How "Office Space" Captured A Political Era Long Gone
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Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman discuss Mike Judge's 1999 film Office Space, citing the state of our culture and politics to explain how it became a raw critique and a eulogy to working in an office. While our society might never know an atmosphere like the one created in this film, it still gives us vital insight into the psychological impact the '90s had on us.
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Welcome to the Weekender Edition of the McCrae Podcast.
I'm Jerry Deidse.
I'm here with Nick House.
What do you think of, bud?
I'm good.
I'm good.
I'm feeling, you know, it's a good day so far.
We were covering, well, you know, let's just tell everybody we're recording this before we record the reaction to the GOP debate on Wednesday night.
I've got places to be, got things to do, but we wanted to take a minute to do another one of our deep dives.
We've been dealing with so much ugliness and so much destruction that we wanted to take a second to do one of these movie deep dives.
Today, Nick, we are talking about 1999's cult classic Office Space, written and directed by Mike Judge, of course, the creator of Beavis and Butthead, King of the Hill, Idiocracy, a whole list of different things.
Before we get to the actual movie, Nick, I want to hear what your experience with Mike Judge has been as a creator, as a writer, all of that.
I've got my own background.
You know, that's a really great question.
And, you know, coming out of... I was in college when Beavis and Butt-Head first, you know, land on the scene from Mike Judge.
And I was really, really into it.
It was kind of this subversive thing.
The drawings... I was an art major, so I was into art at the time.
And so, like, just the crudeness of the drawings.
But, like, you know, at that time, I think what ended up... what we learned a lot was...
Some of the very successful movies and things like Beavis and Butthead, they didn't have to, like, necessarily look amazing and, like, sound amazing.
It was, like, the story, and it was the humor.
And if you could nail that, you know, Brothers McMullen, it comes to mind as well, another low-budget film from that era that didn't look great, the filmmaking wasn't amazing, but because of the story and the characters and you connected with it, it told us that we didn't have to have this beautiful, shining, high-budget thing to become successful and have something that works.
Yeah, Mike Judge was part of that DYI movement, you know, like the animation associated with him has never been spectacular.
But Judge is a very singular type of person.
There's not a whole lot of people who can pull off what he's been able to pull off.
You know, we're talking about this movie because there is a lot of cultural, political, historical stuff that we can use this as a jumping off point.
Of course, we do these in order to reconsider times and also to use these as teaching methods.
But judges rise as a creative person.
It happened at a very particular time.
It's not a surprise that we have a bunch of these things like Beavis and Butthead, South Park, you name it.
A bunch of things where people started just hustling and creating things that caught on and then, you know, went out and did things.
I, for Beavis and Butthead for me, I loved it as a kid.
You know, I actually, one of the anecdotes I like to tell is I got sent home from school because I was wearing a Beavis and Butthead shirt.
That was in elementary school.
Got in trouble, got sent home.
Rough times.
But I really enjoyed it.
It has changed for me as I've watched it.
A lot of that Generation X slacker sort of aggressive nihilism doesn't sit with me as well.
King of the Hill was never my thing.
It's fine.
I just got to the point where I wasn't that into animation anymore.
Same sort of thing with like Idiocracy.
I used to think it was funny and now I think it's pretty offensive in terms of the eugenics and the Uh, sort of intelligence aspects of it.
Actually, it's too accurate now.
Isn't that the problem?
Oh, I disagree.
I think the idea that like just stupid people are breeding and as a result, the world's getting stupider.
I don't agree with that.
I think the premise of it was enjoyable for a lot of people who want to look down on their political enemies and the people they don't agree with.
But I don't think that film has aged very well.
I mean, either way, all I know is that my wife and I will oftentimes think to ourselves, this is idiocracy.
We're heading exactly toward what they predicted in that movie.
That movie supposes that dumb people are passing on their genes and making more dumb people, which is essentially eugenics vision of the world.
I mean, yeah, but it's enough people, you know, the dumb people are allowed.
Sorry, not allowed.
They are very loud out there.
And so it feels that way.
I think calling people dumb.
I don't know.
I have a problem with that.
I think what we're looking at is misinformation, disinformation, a lack of education.
You know, I come from a long line of people who probably would have been characterized as dumb, but they're not dumb.
You know what I mean?
Fair enough.
Fair enough.
I hear you.
But there's an intentionality to this, which is frustrating, I think, when you dissect some of the positions and the notions.
But that's a digression that we can save for another day.
But certainly, yeah, Frog Baseball was, I think the first one was a short that he developed with Beavis and Buttons.
Which is a cruel, cruel cartoon.
Yeah.
And that set the tone for a lot of Beavis and Butthead, a lot of wants and cruelty that you weren't going to see on other programs, which is one of the reasons that it was so popular.
You know, back in the 90s, that was like one of those things that like Beavis and Butthead is like, you know, in culture, like as it got more popular, that was something that politicians and reactionaries could point to and say, something's wrong with our culture.
Things are falling apart, which was, you know, part of the evangelical rights entire act.
And Bart Simpson was probably the poster child for that as well.
You know, the notion that you don't have to have a typical American value set.
Oh, the Simpsons were almost satanic back in that era.
I think people kind of lose sight of that.
Yeah, so that's what we were coming out of, and it was fresh, and it was new, and it was edgy, and we loved to imitate, you know, like, yeah, yeah, fire!
All the little things like all you know you had friends that were probably like that to some degree that he would accentuate and embellish and stuff and so it was it was fun it was a fun you know living vicariously in a way that especially for me like we're in college we're supposed to be high-minded and and you know reading the the romantic poets and things but then let's let's have some beeps and butthead and a beer and relax and so that was he connected to something there So, uh, yeah, I mean, I remember, I remember watching Mike Judge, like on talk shows and being interviewed.
I don't know why.
I don't remember hardly any other talk shows from that era, but I can remember him.
So I obviously was interested and watched and, uh, and was a fan.
Yeah.
And it's interesting because Judge, Judge has never been pretentious.
That's one of the reasons I think that Office Space has become the cult classic that it is.
You know, I watched it last night.
It's 87... There's some stuff.
The third act needs some help.
But it's pretty much a tight 87 minutes.
It's not pretentious, really.
It's probably the most pretentious of the things that he's made, but it's not all that pretentious.
And it allows us to really take a look into the late 1990s at a point that things started changing in big, big ways.
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