Ambition is a dirty word. In pop culture, ambitious people are often portrayed as misanthropic villains--or worse--as sad losers. Think Pete Campbell in Mad Men. No matter how much ass he kissed, or how many late nights he stayed at the office, Pete never made it as a copywriter, forever relegated to the numbers side of the ad business. Meanwhile Don Draper has three martinis at lunch, takes a nap, and--boom--comes up with a brilliant idea. While Pete has to carefully plan each move, Don finds himself taking spontaneous--yet wildly successful--career moves in the name of his artistic independence. The Pete Campbells of the world play a pathetic contrast to the Don Drapers--an often singular genius whose brilliance comes naturally. Ambition is for untalented strivers. The true genius doesn't even need to be ambitious--he just needs to tap into his brilliance.
But three recent, well-received works across three different media cast new light on the ambition theme by portraying ambition as a necessary--and even desirable--trait for getting things done. The musical Hamilton, the Showtime series The Affair and the Danny Boyle movie Steve Jobs each seriously considers what it means to be an ambitious person by focusing on the story of someone who is not successful at first, but makes it through hard work and overt striving.
Lin Manuel Miranda depicts an openly ambitious Alexander Hamilton.
For instance, Alexander Hamilton (Lin Manuel Miranda) wears his ambition on his sleeve. Upon meeting fellow orphan Aaron Burr, Hamilton says, “God I wish there was a war/then we could prove that we’re more than anyone bargained for.” Hamilton constantly repeats the refrain “I’m not throwing my shot” whenever opportunities come his way. Though we are told of his pure writing talent, we see that he only becomes Washington’s right hand man, author of the Federalist Papers, and the country’s first Secretary of the Treasury through careful positioning. While we are shown the sacrifices Hamilton makes along the way--foregone vacations, political enemies--the message is still that Hamilton’s naked ambition shaped his identity, and the identity of the United States.
Steve Jobs portrays the titular character as someone who became successful despite his lack of innate talent. We see Jobs (Michael Fassbender) fail multiple times: both during the unsuccessful launch of the NeXT Cube, and when he gets ousted from the Apple Board. Steve Wozniak (Seth Rogan) at one point even asks Jobs, “What do you do?” But like Hamilton, Jobs is portrayed as a confident man who openly parades his ambition. The film argues that talent without ambition is a waste. As Jobs notes in the movie, without him, Wozniak would have had to settle for the best professor at UCLA instead of one of the world’s wealthiest man.
On a smaller scale, The Affair features a fictional writer who only becomes successful after years of juggling a public school teaching job with his writing. In The Affair, we see a seldom told story of a struggling artist finding middle-aged success. Even as Noah Solloway (Dominic West) becomes-–spoiler alert—a hit author, we still see him grapple with writer’s block, missed deadlines, and angry agents. The hard work only begins once others expect more of him.
But as much as I found these portrayals of ambition refreshing, I was disappointed by the all too familiar trope that seeps through each narrative: the trope of a man being forced to choose between greatness and family. Again and again, we see Hamilton, Jobs and Solloway wreak havoc on their personal lives by prioritizing their work. Noah’s constant networking amongst the glitterati leads him to miss the birth of his youngest daughter; Hamilton’s absence from his family vacation leads to an affair; Jobs’ rejects his daughter again and again to focus on Apple. Should I be great, or should I have a relationship with my child?
Can a true genius like Steve Jobs have a great relationship with his children?
Sure, these works openly judge their protagonists for being dicks. In a therapy session, Noah Solloway gets scolded by his shrink for even voicing the question of whether a man can be a great artist and a good person at the same time. Joanna Hoffman (Kate Winslet), Steve Jobs’ marketing person, chews him out for being a poor father. But even though none of these works advocates that one should be a dick, the assumptions behind the dichotomy presented show that we still have a long way to go. By asking the question, there’s still an assumption that being a good person, or being involved with one’s family, is somehow inconsistent with being successful. And of course, only men are allowed to make this decision. Buried behind this assumption is also the implication that women, who can’t simply choose to ignore their children, are less likely to be successful.
The irony is that there are many successful women behind these projects. The showrunner behind The Affair is a woman. The female actors in Hamilton and Steve Jobs have garnered as much attention as the men. Lin Manuel himself projects a family man sort of image. Surely many of these individuals know from personal experience that one doesn’t need to alienate one’s family to be successful. In 2016, I would like to see some portrayals of ambitious individuals--maybe even a woman or two--who are both ambitious and family-oriented. Hopefully we can have it all, at least in culture.