Affective Labor and Alienation in Up in the Air

Abstract

The neoliberal phase of capitalism has been typified by its ruthlessness in its treatment of labor and this has been captured dramatically by Up in the Air (2009), directed by Jason Reitman, and adapted from Walter Kirn’s novel (Kirn 2001), which focuses on a corporate consultant, Ryan Bingham, whose job is to fly around the United States firing workers. He does this in such a professional and unthinking manner that the reality of what he is doing does not preoccupy him. His world becomes unsettled, however, when two women come into his life both professionally and personally. One is Natalie Keener, a new employee in his firm, who introduces the new technology of videoconferencing as a way to sack people in order to cut costs. The other is Alex Goran, a female mirror image of his own corporate self, with whom he has a relationship that appears to develop a degree of emotional empathy, but within which Bingham finds, to his great cost, that the labor he has been involved in when sacking people suddenly rebounds on him within the realm of his personal life. The alienating aspects of these labor activities begin to dawn on Bingham and Natalie both professionally and personally, forcing them to reassess their lives along more humanist lines.

I would like to thank Ewa Mazierska and Lawrence Wilde for their helpful comments and suggestions. The usual disclaimers apply.