Film Analysis: Office Space

Office space

1. The tagline of this film is "work sucks." Describe some of the workers ' coping mechanisms and resistance strategies both inside and outside of the workplace (make sure to reference at least five).

Kane talks about “Alienation” in his article, and I believe that it was strongly related to the movie, office space. Some of the workers coping mechanisms and resistance strategies both inside and outside of the workplace was when Peter, Samir, and Michael would go out for drinks at the pub after work together to try and get their minds off of work related issues. Another example of the workers, especially with Peter, was when he was constantly drinking coffee before work, during work, and after work. When Brian offered to get something

Kane talks a lot about Alienation, furthermore, Kane mentions that “alienation springs from multiple sources, one of which being the highly evolved ‘division of labour’ - that is, the breaking down of work into simple, repetitive tasks that each individual becomes responsible for, while much of the “thinking” and “overseeing” of work is carried out by a “coordinator class” “ (Kane et al., 2012). The reason why I chose to relate this quote to the Kane article and the movie Office space is because Kane mentions that the work can become very repetitive and especially for people who are not happy with their job, however, might make them feel like must work to make a living for themselves and/or their families. This can become very stressful for people by overseeing the work load. An example out of the film would be Peter. When Peter was not very happy with his job he even mentioned to the two men that was interviewing him that he would come into work at least 15 minutes late, and sit there staring at his computer pretty much all day long. Additionally, Peter also mentions that out of a full 8 hour working day he would really only spend about one hour of his day doing real work. When Peter noticed he was getting super stressed out about everything that was happening throughout his work life, he felt the need to go and see a hypnotherapist because of how stressed out he was from doing the same repetitive work, and how he oversaw his work being too boring for him. After seeing a hypnotherapist Peter got hypnotised causing him to stay hypnotised where the next morning he didn’t wake up in time for work, and noticed he had several missed calls and voicemails from his boss, Lumbergh. The hypnotising affected Peter, he never wanted