The movie
(which can be streamed on MAX), albeit boring, is about a recent graduate of
Northwestern (Julia Garner) who lands a job as a receptionist of sorts who ends
up doing everything from tidying up the office of her boss to holding in her
arms the baby of someone who comes into the office. When she goes to denounce
what she considers to be an ethical breach by her boss, her case is handled in
the most paternalistic manner by the head of the company’s grievance department
who suddenly insults her in the most demeaning way. But the clinch of it all is
the last scene in which she calls up her father who says how proud he and the
mother are of the fact that she has gotten such a promising job. When she tells
her father it’s a lot of hard work and stress, he says it’s always that way at
first but as time goes on it’ll get better. FAT CHANCE.
What the
movie leaves out is that the cost of college education since the 1980s taking
into consideration inflation has gone up 129% and that the average student
graduates college with a debt of $37,000. Combine that with the dead-end jobs
which await many professionals and that more doctors are corporate employees than
in the past and most university
professors have non-tenure track positions, and one can easily reach the
conclusion that the American Dream has become an unqualified myth.