Blogger Sean Keane has an interesting take on the movie using the old underrated/overrated trope. A take that is making me consider stopping the A Case of the Mondays regular feature.
Laughing At Yourself, Not With Yourself:
I have a roommate who works at a tech company. For the purposes of anonymity, I will call him “Mac”. Mac says that people in his office are constantly quoting “Office Space”, which, since “Office Space” is a satire of tech company life. Unfortunately, it seems like a lot of this quoting is like a celebration of misery. When employees who have to do the thankless work of TPS reports, joke about TPS reports, it’s a little sad. When Mac’s boss comes up behind him and begins doing the Gary Cole-esque, “Y-y-yeah” intro to some sort of crappy managerial request, it’s not really funny, because the guy really is a manager, and even though he’s doing a parody of a soulless middle manager, he still really is a soulless middle manager. “Dilbert” isn’t really funny if you are Dilbert.
Also, it doesn’t work both ways. Mac can’t ditch work for days at a time and say, by way of explanation, “Look, dude, haven’t you seen ‘Office Space’?” The manager can make his crappy, office misery-stereotype-perpetuating joke, but Mac can’t, say, burn down the building as a wacky movie reference. The office drones get to laugh at themselves, but are they laughing with themselves?
Perhaps a case of the Monday’s has run its course? What do you say should it stay or should it go? Secondary question, is Office Space overrated? Or underrated?
