9
Humiliation in The Office (and at Home)
Television viewers often participate in the feelings and experiences of onscreen characters. For this we have to thank our capacities for empathy and compassion. But rather than feeling with Michael Scott, we often feel in his place, a kind of “feeling by proxy.” The particular feeling we are most likely to have by proxy for Michael is not loss, depression, fear, love, or joy, but humiliation. You see, Michael Scott is largely immune to humiliation. He rarely notices when he has transgressed moral norms. The problem is his epic lack of self-awareness: Michael Scott’s moral blindspot obscures his vision, first and foremost, of Michael Scott! Viewers, of course, rarely miss his transgressions, and since we are not immune to humiliation, we look away from the television, laugh nervously, and wish we could bury his head for him. Oddly enough, we enjoy it too. We come to expect and even desire these experiences in each new episode of The Office, settling down in front of the television wondering what totally awkward thing Michael will do next.
Why do we enjoy these experiences? One answer is pretty obvious. We enjoy laughter. Perhaps the joy of laughter outweighs the pains of humiliation by proxy. But other answers are available, too. As someone interested in ethics and moral education, I want to explore one of these alternatives—namely, that the humiliation we feel for Michael Scott reinforces our sense of goodness and character. Like humiliation proper, humiliation by proxy calls attention to our judgments of self and to our values. It informs us of our capacities for experiencing a variety of humanizing moral emotions such as shame, embarrassment, and regret. Unlike humiliation proper, however, humiliation by proxy is not a response to our wrongdoing: humiliation by proxy does not so much transform character as reaffirm it. So long as we can reliably perceive others’ moral errors, our experiences of humiliation by proxy show that we possess a degree of genuine goodness and moral sensitivity that they lack.
This might seem a lot of seriousness to impose on a little comedy such as The Office. Yet theorists of comedy have often talked about comedy in terms of its morally relevant functions. The British philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), for instance, held that laughter was an expression of moral superiority.1 Henri Bergson (1859–1941), a French philosopher, contended that comedy promoted moral values by humiliating people guilty of socially disruptive behavior.2 But we should disagree with Hobbes and Bergson that laughter always or necessarily serves to humiliate others. After all, we often laugh at Michael because we are humiliated, not in order to humiliate. Laughter and humiliation have often been thought connected, and this resonates deeply with our responses to The Office. Of course, Michael Scott would like nothing more than to make people laugh, but, if I am right, he is good for more than this.
Beyond High School Humiliation
We use the concept of humiliation in at least two ways. One way we speak of humiliation is as a practice or process of being humiliated, whether it involves public denouncements and other public displays of power or private reflections on one’s place in the cosmos. The other use treats humiliation as an emotion. Here we mean what it feels like to be humiliated and what makes an emotional response humiliation rather than something else like anxiety or fear or indiges-tion.3 We all know from the inside what humiliation feels like because we have experienced it—we know, for instance, that to feel humiliation is to feel the pain of regret, shame, and embarrassment. But feeling is only one dimension of the emotion of humiliation. Humiliation involves additionally the judgment that we have transgressed important social or moral norms, neglected important values, or mistaken ourselves for something we are not.
Our capacity for humiliation, I think, says a lot about us. Minimally, it says that we see ourselves as possibly doing wrong or possibly overestimating our own merit. It also says that wrongdoing and over-estimation are so important to us that we can be pained by them: if we didn’t have these beliefs or couldn’t feel this pain, we couldn’t experience humiliation. Humiliation is a characteristically human emotion, for it connects our reflective capacities to our abilities to be moved to put those reflections into action.
The capacity for humiliation is very significant morally—and we know it can be abused. One such abuse has become a common part of our cultural narratives regarding humiliation: High School Humiliation. Its script runs something like this: mean, controlling, superiority-complex bearing alpha males and queen bees demean others so that they continue to enjoy their social status; betas and wannabes mimic these behaviors as they demoralize those below them on the food chain. The result is public confirmation of the power-disparity between the social haves and have-nots.4
Films and television shows about adolescence and high school often follow this script. As we well know, however, High School Humiliation does not end with the 12th grade. It is practiced, for instance, by both Jim and Michael in The Office. Jim displays smugness and class-security, especially in his knowing glances at Pam, as he plays junior high pranks on Dwight and, later, on Stamford-transfer Andy. Michael uses High School Humiliation frequently. For instance, Michael publicizes that Martin is an ex-con and then treats him as if he knows nothing about prison (“The Convict”). Michael uses High School Humiliation again to reaffirm his managerial authority after misleading Dwight into thinking he’d been named Michael’s replacement (“The Coup”). Michael probably learned to use High School Humiliation from his BFF, Todd Packer, who parades around as if he’s still captain of the high school football team. Surprising Michael from behind by pulling Michael’s sport coat over his head, Packer bellows: “What has two thumbs and likes to bone your mom? [Packer points to himself] This guy!” Jim gets an equally thoughtful greeting: “What’s up Halpert? Still queer?” (“Sexual Harassment”). But while High School Humiliation pricks egos, its targets are not typically false or inflated egos. It prefers instead to seek out easy prey, often persons whose status is perceived to be inferior. Furthermore, High School Humiliation is not aimed at promoting self-awareness or recognition of genuine wrongdoing; it vies merely to elevate the social status of its wielder. Victims of High School Humiliation rarely deserve such rough treatment!
