Office Space (Mike Judge, 1999)- Monday Morning Blues

[K Doherty]

Fuckin’ A Peter Gibbons is a pussy. His boss walks all over him, his girlfriend cheats on him, and he forgot to put the cover sheet on the TPS report. At the beginning of Mike Judge’s 1999 film Office Space the main character Peter Gibbons is a miserable, spineless software engineer who doesn’t know what he wants in life; but knows it’s not what he has.

What would you do if you had a million dollars? Peter alludes to this question multiple times throughout the movie as he while he is in his pursuit of happiness. The question was posed to Peter in High School and he wasn’t able to answer it then and is still unable to now. His co-worker Michael believes it to be a stupid question because no one grows up wanting to be a janitor, and the discussion of the question is dropped. Michael shares a cubicle with Samir and while neither of love working at Initech it does not eat away at their souls’ like it does to Peter. Ultimately everyone wants to feel in control, or powerful to be happy. Instead of just continuing the conversation of ‘what you would do if you had a million dollars’ colors and music guide the characters to greener pastures.

At Initech everything is gray. The ceiling, floor, walls, cubicles, machines, filing cabinets, mouse pads etc… It is a depressing monotone environment. The only bits of color injected are the personal objects employees decorate with. When Peter goes to ask if Michael and Samir want to go to the restaurant Chotchkies with him, we see that Michael has colorful posters of rappers adorning his cubicle. Gangster rap is played when the characters feel masculine and powerful. Michael’s last name is Bolton and having to share a name with the signer makes for great insecurity in Michael’s life. Michael makes homophobic statements and loves gangster rap as ways to distinct himself from the soft-rock singer and feel more masculine. Michael and Samir accompany Peter to Chotchkies; which provides our first clue to where Peter can find his happiness.

Outside of Initech green is where Peter longs to be. Whenever we see Peter outside of Initech the lawn manicured and bright green, and at Chotchkies fake green plants are in every shot. Green is also the color of the uniform being worn by Peter’s love interest Joanna. Joanna isn’t in love with the uniform, or her requirement to wear flair at work, and expresses her envy of the neighboring restaurants reddish -maroon uniforms while having lunch with a less-of-a-pussy-Peter one afternoon. The whole restaurant is reddish-maroon and this represents control. This is the first scene where Peter really seems like he has some control in his life, and Joanna decides Chotchkies isn’t for her, and takes a job at this restaurant instead.

Keeping in the red theme, what is Office Space without mumbling bumbling Initech Milton and the bright red Swingline stapler. Bright red is only appears a few times in the movie and every time it guides Peter to his happiness. All the exit signs at Initech are bright red, when Peter ignores his alarm clock and spends his Saturday how he wants too the numbers are bright red. But bright red really doesn’t hold any weight if it wasn’t for Milton. Once Milton loses the only thing he has to live for in this world, the red Swingline stapler, he follows through on his threat and burns down Initech, officially freeing Peter from that prison.

Michael Bolton was wrong; some people do want to be janitor in this world. The movie ends with Peter being a construction worker cleaning up the Initech building remains. And while this job isn’t glamorous it’s what makes Peter happy in this world. Peter’s boss Mr. Lumbergh always has gold accessories, but extravagance doesn’t equal happiness for Peter. Michael, Samir and Peter devised a plan and stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from Initech and the money didn’t make him happy. Peter answering the question ‘what would you do if you had a million dollars?’ didn’t lead him to his happiness; what makes Peter happy in this world is wearing a blue collar to work and not a white one.

[C Arthur]

Red defiantly plays a part in this movie, but I’m not convinced it was specially ment for Peter, and “..guildes Peter to his happiness”. Though I agree it is a good observation, but I think the color red holds a different purpose in the film, and that the color doesn’t faze Peter, or mean anything to him in anyway. Peter is not the only character in the movie, I don’t even see him as the hero of the story. He is in a sence that he cuts loose of the job he hated, and found something worth living for in the end, but he is not the true hero of the story.
Milton’s red Swingline stapler was made as if it were a character itself, and not just an inadament object. Swingline didn’t even make staplers in that color, so I think this makes the stapler that much more special. When it is taken away from Milton, he is hurt as if someone had taken something living away from him. As you mentioned, Initech is full of gary and the staff’s personal effects are the only things that give the office a bit of color. I think maybe the stapler was a little to striking, and since Milton treasured it so much, that Limburg had to take it to prove his high authority. So if the color red ment anything special to anybody it would be Milton. He started out to be a small character, but ends up being Initech’s downfall. So in a why I think Milton was the off centered hero of the story. So the color red was Milton’s to claim, that his bit of safe haven in that gray dungeon.

