How HBO’s Industry Explores the Unsatisfactory Role-Playing That Workplaces Demand of Black Women
This article contains spoilers for multiple seasons of Industry.
In her 2020 essay When Black Women Go From Office Pet to Office Threat, the writer Erika Stallings broke down the pipeline that many Black women go through at the corporate level.
First lauded as miracle hires, or “office pets”, Black women, Stallings argues, are treated in a “child-like” fashion, as their bosses assume to know what’s best for them and assert what appropriate behavior is. Black women can quickly find themselves debased and scrutinized as “threats”, she writes, especially after hypercompetence or when they manage to secure positions of power.
“Pets often experience feelings of tokenism, invisibility, pressure to assimilate, mistreatment, and being overprotected by colleagues,” Stallings wrote. “When Black women resist their status as pets, they find themselves transforming into a threat … [experiencing] microaggressions or punishment for challenging the status quo of the workplace.”
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Industry, the firestorm HBO financial drama now in its third season, offers an incisive look into this phenomenon, and into race, more broadly, in the modern-day workplace. The show’s protagonist, Harper Stern, shifts at various points between “pet” and “threat” throughout her career, in her vacillating attempts to stay ahead in the precarious financial world. But Industry argues that even when Black people “win” in white workplaces – when they embrace their status as “pets” or appeal to gatekeepers by working “twice as hard” (only to be rejected as “threats”) – they still lose. The show argues that there is never really a way for Stern as a Black woman (or anyone really) to “win” at capitalism, not without shelling out some part of themselves.
Several television shows in recent memory have attempted to portray being Black at work: dealing with microaggressions from white co-workers, navigating pay disparities. Nella from The Other Black Girl and Molly and Issa from Insecure all tried to amend their workplaces. They rejected the notion that getting a seat at the table is enough, either questioning the table’s validity or at least trying to make more room for others. Industry, on the other hand, makes a point to show that some Black protagonists are just comfortable with a cushier chair.
At the series’ start, Stern (played by Myha’la) is a hungry, young graduate at Pierpoint, a London investment bank. She is one of two Black people in her cohort, and the only Black American woman. Through a blend of shrewdness, smarts and calculated fraternizing (see: recreational drugs), Stern manages to secure a permanent position. She blasts through the firm’s ranks, an Icarian overachiever, by being ruthless, underhanded, constantly proving herself to be the firm’s best investment. Stern fully embraces her “threat” status. Despite several fumbles at work, she stays afloat by being a bold risk-taker, an attribute her white co-workers don’t have. Her wings are clipped only when she is fired by HR for falsifying a college transcript. Eric Tao (Ken Leung), Stern’s Asian American manager, blows her secret after becoming increasingly intimidated by her success.
At her next job, Stern becomes a chameleon. She crafts a distinctly new identity after her traumatic dismissal from Pierpoint, a workplace she has given up long hours and her moral compass for. Set adrift post-firing, she attempts to wedge her way into the “office pet” role, which doesn’t quite fit her flair of ambition. Now working as a lowly assistant at the “ethical” investment fund FutureDawn, Stern speaks in a softer, more casual tone versus her usual sharpness. She wears cream wool sweater vests instead of structured blazers, making her appear more demure. When a white co-worker chastises Stern for her failure to recycle a disposable coffee cup, she offers a cordial apology where the old Harper would have offered a sarcastic put-down.
Harper undergoes the unsatisfactory kind of role-playing that workplaces demand of Black women. But what’s most interesting is her desire to stay in the game. Despite repeated rejections and degradations, Harper is eager to remain in finance, attempting to best the system through the various fronts she puts on.
In that vein, Industry also examines the strict conditions under which Harper’s ambition can survive and thrive. At Pierpoint, Stern’s sly and unsparing mentality wins her adoration, but ultimately leads to her downfall. Her attempts to “play the game” at FutureDawn, to etch out legitimate routes of success, are met with tight-lipped smiles and head shakes. Her pleas to be included in the company’s investment choices are shot down, emphasizing her ultimate status as an outsider.
Stern makes some headway when she accepts the macro-aggressions lobbed at her, proving to others that she is above political correctness. For instance, at a climate conference in Aspen, Otto (Roger Barclay), the epitome of “white man capitalist”, questions how Stern got invited.
“Why do you assume I’m not influential enough to make the list?” Stern asks.
“Because you’re a diminutive woman,” Otto replies.
When another white man, an “ally”, argues that climate change would be resolved if women were in charge, Stern barbs back: “I prefer the kind of feminism where women can be cunts.”
In this moment, she has gained temporary respect for placating Otto’s sexism. But Stern goes even further, embracing her audacious nature to woo potential investors. After failing to secure funding for a startup hedge fund, she reveals a confidential plan in front of her current boss and former Pierpoint colleagues, including Tao, a petty revenge play that works in her favor. Stern has once again burned bridges, this time with FutureDawn, but she has also succeeded at her goal and established herself as a legitimate competitor and peer.
Industry understands that Stern, as a Black woman, will always be in a vulnerable position. Yes, she has secured a temporary landing of triumph, but there is still the anxiety that at any point her victory could be washed away. She previously thought she had found bonafide success at Pierpoint, only to be summarily dismissed for her lack of credentials. Now she feels that her acumen has paid off, but even that has a provisional tinge. After all, she is winning a game – of success, of white approval – that is also playing her.