POPULAR CULTURE ARTIFACT PRESENTATION
Social Context
Historical Context
- Understanding social context of The Office through Fiske's Commodities and Culture
- Media and Cultural Analysis
- Gender roles and Feminism
- History of the popular culture artifact - TV shows
- Analysis of The Office through Yosso's CRT and how it has affected marginalized communities throughout history
- Exploring intersections of race, gender - Prof. Grenshaw
Social Context - Fiske
Media and Cultural Analysis
The Office through a CRT lens
History of TV Shows
- The Office shows the hypocrisy of the American workplaces which claim to have sexual or racial equality within a workforce when in reality they hire one or two people of color in order to give the appearance of diversity.
- Heteronormativity is emphasized by the boss in this show. When he finds out one of his employees is gay, he gets confused because it's not "normal" behavior and hinders with his coming out process
- According to Fiske views, people are the producers of popular culture. Popular culture is created by the economically and politically powerful but its creation is only possible due to the resistance offered by the people who associate different meanings of popular culture in different social constructs.
- Culture of everyday life is constituted by people doing the best that they can with what they have. They adapt to the manipulative nature of the powerful who try controlling their spaces and the commodities produced for everyday use.
- The Office is made to show the creators of popular culture (the people) the nature of the American workplace. It speaks to a person's social and cultural constructs about gender, race, class through funny yet stereotypical dialogues.
- From Fiske's perspective on Cultural Economy, the people are the producers of meanings and pleasures which are reproduced and circulated in the society to form its culture.
- Development of television between 1880s-1930s
- 1880s - Electromechanical television system invented; became the basis for all television experiments in early 20th century
- John Logie Baird's 30 line resolution to discern a human face
- Production and broadcasting of all-electronic tv began, starting with 24 line going all the way up to 405 line resolution
- Commercial broadcasting began in NY in 1940s
- Broadcasting
- Popular TV shows began broadcasting on the radio.
- Late transitioned to live performances in film studios and later to taped performances when the first video recorder Ampex VRX-1000 was introduced.
- Bourdieu's cultural capital theory assumes the White middle class to be the standardized norm and therefore historically all other societies and cultures such as african american did not conform to the norm
- CRT "examines and challenges the ways race and racism implicitly and explicitly impact on social structures, practices and discourses".
- Yosso's community cultural wealth is the wealth accumulated by communities of color throughout history that helps them survive and fight against oppression in the historically white dominated workplace environment. In The Office, most of the warehouse worker positions are taken up by blacks, but we often see power struggles between the white boss and the black workforce of the warehouse when they utilize social, navigational, and resistant capital to fight against oppression in the employment sector
- A power struggle is often seen in at least 4 males of the sales staff, who try to attain the manager position, while there is no power struggle in females in work related matters. This speaks to the socially created gender norms that say that males have to be fierce and aggressive while females have to be docile and conforming.
Feminism, Stereotypes, Gender Roles
THE OFFICE - TV SHOW
Exploring Intersections of race, gender, and sexuality
- The workforce in The Office is predominantly male, and the positions that individuals hold are gendered. For example, most of the sales staff is male, with the exception of a middle aged lady who is in sales only because of her years of experience. The receptionist with the supposedly easier job is female and the boss is male.
- A power struggle is often seen in at least 4 males of the sales staff, who try to attain the managerial position, while there is no power struggle in females in work related matters. This speaks to the culturally created gender norms that say that males have to be fierce and aggressive while females have to be docile and conforming.
- The Office is not feminist, because although there were a handful instances of females getting equal rights, they were not treated with respect (sexist remarks from the boss) and not given equal opportunities to promote to higher positions.
- It is important to talk about the intersectionality of gender and race when we talk about TV shows because they influence our ideas and behaviors to a great extent.
- In The Office, intersectional discrimination in the employment sector occurs. There are only 2 women of color in a male dominated workplace and both hold lower tier jobs of customer support and warehouse worker as compared to the male dominated higher tiered sales and accounting jobs. All other white women hold either accounting or sales positions.
- It can be seen that since Oscar is Hispanic and gay, he has to endure his coworker's derogatory remarks about him being Mexican and also about his sexuality (watch both in Videos and Additional Links slide) .
- How this TV show is situated historically and socially in popular culture
- Production and Consumption
- Visual images and additional links
Videos and Additional Links
Production and Consumption
Remarks about a gay person
Everything you need to know
Stereotypes against Mexicans
Stereotypes about women
Production
- Producers: Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant and others
- US series began in 2005 but it originated as a British tv show in 2001
- Crew: Producers, Directors, Writers, Cinematographers, Editors, Production Managers, Supervisors, Sound artists, Stuntmen, Music dept, and many others
- The cost of production of the popular sitcom was enormous. At its peak in October 2011, it cost around $175,000 for a 30s commercial - the most for any NBC scripted series (Wikipedia)
Consumption
- The Office is trying to reach the younger demographic. Its tagline "A comedy for anyone whose boss is an idiot"(IMDb) reaches its targeted demographic because everyone between 20 to 40 working for an employer would have a problem with him/her in some form.
- The TV show is aired on popular channels such as NBC as well as streaming websites such as Netflix and Hulu in specific countries.
Bibliography
Characters:
http://www.cleveland.com/tv/index.ssf/2013/05/the_office_characters_personal.html
The Office in a positive light:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122494690
How The office imparts life lessons:
https://the-artifice.com/the-office-characters-comedy-life-lessons/
Fiske, John. “Commodities and Culture.” Understanding Popular Culture, Routledge, London, 2011, pp. 24–47.
Gillin, Mallory. "Gender and Success at Dunder Mifflin." Gender, Race, and Sexuality in the Media, N.p., 12 May 2015, https://com389s15.wordpress.com/2015/05/13/gender-and-success-at-dunder-mifflin/ Accessed 16 Aug. 2017.
“Television in the US: History and Production.” Television in the US: History and Production, www3.northern.edu/wild/th100/tv.htm. Accessed 16 Aug. 2017.
“The Office.” Media and Cultural Analysis Section 6, 17 Dec. 2012, www.karanovic.org/courses/mca006/2012/12/17/the-office/. Accessed 16 Aug. 2017.
“"The Office" (2005).” IMDb, IMDb.com, www.imdb.com/title/tt0386676/combined. Accessed 16 Aug. 2017.
Velez, Denise Oliver. “Exploring the intersections of race, gender, class, ethnicity, and disability.” Daily Kos, 22 May 2016.
“The Office (U.S. TV series).” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Office_(U.S._TV_series). Accessed 16 Aug. 2017.
Yosso, Tara J. “Whose culture has capital? A critical race theory discussion of community cultural wealth.” Race Ethnicity and Education, vol. 8, no. 1, Mar. 2005, pp. 69–91.