The Apprentice: Realities and Fictions for the London Skyline 129 © Copyrighted Material

Chapter 8 m o .c te a g h s The Apprentice: Realities and Fictions.a w w w

m o for the London Skyline .c te a g h s .a Iain Macrury w w w

m o .c te a g h A concrete metropolis of unparalleled strength and purpose. s .a w 1 Introduction, Donald Trump (2004) The US Apprenticew , Season 1 episode 1 w

m o .c te a g h s The human economy, then, is embedded and enmeshed .ain institutions, economic w w and non-economic. The inclusion of the non-economic wis vital.

m o Karl Polanyi (1957), The Economy.c as Instituted Process, 146 te a g h s .a w w w

Playing and Reality: The Apprentice’s Fictitiousm Capital o .c te a g h In a book about ‘fictitious capitals’ this chapters explores London from perspectives .a w 2 afforded by looking at a highly popularw reality television-based presentation w

m 3 of the city. In its production, staging ando narration, the BBC’s The Apprentice, .c te a broadcast in the UK since 2005, incidentallyg but forcibly, serially foregrounds h s London-as-cityscape (Figure 8.1). .aIn particular both signature imagery and the w w w show’s unfolding events stage and are staged by London; presented in its guise as m o a hyper-modern global metropolis,.c signalled especially by mock up Canary Wharf te a 4 g offices and framed and reframedh throughout each episode by wide-angle panning s .a w shots of the city’s iconic skyscrapers;w the Swiss Re building (colloquially ‘the w

Gherkin’), Tower42 (oncem the NatWest Tower) and with One Canada Square at o .c te a g h s .a w w 1 Trump is speakingw against a backdrop of footage showing skyscrapers and the New

m York stock exchangeo – and in the relatively recent context of the September 11th terrorist .c te a attacks on New York’sg Twin Towers. h s 2 The Apprentice.a has been successful in growing a large prime time audience w w – topping 9 millionw in series 7, and with critical acclaim expressed in awards from the

m o Royal television.c society and BAFTA. It has developed a range of subsidiary spin off shows te a including celebrity-basedg competitions and a Junior Apprentice programme aimed at young h s audiences..a w w w 3 The show is developed from a 2004 format launched in the USA with Donald m o Trump.c standing as the ‘master’/’employer’. te a g4 (Fictive) location of the show’s famous boardroom – and vantage point from which h s Sir.a Alan is imagined to survey the competition – alongside his trusty aides – Nick Hewer and w w Karenw Brady (with former assistant judge Margaret less prominently involved in recent series. © Copyrighted Material 128 London After Recession © Copyrighted Material

5 Canary Wharf coded as the show’s Head Quarters set against London’s growing m o clusters of surrounding financial-industry edifices. As Jonathan Freedland puts.c it te a g h in a 2006 review of the second series: ‘London never looked so good’ (Freedland:s .a w 2006). This is Marion Boyer’s (1995) ‘figured city’ for the small screen. w w

The Apprentice’s London is also a site of everyday commerce and m business o .c te culture, ersatz arenas springing up in shopping malls and commercial officesa with g h s major parts of each episode requiring contestants to pit their wits on.a location, to w w ‘get their hands dirty’ in the reality show’s business simulation tasks.w Each episode

m o samples an industry-based ‘task’ staging problems themed to refer.c to an array of te a commercial and professional areas of work; from selling rag-and-boneg ‘junk’, to h s .a used car sales, to restaurant management, to market trading, wto food manufacture w w and retail, to advertising and branding. These simulations are certainly in the m o .c register of ‘game’, serious as competitors become in pursuitte of their goals. In genre a g 6 h terms the show has been cast as reality TV (McGuigans 2008). Of course there .a w 7 appears to be little intention on the part of producersw towards realism as such. w

m Instead a general understanding prevails in accord witho genre convention, so that, .c te telling and high pressured as the representative ‘work’a situations performed by the g h s candidates might well be, the show is largely unconcerned.a with verisimilitude in w w 8 w relation to depictions of its work-themed scenarios. In particular, while the show m o gives emphasis to ‘city’ locations there is no.c real engagement, no dramatisation te a g of the major kinds of work undertaken in London’sh financial districts. Candidates s .a might design a funny ‘app’ for an iPhone wor seek to bake a better biscuit, but they w w are not tasked with derivatives tradingm or hedge fund management. This simple o .c trompe-l’œil substitution – placing fictivete concrete work in the spaces and places a g h of actual abstract work – the real works undertaken beneath the city vistas on show .a w w can be examined as part of the showsw appeal.

m In the ‘balloon debate’ formato typical of such shows, one by one and episode .c te a by episode the wannabe apprenticesg are removed from the game with Alan Sugar h s .a leading a panel and making aw final evaluation before firing a candidate – that week’s w w

m o .c 5 One well known fictionte in relation to the show’s presentation is that the boardroom a g h is in fact not located at sCanary Wharf and that Lord Sugar’s Amstrad offices are based .a w in unglamorous Brentwood,w an Essex-based suburb some distance from London’s city- w metropolis. m o .c 6 The show waste invented by a producer who also made a US format called Survivor. a g h The ‘balloon debate’s style pattern of competition and weekly ejection by some process of .a w voting and/pr judgementw is standard to the ‘reality’ format. w

m 7 Othero reality-style shows emphasise the fly-on-the-wall-exploration of working .c te sites, notablya airports and hotels. However, the surveillance aspect of The Apprentice’s g h reality-TVs commitments are fulfilled more fully in relation to emotional expose, framing .a w the contestantsw ‘seemingly real pain of failure and rejection for instance skilful editing w

m juxtaposingo hubris and incompetence, arrogance, tears, shame and shamelessness in .c te contestants’a self-presentations. g h s 8 There is an extended debate about the accuracy and usefulness of the show’s .a w w wmaterial as a resource in business education (Lair 2011; Wice 2006; Huber 2008). © Copyrighted Material The Apprentice: Realities and Fictions for the London Skyline 129 © Copyrighted Material

