https://xcancel.com/FoxNews/status/2066191563340788039#m
Rainn Wilson says “The Office” probably wouldn’t be made today, telling Fox News Digital that media trends have shifted left and that cancel culture makes it difficult for edgy comedies to thrive.
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The Office’s “humor” is cruel and unfunny
You know that incredibly popular thing that is still incredibly popular even like 15 years later? Yeah well I bet a lot of woke people don’t like it. That’s why I can’t get a job.
I remember binging The Office for my first and only time many years ago. I was sick at the time and running a fever that felt like it was cooking my brain. As soon as I started feeling better, my enjoyment of the show evaporated, and I never went back to finish it. So now I just remember this show as something I could only enjoy while delirious from fever
I’ve never watched the office but the most vanilla fucking normie ass people I’ve ever met love the show so I don’t assume there’s anything pushing the envelope in that show.
The show is filled with racism, queerphobia, and other bigotries. The show plays out like boss does something offense, everyone gets riled up, he’s still the boss next episode. I doubt it’s too deliberate but it feels like they are trying to condition the audience to accept incompetent, bigoted leadership that can’t be fired or replaced no matter how awful they are
I strongly disagree, it is more a reflection of reality. I think it is common for people to be like “my boss is like Michael Scott” as a negative aspect. I think it’s common that people are sympathetic to his character on TV, but it’s clear that nobody would want to deal with him in real life (but there are many of him in real life nonetheless).
I don’t really see a big difference between ‘reflecting reality’ and ‘shaping reality’; this is why people do their hair and makeup in front of a mirror.
Michael Scott being the boss on one of the most popular shows on television is relateable but it also normalizes and conditions us to expect behavior like this from bosses and authority figures in our lives. It doesn’t matter if people wouldn’t like him in their own life, it reinforces capitalist realism in the minds of the uncritical viewers.
Capitalist realism being the pervasive cultural and ideological belief that capitalism is the only viable economic and political system, making it impossible to even imagine a functional alternative. It suggests this notion is so deeply ingrained that people readily accept the system’s flaws as natural facts of life and Michael Scott is the poster boy for abusive, incompetent bosses that you have to accept as an immutable fact of life.
They would have an episode where they put Michael Scott through a fucking struggle session before I turn the TV back on.
The closest the office ever got to being “edgy” was Michael Scott being racist/sexist/an ass “but it’s ok because he means well”
Nothing close to what’s in, let’s say, The Boys, a very modern television show.
They still make It’s Always Sunny lmao
these people think IASIP is woke now
I’m almost finished watching it, it’s crazy that some American rightists liked it. It’s not even being subtle, it’s straight up “CONSERVATIVES BAD AMARITE FELLAS” all the way. I get why some are confused by Disco Elysium but The Boys?? Straight up lib-left propaganda
chuds cannot art, they can’t make it they can’t understand it even when it has all the subtlety of a brick to the face
there’s cases where they get it and like it anyway on an ironic level, like the self-aware fascists who like starship troopers, but all you have to do in those cases is break any chance of them suspending disbelief by doing something too explicitly “current politics” to ignore, like putting pride flags on the helldivers
It’s not a terrible show, the first few seasons have some funny moments mostly thanks to Steve Carell but the formula gets old fairly quickly as it usually does with these kinds of shows. It’s definitely highly overrated.
The Office couldn’t be made today because Ricky Gervais was poorer in 2004 and willing to license out the IP for pennies, he became too self important after the late 00’s to allow a reboot on a major US channel for such little money. The Australians can’t afford to pay much, but the US? He’d be making them pay through their teeth.
It could also never be made today because no one but the most deluded of white lib FB moms would have any appetite for a show about how your exploitative labor aristocrat boss is actually one of you and you should love him. If that’s not the most American show premise of all time tell me what is. The British are addicted to their own exploitation too, but they’re also critically depressed cynics, so the UK version at least had the decency to have the Gervais character be a universally reviled loser that everyone is relieved to see get fired.
insane that gervais could license, sitcom taking place at work. i guess nbc was just paying for critical buzz.
That’s a very roundabout way of saying “I’m creatively spent and alienated from our current cultural moment”
Bish, no one’s asking you to make the fucking office in 2026! If you have nothing new to add then shut your old ass up and let the new generation take over
no one’s asking you to make the fucking office in 2026!
They literally use the same format and beats in Abbott Elementary, and it’s good, and it’s still going!
Been meaning to check that show out since they did that crossover episode on It’s Always Sunny last season
I really enjoy it. It’s pretty wholesome and sitcom-y, but it’s funny and the characters are likeable.
This is always it. Anyone saying this is no longer capable of making anything of quality, so they tell everyone “the specific type of quality we made is no longer possible.” They might even believe it on a surface level, but deep down they know they’re done. They suck. They lost it. So blame the kids.
Well the are still making the office. It’s fucking terrible. Even more than the original
Nothing about The Office was all that edgy. It wouldn’t get canceled today. It’s just that no one would watch it because the moment demands a different kind of show.
