Does The Office Hold Up?
The Office gave us nine seasons of cringe-worthy laughs. But does a self-aware comedy about bad workplace behavior feel the same when so many of our day-to-day conversations are about workplace abuse?
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Here’s the first joke in the first episode of the first season of The Office: Michael Scott mistaking a woman for a man. He ends a phone call with the flourish of “You’re a gentleman and a scholar!” before being corrected by the person on the other end, and then justifies it by saying, “She had a very low voice.” A joke, about a minute later, is Michael saying of Pam, “If you think she’s cute now, you should have seen her a couple years ago” and then making vaguely dog-like growls. By 20 minutes in, he’s made her cry. One episode later, he refuses to sign a pledge to not make racist jokes anymore.
What saves that second joke is Pam’s dismayed “What?”—her clear exasperation at having to put up with this fuckin’ guy every day setting the tone for the show. The point is to laugh at Michael Scott’s incompetence. The butt of the joke is the sexist, racist fool of a boss, and if you are taking his jokes at face value, you don’t understand what’s going on.
The Office (both the British and American versions, though we’re talking about the American one here) is about a deeply toxic workplace, where the humor comes from the painful truth that this is what it’s like. But it’s maybe worth it to sit with the show at face value for a second. In light of all the upheaval over workplace harassment, with people (in some industries, sometimes) finally having the courage to come forward and name abusers, I have to say The Office is hard to watch. Whereas it was once seen as exaggeration, it’s now run up against Poe’s Law: too close to be satire.
I hate this. I love The Office. One of my favorite jokes ever: when Mindy Kaling says she has a reason for wearing white to a wedding, and it cuts to her saying, “I look really good in white.” But upon rewatching, it feels like we’re supposed to be laughing just because they’re naming the problem.
The (white, male) employees in the show who make their co-workers’ lives a living hell are constantly saying things that anyone in a toxic workplace has heard, whether it’s Michael saying, “I’m a friend first and a boss second,” or Dwight’s “People sometimes take advantage because it’s so relaxed.” It’s horribly true, and that’s the joke. Compare that to how VICE employees complaining of sexual harassment were told it was a “non-traditional workplace.” Or when faced with HR training on sexual harassment, Michael protests, “Okay, what is a lawyer going to come in and tell us? To not send out hilarious e-mails or not tell jokes?” How different is that from men who say they “can’t even feel safe saying ‘good morning’ anymore”?