[jdefever]

I agree with K Doherty’s posting in regards to the bright red color theme signifying objects that make Peter happy. Though the phallic reference to Milton’s red stapler may directly resemble a robbing of his masculinity, Lumbergh might as well own Peter’s red stapler with the way that these two characters fail to stand up for themselves.

I personally would have liked to see Lumbergh’s character as a notably physically smaller man than Peter to emphasize the drastic difference in what the “alpha male” image has become since the days when man roamed the earth outdoors.

After his hypno-therapy session, Peter almost seems to hold an unconcerned opinion on life that may be considered comparable to Meursault in Albert Camus’ “The Stranger”. He becomes perfectly indifferent with his life and does exactly that which he would do if he had a million dollars—nothing. Eventually, whether it be because of the euphoric hypno-therapy session wearing off or Peter’s vengeful inhibition to get back at his enslaving company, the protagonists’ ambitions to make a bold move with his life offset his life of nothingness and carefree days.

It seems ironic that throughout a significant section of the film, the million-dollar question is prevalent, yet when the characters achieve a large portion of money through their grand scheme, they don’t know what to do with it (i.e. looking up the definition of laundering in the dictionary). For me this makes the film very interesting because we have people slaving away their lives to achieve the American dream, only to find that they don’t know what to do with themselves once they’re there. Even Milton, who scored the $300,000 before torching the building is still mumbling away his complaints at some tropical resort where it shouldn’t matter whether there’s salt on his margarita when he didn’t ask for it.

This dark comedy resembles the impossibility of attaining happiness in corporate America when the daily actions of life become dictated by machines and computers. What a scarily accurate and ironically elegant film.

[bvangundy]

I really enjoyed reading this post. You obviously are a person with humor. You opened with undoubtedly the most memorable aspect of the movie, “Fuckin’ A Peter Gibbons is a pussy”. This short sentence almost sums up the entire point of the movie. All except for the end because in the end he, in a way, overcomes himself. One thing I did not especially agree with is that the job didn’t “eat away” at Michael and Samir’s “souls”. There is no real way we can know this for sure. We see in the story that they all seem to be in the same position, they all hate the job. Peter just happens to be the first one to speak out and decide he was done pretending. In a sense Michael and Samir could have been much worse then Peter, but Peter is the main character of this story. I agree that they do not act out as Peter did but we do not know if it is eating away at them. Maybe it is, Maybe Michael is on the edge. For all we know Michael could be a few seconds away from pulling a pistol out of his desk and blowing everyone in that office away.

On another note I completely agree with the symbolism of the colors throughout the movie. We see peter moving from the gray drab area to this place full of color and energy. In the beginning Peter goes and sits in his isolated cubical everyday. When they are planning to rip off the company and get out of there they always seem to be in a lot more vibrant surroundings like the restaurant or the lawn. Throughout the movie we see peter, in a way, breaking out of his cubical. At one point peter knocks out the wall of his cubical so he can see the outside world and in the end peter is working outside. This is direct correlation with peter working toward his happiness.