Trends are often portrayed as completely arbitrary, but they aren’t. Not really. A trend catches on if it expresses something that needs expressing in the current time and place. And of course, new technology can precipitate trends, on one hand by making the technique accessible, and on the other hand by catching the attention of the public in general.
The Office came at a time when YouTube popularized amateur handheld video recording of mundane life. It democratized video production, opening a portal that had previously been guarded by polished TV crews and expensive studio sets. The Office aired its pilot in 2005, but IIRC it wasn’t til a few years later, with the advent of smartphones, that it really took off. There was a concurrent proliferation of similar concepts in movies like Cloverfield that used a “discovered footage” POV. In the eras before, I don’t think shitty, shaky footage would have enthralled audiences. It was only relevant once it connected to the common experience.
Also, who the fuck has a mostly do nothing, comfortable but make-work office job anymore?
You might as well set it in a video rental store or on a fucking pirate ship.
They did. Blockbuster was set in the last Blockbuster store in 2022, ran for one season and was cancelled. Randall Park, Melissa Fumero, JB Smoove.
You might as well set it in a video rental store or on a fucking pirate ship.
That’s awesome, let’s do that. Can the pirate ship also frequently dock at an island which hosts a colourful selection of long forgotten whimsical stores, people, flora, fauna and weather?
Our Flag Means Death was fun
…maybe a temple, too?
Yeah if anything, The Office wouldn’t work these days because we’re burned out on the last ~15 years of sitcoms using practically nothing but the “documentary” style.
can’t make the office a second time in a world where the office exists, basically
I don’t know, they keep trying to make Harry Potter happen again
proliferation of similar concepts in movies like Cloverfield that used a “discovered footage” POV. In the eras before, I don’t think shitty, shaky footage would have enthralled audiences.
blair witch was the progenitor of those
They literally made a sequel show that aired last year and people thought it was meh.
I always hated this show
Shut the fuck uuuuuuuup
This is extra stupid considering they are literally making The Office today in the form of "La Oficina, " a Mexican version of The Office and the spinoff “The Paper.”
The American office was already a watered-down version of the original. There are no redeemable characters or story arcs. It’s not a goofy family of misfits making the best of a dreary existence. It’s just hell.
→--------------------------------------------------The UK fucking sucks --------------------------------->
↑
have fun with coworkers------------------------------- 👀I tried watching an episode of The Office. I found it boring and unfunny.
why does Ricky Gervais, the largest human in the office, not simply fire the other humans?
every unfunny old comedian cries about “woke” like it’s the only reason they cant get work. maybe it’s your rancid “comedy”, my guy? See also, Bill Maher.
Like 10 years ago they all got their own Netflix special called ”Triggered” or ”Safe Space”, they’re pining for those glory days now.
Don’t they still get them? Maybe not on netflix, but it’s not like they’re destitute because of some mythical “left”
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
“Ricky Gervais couldn’t have a career today”
I thought you were arguing against cancel culture?
Ricky Gervais, who pivoted from being the unfunny part of a comedian trio where his only contribution was laughing like a hyena to literally only having a career BECAUSE he’s complaining about cancel culture every single day?
hey hey hey hey, you skipped the middle part of his career where he made fun of fat people and religion. super edgy, that was.
being anti-religion when the bush administration was having a crusade was a cultural moment. we could use some more of that wrt trump orbiters.
So an evil Stavros
Dark Stavros
Hey. You’re mixing up Stephen Merchant and Ricky Gervais. Ricky would sometimes call Karl stupid for not knowing things, or for thinking something was one way when he believed it was another (And he was usually wrong).
Is rainn wilson a chud? I thought he was normal
When he went on the Adam Friedland Show a couple months ago he came across as just a regular lib, if anything he was going out of his way to show some woke credentials. So either he’s a flip flopper or Fox is reading the chuddiness into him.
I wonder if this is Fox News cherry picking things he said to put words in his mouth. Last I checked, he was distinctly not a chud.
Wilson and his family are members of the Baháʼí Faith.[50][51][52] The website Baháʼí Blog, which is popular in the Bahá’í community, hosts Wilson’s podcast, the Baháʼí Blogcast, for which he interviews notable people[example needed] about the intersection of their faith and work.[53]
On Bill Maher’s Real Time, Wilson described himself as a diverse independent, having voted for Republican, Green and Democratic candidates.[54] In 2008, he said he regretted the statement: “It was kind of a mistake, I don’t want to talk politics. […] The process of politics is so deeply corrupt on so many levels. Even the greatest candidate in the world couldn’t really make that much of a difference. But people with compassionate hearts can make the world a better place.”[54] However, Wilson does vote.[54]
From wiki
Oh no hes just a stupid liberal, kind of worse than being a chud.
Oh no hes just a stupid liberal, kind of worse than being a chud.
oh gimmie a break
Well, shit. What a bummer.
i mean, he just sounds like a very politically average person. probably 60% of people think as he does, to whatever extent
The hexbear party line is that you get shot for being politically average.
The average are average due to apathy to the world beyond their individual delusion, which lets fascism in the door.
💰
I wish we lived in the world that conservative fascists claim we do.
