Kelly Kapoor

Though The Office is not a rhetorically anti-oppression show, it’s a show that I think has some strong instincts about how to portray oppression in a critical light. But one thing that’s always stuck in my feminist craw is its depiction of rape.

The Office is a show about an everyday office and the romances therein. There are a lot of fairly responsible portrayals of verbal violence and references to sexuality, but there are few opportunities to portray rape. But on the rare instance that rape does enter the narrative, The Office whiffs it by playing into tired patriarchal tropes about false rape allegations and making a mockery of male rape victims.