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.
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.