Talking Cookie Jars and Tongue‐Tied Bodies: Posthumanism and The Office

Abstract

D ISCUSSIONS OF BBC TV SERIES THE OFFICE TEND TO FOCUS ON THE question of why audiences find the show funny. This analysis, however, will begin by examining the series' representation of a contemporary British working environment, and will consider the ways in which this environment shapes the identities of its inhabitants. It will then trace some of the preoccupations of The Office and its main protagonist David Brent (played by Cowriter and Director Ricky Gervais), focusing on the series' interest in human bodies, particularly those of liminal or uncertain status. The discussion that follows will demonstrate that within the imitation ''reality TV'' format of The Office, with its knowing absorption in its own artificiality, there lies a deeper questioning of ''real'' human bodies and values. 1 Finally, with all David Brent's anxieties about (post)human bodies in mind, this article will return to the question of comedy, and suggest that the different models of humor in The Office reflect divergent attitudes to the shifting status of the human form. Reality TVThe term reality TV covers a wide range of genres from fly-on-the-wall documentaries and docusoaps like Driving School to elaborate gameshows like Survivor and Big Brother. The Office falls into the hybrid, spinoff category of the spoof documentary, a drama that imitates the reality TV format, and as such it is a direct descendant of Peter Weir's The