through Labor Day, though, they can work until 9:00 P.M. Fourteen- and fifteen-year-old workers can also work no more than three hours on a school day, eighteen hours in a school week, eight hours on a non-school day, and forty hours in a non-school week. There are no restrictions on the work hours of those sixteen years old and older, however. They can work any day, any time of day, and for any number of hours. For more information about U.S. child labor laws, see the Department of Labor’s website, especially the page found at
http://www.youthrules.dol.gov/hours.htm
.

Chapter 7

BOURGEOIS BLUTHS

Arrested Development
and Class Status

Rachel McKinney

From yachts to designer clothes, from private schools to lavishly catered parties, the Bluths lead privileged lives. Indeed, the excesses of American capitalism are one of the main targets of
Arrested Development’s
satire. But how exactly does the show represent socioeconomic class as a social category? What can we learn about class status, anxiety, consumption, labor, and the family by inquiring into the politics of our favorite dysfunctional clan? What does it mean to be bourgeois and a Bluth?

Your Uncle Doesn’t Not Work Here Anymore: Marx, Labor, and Capital

To begin, a crash course in terminology might be helpful. For Karl Marx (1818–1883), under conditions of capitalism, society is divided into two main social groups: those who own and control the means of production (the bourgeoisie) and those whose labor fuels this production (the proletariat). Under capitalism, labor becomes a commodity to be bought and sold in the marketplace. Because the only thing available to members of the proletariat is their own labor, the only option available for subsistence for the working class is the sale of this labor for wages. This labor is then converted into more capital as the worker produces goods and services. The bourgeoisie then sells the products of this labor in the marketplace, making a substantial profit. By keeping wages low, the owners of the means of production can pay workers just enough for basic necessities—in the traditional formulation, enough for the head of household to sustain his home life and provide for the next generation of workers, his children. The bourgeoisie take surplus value from sales of the goods and services and either reinvests the profits or uses them for their own purposes.

Marx’s two-category taxonomy doesn’t easily map on to our contemporary American English use of terms categorizing social class. In casual conversation, the terms
bourgeois, poor,
and
middle-class
pick out lots of different things. In addition to a person’s relationship to the means of production (what Marx was primarily interested in), we track social practices, social position, wealth, education, access to resources, and even geographical location. While it’s true that the Bluths do own the means of production—the process of producing McMansions for wealthy southern Californian suburbanites—they are situated as “bourgeois” beyond this mere fact. Their status, wealth, and practical activities all serve to make them recognizably members of the bourgeoisie. Because of these factors, I’ll be taking a wide scope when using the term
bourgeois,
discussing several factors of the Bluth’s lives that situate them as members of a capital-owning elite.

It’s a Gaming Ship: Consumption and Leisure

While for Marx bourgeois identity is primarily marked by one’s status as a member of a capital-owning class, within the world of the Bluths we see bourgeois identity in the practices of consumption and leisure. What the Bluths buy—expensive conditioner and diamond dust crème (Lindsay), furs and jewelry (Lucille), $5000 suits—C’mon! (George Sr. and later Gob)—as well as how they buy it (at expensive boutiques, the most exclusive hotels and restaurants)—are a means of making visible the wealth (or illusion of wealth) they have. Indeed, their consumption reveals a preoccupation with frivolity: the Bluths, in the words of Dorothy Parker (1893–1967), are only interested in taking care of the luxuries and expect the necessities to take care of themselves.

The Bluths are masters at offering reasonable-sounding justifications for their unreasonable purchases. When George Sr. buys a hot tub for the attic, both for his aches and to provide a method for cooking dinner, he can’t fathom that this purchase might be a poor, short-sighted investment. Indeed, the attic didn’t turn out to be the “party hang-out” that he had envisioned.

The way the Bluths spend their time also identifies their class status. While daily work clutters our lives, the Bluths’ days are filled with leisure. Constant parties at Lucille’s townhouse that celebrate events not worth celebrating (“You’re killing me, buster”), Spring Breaking for weeks at a time (and referring to this time of year as “the holidays”), shopping sprees and fancy restaurants, all these things contribute to a life spent playing hard rather than working hard. Indeed, even the Bluths’ labor practices (what they do for work)
look
like leisure practices (what the rest of us do for play). Tobias’s acting career, Buster’s years as a graduate student and areas of study (cartography? Native American tribal ceremonies?), and Gob’s magic tricks (or rather,
illusions
) don’t really provide a wage or fulfill a social need. The Bluths engage in low-stakes, low-responsibility activity subsidized by the family’s considerable assets. To top it off, many times these activities are illegal (the family’s shoplifting in “Not Without My Daughter”), destructive (Gob blowing up the yacht in “Missing Kitty”), and immoral (just think of all the doves, rabbits, and chickens who have sacrificed their lives for Gob’s magic shows).

