Well, That Aged Badly
Many of us have whiled away the pandemic with deep dives into nostalgia, whether we’re self-soothing by lazing around like teenagers, or revisiting historical moments that seemed simpler (or at least, explicable). We all have our “comfort food” media of choice. For me, it’s been an era of lip-glossy costume dramas filmed in the 1990s (yes that’s two layers of history in one, it’s actually very complicated, but that’s another essay).
For writer Sarah Rosenthal, The Office has been her go-to…except that it’s not so funny anymore. Particularly, the uptight, know-it-all character of Dwight Schrute seems less like a ridiculous caricature and more like, well, a Proud Boy. As Rosenthal writes in GEN:
Given the chaos of 2020, it’s been harder to relax when I watch The Office. Dwight’s worries about grandiose threats, emergency preparedness, and flashy displays of dominance seemed hilariously exaggerated in 2005. Now, his toxic masculinity doesn’t lend itself to humor in the same way. He’s an exaggeration of what was always there, simmering beneath the surface of our workplaces; he’s a man worried about others who don’t look or sound like him taking what he assumes to be his. The hum of energy he emits onscreen hits differently now.