‘victim’ is denied the winner’s opportunity to become the master’s apprentice and,m o .c te formerly, to earn a ‘six figure salary’ or lately, to receive a £250,000 investment,a g h s a detailed format change reflecting a shift, post-crunch, as the show soughta to . w w endorse a more substantively entrepreneurial spirit for London and for Sirw Alan

m – appointed entrepreneurship Czar in 2009. At the end of the series, oneo winner .c te a remains. He or she will be the apprentice. g h s .a Each episode is fronted by Sir Alan Sugar, presented partly as a wquintessential w w London wheeler-dealer entrepreneur and partly as shrewd experienced business m o .c sage. Sugar is assertively not an establishment city figure, nor teis there anything a g h abstract about Sir Alan’s to-the-point argot. Sugar’s Hackney background,s starting .a 9 w as a by-the-bootstraps electrical goods trader is frequently mentionedw in the show. w

m His past stands as illustration and resource to warrant assertionso and judgements .c te about the rights and wrongs of business practice. Partlya connected to the fame g h s accruing to Sir Alan Sugar via The Apprentice (he had.a already been knighted w w w in 2000) Sugar was offered his role of ‘Enterprise Czar’ by the New Labour m o administration in 2009 with an accompanying place .cin the House of Lords (Murray te a g 2010). Couldry and Littler (2011) rightly point hout the show’s endorsement of s .a neoliberal notions of ‘charismatic’ workplace w leadership – embodied in Alan w w

Sugar. This complementary reading of The Apprenticem further asserts place as a o .c key preoccupation – with London figured andte refigured on screen accruing and a g h evoking identifications and value in the process.s .a w The Apprentice offers a particular andw popular framing for London presented w

m as a working capital. In terms made popularo by Roland Barthes (1972), the show .c 10 te a might be called ‘mythic’. Each episodeg offers up a fictive and poignant version h s of London-as-work-place – in the.a guise of light entertainment but with the w w w underpinning structures of morality tale and moral trial. As such The Apprentice m o serves as an everyday media object,.c as a set of ritual (Couldry 2008; Couldry te a g and Littler 2011) narrations hand dramas which engage across media, and with s .a w the prime time TV show supplementedw by subsidiary shows, a web site, a twitter w 11 feed and extensive cross mediam coverage. The show, its coverage and its widely o .c te observed ‘water-cooler’a popularity together combine to produce a complex virtual- g h s .a w w 9 Sugar’s fortunew emerged between from success in consumer electrical culminating

m in highly profitable partnershipso with digital broadcasters and in computing – his company .c te a Amstrad has been ga prominent UK High St. Brand. As Couldry and Littler (2011) observe: h s ‘Sugar is indicative.a of the discourse of meritocracy which has become so central to New w w Labour governmentw discourse, as the exhortations of Gordon Brown (ex-Prime Minister

m o and Chancellor.c of the Exchequer) that schoolchildren should be more like Sir Alan in their te a entrepreneurialism,g indicates’ (Wice 2006). h s 10 Barthes.a famously described the mythologies surrounding everyday representations w w w and practices in essays collected under the heading Mythologies (Barthes 1972;1979) m o 11.c The show’s official site can found at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/apprentice/. See te a alsog http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007qgcl for information on the sister show The h s Apprentice.a You’re Fired in which ‘The newly-fired candidate from The Apprentice receives w w aw grilling in front of a studio audience’ © Copyrighted Material 130 London After Recession © Copyrighted Material serial media event each year (2005-2012 in the UK). This constitutes a fragile but m o engaging and extended conversation to obliquely cut across and illuminate more.c te a g h serious and deep rooted anxieties and reflections on London, value and works and .a w on ‘the city’. w w

In 2009 much anxiety about London and ‘the city’ was for instance elaboratedm o .c te through discussion of the social value of financial services, notably focussinga on g h s Financial Services authority head Lord Turner of Ecchinswell’s comment.a that w w activity within the sector had become bloated and was of questionablew social

m 12 o utility. The debate set in train in 2008 continues to define the evolving.c image and te a reflections upon London-as-city and as site for economic productivityg and social h s .a value. w w w This chapter proposes that one part of The Apprentice’s popular appeal lies here m o .c – in the opening up of a casual reflective space through whichte anxieties and desires a g h connected to the imagination of London-as-working-capitals can emerge, alongside .a w impromptu notions of value and judgements in these regards.w All are fictionalised w

m and dramatically played out on screen – and consumedo largely in the Freudian .c 13 te mode of displacement. The Apprentice appeals furthera as a media-based counter g h s to a widespread and disorganised sense, that London,.a and in particular ‘the City’ w w w is in many regards an abstract and peculiarly distant place whose productivities m o 14 and fortunes are perceived to be increasingly.c delinked from the ‘real’ economy, te a g from consistently purposeful substantive activityh and, even, from the political and s .a moral economy of the capital city and thew wider UK. w w

Critiques identifying London’s abstractionm are recently amplified through o .c extended considerations of the bankingte crisis and its aftermaths. Certainly at a a g h remove from formal public debate ons the topic, nevertheless in its popular blend .a w w of light entertainment and reality formatw The Apprentice seems to engage with this

m o .c te a g h 12 Lord Turner of Ecchinswell,s an influential figure in the reform of banking rules .a w in London and beyond, said thatw the City had grown ‘beyond a socially reasonable size’, w accounting for too much of nationalm output and sucking in too many of Britain’s brightest o .c graduates. ‘I think some ofte it is socially useless activity,’ he said, adding that the financial a g h sector had ‘swollen beyonds its socially useful size’ and seemed to make excessively large .a w profits. Lord Turner namedw fixed-income securities, trading, derivatives and hedging as w areas that have grownm beyond socially optimal levels, adding that fund management and o .c share trading mightte also have grown too big. The Times, 27 August 2009. a g h 13 Classicallys Freud used the psychoanalytic term ‘displacement’ to describe .a w a defensive organisationw in the individual psyche whereby a patient might obsess, or w

m otherwise directo attention away (via joking or parapraxis) from an object, person or idea .c te that was troublinga or traumatic and onto a focus that was psychically safe, less taxing, less g h disturbings – but perhaps still obliquely connected to the reality being avoided. .a w 14 w This delinking does not extend to the consequences of expanded debt in the w

m aftermatho of the governments numerous and substantial interventions to prop up banks’ .c te financiala deficits in the wake of the crunch. A direct line can be drawn between this public g h expenditures and coalition policies drastically reducing welfare and public sector expenditure .a w w –w with a knock on effect for national employment rates and general levels of public service. © Copyrighted Material The Apprentice: Realities and Fictions for the London Skyline 131 © Copyrighted Material