The Bluths’ relationship to real labor is equally troubling. During the Bluth Company’s crunch time on a new housing development, it comes to Michael’s attention that his mother and siblings have been receiving paychecks for years without doing any work for the company. To remedy this, Michael puts Lindsay in charge of the office and Buster and Gob on the construction site. The only family member who finds that he enjoys manual labor is Buster, and even then it’s because the process offers him a sense of novelty and whimsical camaraderie (“I love it here! And the
language
these guys use!
Rough.
One of these guys told me to take my head out of my
bottom
and get back to work. My
bottom
!”). Meanwhile, when Gob takes up the workers’ plight as his own and organizes a work stoppage, Lindsay retaliates by presenting Lupe’s family (who thought they were being taken on a vacation trip to Catalina) as scabs. Seeing the Bluths forced to work for the first time in their lives quickly turns into watching them do everything they can to avoid
actually
working. These shenanigans are the privilege of privilege: if the Bluths were working class—or even middle class—they wouldn’t have the choice of “opting out” of labor practices in the ways that they do. Indeed, if we think about who in the show actually does work, we find that the answer is: children (George Michael at the banana stand, Maeby at the movie studio), women of color (Lupe and her family), machines (the Roomba that replaces Lupe), and sometimes—
sometimes
—Michael.

There’s Always Money in the Banana Stand: Class Status and Performance

The characters of
Arrested Development
are never quite sure where they stand. Consider Tom Jane—the famous actor that Lindsay meets while he is slumming as a homeless man to research a movie role. Tom Jane is an interesting counterpoint to the Bluths. Lindsay meets him outside of a bar, assuming him to be a casually dressed celebrity (he had the effortless, dressed down look of a movie star, anyway). Then, walking into a liquor store, the clerk tells them he doesn’t allow homeless people in the store, and Lindsay is immediately repulsed. Of course, we later find out that Jane has affected the trappings of homelessness in order to further his goals (in this case, to study for an acting role). This incident shows that one of the ways in which social class becomes recognizable in
Arrested Development
is through performance. How one dresses and carries one’s self, how one grooms, and the places one frequents are all ways of performing what one
wants
to be. Whereas for Lindsay and the rest of the Bluths, this performance is upward-directed, for Tom Jane’s research interests it is downward-driving. While being a member of a socioeconomic class isn’t just how one appears to others (after all, Jane still
is
a movie star), markers such as clothing, speech, and performance are important social signals for how other people will perceive you.

Class is also about
place.
A recurring theme of
Arrested Development
is the places that the characters do and do not occupy among Southern California’s rich, powerful, and elite. The Bluths are sustained by constant attention to, and preoccupation with, their ability to gain access into the most prestigious schools (the Milford Academy and Openings), exclusive restaurants (Rudd), and other cultural institutions (the Living Classics pageant). And when it comes to public institutions such as the legal system, the Bluths expect (and indeed receive) special treatment and privilege within those institutions—George Sr. paying off the Mexican authorities, a series of expensive (if often incompetent) private attorneys, and so on.

In fact, the game of keeping up the appearance of an aloof, privileged Southern California lifestyle is more important to the Bluths than actually developing the financial resources to sustain that lifestyle.
Passing
as upper class becomes a priority over actually
being
upper class. Needing to present themselves as part of the bourgeoisie becomes the point of intentional activity, and the result of this is a constant anxiety over class status, presentation, and identity. Consider Lucille’s shock and horror upon learning that her country club membership had been downgraded to “poolside only.” Her sense of revulsion is so complete that even her body responds violently: her stomach, after all, isn’t “used to curly fries.” What it is to be upper class is so intimately tied to what it is to present one’s self as upper class that Lucille’s very body can’t handle the unexpected revelation that her persona and gradual “slide into poverty” is more visible than ever before.

