Peter Bart: Corporate Hubris Makes For Embattled CEOs, But Good TV
deadline.comBob Chapek, the Disney CEO who is under siege, hopefully does not watch much TV. If he does, he’ll see a succession of fellow CEOs who seem prone to self-destruction — Adam Neumann of WeWork, Travis Kalanick of Uber, Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos, etc. — portrayed on buzzy TV series.
Viewing these shows back to back, the stolid Chapek might wonder whether the CEO is extinct as a folk hero.To be sure, the CEOs depicted in this cycle of streamers’ series are uniformly greedy and delusional, though gifted in the hyperbole of “technospeak.” In WeCrashed, Neumann, played by Jared Leto, re-imagines renting work space as a business that “will elevate the world’s consciousness.” In Super Pumped, Kalanick (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) re-defines Uber as a “higher form of life.”The cycle is easy to dismiss except that headlines tell us a surprising number of working CEOs seem to be falling on their swords.
Even Chapek, who inherited his Disney gig from Bob Iger, finds himself under political fire.Upon retiring, Iger was heralded with a chorus of worshipful tributes.
He was the master of mergers who could earn the trust of existentially difficult CEOs like Steve Jobs and Ike Perlmutter of Marvel.
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