debate both directly and indirectly. Thus before the launch of the fifth series m in o .c te 2009 BBC controller Jay Hunt claimed: a g h s .a w w In the current economic climate, The Apprentice has never seemed morew

m relevant. That emphasis on sheer hard graft seems more appropriate thano ever .c te a before. (Holmwood 2009) g h s .a w w w The 2009 series included a number of ‘Buy British’ tasks and a local regeneration m o .c project. As noted, subsequent series have replaced salary prizes withte entrepreneurial a g h investments. s .a w Indirectly the show allows its audiences to symbolicallyw offset ‘the city’s’ w

m abstract unintelligibility by offering up a peculiarly engagingo mix of comedy, .c te reality and fantasy in the form of a game: amounting to a adrama of the city, for the g h s city and staged and set up as a substitute for a London .awhere work, meaning and w w 15 w value are sufficiently disturbed as to invite both refection and disavowal. This m o presents viewers with a tabloidisation of business: .c te a g h s .a Business culture is increasingly drawing on tabloidw discourse to construct an image w w

of itself as ‘democratic’, contemporary and coolm (Littler 2007; McGuigan 2006) o .c te a g h and the theatrics of the Apprentice are parts of that shift. (Couldry and Littler .a w 2011: 274) w w

m o .c te a This more dramatic business discourseg functions especially in relation to the h s perceived ‘abstraction’ of the city, the.a show seeking to forge connections between w w w the intelligible real-world commercialism figured in business tasks and in attendant m o reflections and evaluations, and. cthe spaces and places of ‘the city’. The Apprentice te a g makes it easier to imagine continuitiesh and connections between the algorithmic s .a w finance-industries inhabitingw London’s sky line offices, and the ‘real’ concrete w commercialism of everydaym trading, creativity and ‘graft’. The abstract city-image o .c te is leant credibility in a screeneda association leveraging the affective ‘reality’ of the g h s TV show and trading .ona its task-focused ethos. w w w

m o .c te a Unreal City: Disembeddedg London h s .a w w w In referring to human activities the term economic is a compound of two m o .c meaningste that have independent roots. We call them the substantive and the a g h formals meaning…The two meanings could not be further apart; semantically .a w theyw lie in opposite directions of the compass. (Polanyi 1957: 139-40) w

m o .c te a g h s .a w w w 15 See footnote 12 above. © Copyrighted Material 132 London After Recession © Copyrighted Material

The Apprentice is usefully considered in the context of a broader argument about m o processes of ongoing and contemporary change and with a focus on London.c te a g h as ‘fictitious capital’. The particular disturbance confronting and confronteds in .a 16 w London here is abstraction. Contemporary urban processes intensivelyw played w out across London in recent decades can usefully be understood under thism heading. o .c te James Carrier (1998: 2) provides a helpful description of what he termsa ‘practical g h s abstraction’ a process he links both to Miller’s (1998; Carrier and .aMiller 1998) w w conception of ‘virtualism’ and back to Polanyi’s analysis of ‘dis-embedding’,w

m o noting, correctly, that many of the mechanisms whereby social processes.c become te a ‘abstract’ are delivered thorough shifts in practice – a dynamicg historically in h s .a evidence as part of the emergence of modern societies. w w w

m o .c If abstraction can be taken as the removing of somethingte from the social and a g h practical contexts in which people previously existed, thens one can talk about .a w practical abstraction. That is, people can find that theirw practical activities have, w

m for reasons beyond their control, changed in a way thato make them more abstract: .c te from the perspective of those who confront the changes,a these practical activities g h s have become removed from the contexts in which.a they existed. (Carrier 1998: 25) w w w

m o Abstraction, as applied in this discussion, is both.c a matter of spatial as well socio- te a g economic change, and, following Carrier h(1998) can be said to have a practical s .a aspect played out, for instance, in work cultures,w as well as in the look and feel of w w

London-as-place – in the built environmentm and practical managerial frameworks o .c performing ‘the city’. te a g h Finance, London’s dominant industrys is, of course, susceptible to abstraction, .a w w dealing as it must with complex weconomic models and algorithms. But financial

m industries also and at the same timeo support real substantive needs and wants, for .c te a services related to the saving andg investment of money, for housing, for structured h s .a borrowing, for inheritance and,w lately for education, health and social care and so w w 17 on. Indeed current debates about regulation and restructuring of London’s banks m o have revolved around a .cdichotomy seeking to protect High Street banking from te a g h s .a w 16 The identificationw of ‘abstraction’ here opens connections to a complex debate w taking focus away fromm the main focus here. Certainly however there are key issues to flag o .c up about the embodiment,te location and performance of ‘abstraction’ in the social world. a g h Carrier’s account sof abstraction as a practical process is helpful (Carrier 1998, see also Frith .a w 1998 and Fine 1998)w but it is useful to also note Miller’s (1998; 2002; 2011) discussions of w

m ‘virtualism’ whicho is linked to this concern with abstraction, and to a debate with Michael .c te Callon (Millera 2002; Callon and Muniesa 2005) regarding the performance of markets and g h the conceptions of markets as practical-collective ‘devices’. Thus abstraction should not .a w be seen where as airy and un-located, even while its attendant practices and rationalities w

m produceo in realities and institutional relations and spatial effects of the kinds identified as .c te ‘dislocation’a and ‘disembedding’ in much social theory. g h s 17 Most UK banks are based in London – with one further important other UK .a w w financialw centres in Edinburgh. © Copyrighted Material The Apprentice: Realities and Fictions for the London Skyline 133 © Copyrighted Material

contagious relationships with investment banking. Advocates for better regulationm o .c te hope that the ‘lifeworlds’ (Habermas 1987: 355) of ordinary savers and investorsa g h s can be more effectively shielded from the volatility of the abstract global marketsa . w w and the risks taken by banks, prone to risky mistakes linked to serially assertingw and

m applying the formal logic of theoretical finance-driven market economicso in the .c te a abstract– treating economic models as real and robust rather than as hypotheticalg h s 18 .a and abstracted. w w w The character and extent of finance’s divorce from its former ‘real’ substantive m o .c referents; houses, capital investments and trading, savers’ domesticte financial a g h concerns, and in favour of formal logical processes taken-as-real,s ‘treating the .a w economic model of the market as though it were core to actualw economies rather w

