A LOVE/HATE CENTURY

To understand this American century, future scholars looking back over the last 100 years will need to explore this nation’s voracious appetite for toil.

Government statistics will provide evidence of our blistering pace of start-ups, our gravity-defying leaps of productivity and the lengthy workweeks that helped turn us into an economic superpower.

But when social scientists look to the popular culture of the period for a window into workers’ souls, they’ll get a very different view of our national pastime.

Charlie Chaplin doing battle with a machine. Mr. Dithers heaving a typewriter at Dagwood’s head. Willie Loman’s sloped shoulders and battered salesman’s case. Norma Rae standing defiant on the factory floor.

These icons of 20th century stage, screen and print speak volumes about our relationship with the work that underpins our nation’s economic might. If art really imitates working life, what is the message to be discovered by future generations?

“That 20th century working Americans were discontented and a lot of them despised their jobs,” said Garth Jowett, professor of communications at the University of Houston. “Not for nothing did Dolly Parton sing ‘9 to 5.’ ”

How did the nation founded on the Puritan work ethic and steeped in the up-by-the-bootstraps lore of Horatio Alger come to be whistling “Take This Job and Shove It” in the twilight of the 20th century?

Historians and social scientists trace the shift to the 19th century, when the Industrial Revolution fundamentally altered the way we work. Factories and their mechanized, systematized production transformed America from a land of self-employed craftsmen and farmers into a nation of wage laborers. Standards of living rose, but the trade-off was a loss of autonomy, job security and any sense of ownership in what was produced. Days filled with repetitive, mind-numbing tasks left workers struggling to find meaning in all those stacks of pig iron and paperwork.

“It became harder and harder to insist that compulsive activity, work and usefulness were the highest goals in life,” writes historian Daniel Rodgers in “The Work Ethic in Industrial America 1850-1920” (University of Chicago Press, 1980).

This transformation wasn’t lost on artists of the day who began reexamining the traditional work values and people’s relationships to their jobs.

To be sure, American author Alger cranked out wildly popular 19th century tales of plucky factory boys and bootblacks who succeed through hard work and determination. But it was writers such as Britain’s Charles Dickens, whose 1854 novel “Hard Times” indicted the dehumanizing effects of industrialization on workers, who foreshadowed the cynicism and suspicion with which many 20th century artists would come to view the workplace.

Consider George Bernard Shaw’s turn-of-the-century play “Mrs. Warren’s Profession.” It made a splash in Europe and the United States at the time for its controversial defense of prostitution. But Thomas Greenfield, author of “Work and the Work Ethic in American Drama, 1920-1970” (University of Missouri Press, 1982), says it’s Shaw’s challenge of traditional work attitudes that left its mark. Twentieth century playwrights such as “Death of a Salesman” author Arthur Miller, among many others, would keep returning to the larger questions posed by Shaw’s gimlet-eyed Mrs. Warren.

Defending her decision to live comfortably as a prostitute rather than accept the few low-paid employment options available to women, Mrs. Warren attacks the alleged virtue that comes with a lifetime of grinding toil.

“What did my sisters get for their respectability? I’ll tell you. One of them worked in a white lead factory 12 hours a day for nine shillings a week until she died of lead poisoning. . . . That was worth being respectable for, wasn’t it?”

Indeed, the danger and drudgery of the factory floor is a recurring theme in 20th century literature, film and art. Upton Sinclair’s 1906 novel “The Jungle” documented the filth and exploitation of Chicago’s stockyards in such gruesome detail that it sparked a government investigation of the industry. Mexican muralist Diego Rivera depicted heroic assembly line workers straining against the weight of massive engine blocks and the yoke of capitalist overlords in his 1932 Detroit Industry murals.

Still, pop culture artisans quickly harnessed the theme of automation to manufacture laughs along with social commentary. Chaplin’s 1936 film “Modern Times” shows the Little Tramp frantically tightening bolts on a production line, where his wacky antics unwittingly land him in a mental hospital, a jail and the center of a communist rally.

The same speed-up-the-line gag became a classic “I Love Lucy” television episode two decades later. That’s when Lucy and Ethel get jobs boxing goodies at a candy factory and resort to gobbling chocolates to keep up with the fast-moving belt.

Seventies sitcom pals Laverne and Shirley lost their brewery jobs when the plant owner automated the bottle capping line, then fired production workers via the company intercom: “Goodbye, good luck--and get out!”

It’s Hollywood’s way of helping us laugh to keep from crying about the dead-end jobs in which many of us find ourselves, says Robert Thompson, a professor of television, radio and film at Syracuse University.

“Let’s face it, much of the work we do isn’t terribly ennobling, and it’s about the last thing we’d want to sit down and watch at night,” he said. “That’s why it has to be so entertaining.”

White-collar workers don’t have it much better. Indeed, the office has been a backdrop for tales of harried working stiffs since Bob Cratchit wielded a quill in Dickens’ 1843 classic “A Christmas Carol.”

What’s significant is that the office setting has become so ubiquitous in popular culture, reflecting Americans’ expanding working hours and the rise of the service and information economy. Early television sitcoms such as “Leave it to Beaver” and “The Donna Reed Show” were centered mainly around home and hearth. Now the workplace--principally a white-collar, professional one--has replaced the living room as the main stage for TV storytelling. Examine just a sampling of this season’s on-the-job line-up: “Just Shoot Me,” “Suddenly Susan,” “The Practice,” “Ally McBeal,” “Veronica’s Closet,” “Spin City,” “The West Wing” and “Law & Order.”