I Thought You Meant of the Things You Eat: the Bluths and the Politics of the Family

By many standards the Bluths are a nontraditional family: Michael is a single parent, Lucille’s husband is in jail, Lindsay and Tobias are separated and struggling, Gob unknowingly has a son out of wedlock, Lucille adopts (and subsequently neglects) a child across national and racial lines. Adultery is normalized and expected. Alcoholism is tolerated and encouraged (I mean, we don’t want the vodka to go bad, do we?). The Bluth men fight over women (Marta, Lucille Ostero) just as they fight over toys in the
Boyfights
VHS movies (which, incidentally, were a huge hit in Mexico). They are, in many ways, the opposite of the perfect nuclear family.

And yet, these are features of family life that are a substantial part of the fabric of American reality. Single parenting like Michael’s is no longer an unexpected, remarkable feature. With millions of Americans in jail, families separated by the prison system are increasingly common. Young men, like the teenaged Gob, father children without bearing the fiscal or emotional responsibilities of fatherhood. There is no question that these are problems that face, not just Americans today, but people generally. What makes these features notable is not the fact that these things are happening, but the context in which they appear. These are features of family life that we’re not used to seeing portrayed on television within the upper-middle class, white So-Cal demographic, unless of course we’re big fans of
The O.C.
(don’t call it . . . wait, that’s actually the name of the show . . .).

Michael, of course, is supposed to be the moral center of the family unit: he’s the character who most explicitly takes it upon himself to keep the family together and to promote their well-being. But Michael has his own list of failings and familial betrayals. In romantic relationships, he’s less than a gentleman: he steals Gob’s girlfriend Marta, he culpably fails to realize Rita’s mental retardation, and he seduces and lies to a (supposedly) blind woman (finally throwing a Bible at her in court in an effort to both embarrass her and get his father out of paying his debt to society). He’s unable to actually listen to and communicate with his son, George Michael (and what father would give his son the name of the pop star and former lead singer of
Wham
?). Rather than supporting his son, he meddles with and dismisses George Michael’s relationship with Ann (“Bland,” “Egg,” “Yam,” “Plant”), even leaving her in a foreign country at one point.

Is Michael’s devotion and commitment to family values genuine? Or, rather, are Lindsay, Gob, and Tobias’s criticisms of him true: that his self-satisfaction at being the “good guy” is the driving motivation behind his actions, and that he is in fact only happy when he’s needed by others? Is the Bluth family—perpetually in crisis—the only context he can thrive in?

In answering this, one point worth noticing is that much of the humor of
Arrested Development
relies on subverting our expectations of happy, functional families. Consider Dr. Fünke’s 100 percent Natural Good-Time Family-Band Solution: the illusion of family togetherness, love, and stability serves as means of marketing chemical supplements with disgusting and problematic side effects (“Let’s take it from ‘Loose Stool’!”). The supplements—Teamocil, Euphorazine, and Xanotab—work by tranquilizing their users: they make docile bodies of volatile subjects.

For the Bluths, however, it’s only with these products that the features we take to be necessary conditions of an emotionally functional family—trust, care, affection, honesty, and mutual respect—emerge. Perhaps this unrelatability, unconventionality, and unexpectedness really were factors in the show’s short network television lifespan (it’s not as if they didn’t realize it, either!). The Bluths are not the sort of family we’re
used
to seeing on TV. It’s difficult to see these characters in terms of the familiar categories and roles that we’ve grown accustomed to seeing elsewhere in the television sitcom world. Lucille and Lindsay are not mothers in the same way as, for example,
The Simpsons’
Marge Simpson or
Family Guy’s
Lois Griffin are: they don’t exist as the responsible moral center, they don’t offer the promise of stability and comfort, and they don’t serve as mere foils to their husbands’ punchlines. “If I go with you,” Lindsay tells her daughter Maeby when discussing the Bluth Company’s Christmas party, “it’ll just make me seem like a
mother.
”And while Maeby has never thought of her this way, and while this may make her—and the other Bluths—more fitting and robust comedic characters within the space of the show, it doesn’t make them any more likable. The Bluths fail to be relatable
qua
(a bourgeois way of saying “as”) people, but also
qua
members of a televised family unit. Whatever complications arise in real life, we expect our sitcom families to be antiseptic and emotionally nonconfrontational. This is why the Bluths both horrify and delight us.