The dark side of Barbie-mania
But the release of half a dozen movies about brands — Barbie, Flamin' Hot Cheetos, Tetris, Nike Air, BlackBerry, and Beanie Babies — in six months isn't just the result of Hollywood groupthink and coincidence.
Movies about brands have something original concepts don't: audience prerecognition. Because people already know something about the story, the studios surmise, they're more likely to be interested in it. People like Flamin' Hot Cheetos, so they'll probably click on a movie called "Flamin' Hot," the thinking at Hulu went. In a tightening economy, Hollywood has turned toward these kinds of safe bets: 13 more movies based on toys from Mattel, the company behind Barbie, have been announced, and another 45 are in development.
Most of these brand-centric movies have another thing in common, compounding their twinness: Instead of just using the brand as a jumping-off point, they focus on the brand's origin story. That's no coincidence either; the rise of this kind of branded success story is an attempt to capitalize on the increasing demand for workers to brand themselves to make a living.
Success in the growing gig economy, the market for short-term and freelance work, is predicated on the cultivation and maintenance of strong personal brands. In a sense, successful brands are the new American movie stars. But just as these brand-centric movies ring hollow, so does the gig economy they're catering to.
The new movie stars
Between this spring and this summer there will have been five movies released whose plots are about the creation of a brand: "Flamin' Hot," "Air," "Tetris," "The Beanie Bubble," and "BlackBerry." They're all named after the main character, the product. You don't need to get into the specifics to know the plot: an underdog tale about how something we like to buy came to be.
"Flamin' Hot" is a rags-to-riches account of an industrious janitor who seizes his last chance to pitch a spicy variation of the crunchy corn puff and become a marketing executive. "Air" tells the story of a nearly forgotten shoe brand whose struggling basketball division doggedly pursues a deal with an unproven college basketball player, to everyone's massive success. "The Beanie Bubble" follows Zach Galifianakis as Ty Warner, the unsuccessful toy salesman who landed on the overnight success of Beanie Babies.
While glossing over the real barriers to success people face — things like abusive bosses, wage theft, and the precarity of unemployment — the movies focus on how, with some plucky perseverance, anyone can build a world-conquering brand. ("Barbie," which is lining up to be the hottest movie of the summer, is a bit of an outlier in this regard. While the plot isn't about the making of Barbie, Barbie and Ken do step outside Barbie Land to peek behind the curtains of their creation.)
While "Barbie" stars Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling and "Air" stars Ben Affleck, most of these movies lack star power. The human characters often play second fiddle to the brands. This is what makes these movies feel so hollow: Any excitement or positive feelings they engender are ultimately in service of consumer packaged goods. Each movie asks us to feel something … about Flamin' Hot Cheetos. But the narrative is selling because millions of Americans are trying to build similarly successful brands — of themselves.
The gig economy's empty promise
The gig economy promises a shortcut to the freedoms enjoyed by the entrepreneurs and owners valorized in these films — you get to work when you want to and be your own boss. So far, the pitch has been successful. Since Uber, Fiverr, and other gig companies hit the scene in the early 2010s, the gig economy has been growing: Some 35% of workers in 2021 were freelancers. In the wake of COVID-19, an unprecedented number of people quit their jobs, and many turned to freelancing. The reasons varied: wage stagnation, the precarity of at-will employment, the ever present threat and unpredictability of layoffs. From 1979 to 2020, productivity in the US grew by 61.8% while wages grew by 17.5%.
For companies, a big appeal of gig work is the cheap cost of labor. Some studies suggest that using independent contractors — the formal classification of gig workers — instead of full-time employees can save companies up to 30%. As more companies look to gig workers to replace full-time jobs, more workers take up gig work.
But just like the films, the gig economy largely hasn't delivered on the goods. In the gig economy, a person is both the product and the business. As such, many gig workers attempt to differentiate themselves from their competitors by crafting a personal brand on social media. With an estimated 58 million American gig workers, it's a race to the bottom to stand out and secure work. In a 2020 survey conducted by the Shift Project, 14% of gig workers said they earned less than the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. The majority — about 64% — of gig workers said they earned between $0 and $14.99 an hour, whereas about 89% of W-2 workers, those employed by a company, said they earned at least $10 an hour.
Since almost all gig workers are classified as independent contractors, they don't receive the standard protections and benefits that ordinary employees typically receive. This includes things like a minimum wage, health insurance, access to unemployment insurance if they get laid off, paid sick days, and health-and-safety protections. They also don't have the same right as W-2 employees have to organize and negotiate with their employers for better working conditions.
More startlingly, reports of wage theft are widespread: In the Shift survey, 62% of gig workers said they hadn't been paid for their work in at least one instance, and 36% said they'd lost wages three or more times. This adds up. In 2021, the Federal Trade Commission forced Amazon to pay $61.7 million to settle allegations that over two years it'd been stealing tips from contracted delivery drivers. An analysis published by the Economic Policy Institute in 2021 suggests that while earners in all income levels experience wage theft, most are independent contractors and hourly workers.
Gig workers have begun to push back on their raw deal. Following three separate strikes this year, Uber and Lyft drivers in New York received pay increases. App-based delivery drivers in New York recently won a minimum wage of nearly $18. There's the rise of Fuck You Pay Me, an app for creators to share and compare the deals they receive from companies and describe what it's like to work with them; before, there wasn't a centralized place, like a Glassdoor, for creators to share their experiences with clients.
These recent fights highlight the rot underlying the promise of the gig economy. As the economy continues to emphasize the importance of self-branding through gig work, brand movies will continue to resonate. We're all brands now. And if you decide to wade into the freelance waters, it's best to have your branding floaties equipped.
Jared Holst is a Brooklyn-based writer focused on the ways branding impacts all facets of life from pop culture to policy. In addition to Insider, Jared has been published in Naked Capitalism, and self-publishes on Substack at Brands Mean a Lot.