Brick wrote:
Tall Midget wrote:
Brick wrote:
I wasn't aware that Tall Midget was such a fan of the Professional-Managerial class. Dwight, with his position as Assistant Regional Manager, may actually represent the worst of that group of people as he seemingly pushed his way into power first by pushing his way into a promotion over the rest of the office by brute force but later by purchasing the building to torment the entire office and further position himself as a person of power within the office. Jim may have had questionable actions at times in his dealings with Dwight but it is clear that Jim is fighting against the class war that has been fought for decades against people in his position that simply want to be a productive worker while having no desire to enter management to the point where he accepted a wide range of supervisors after Michael left even though he clearly was a better choice to lead the Proletariat.
Dwight aspires to be "Assistant Regional Manager" but for most of the show is "Assistant to the Regional Manager". He cannot ascend the corporate ladder even though he is the Office's best salesman because he is culturally "other". It is this "otherness" that, within the tortured logic of the show, justifies Jim's campaign of humiliation and terror against Dwight.
Even when he becomes manager (by default), he more closely identifies himself as a member of a rural subculture that exists, according to the logic of the show, only to be ridiculed.
Jim was likely the only thing that stopped Dwight from ascending to power almost instantly. Dwight was very close to getting Michael fired and taking control early on. It's hard to tell what work Jim was doing behind the scenes during that attempted coup but Jim was smart enough to know that it was only a matter of time so he had to protect Michael by any means necessary. I understand why you find the fight against management to be so distasteful but the only way to keep balance was to keep Dwight occupied until Michael chose to leave on his own likely seeing the writing on the wall where Dwight as the owner of the building was not going to be stopped forever.
You've now gone from arguing that Dwight
is a member of the PMC to arguing that he
would be a member of the PMC if it weren't for Jim.
I agree. Thank you for confirming that Jim is precisely the awful human being that I have previously described him as.
Jim prevents Dwight's advancement within his job because he thinks Dwight is "weird", though, as I have said, this weirdness is coded in very specific political, cultural, and class-based terms. Jim serves as the guardian of PMC cultural values, and it is those values--rather than merit--that, thank's to Jim's despicable behavior--determine one's place in the office/
The Office. Jim's whole reason-for-being is to block the advancement of "others" to preserve PMC hegemony. Like the class that he defends, he is not particularly good at anything and must stoop to questionable (at best) tactics to undermine superior talent and reproduce social inequity.
_________________
Antonio Gramsci wrote:
The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.