People will express their preferences for the Steve Jobs they wish to carry forward into the future: modelled on the Steve Jobs actual, currently living human beings dealt with in person, with all the baggage he and they brought to such occasions, or perhaps reminiscent of the Steve Jobs Aaron Sorkin chooses to give us, a guy in the next universe over with the same name and, well, jobs, relating to his daughter over time.
It's not clear that people need to carry forward into the future the version of Jobs offered up by Sorkin, any more than people need to carry forward into the future an image of William Randolph Hearst inflected by Orson Welles's version of him, though they do. But if that's what Sorkin achieves, then, well, there's art for you, manipulating its materials to serve its own priorities, arbitrarily replacing the knowable record with the desired construct every chance it gets, following the precept known to all that great stories trump history. Whether Citizen Kane is a better story on balance than the reprehensible William Randolph Hearst of actual record is debatable, of course. In any event, Sorkin naming his Steve Jobs Steve Jobs is cheeky.
No comments:
Post a Comment