m than a projection of economists’ (Miller 2002: 219) cano be said to determine .c te the extent to which the practice of finance has becomea overly abstracted. As g h s Boltankski and Chiapello (2005) write, describing an.a emergent and changing w w w ethos in contemporary capitalist accumulation. m o .c te a g The deregulation of credit markets, their de-compartmentalisation,h and the s .a creation of ‘new financial products’ have multipliedw the possibilities of purely w w

speculative profits, whereby capital expandsm without taking the form of o .c investment in productive activity. (Boltanskite and Chiapello 2005: vii) a g h s .a w Such abstraction-process are linked to wrelated terms discussed in a number of w

m chapters in this volume; especially financialisationo (in particular), globalisation, .c te a extended commoditisation, ‘time-spaceg compression’ (Harvey 1990) and h s deregulation – with London as a.a key network centre where these dynamics w w w 19 intensify and radiate. These processes are by no means total, defining or unitary. m o Nevertheless they afford narratives.c framing a number of evident transformations te a g experienced in London’s recenth and ongoing evolutions and crises, with parallel s .a w and interlinked crises extensivew across the UK and globally. w

This is not to say thatm London is ‘abstract’ as such. It retains its immanence, o .c te its multiplicities; its streetsa and scenes, its material and cultural resonance; g h s cosmopolitan, productive,.a energetic and creative. And yet, in different places, w w w

m o .c te a 18 In relationg to the notion of ‘lifeworld’, Jürgen Habermas observes that there is an h s ever present risk,.a namely, ‘that the imperatives of autonomous subsystems make their way w w into the lifeworldw from the outside—like colonial masters coming into a tribal society—and

m o force a process.c of assimilation upon it. The diffused perspectives of the local culture cannot te a be sufficientlyg coordinated to permit the play of the metropolis and the world market to be h s grasped from.a the periphery (Habermas 1987: 355) w w w 19 Frith makes an important criticism of over-arching narratives of change reminding m o that analysis.c must distinguish between confusing theoretical logics and narratives and the te a logicg of practice. This applies in his notion of practical capitalism, a conception alert to the h s complex.a and multiple contradictions attenuating abstraction, globalisation, technological w w changew and time-space compression (see Frith 1998: 162-3). © Copyrighted Material 134 London After Recession © Copyrighted Material in differing registers London is marked by, sets out and displays a tendency to m o and deference towards this economistic abstraction. The extension of such.c te a g h abstracting logic into our structuring and experience of further spheres standss as .a w both present condition and future threat (Miller 1998; 2002; Fine 1998; wCarrier w

1998). It is the model of efficiency and modernity, as per Ritzer’s (1993)m account o .c te of McDonaldisation, but it is also the target for reflective redress asa we think g h s about places, spaces and the development of contemporary city. The .Apprenticea is w w relevant in this context. w

m o .c te a g h s .a Apprenticeship: Dreaming the Substantive Economy w w w

m o .c Part of The Apprentice’s attraction lies in its title and in itste explicit but underlying a g h theme. The name of the show ‘Apprentice’ alludes tos a tradition of hands-on .a w skills acquisition, an intimate social-relational processw depending upon extended w

m engagement with a master and with the social worldo of his work and craft – the .c te workshop (Sennet 2008; 2006; Rule 1987; Carriera 1998) as a social context for g h s economic productivity and relations. As Bauman.a observes: w w w

m o The very character of apprenticeship [is] an .initiationc into a totality of patterned te a g existence of the closely-knit trade community.h (Bauman 1982: 8) s .a w w w

Notionally, apprenticeship stands as mcounter to abstract market processes of o .c selection and promotion structuring today’ste employment markets, predicated, as a g h they are, on a modern discourse of ‘careerism’,s ‘personal branding’, ‘competition’ .a w w and individuals’ ‘market value’. w

m Apprenticeship marks an erao where some of the contemporary processes, .c te a linked to highly developed marketg societies, were far less extensive, and so did not h s .a so readily define individualw ‘value’: a sociality where there was a demonstrable w w continuum between work, culture, family and community, place and the m o productivities in the application.c of skills and experience. In many ways redolent of te a g h the pre-modern, and findings its historical apogee in the proto-modern organisation .a w of work, apprenticeshipw becomes rhetorically and nostalgically attractive as a w

m traditional counterpointo to the hyper-modern realities of a risky, unsettling and .c te marketised connectiona between work, self-identity, economy and society. g h s The Apprentice.a offers a notional and compressed version of apprenticeship as a w w prize, along withw a large financial reward. While actual motivations in the show are

m o multiple and.c complex, in the televisual poetics of The Apprentice and registered te a g in the veryh title is the idea that the contestants seek not only to be contracted s .a – to be w paid the winner’s salary. They want something more. The show also w w maps a journey from ‘outside’ Sir Alan’s circle and inwards (project by project); m o .c it figureste a promise of initiation and connection, to narrative and membership, a g h to swork and success framed not only by economic reward but by durable social .a w engagementw through work. The show valorises not just competitive and financial w © Copyrighted Material The Apprentice: Realities and Fictions for the London Skyline 135 © Copyrighted Material

success but, also, instituted success. The atavism underwriting the show’s title canm o .c te be considered as a mass-mediated instance of social dreaming – with audiences’a g h s displaced desire reaching for ‘apprenticeship’, a rhetorical and compensatorya . w w emblem for the employment-sociality formally ejected from London’s abstractedw

m marketised economy and its casualised and volatile employment markets.o .c te a g h s .a w w w Foregrounding the Background: London, Place and Work m o .c te a g h According to Lao Tse, the reality of a hollow object is in the voids and not in the .a w walls that define it. He was speaking, of course, of spiritual realities.w These are w

m the realities also of the Canary Wharf Tower. The power of theo void is increased .c te and … with its supporting structure creates a portal to thea sky … a door to the g h s infinite. (Cesar Pelli, architect’s speech at the opening of.a One Canada Square at w w w Canary Wharf 1991) m o .c te a g The Apprentice is distinctive amongst reality showsh in its studied consciousness s .a of place. The place-based inflection stands as significantw here in thinking about w w