[JWray]

I agree that some people actually want to be janitors in life. Our entire lives we are ingrained with the American Dream; The idea that in order to be happy in life we have to get a high paying job, a family, and a nice house. However, this is not everybody's idea of a happy life. Peter enjoys the construction worker, not because of the money or the perks; he simply enjoys the exercise and being in the fresh air. One does not have to make a six figure income to be happy. The American Dream is not everyone's dream.
I also get the symbolism that the author was talking about. I think it's incredibly astute to use something as simple as color to make a point about one of the themes. The mise-en-scene of a film can be just as important to the central meaning of the film as the characters or dialogue. It might be more subtle, but the colors and the rest of the settings still play an important role in the movie. The mise-en-scene re-inforce the characters and dialogue, and even makes points of their own.
The point about Michael listening to gangster rap to compensate rings true for a great deal of people. A great deal of people are ashamed of some part of their lives and they feel the best way to make people "accept" them is to go in the complete opposite direction. Michael's issues stems from the traditional views of masculinity. Somewhere along the way, there were rules decided on that stated how a man can live and what he should and should not like. Judge satirizes these rules by making this really white character who loves gangster rap and makes homophobic statements just to compensate for something as basic and unchangeable as his name.

[whughes]

I must say while watching “Office Space” the thought of comparing this movie to a color format never really crossed my mind. Until you pointed it out. Part of the reason why Peter was so uptight about his job was not just because of his dick of a boss but it had a gray atmosphere. Honestly sitting a cubicle is miserable it’s such a close environment. You can hear what everyone is saying and doing. The only plus is that you can see if your boss is coming over or not. Even all the workers with the exception of Mr. Lumbergh and a couple others had dull and boring clothing.

I appreciate how you brought to our attention the color scheme of the different working environments in the movie. Just like Joanna’s work place it may have been green but it was almost like a fake green. Just like how all the plants were fake in the restaurant. Joanna was not herself in front of her boss, colleagues, or costumers. I think when she pulled the finger we could tell how fake she was being.

Red was definitely a key factor of this movie. The red swingline stapler was not gray and depressing like the rest of Initech. It stood out amongst everything else in the office. The stapler was even capable of surviving the fire. How could Milton not be attracted to it? It was basically an escape from the office. I think about that stapler now and it would probably bring me some happiness if I were in that environment. When the stapler was taking away though, Milton reacts by burning down the Initech building. However, instead of that becoming a negative situation, Milton ends up with all the proceeds except for that he’s still the same guy. Probably one of the first times we see Peter relaxed and not stressed out was in the red restaurant. Also, like you stated the exit sign was red which was almost like an escape to the outside world for Peter. Plus, the burning red building gave him his freedom from going to jail. Basically, whenever red came up in this movie, it gave a sense of freedom to the characters.

[bcarpenter]

I don’t know if I agree with K Doherty in the sense that Peter Gibbon longs to be or wants anything, but to do nothing. Peter is the main character and so automatically I think we want to connect with his life and feelings when most of us really don’t. I don’t think that Peter really knows what he wants throughout the entirety of the movie. Even the end when he is shoveling debris he talks about the positive things in his new job, but it seems to me, especially the way he says his last line, f’ in a, that it was just to convince himself that he enjoys the job, when I think in reality all Peter Gibbons ever wants to do is nothing, or to do whatever he wants. When asked what he would do with a million dollars Peter just says “nothing.” Peter doesn’t really want a job, he just wants to go fishing or watch kung fu.
I partially base my conclusion on Peter’s character with that of my own father, who was an engineer in an aluminum plant for years before he decided to start his own business, where he worked even harder until he sold it, and became a garbage dump fee collector. He did this because he didn’t want to go to work. He likes doing lots of different things and work has too much repetition for that. He says he is happy with working at the dump because he doesn’t do anything, one time a customer had to wake him up because he feel asleep in the collecting booth, and the job is only one or two days a week, so he can stay ay home most of the time and do whatever he wants.
This I believe is Peter’s goal: to do nothing until he can go home and watch kung fu with his girlfriend. His new job with Lawrence creates a lifestyle more like that where he doesn’t have to work that hard and then he can go have fun.
I think it’s more realistic for all of us to relate more with Samir and Michael, because they actually enjoy what they do, otherwise they wouldn’t go back to their old jobs. They enjoy complaining about their jobs and like being rebels, even though they don’t really want the change, they just want to feel like they could do something about it if they wanted to. They might feel like they are unhappy about their jobs like most people, as joeanna says, but who isn’t at times. They don’t seem to feel that gaping hole that they’re missing out on something like Peter is.