From Break the bad has Fight clubthe media misinterpretation that skewers the male power fantasy is well established, and the long-gestating HBO hit Industrynow in its final season, is no exception to the literacy crisis.
By speaking with the The Wall Street Journalco-creators Mickey Down and Konrad Kay said they regularly receive DMs from people in the financial industry who misunderstand the show’s purpose.
“Everything that’s happening in this world has to be very seductive in that first act because you have to, basically, convince the audience to think that these people are having a good time, and you have to lean in,” Down said. “And then the third act is usually when everything goes to hell and you reveal that the person’s pursuit of this thing is not going to be uplifting – it’s actually going to destroy them. And a lot of finance bros just look at the first act and just think, ‘OK, that looks like fun, I can do drugs and have a lot of sex and it looks like rock ‘n’ roll.’ And they don’t really watch the third act where everything implodes.
He continued, “It’s weird because I always get LinkedIn messages and there’s usually a ton of messages from people like, ‘Bro, I love your show. Got me into finance.'”
Kay added: “There is also a level of dishonesty in the way people engage in this matter, I think, where they look Wall Street where they look Industry and they say, “These people are sociopaths, they’re dead-eyed,” when really what they’re saying is, “I recognize parts of myself that I haven’t necessarily nurtured or that I’m too afraid to think about.” But these traits – greed, blind ambition – exist in everyone.
The two ex-bankers get started Industry in 2020 as newcomers to the world of television alongside their now essential cast. Initially tracing young graduates cutting their teeth on the cutthroat trading floor of prestigious London-based investment bank Pierpoint & Co., its fourth season pits its multitude of characters in opposing camps of a flashy new fintech company, Tender.
