Proletarian Blackface: Appropriation and Class Struggle in Mike Judge's Office Space

摘要

Mike Judge's 1999 cult comedy Office Space chronicles the experiences of primarily White male workers in contemporary corporate culture, as well as their efforts to resist it. I argue that the film engages in "proletarian Blackface," or the appropriation of Black vernacular practices to articulate a predominantly White male, working-class rage against modern capitalism. Through a reading of the film that juxtaposes its key narrative themes with its appropriation of a gangsta aesthetic, I argue that Office Space allows its predominantly White male characters and viewers to traverse racialized, gendered, and classed subject positions in ways that enable critiques of capitalism, Whiteness, and masculinity, but also reify White supremacy.