London. Put simply the aesthetic and presentationalm style of the show, redolent as o .c it is with vistas traversing Canary Wharf, thete financial districts of Docklands and, a g h 20 lately other numerous other iconic buildings,s works effectively to connect the .a w show’s discursive play and drama (aroundw work, employee ‘value’ and values), w

m with London underlined as space and placeo – as economic ‘seat’. .c te a It is commonplace to point out theg ways in which cities ‘star’ in novels, film h s and lately television. 1990s drama.a Sex and the City is all about New York, as w w w are Woody Allen’s 1970s comedies (Manhattan and Annie Hall in particular). m o Inspector Morse is more or less .ca televisual hymn to Oxford. In each case the city- te a g vision provides or implies an hethos – an urban style and a collection or collocation s .a w of subjectivities. It becomesw both set and set up: an interruptive backdrop that w sometimes supports and m at other moments undermines characters’ particular o .c te urbanity. So it is with Thea Apprentice. The show places its contestants ‘on trial’; g h s stuck in London traffic.a or in Sugar’s putative Canary Wharf boardroom: do they w w fit in this city – are theyw at home here in and amongst these places? The city stands

m in the show as botho obstacle to and destination for its competitive participants – as .c te a 21 they negotiate theg ‘reality’ contest. Such London-based urban-imagery cut into h s .a w w w

m o .c te a 20 Suchg as ‘The Gherkin’ and Tower 42 and soon The Shard. h s 21 Numerous.a episodes unfold in which knowledge and ignorance of London is w w w deployed by contestants seeking to solve problems. Much on screen time is devoted to m o contestants.c in taxis and hire cars shuttling between distant destinations around the London te a compassg – and as they seek to return to the notional ‘hub’ Sir Alan’s boardroom in Canary h s Wharf..a And, finally, the lucky winner will notionally be installed at Sir Alan’s side. Not in w w wfact in the Canary Wharf Tower where so much putatively goes on – but at Sir Alan Sugar’s © Copyrighted Material 136 London After Recession © Copyrighted Material

The Apprentice, like its musical score, drives the sense, the sensibility and the m o culture of events as they unfold. .c te a g h London’s city skyline is both figure and ground for the show. The openings .a w shots, backed by Prokofiev’s imposing ‘Dance of the Knights’ from Romeow and w

Juliet, comprise perhaps the most recognisable credit sequences in UK television.m o .c te Sound and vision lend context, drama and affective charge to thea business g h s activities depicted. The same vistas have been foregrounded in recent.a years the w w context of anxiety and confusion about the ‘content’ and ‘function’w of some of

m 22 o London’s buildings. These have provided a spectacular stage and.c backdrop for te a narratives of economic success, but now (also) London’s iconicg skylines must h s .a signify and stand witness to news stories of grand-scale failuresw and to crises and w w decline. Spectacular architecture has become linked in the popular imaginary to m o .c over-speculation, abstracting de-control and market collapse.te a g h Leslie Sklair (2005; 2006; 2010) has pointed up thes iconicity of corporate .a w buildings – part of a transnational vernacular for globalisation.w As Sklair argues, w

m global capitalism … mobilises the commercial potentialo of generic globalisation .c te in the sphere of architecture as it does more or less successfullya in all other spheres g h s (Sklair 2010). A consequence of the financial crisis.a has been some uncertainty w w w about the referentiality and value of such pervasive architectural iconicity – with m o23 knock on anxieties about the city-as-a whole.c and underscoring more imminent te a g and specific concerns regarding the commercialh and market value of commercial s .a property in London. To specify: the extensionw of anxieties about disembedding w w and abstraction outlined above extendm into sentiment regarding the iconic built o .c environment. The city risks losing thete ‘moral’ value built into its aesthetic skyline a g h – a ‘hyper modern’ skyline framings London and the city and tacitly affirming .a w w the coherence, the purposeful developmentw and function of the (financial/global)

m cityscape. o .c te a The show’s drama, stagedg by the city in this way, ends up offering up fictive h s .a work content for the city – wand a framing, scripted sociality structured as game. w w The show populates the abstract city – the hollow abstract towers spreading m o across London’s skyline.c – light heartedly but arrestingly figuring rituals of te a g h work, productivity, creativitys as well as failure and ineptitude. This produces .a w w w real headquarters – untilm recently in Brentwood. On occasion contestants are taken ‘global’ o .c with notable trips inte past series to Morocco and to Paris. a g h 22 TV and spress imagery have continually featured the towers at London’s Canary .a w Wharf, the Swissw Re Building, widely known as ‘the Gherkin’ and Tower42, just as are w

m framed in Theo Apprentice’s vistas of London, along with a number of other banking head .c te offices in London’sa financial districts. As finance-industry news spread to more frequently g h dominate sfront pages and news headlines in 2008-9 and subsequently, and with the credit .a w crunch andw its aftermaths demanding serial coverage and overview, the ‘image’ of the city – w

m and attendanto architectural imageries – has been very much in the frame for news audiences. .c te a23 With The Shard soon to be added to the London skyline, a new tallest building g h fors London, there is evidently a continuing confidence in the value of such structures in the .a w w reputationw and the functional economic life of a global city like London. © Copyrighted Material The Apprentice: Realities and Fictions for the London Skyline 137 © Copyrighted Material

m o .c te a g h s .a w w w

m o .c te a g h s .a w Figure 8.1 The Apprentice dramatisesw individuals in competition, w

m judgement, justificationo and business practice but it is also .c te a highly conscious of placeg – London’s city skyline is both figure h s and ground for the show.a w w w

Source: Photo courtesy of author. m o .c te a g an imaginary dramatic narrativeh of value, virtue, punishment and reward. Again s .a w the show answers an appetitew – to apprehend London’s moral economy. The w

Apprentice offers this upm and framing punishment and reward in the imagined o .c te spaces of the city – anda in a space where, as some have argued, judgement and g h s justice have been suspended.a and deferred by abstracting market logics. Ethos is w w added to vista: affectw to abstraction.

