Last night’s Apprentice on BBC1 shocked me, but not for the reasons I suspect it shocked most others. To recall, the all-female team failed the task – not least because they spent the entire time bickering. In the “boardroom” – the dramatic staged finale to each episode where one contestant is “fired” – this bickering exploded into shouted accusations, hurled insults and general aggression towards each other. Of course, the programme allowed this “outrageous” scene to play out before Karen Brady, Lord Sugar’s new female sidekick, delivered a stern lecture on “women in business” and the fact they were offering a poor demonstration of female capabilities in the boardroom. They had “let down their gender” as someone (admittedly a comic) pointed out on the aftershow (not that I’m addicted).
And it was this assumption that shocked me. I was shocked by the gall of it. Leaving aside the fact I doubt a bickering all-male team would have been judged to have “let their gender down”, it amazes me that one of the show’s main protagonists decided to offer a lecture on the fact the show’s premise had delivered on its promise. This modern-day gladiatorial contest had resulted in, well, a gladiatorial contest: cue shock and admonishments.
This is Big Brother for, er, grownups, with the contestants picked, not because they are likely to be good at business and therefore a suitable employee for Sugar’s Brentwood-based ventures, but because they are likely to make good television. Given this, it is no surprise that the most obviously competent candidate – the captain of the other team Stella – is also blond and so pleasing to the eye that she ended up modelling her team’s product in a swimsuit. I have no doubt that the 1000s of other obviously-competent applicants were rejected on the grounds that they’d look less than compelling in a swimsuit. For those with less-than-stellar looks, meanwhile, incompetence – or some other comically-televisual trait we have yet to discover – is a must.
Certainly, Karen Brady had no right to lecture anyone for behaving in a way the programme has encouraged from the start. In that respects it is no different to a ref on WWE penalising a wrestler for poking someone in the eye, in the full knowledge that it’s that sort of behaviour the crowd have come to see. And just as wrestling is no more than theatrical combat – a parody or lampooning of reality – The Apprentice is equally a distorting mirror for the world of work: executed by clever TV creatives that have the pleasure of standing aloft in their mockery.
In fact the programme showed its true Darwinian savagery last night. It was clear from the start that the all-female team saw the dipsy project manager, 22-year old Laura, as an easy target and immediately set about undermining her. Indeed, she was hopeless but the whiff of blood clearly affected the behaviour of her team mates – generating a near-feeding frenzy by the end, especially as she (successfully, as it happens) tried to fight back against her seemingly-inevitable firing.
Of course, for those “fired” at the end, their dreams of reality-TV stardom are also finished, barring an appearance on the aftershow. This is a fate to be avoided at all costs. They are fighting for their celebrity life, after all, so they fight-like-hell – as they are encouraged to do. This was also evidenced last night by the fact it was Joy that was fired, the one person that kept her dignity and showed reluctance to dive into the scrap.
In fact it was Joy’s behaviour that first made me think The Apprentice an appropriate subject for a blog. For me, she showed clear signs of fear of failure, both during the task and in those crucial moments in the boardroom. Nervous of failing, she backed off from the task itself and was then incapable of defending herself in the boardroom when up against the scrapers.
Yet Joy was not alone in fearing failure on this show. As I write in What’s Stopping You? (TBP in 2011) fear of failure manifests itself in many ways, not just in withdrawal, and certainly not always through meekness. There is the brooding back-stabber, the angry shouter, or the scheming Machiavellian – all of which were on display last night and have been in every episode of The Apprentice ever broadcast. But, of course, the programme is set up to encourage fear of failure and the changes in behaviour such fears engender. Given this, it isn’t the women that “let down their gender” last night, it’s the programme makers that revealed their usual stereo-typical and self-fulfilling prejudices towards the world of work – at least for us mere mortals not working in television.
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