32 - SMOKE AND MIRRORS
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John Hammond - Portrait by Dave Aikins.
From the very beginning, InGen - and by extension, Jurassic Park - had derived many of their structural features directly from Hammond’s personality. The immense forces that had been poured into this miracle factory, however, were now starting to produce emergent results. (1)
Jurassic Park was taking a life on its own, and for the first time - though by no means the last - the flow between creator and creation was going to be reversed: this time, Jurassic Park would be the one impacting and shaping Hammond.
By the time he returned to the island, his three lieutenants had already secured approval from Cowan, Swain and Ross. The lawyers, after all, saw no reason not to approve the candidacies put forth before them.
This came as a great relief to Wu, Harding, and Muldoon. With the lawyers’ assent, there would be no reasonable way for Hammond to undo the decision.
But why was this assessment so easily forthcoming?
This topic of debate has occasionally cropped up over the years, not least because Hammond and those closest to him occasionally gestured in the direction of vague conspiracy theories, power-hungry subordinates, and collusions.
In reality, the lawyers’ true motives are, in spite of many claims to the contrary, impossible to ascertain with any degree of confidence. It’s possible that they saw it as a strategic move to drive a wedge between Hammond and his top employees.
It’s equally likely that they simply didn't find any grounds for objection. While this hypothesis can’t be verified, it’s hard to discount. The fairly narrow scope of their mandate, after all, was to represent the legal interests of Jurassic Park’s investors, a core mission that was hardly jeopardised by the nominations of Joger and Crane.
Whether the lawyers realised this or not, however, the real benefit they would derive from this move, was arguably that it prevented Hammond from packing the endorsement team with “his” creatures. (2)
The deal was thus sealed with relative swiftness, and the relevant calls placed, all before Hammond had had a chance to set foot back on the island.
When he did, his initial enthusiasm over successfully recruiting Anna Rodriguez quickly waned, and his mood rapidly darkened.
It’s not just that Hammond feared that an independent endorsement team might jeopardise his efforts at completing Jurassic Park, though that fear was very much front and centre in his response. But this flashpoint also touched upon a deeper and more foundational issue.
This sort of independent maneuvering went against Hammond's anxious and controlling temperament. His emotional and mental health state didn't agree with this sort of subterfuge, not when it came from inside InGen itself.
Hammond saw Jurassic Park as a perfected, realised version of his childhood dream. A way to come full circle, to find closure with the hardships of his early life and the deterioration of his family’s status. It was meant to close the circle, not to take a life of its own.
The confrontation with Wu, Harding, and Hammond soon took a nasty turn.
As the initial shock gave way to a fumbling search for an explanation behind the “perfidy” of his subordinates, Hammond accused his star employees of ingratitude and overreach, of collusion with the “legal sharks” circling around Jurassic Park.
His focus increasingly narrowed on Wu, whose “betrayal” probably rankled the worst. Hammond and Wu allegedly descended into a shouting match of memorable proportions. (3)
If Hammond thought shouting would intimidate his employees into meekness, he had misread the situation: it didn’t work. It couldn’t, given the personalities involved.
Muldoon and Harding were established professionals, with the former in particular having a strong sense of personal integrity that left him with little patience for the antics of a mercurial billionaire.
And as for Wu, he was no longer the ambitious but inexperienced young prodigy that Hammond felt he could control. He simply couldn’t be. The mere fact of emerging victorious from InGen’s social-darwinist, throat-cutting work culture had tempered him into a much more jaded and calculating figure, and his spectacular success in bringing dinosaurs back from the dead had filled him with quiet confidence.
Moreover, the trio were prepared for this discussion, in a way that the blindsided Hammond simply couldn’t be. When faced with their boss going ballistic, Wu, Muldoon, and Harding acted as planned. They presented him with a common front, threatening to resign on the spot if not listened to.
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This was a threat with real teeth.
Until this moment, InGen’s loose structure had worked in Hammond’s favour, but Jurassic Park was not yet mature enough for him to be able to do without these essential personalities. He could not simply fire and readily replace them. (4)
Too much precious knowledge painfully accrued by working with the dinosaurs every day, or perfecting the genetic sequencing techniques, rested entirely in their hands. Until the park reached a considerable level of maturity and dissemination of knowledge, they were indispensable.
Maybe most importantly, Wu pointed out that a wave of prominent resignations was bound to collapse investor confidence, precisely when Jurassic Park was already under intense scrutiny. It could undo the financial viability of the project in one stroke.