Thompson says it’s a reflection of how much time two-income American families now spend at work. Pesky neighbors like Gladys Kravitz of “Bewitched” fame have morphed into tattle-tale co-workers like Mimi on “The Drew Carey Show.” The autocratic socialite has become the dictatorial boss. The rumpus room surprise party of old is now set in the office or the after-work watering hole.

“Co-workers have become the surrogate family,” Thompson said. “Viewers can relate.”

Just as machines revolutionized the shop floor, automation transformed the traditional clerk’s cubbyhole into a systematized, paperwork assembly line. Playwright Elmer Rice gave modern audiences one of the first glimpses inside this white-collar hell in his play “The Adding Machine.” That 1923 work tells the story of accountant and everyman Mr. Zero, who finds that his reward for 25 years of loyal service is to be replaced by an adding machine. Zero murders his boss, is executed for his crime and is reincarnated as the same, pathetic office drone that he was.

Themes of disillusionment and downsizing remain as relevant at the end of the century as they were at the beginning. Actor Michael Douglas gave voice to a generation of frustrated company men in “Falling Down,” the 1993 film in which he plays defense engineer William Foster. Unemployed, divorced and embittered by a society that seems to have changed all the old rules on him in mid-stream, Foster is confounded to find himself the target of a manhunt after he metes out frontier justice on the mean streets of Los Angeles.

“I’m the bad guy?” he asks incredulously, after lashing out at adversaries with a baseball bat, a switchblade and a gym bag full of weapons.

Workers have found other ways to fight back against the system. Dagwood Bumstead naps and loafs to rebel against the overbearing Mr. Dithers in the comic strip “Blondie.” Three secretaries played by Dolly Parton, Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda in the 1980 film “9 to 5” resort to hog-tying their rotten boss to wrest control of their department. Sally Field plays a textile worker-turned-union activist fighting for better pay and working conditions in the 1979 film “Norma Rae.” Atomic worker Karen Silkwood, played by Meryl Streep, blows the whistle on her corrupt employers in the 1983 film “Silkwood.” Cartoon engineer Dilbert spends most of his time circumventing the idiotic orders of his superiors.

M. Thomas Inge, author of “Comics as Culture,” says pop culture icons like Dilbert are a catharsis for millions of workers who see a little of themselves in the humble cubicle dweller fighting the good fight.

“Comics reflect what is true of the larger culture . . . and our ideas about bosses and authority,” Inge said.”It’s the old idea that power corrupts.”

Clearly, the Bad Boss is an almost indispensable figure in the 20th century pop culture workplace. D.W. Griffith’s hard-hearted Industrial Magnate slashed workers’ wages in the 1916 film “Intolerance.” Bosses would only get meaner as the century progressed. By the time the 1980s rolled around, “Wall Street” financier Gordon Gekko was raiding pension plans, breaking up companies and throwing workers on the street. Mr. Slate, Mr. Spacely, Mr. Mooney and Mr. Drysdale gave ‘60s kids a taste of the autocrats awaiting them in the workplace. Small wonder so many young people chose to tune in, turn on and drop out.

Portrayals of union leaders haven’t been much better, however. Although films such as “Norma Rae,” “Harlan County U.S.A.,” “Roger & Me” and the progressive workers’ theater of the 1930s depict labor unions as a force for justice, more typical are movies such as “On the Waterfront,” “Hoffa” and “Blue Collar,” which made labor unions synonymous with graft and corruption.

Tom Zaniello, author of the labor film guide “Working Stiffs, Union Maids, Reds and Riffraff” (Cornell University Press, 1996) says the shift began during the McCarthy era, when unions were painted as hotbeds of communist activity, followed by Robert F. Kennedy’s probe of the Teamsters union in the 1960s.

“Hoffa stood for corruption and the Kennedys for crusading goodness,” Zaniello said. “It’s a stereotype of unions that became dominant in film.”

He says another enduring theme in popular culture is that people must leave the working class in order to find true fulfillment. Take Melanie Griffith’s portrayal of a modern-day Eliza Doolittle in the 1988 film “Working Girl.” She plays Tess McGill, a frustrated secretary who borrows the right clothes and a new identity to show up her boss and make her mark on Wall Street.

Still, some of the happiest workers in popular culture don’t have a boss at all. Just look at the funny papers. Launched in 1918, the strip Gasoline Alley is still chronicling the doings of the warm-hearted Wallets and their family-owned gas station and auto repair shop. Urban adults loved the work-a-day adventures of Jewish businessman Abe Kabibble, whose “Abie the Agent” strip countered demeaning stereotypes of Jews when it was introduced in 1914. Dagwood may still be cowering under the thumb of Mr. Dithers, but Blondie now runs her own catering business.

Contrast that with the desperation and degradation experienced by unemployed workers, from the migrant Joads in John Steinbeck’s 1939 novel “Grapes of Wrath” to the steel-workers-turned-strippers in the 1997 British film “The Full Monty.” Which just goes to show that the only thing worse than having a job, is not having one at all.

“We may hate our jobs, yet they’re an integral part of who we are,” Jowett said. “That’s the great paradox of working in America.”