The Languages of "The Office" 147
Venkat Rao has followed up his analysis of office dynamics as reflected in The Office, which we discussed last month, with one titled Posturetalk, Powertalk, Babytalk and Gametalk. The Office is running a little thin of meaty examples to make his points in delineating the ways of PowerTalk — the language of the Sociopaths — so Rao reaches out to Goodfellas, Wall Street, The Boiler Room, and Making Jack Falcone. The entire analysis illuminates and is illuminated by a diagram of the disparate languages that Sociopaths, the Clueless, and Losers speak to each other and among themselves.
Let me get this straight (Score:5, Insightful)
Didn't read TFA - just skimmed it a bit, but let me get this straight, some guy has analysized a bunch of fake conversations (that were created by the various shows' writers) in order to produce an explanation of real world office dynamics?
Do I have that right?
not sure I totally agree with what he says (Score:5, Insightful)
There's certainly layers of nuance and meaning that can get heaped onto human communication. As an aspie geek, it's very easy for me to get what was literally said and completely blow past the subtext. "What's wrong?" "Nothing." "Ok! I'll be on my way." Nooo, that's the nothing that means there's something and I'm supposed to fish.
However, the author really starts heaping on the layers of meaning in his examples. It reminds me of the conference scenes from Dune where whole conversations are intuited from the lifting of an eyebrow. "I knew it, he knew it, he knew I knew he knew it, but he didn't realize I knew he knew I knew he knew it. The twitching of my pinkie finger drew his attention away from my own eyebrow thus concealing my knowledge." Puts me in mind of great bits of comedy where sophisticated and devious characters are speaking obliquely around a topic of great significance, doing so in such a way that they soon realize they're not entirely sure if they're both having the same conversation.
i hope everyone realizes (Score:5, Insightful)
that these stereotypes of behavior are aspects of everyone's personality, including yours
i would have hoped that people would have realized thinking about the world in this cliquish way went out of fashion in high school. simply because you realized in high school (or should have realized) that people aren't cartoonish cardboard cut-outs of one dimensional behavior
show me someone who is supposedly dead center for being, say, the "sociopath", and i'll show you their empathetic qualities. now also show me someone who is supposedly far removed from being the "sociopath" and i'll show you the sociopathic side to their personality
it makes for good television, but real people are a lot more complex than this derivative reductionist thinking that sells people short. its entertaining, but in real life, its brutalizing to your social interaction
thinking about people this way only hurts you, in the end, by hobbling you with a poor model of human thinking and interaction. such that you reduce the richness of your own social experience up front before you even have a chance, because your mentality has overly simplified the people around you. you sell them short, and in turn, you only wind up selling yourself short
in other words, you've become the source of the problem: i would call a person who uses these stereotypes as a way of thinking about people around them the only truly one-dimensional stereotype that has a ring of truth: "the feckless tool"
Re:Let me get this straight (Score:5, Insightful)
but... is the The Office [bbc.co.uk], or the US version?
The original was unbelievably true to dysfunctional form. I Everyone I know says "yeah, I used to work for a guy like that". that's mainly what made it so popular. The US version... well, I believe they altered it to make it fit the US culture, mini series format, product placement and got a pit of writers in to add some jokes and make it run for half a dozen series. I'm sure the joke wore thin after the 1st.
Writers never worked in a real office (Score:3, Insightful)
The Office and other Workplace fiction are written by people who have never worked in a real world workplace, or if they have it was merely as a stopping point for them.
Thus they don't know a thing about it...but...they're creating an entertaining fiction. To acurately reproduce workplace interaction would be very boring TV. So they're doing what they need to do...but there's no reason to try and interpret that dialogue as if it were real.
Re:Let me get this straight (Score:5, Insightful)
I know, right? It's almost as if he were pretending that the conversations in The Office were like, extreme examples of the things that people do, in fact, run into every day in office situations and then using them as exemplars, and that he also thought maybe more people have seen The Office than would be privy to the goings on at McManus, Kinsey & Schmidt Box & Container Manufacturers. What kind of insanity as this?
It would have been MUCH better if he used really tame or low-key examples from some office in the middle of Podunk, Iowa that nobody has ever heard of, because that would just work so much better for an article intended for a nation/world-wide audience. EVERYONE knows how Jeanne in Accounts Payable is like this while Frank in Customer Service is like THAT. Cause that stuff is REAL, yo.
Gotta keep it real.
Does it also bug you that people study literature or historical accounts which may very well be somewhat fictionalized/idealized portrayals of real events, and attempt to use them to understand human interaction?
Re:American version Office, or the real one? (Score:1, Insightful)
Yes, how outrageous, Americans assuming that "The Office" means the version shown on American television.
Cache and comments (Score:2, Insightful)
My response to what people have said here so far (and I haven't read any of the article yet) is that this is not social theory, it's business theory. It's not supposed to define how you relate to people or how you perceive them. It's intended as an analysis of business dynamics, which is to say it's about how workers in different positions respond to their position and the position of those around them. From what I remember about the earlier article, I would say that even just among the "Losers," their goal is to focus energy into other parts of their lives, parts that have nothing to do with business or their job. When the characters leave the office, this entire analysis falls apart, and this does not invalidate the analysis because it's not intended to reflect each person's entire life.
Re:Let me get this straight (Score:4, Insightful)
Idunno. What kind of a sociopath divides the entire world into the "clueless", the "losers", and the "sociopaths"?
Clearly the kind who is a clueless loser...
Re:This is crap. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:American version Office, or the real one? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:American version Office, or the real one? (Score:2, Insightful)
Having thought about it a little... (Score:3, Insightful)
Sociopaths (that is, people with a brand of Antisocial Personality Disorder that have a pathological failure at true interaction with society) is probably not the correct term for the people at the top. What these people actually have is more likely Narcissistic Personality Disorder.
the author may be clueless (Score:2, Insightful)
if you're not a sociopath, you are either clueless or a loser
I don't think the author fully understands what a sociopath is.
Re:This is crap. (Score:2, Insightful)
Enlisting for these reasons (patriotism and service to your country, honor, tradition and personal development) are what mark the clueless. Losers know they will get material benefits and dispense with the patriotism -- they are willing to make the (questionable) trade-off of risking their own lives for tuition and health care. Sociopaths benefit from "most normal people" who you say "know" to equate military service with patriotism.
Semi-related questions and comments: Why are other forms of service and sacrifice not considered patriotic? Like, Americorps or Peace Corps or volunteering within the community? Surely these may offer a better trade-off for the clueless than being a target in a foreign country?
Tradition and personal development can be achieved and maintained non-militarily as well. Why admire someone who buys into the military's brands of tradition and personal development, which are clearly marketed to the clueless? "The Few. The Proud. The Marines." cleverly manages to leave out that enlistees will be expendable grunts and used as such.
Congratulations, AC, you just outed yourself as clueless