m o .c te a g h s .a Moral Trial: Thew Apprentice as Modern Fairy Tale w w

m o .c It is …te no exaggeration to think that a society (or the state of a society) may a g h be defineds by the character of the tests it sets itself, through which the social .a w selectionw of people is conducted, and by conflicts over the more or less just w

m natureo of those tests. (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 32) .c te a g h s The.a Apprentice is a moral fable tailored to a generation brought up on Big Brother w w wand neoclassical economics. A further element to its imaginary encounter with the © Copyrighted Material 138 London After Recession © Copyrighted Material abstraction of disembedded market relations is the show’s assertion of emotional- m o narrative engagement. While The Apprentice primarily invites the emotional.c te a g h enjoyment of competitive play – for viewers and participants – the structure sof the .a w format invites further analysis. A deeper component of the show’s appeal liesw in its w structure as modern fairy tale – dressed up to conform to reality-TV’s demandsm for o .c te cringe-making exposure, rendered comedic via slap-stick pitches and anarcissistic g h s assertions of success. .a w w Couldry rightly compares reality TV to theatres of cruelty (Couldryw 2008).

m o If we are at a safe distance and the pain is largely self-inflicted,.c people under te a pressure are often funny or otherwise compelling – sympathyg gives over to h s .a something else, especially on reality TV. Like much lovedw 70s classic Fawlty w w Towers, The Apprentice stages a painful kind of neurotic chaos. It exploits its m o .c frantic protagonists’ confused eagerness to serve either thete projected ethos of the a g h master, or the embodied abstractions of market-competitives orthodoxy. Candidates .a w become mini cartoon capitalists on the living streetsw of London or spluttering w

m justifications in the boardroom. On screens since 2005o and in a number of variants, .c te this has provided one of the present generation’sa major workplace-comedy of g h s manners. Like most comedy, The Apprentice is also,.a in the end, a morality tale. w w w The Apprentice’s further appeal is to the affirmation of moral judgements m o – an attempt to link the abstract emotionally.c unintelligible world of city work, te a g and to dramatise a process whereby ‘good’h is affirmed and embodied in one who s .a triumphs, who inherits, in a narrative underpinnedw by the emotional register of a w w fairy story. Whoever devised The Apprenticem format no doubt took inspiration o .c from Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the teChocolate Factory (1973) – another cruel a g h 24 theatre of selection and judgements. The Apprentice re-plays Willy Wonka for .a w w Reality TV. The ‘children’, havingw won golden tickets to the mythic factory are

m presented to the master (Wonka/Sugar)o passing through in a series of inventive .c te a scenarios: An ongoing moralg trial, or, as Sugar likes to call his equivalent, ‘a h s .a process’. They are given instructionsw and clues and we see them fail, one by one. w w Each is then unceremoniously ejected, weeping into their Blackberry, if not turned m o actually into one – remember.c Violet Beauregarde. te a g h The annual crop of scontestants readily personify the moral failings of childhood .a w favourites; the greedw of Augustus Gloop, the know-it-all-entitlement of Violet w

m Beauregard, and, ofo course, spoiled ‘daddy’s girl’ Veruca Salt: ‘I want an Oompa .c te Lumpa, and I wanta it now!’ Pick any series and there are candidates who readily g h s 25 reference Dahl’s.a modern-consumerist archetypes. w w w

m o .c te a g h 24 Ifs Alan Sugar makes an unlikely Willy Wonka, notwithstanding his sweet-toothed .a w name, neverthelessw Canary Wharf’s towers suggest a credible great glass elevator (Dahl w

m 1973b).o .c te a25 The most important Dahl character in all this has not yet been mentioned. Mike g h Teavees (TV) is a lesson to us all. He was the child for whom nothing mattered except that .a w w itw was on screen. His fate was to be transmitted through a TV signal. Mike Teavee’s efforts © Copyrighted Material The Apprentice: Realities and Fictions for the London Skyline 139 © Copyrighted Material

The prize, as in Sugar’s game, is a place at the master’s side, the key to them o .c te factory. The master seeks an heir, an ‘apprentice’: the desperate heirs seeka an g h s inheritance – all the chocolate you can eat, or a £250,000 investment froma Lord . w w Sugar. A psychoanalyst might conjecture that the errant children in the chocolatew

m factory are all also seeking more adequate father figures. It would be owrong to .c te a wildly extend that point to The Apprentice candidates. However, itg is safe to h s .a conjecture that part of the show’s appeal, if read psychoanalytically,w stands in its w w offering some affirmation of and structure to contain a version of the ‘good’ in the m o .c city and in work, to construct from the process of elimination at efurther structure, a g h also basic to the shows narrative – of legitimation: a way of reassurings ourselves .a w and affirming that in ‘the city’ there remains an ethos supportingw evaluations of w

m good and bad – a moral economy as check and balance againsto an abstract market- .c te place logics. a g h s The provision of such a framework is especially attractive.a in relation to and w w w in the context of popular anxieties about London-as-unintelligible city, the ‘city’ m o out of control and seemingly deferring regulation and.c (communal) reparation. As te a g such this accounts for The Apprentice’s further attractionh – an attraction which s .a of course might readily be cast as dangerously seductivew – for the show does not w w invite real practical judgement. Instead it producesm a light hearted fictive scene o .c where judgement is applied satisfactorily andte ritually, and in the seeming absence a g h of a position to pass or enact judgement ons real failures in the Square Mile. .a w w w

m o .c te a Clash of Cities: The Apprentice as Legitimationg h s .a w w w It seems to us scarcely open to doubt that at an ideological level…capitalism m o will face increasing difficulties,.c if it does not restore some grounds for hope te a g to those whose engagementh is required for the functioning of the system as a s .a w whole. (Boltanski and Chiapellow 2005: xliii) w

m o .c te The differences betweena TV shows and fairy tales are as illuminating as the g h s comparisons between.a them. Thus the moral ground of The Apprentice is not as w w raw, not as comprehensivew as in Dahl’s fable. The show, pantomimic as it is, feeds

m into a more articulatedo morality play than Dahl’s child’s morality fable. The show .c te a does not simply,g just pull out the ‘baddies’ and reward the good character – the h s .a one who passesw all the tests. Instead the show tests the contestants and seeks w w to affirm a ‘good’ candidate, selecting and scripting an individual to embody a m o .c suitable ethoste – a suitable version of business practice and capitalism befitting and a g h connectings to the projected ethos of Lord Sugar and his corporation and his vision .a w of a regeneratedw practical capitalism in the city. The show attempts to perform, w

m or, rather,o attempts to address an appetite for ‘an ideological reconstruction [of .c te a g h s to. abecome bigger by broadcasting himself made him very much smaller. Perhaps there is a w w wlesson in there somewhere too? © Copyrighted Material 140 London After Recession © Copyrighted Material business ethos] to demonstrate that the world of work does indeed still possess a m 26 o “meaning”’ (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 29). The Apprentice amounts not.c to te a g h a critique of capitalism as such; far from it: but an exploration of variants withins .a w the differing scripts laid out in the show. w w

