TelevIsm

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.

Image: Cartman looks angrily at the camera in front of a tank full of manatees and balls. Both South Park and Family Guy have issues. But which privilege do they insist upon most thoroughly? At what rate do these shows oppress which bodies, and in what way? Which is more offensive? In the next few posts, I’m going to take a quantitative (though inherently subjective, of course) look at exactly how offensive these shows are. I will take five episodes spread over the course of each series and analyze the rate at they make offensive comments or jokes, whether in language, image, or action, and break it down by sexism, racism, classism, ableism, cissexism, sizism, and heterosexism.