'Office Space'

After watching 'The Bicycle Thieves' in class on Wednesday and briefly discussing it, I could not help but think of 'Office Space' as a movie which a Marxist could view and (hopefully) thorougly analyze.

Briefly, 'Office Space' is a film from the late 90's about a technology company called Initech. Two consultants are hired in order to analyze the company's employees and contribute to the decisions of who should be fired, seeing as they are "downsizing". The main character, Peter, is obviously bored of his job and cannot help but assume that he will definitely be on that list of people to fire. After a sort of epiphany, Peter decides that he will not allow that to happen; instead he will quit his job and dedicate himself to literally doing nothing all day, something he's been longing to do for a while. While announcing this to the temporary consultants, he receives a promotion instead, and his two co-workers/best buds, Samir and Michael, get the boot. These three characters seek revenge by installing a virus in the company's system that somehow steals money from Initech and deposits it into their account. Some time and some significant digits later, the three friends begin to worry that they will get caught and anonymously write to the company admitting to their crime, and return all the money, expecting to get arrested. However, they are saved by their fellow co-worker, Milton, who is typically perceived as an idiot by his bosses who gets thrown around and never speaks up for himself. Finally fed up, Milton sets the office building on fire and disappears with the criminals letter of apology and returned money.

Going back to Balibar and Macherey's Literature as an Ideological Form, "literary productions must not be studied from the standpoint of their unity which is illusory and false, but from their material disparity" (p. 136). After looking up the word disparity in the dictionary, I learned that it means inequality or difference. So, Balibar and Macherey's statement can mean that one can analyze a literary production and find within it many obvious material differences. In 'Office Space', these disparities that have been discussed can be depicted in the four main characters work ethic, compared to of course their bosses. These employees are obviously not satisfied with their jobs and their role in production; their bosses who profit from them obviously do. A Marxist would see this movie and automatically associate it with the flaws in a capitalistic government; within capitalism, the competitive market system is designed to leave most (if not all) of the power with big businesses, leaving those who contribute to the market, in other words the employees, with little or nothing.

Balibar and Macherey also discuss hegemony: "the aesthetic effect is also inevitably an effect of domination: the subjection of individuals to the dominant ideology, the dominance of the ideology of the ruling class" (p 140). In relation to 'Office Space' the "ruling class" in this case would once again be the managers of Initech, while the workers, such as Peter and Milton, are the "individuals subjected to this dominant ideology", until of course all of them revolt and in the end, are left with much personal satisfaction.