The show’s format invites reflection: justification and the elaboration,m in o .c te theory and practice, of competing ‘scripts’. Versions of ‘business’ area hinted at. g h s Differing ethos becomes personified in candidates; in Sir Alan, too;.a and with w w understated gravitas, in his ‘eyes and ears’, the experienced mentor/auditorsw

m o Nick and Margaret, and lately Karen Brady. From within the series.c values begin te a to crystallise, emerging across the boardroom table and duringg tasks; between h s .a w w w

m o .c te a g h Table 8.1 Ideal Types of business ‘cities’: Criteria sfor status and .a w justification w w

m o .c te Ethos ‘city’ Justification of a decisions Candidates/ g h and judgementss made commentary .a w primarily in termsw of… w

m o Here the ethos The Authenticity.c and Candidates are often te a depends upon inspirational creativity.g The scripts of rejected for over- h s a performative city romantic.a individualism, playing a creative w w valorising non-conformityw and approach and

m of creativity, ‘zaniness’.o To what extent advertising creativity .c te authenticity, artistry is athere evidence of – as divorced from g h and so on. Also some creatives risk taking? It is the hard sell approach .a w valuing of religious w carried credibly. favoured by sugar is w

purity/integrity etc. m mocked o .c te Here status The a Respect for elders and Sugar asserts g h depends on respect domestics continuity of concern a discourse of .a w for tradition, city w with past values and respect, but uses his w

seniority and on m approaches. To what own biography to o .c enacting reciprocal te extent does the candidate undermine candidates’ a g h dependencies s offer deference to the assertions of .a allied to familial w knowledge/experience of entitlement and scripts w w and generational his elders? of success linked to m o structures. The ‘great.c inherited privilege te a man’ as elder, sageg h s and protector .a w w w

m o .c te a g h s .a w w w

m 26o Boltanski and Chiapello identify this ‘appetite’ not with TV programming but with .c te the atracts of business books published in recent decades and which support their detailed g h analytics study of evolving business ethos. Their analysis is pre-empted by a helpful discussion .a w w wof the ‘globalization of reflexive business knowledge’ by Nigel Thrift (Thrift 1998). © Copyrighted Material The Apprentice: Realities and Fictions for the London Skyline 141 © Copyrighted Material

Table 8.1 (continued) m o .c te a g h s .a Here Status depends The The standing of the Sugar underplaysw w w on the opinion of reputational individual amongst aspects of his own m o others. This is the city members of important celebrity, even.c as te a city of ‘celebrity reference groups. What part of his cultivationg h s culture’ or, more do peers, customers and of image..a A notable w w soberly, of reputation other colleagues think of failure inw this regard

m systems and good the candidate? was a o2010 candidate .c conduct dependent who teannounced a g h upon ‘the community himselfs as ‘Baggs the .a w view’. brand’w and who was w ejected with an extra m o .c dose of scorn. te a g h Here status is The civic The capacity to represents Few candidates .a w established via city fairly, to subordinate wtheir emerge from political w

political power. own views or aims mwithin or public sector o .c How fully and how the task of representingte spheres and the a g well does ‘the great and respecting theh formal show does little to s .a man’ represent his views of the groupw he support processes w w constituency, his or she might represent. of democratic m o team, his firm and Includes commitment.c to decision-making te a so on. social justiceg as a guiding or social justice. h s value .a One team failed a w w w task, partly, for poor

m o implementation of .c te a a charity-linked g h s marketing scheme .a w w selling trainers w

m (McGuigan 2008) o .c te Here status is The a The profit motive. How This competent g h marked by wealth commercials much money has the espousal of and .a w and acumen in city w candidate made. Was performance w

the provision of m he or she successful in conforming to version o .c commodities in the te selling profitably? of capitalism seems to a g h market s have a firmer success .a w rate for candidates and w w ‘winning’ each week m o .c is often a matter of te a g market competition h s .a – who made the most w w w profit. Candidates who

m o sell well and make .c te a good profits tend to g h s thrive. .a w w w

Table 8.1 (concluded) m o .c te a g Here status is The Expertise and technical A common trope inh the s .a primarily a matter industrial skill. Was the candidate shows find Sir Alanw w w of professional or city exhibiting know-how and exposing failures on m other competence applying expertise in the the part of candidateso .c te including efficiency delivery of this or that whose experiencea and g h and the capacity to task CVs suggests they have .a w ‘graft’. expertisew in certain w

areas –m and then o .c neverthelesste fail in a g h taskss themed to their .a ‘home’w industries. w w This, while well m o .c applied expertise is te a g valued, Sugar rejects h s .a much expertise, but w w w serially rewards and

m o endorse graft. .c te a In the most recent g h s series (2011) .a w w Sugar appointed an w

m inventor, suggesting o .c te endorsement of a g h s this aspect of the .a w accumulation process w w

m o Source: Adapted from Boltanski and Chiapello.c (2005: 24-6). te a g h statements, judgements and justifications.s Unstable and partial as these emerging .a w w scripts are, something engaging isw transacted across the screen.

