Millennial Messiahs, Female Fixers, and Corporate Boards

Abstract

This article explores how television dramas function as a cultural forum on the workplace power dynamics of US tech startups. Focusing on the limited series, Super Pumped and WeCrashed, which are about Uber and WeWork, the authors analyze how relations of race, class, and gender/sexuality emerge in these narrativized techworlds via several “figures,” including white male founders/CEOs or “millennial messiahs,” “female fixers” that range from executives to silent service providers, and the “corporate board.” These figures are important because they circulate across fictional and non-fictional contexts and become a means by which publics make sense of the power relations of tech startups. Even as these shows center on the trials and tribulations of egomaniacal, power-hungry CEOs, they raise crucial questions about corporate corruption, gender/racial discrimination, and labor exploitation in the tech workplace and challenge viewers to reckon with the unchecked power of the big US technology companies.