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Kevin Parikh

Mr. Yerkes P1

AP English Language

8 January 2017

Satire in the Office

A popular example of satire in todays popular culture is the TV show The Office

starring Steve Carell as the boss, Michael Scott. While the show as a whole is generally

satirical some specific episodes are Diversity Day, Health Care, and Basketball. If you view

the show on the surface you might think that show is trying to reinforce stereotypes about

race, religion, sexuality etc. However, through the use of satire it actually uses the jokes made

about the workers at the office to achieve the goal of the writers to show how people are really

treated in the American workplace.

An underlying assumption of the show is that you know many Western stereotypes to

fully understand and enjoy the series such as in the episode Diversity Day . The writers of the

show attempt to show Michael Scott, the main culprit of using stereotypes, as a typical and

educated boss at the workplace. In Diversity Day , Michael tries to promote acceptance in the

office but ends up making the situation worse, which satirizes the common workplace

occurrence of trying to acknowledge someones race without offending them. The episode

Health Care , satirizes companies efforts to reduce medical costs at the expense of reduced

benefits for the employees, if an employer watched this episode they could see what an effect

reducing insurance would have on their employees.The show tries to critique peoples

insensitivity to people unlike them. Much of the language used to skewer the target is through

jokes. In Basketball , Michael chooses Stanley, the only African-American member of his team,
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to lead his team in basketball purely because of his race. The goal of the writers is that if

someone sees this then they would realize how they were unknowingly rude and be nicer next

time.

As you can see, satire is very much present in the popular TV show The Office and a

lot to the show.