m Boltanski and Chiapello (2005:o 24-6) offer a useful typology here (Table 8.1). .c te a They understand the relationshipg between the various regimes of accumulation in h s .a terms of different ‘cities’. Eachw ‘city’ (as they term it) identifies and is identified w w in the enactment of specific clusters of ideal typical values – underpinning a kind m o of regime validating ‘success’..c They describe these ‘cities’ as sites for justification te a g h (in terms of an appeals to ethos) of particular values affirming status and worth. .a w The moral ‘architecture’w corroborating value and justification in specific moments w

m makes for the charactero of ‘the city’. .c te The show (anda the reflective after show, where judgement and justification are g h s picked over again.a and again in comedic mode), together comprise – and make a w w space for – a ritualw enactment of an ethos for sense of ‘the city’. The ‘city’ referred

m o to and presented.c become, variously and at once, a purely thematic concept (e.g. te a g domestic,h reputational. commercial etc.) denoting a cluster of values, a specific s .a location-inw transition, i.e. the span linking ‘The City of London’ between the w w square mile and Canary Wharf tower so avidly traced in the show’s imageries. m o .c For tethe audience, the city becomes also an approximation of an inner world of a g h judgement,s as the show affords moments demanding evaluative interventions on .a w thew part of viewers mobilising their adherence to this or that city, or, more likely, w © Copyrighted Material The Apprentice: Realities and Fictions for the London Skyline 143 © Copyrighted Material

this or that hybrid combination of ‘cities’: a city of the mind and of aspiration. Them o .c te show invites the private formulation via public discussion of ‘the good city’a – a g h s private-public connection affirmed in the social media traffic that has surroundeda . w w the more recent series. w

m Sir Alan, for his part, appears to judge primarily in terms of the ‘commercialo .c te a city’ – with some deference to ‘the industrial city’. He is widely criticisedg for a h s .a narrow conception of what really counts in business and for an overlyw mercantile w w morality. Critique aside, Sir Alan is enacting an important ritual task in the cultural m o .c performance – presenting a version of the old to expose and testte emergent and a g h ‘new’ novice scripts. As Boltanski and Chiapello 2005 put it: s .a w w w

m The spirit of capitalism is transformed to respond to the needo to justification .c te by people who are engaged in the capitalist accumulationa process at a given g h s moment, but whose values and representations, inherited.a as a cultural legacy, w w w are still associated with earlier forms of accumulation. (Boltanski and Chiapello m o 2005: 21) .c te a g h s .a The moral drama of the show –beyond a broad affirmationw of and embodiment of w w the good apprentice in a winner – comes from ma clash of generations and a clash of o .c ‘cities’. This clash is interesting in the contextt eof the discussion of London as abstract a g h city. To reiterate the world of work has becomes somewhat abstract, disembedded .a w from framing scripts. It is lately at a removew from the sets of activities associated w

m with previous regimes of accumulation;o it is disconnected from established ‘cities’ .c te a i.e. the instituted regimes of accumulationg and legitimating discourses that govern/ h s have governed economic activity .ain the city-past. Ostensibly the show simply w w w asserts a particular strand of capitalism. But what it also points to is an appetite for m o some framing, some social structure.c and moral-political governance of the market. te a g Sugar, in person, cannot provideh this. What The Apprentice points to, as media s .a w object, is a latent desire forw a social-ethical frame for the city, for the market and w for the people working daym by day in those spaces and places. o .c te Evident and widespreada fascination with The Apprentice can be read as g h s symptomatic of what .aI want to describe as a virtual movement – with the show w w affording not traditionalw critique, but a media space where anxieties and deficits

m in London’s cultureo of work can be explored. This is in no way to say that the .c te a show is in any mannerg critical in its approach to business – again, far from it. As h s .a Couldry and Littlerw suggest ‘neoliberal norms are both worked out and endorsed’ w w (Couldry and Littler 2011: 270) and McGuigan (2008) finds engagements with m o .c ‘cool’ cultureste in the show to serve mainly marketing ends. a g h However,s in part, and as a general function of its status as entertainment- .a w orientedw media product, with a brief to engage audiences and to afford drama, w

m and ino part, also as a function of its narrative and meta-narrative structures, the .c te showa nevertheless affords a resource – an object around which emotive, moral g h s and.a evaluative thinking can emerge. In particular The Apprentice has a specific w w wsalience in London, and that the specific presentation and execution of the show’s © Copyrighted Material 144 London After Recession © Copyrighted Material format in its UK editions has tuned into the show’s location – in the city – as a key m o underpinning theme. .c te a g h Fictive and playful as it certainly is, The Apprentice has contributed a powerfuls .a w set of imagery to accompany ideas about London – as a centre for businessw know w how and entrepreneurial success. It locates a part of its appeal in a popularm media- o .c te based image of ‘London’, in the space of, but in register counterpointeda against the g h s ‘the city’ and its discursive abstraction. This is abstraction of long standing,.a but that w w became lately ‘real’, in the sense of dramatically impacting news w agendas, lives

m o and livelihoods via the multiple unravelling of unstable financial .cmechanisms and te a in the collapse of fictitious dependences within the fiscal system,g as described by h s .a Gillian Tett (2009) and others (Turner 2008; Nesvetailova 2010)w in the immediate w w wake of the wake of the 2008 crisis. m o .c There is a hint in the show’s popularity of a need forte a resilient institutional a g h frame for London’s economic life. As Polanyi writes: s .a w w w

m The instituting of the economic process vests thato process with unity and .c te stability; it produces a structure with a definite functiona in society; it shifts the g h s place of the process in society, thus adding significance.a to its history; it centres w w w interest on values, motives and policy. (Polanyi 1957) m o .c te a g Crucially this is a matter for governance andh government, and not for ‘leadership’ s .a and management styles as the show impliesw it might be. In the show’s reality w w format, and as Couldry and Littler rightlym identify, The Apprentice seems to o .c assert commitments to the notion of tindividuale corporate leadership. While such a g h leadership has a place and a value,s the city, London and the market require a .a w w process of social re-embedding tow reconnect finance and the global-local flows of

m capital to the grounds of political,o moral and community-linked governance – not .c te a least through a more stable connectiong between the jobs markets and education – h s .a and via real and not fictive apprenticeships.w Then, again London might seem more w w real to more of its inhabitants and the excitement of energy of work will emerge, m o will be sought and found. c on the streets and in offices, institutions and work places te a g h – and not just on screen.s .a w w w

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m Holmwood, L. (2009). The Apprentice tackles credit cruncho as fifth series launches. .c te The Guardian, Tuesday 17 March 2009. a g h s Huber, N. (2008). The apprentice: Is it the real deal? The.a Guardian, Tuesday 27 w w w May 2008. m o Mandelson, P. (2008). speech by Rt. Hon. Peter Mandelson.c Monday, Secretary of te a g State for Trade and Industry, CBI Annual Conference,h Monday 2 November s .a 1998. w w w

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m o .c te a g h s .a w w w