It was a pivotal moment for Hammond. He had always been a master of smoke and mirrors, manipulating investor perceptions to his advantage. It was how he’d kept the balls juggling in the air for so long, during the mad race to deliver a viable dinosaur embryo.
Now, he found his young geneticist prodigy threatening to use these very same tactics, so as to force Hammond’s hand.
It has been pointed out that in spite of his scientific background, Wu was showing himself to be Hammond’s true corporate and political heir. This instance certainly acquires new significance, when seen in this light.
That day, Hammond learned that smoking mirrors go both ways.
With all his biggest assets united, and the investors on board, Hammond had no choice: he had been presented with a fait accompli. He acquiesced, and the three lieutenants of Jurassic Park had their victory.
In the immediate days following this confrontation, Hammond retreated into a state of isolation and depression. He alternated spending time in his suite near the visitors’ centre, and visiting the enclosures, observing the dinosaurs in contemplative silence.
Wu, Harding, and Muldoon gave him a wide berth. They erroneously figured that the storm would soon pass, and that after the visit, things would return to normal.
On paper, all that was left for Hammond now was to anxiously await the impending visit of the endorsement team, a visit that would determine the fate of Jurassic Park in its hands. But the reality was more complicated.
As it would soon become apparent, the successful “coup” merely ended the very first battle, the battle over the composition of the endorsement team. It emphatically did not end the battle to influence said team to the greatest possible degree, and nudge them towards a preferred outcome.
Wu, Muldoon and Harding may well have settled the matter of team selection, but what they couldn’t do was alter Hammond’s priorities in any way that actually mattered.
Hammond eventually emerged back from his depressed state, interacting with the onsite staff again. Superficially, this looked like the usual pattern, in which a depressive phase was followed by a characteristically maniacal phase of frenzied activity.
This was true, as far as it went, but at a more fundamental level, Hammond was simply proceeding in his endeavour to ensure that Jurassic Park would get the go-ahead from the endorsement team, no matter what.
For this purpose, he decided to channel his anxiety towards meticulous preparations for the visit itself. He would seek to choreograph it in such a way that surely the endorsement team would have no option but to greenlight the park.
This revealed one of the more fundamental, critical weaknesses in InGen’s structure. As an immature organisation centred around larger-than-life personalities, it was incredibly responsive to perverse incentives, and married to the personal goals of its decision-makers.
For good or ill, larger-than-life personalities held an oversized influence in Jurassic Park. While this did provide room for rather dramatic actions by principled employees like Muldoon, it also meant that actually swaying InGen from dangerous courses of action was exceedingly difficult.
The company would end up paying the price for this cost, time and time again. (5)
Footnotes:
(1) What’s remarkable about a “grounded” version of Jurassic Park, is that a small cadre of people ends up mobilising an absolutely remarkable amount of money, scientific brilliance, and technical/engineering expertise. That’s not a genie you can put back in the bottle. Hammond may be firmly in the driver’s seat in the large scheme of things, but this is no longer just his personal pet project. He’s about to learn that the hard way.
(2) As we’ve mentioned in the past, this tension was present in the original book ad movie as well, though it very much ended up taking a backseat compared to the adventure (in the movie) and an illustration of the author’s epistemology through Malcolm (in the book). It’s a shame, because I think of the endorsement team and its visit as one of the sliding-doors moments that end up really determining the shape and the future of Jurassic Park.
(3) Not the healthiest work environment, I’m afraid. A reader has previously made the comparison between my version of Hammond and Walt Disney, which I found to be incredibly insightful and well-written. I think this is a good moment to highlight the somewhat tragic nature of his duality. On a purely personal level, you can empathise with how destabilising this is to Hammond’s mental health, given his background. Of course, on a systemic level, it’s important to remember that therapy would have both been cheaper, and way less harmful to other people who were caught up in the orbit of the park…
(4) The middle-ground trap Jurassic Park finds itself in. In this transitional phase, the project has become too big to function like it used to, but it’s not yet big enough to run like a “normal” company. This has warped things and amplified the importance of key personalities. It’s what allowed Wu, Muldoon, and Harding to make their move. And I think it’s important to emphasise that the actors involved have also changed, matured, grown - and the incentives they’re responding to have shifted. Hammond does not view it with such clinical detachment, however, and mostly fixates on the tragedy that everything changes.
(5) All the pieces are on the board. It’s time for the visit to begin.