The Office premiered in 2005 on NBC, and seemed to take over the nation throughout the years with its unusual humor. The show takes place mainly inside a paper product selling office branch and documents the everyday lives of all of the employees. The show seems to revolve around the manager of the branch, Michael Scott, who many watching at home cannot take seriously because of his relatively unprofessionalism and many seem to wonder what he does all day. In the second episode of the first season, the team must undergo a ‘diversity day’ which promotes diversity in the workplace and trying to eliminate racism. While watching the episode, you learn that the real reason why the diversity day is taking place is because of Michael’s actions. This episode really spoke to me when it came to minoritizing and universal discourses.
Minoritizng discourses seem to centralize the norm and have everything else surrounding it. In the show, majority of the employees are white, which is the norm in the workplace. There are a select few that are of different race; Stanley is African American, Oscar is Hispanic and Kelly is Indian. Michael is an upper/middle class white, middle aged man which would certainly fit into what Lull identifies as a hegemonic norm. Everyone seems to revolve around him, or at least take orders from him because he is the leader of the office itself. This is minoritizing because Michael is at the center because he is the manager and because of the hegemonic norm, and all of the other employees are surrounding him (Brown, Transgeneration). This particular episode also identifies those who are non-normative and in the periphery. To get attention from the diversity day leader, Michael seems to be treating Stanley, Oscar, and Kelly all a little differently than the other white or normative employees. This is a good example of singling out the non-normative identities (Brown, Transgeneration). After what was led to believe as a failed attempt at the diversity day by Michael, he chooses to coordinate another session on his own. Michael had already embarrassed everyone by his behaviors, which seemed to be a universal discourse because of his behavior because no one seems to have a problem with any of the diverse employees in the office. Michael coordinates an exercise that makes everyone take an index card with a nationality on it, and without looking at it, put it on their forehead. The employees must then treat others or give “clues” as to what nationality they are. This is minoritizing because the employees were singling out the identities and treating them as a joke it seemed. At one point, Michael starts talking to Kelly in an Indian accent and asks her to visit his convenient store, which is extremely stereotypical and Kelly is very offended and slaps Michael. This is considered very blatant, overt, explicit racism, which Stuart Hall discusses in his article.
Obviously whiteness is unchanging, and none of the employees could change their nationality, so the exercise was not taken very seriously. This exercise used extreme stereotypes and identifying the non-normative identities to make minoritizing discourses (Brown, Transgeneration).
Although this specific episode has several minoritizing discourses within it, there are also universal discourses being demonstrated as well. None of the other employees seem to treat Oscar, Stanley, or Kelly differently because of their color, which relates to not giving whiteness the privilege over anyone with a different color or nationality (Brown, Transgeneration and Brown, Privilege). Also, during ‘Diversity Day Take 2’, everyone was included, even Stanley, Oscar, and Kelly. Universal discourses also include seeing all of the characters in a continuum (Brown, Transgeneration). This is evident when Mr. Brown, the group leader addresses all of the employees about the diversity that needs to not be turned into racism in any way. Michael tries to help run the session, but Mr. Brown indicates that he needs to be addressed as well, which puts them all on the same level, instead of Michael being the leader as a hegemonic ideology (Lull). Also, as much as the index card exercise seemed quite degrading in a way, it put a different label on all of the employees so they were not used to the usual white label they always will have. In this exercise, none of the employees have a certain privilege over the other (Brown, Privilege).
At the end of the episode, Michael seems to just give up on the whole “Diversity Day Take 2” and at 5pm he tells everyone to go home. Everyone seems to be very passive towards Michael because they’re used to how he acts, but in this particular episode, Michael pushed several boundaries that were sure to cause controversy with those watching at home. His behaviors seemed to not offend any of his employees completely, and everyone went home with no major feelings hurt.
Citations:
Brown, Adriane. Trangeneration powerpoint. February 2011.
Brown, Adriane. Privilege powerpoint. January 2011.
Hall, Stuart. "The Whites of Their Eyes." Silver Linings: Some Strategies for the Eighties. G. Bridges and R. Brunt. London: Lawrence and Wishart Ltd. 1981. 89-93
Lull, James. “Hegemony.” In Gender, Race, and Class in Media: A Text-Reader. Eds. Gail Dines and Jean M. Humez. Sage Publications. 2003. 61-66.