Not all humiliation is High School Humiliation, obviously. Other forms of humiliation aim at social control too, but not primarily by elevating the status of their practitioners or by suppressing potential competitors in the social arena. Instead, they commonly aim to bind communities around shared values and norms. Think of Hester Prynne’s treatment in Hawthorne’s novel The Scarlet Letter. Think of public canings, whippings, or hangings. Think of local papers that publish the names and offenses of community members: drug possession, petty larceny, driving while intoxicated, even divorce. Michael Scott uses humiliation in this form as well. His “Name That Stereotype” game (“Diversity Day”) was evidently intended to promote social values, on the assumption that everyone (else) would be humiliated by the stereotypes they secretly harbored. After Kevin gets pulled in to one of Todd Packer’s sex jokes (this one about a guy at a convention of nymphomaniacs), Michael tries to humiliate Kevin for creating a hostile work environment (“Sexual Harassment”):
Todd: He is psyched because all these women are smokin’ hot perfect tens, except for this one chick who looks a lot like, um … [pointing to Phyllis]
Kevin: Phyllis.
Michael: No, no, no, no, that crosses the line.
Todd: Exsqueeze me?
Michael: [to Todd] Not you. Kevin. …
Michael: [to Kevin] … There’s a line and you went over it, so you must be punished. Go to your corner.
Kevin: You mean where my desk is?
Michael: Yes, your corner. Go.
Kevin: Ok, I have a lot of work to do anyway.
So not all humiliation is High School Humiliation. Some public humiliation is aimed at social control, but not the superiority of its practitioners. Other forms of humiliation may not even be public. But all forms of humiliation have the same necessary conditions: recognition of at least the possibility of wrongdoing or false self-appraisal, and the ability to be pained by such a recognition. There is no reason to believe that Michael Scott lacks a capacity for pain, of course, but he clearly has difficulty looking closely enough at himself to realize his own imperfection.
Michael Scott: Dishing Out What He Cannot Take
Everyone knows someone who is blind to his own foibles. We criticize such blindness because we tend to hold that persons should see themselves for what they are. If a person is prone to mistakes, or has significant faults or vices, we often praise him for recognizing it. If a person is skilled, if he excels in certain capacities, we praise that recognition as well (understanding, of course, that recognition of excellence is not the same as boasting of it, and that recognition of flaws is not identical with beating oneself up over it). Honesty with ourselves matters, and not simply because we care about truth for its own sake. Immense practical and moral value hangs on it: it’s hard to achieve much if we’re duping ourselves constantly about who we are, what we are able to do, and what others believe about us.
The problem is that we are about as good at self-appraisal as Dwight is at interrogation (“Drug Testing”). The errors to which we are generally liable come in two kinds. One involves overestimation and typically indicates a person’s excessive pride, egomania, or narcissism; the other involves underestimation and indicates a person’s servility, slavishness, or obsequiousness. Michael Scott does not characteristically underestimate himself. He is a narcissist who chronically exaggerates his status, believing himself to have the loyalty, trust, and friendship of his employees when he has actually alienated them; taking himself to be a creative leader when he is in fact an object of contempt; thinking himself a brilliant comedian when he is virtually without wit or comedic timing.
Good varieties of humiliation transform wrongdoers and correct their self-appraisals. For humiliation to transform us, we must believe that we have transgressed moral norms, neglected moral values, or mistaken ourselves for something we are not. This is because the emotion of humiliation is partially constituted by these beliefs: if we do not or cannot see that we have done wrong, we will not feel the sting of humiliation. This is precisely Michael’s issue.
For instance, Michael Scott has the vague sense that racism, sexism, and homophobia are unacceptable. Perhaps he even cares in some fashion not to do what is unacceptable. But his behavior consistently defies his knowledge and care. Michael apparently cannot translate his notion of what is morally required of him into action. He seems not to perceive when and how his moral values apply. Perhaps this is because he does not recognize his situation as calling for those values. Think of the exception Michael makes for himself on “Diversity Day” (his name tag reads “Martin Luther King, Jr.”), not seeing that he too harbors racial stereotypes (any doubt about this is smashed as he assaults Kelly with an impression of an Indian convenience store manager). Or consider the way Michael puts together a basketball team to challenge the warehouse crew (“Basketball”): he chooses Stanley first (evidently because he’s black), rejects Phyllis (she’s female), ignores Kevin (probably because he’s overweight), and tells Oscar that he’ll call on him if it comes to baseball or boxing (presumably because he’s Hispanic).
As I see it, though, Michael’s inability to perceive the morally salient details of his situation is rooted in something deeper: his lack of self-awareness. Michael Scott’s moral blind-spot is defined by his narcissism. He thinks his jokes are funny; he thinks his grandstanding is deserved; he thinks those who disagree with him are out of their heads. Recall once more Michael’s treatment of ex-convict Martin. Contrary to Martin’s assessment, Michael attempts to convince everyone in the office that prison isn’t really better than working at the Scranton branch. Michael can’t imagine not being the expert, even though his only acquaintance with prison is from TV, the Internet, and gangsta rap (“The Convict”):
Michael: [donning a blue bandana] I’m Prison Mike. You know why they call me Prison Mike?
Angela: Do you really expect us to believe you’re someone else?
Michael: Do you really expect me to not push you up against the wall, beotch? … [In response to grumblings] … Hey, hey, hey, hey, that’s just the way we talk in the clink … A lot of fun talk about prison today, but I’m here to scare you straight. I’m here to scare you straight!
Michael cannot conceive of the possibility that his own behavior could violate the demands of morality. He counts himself an exception to the rules, but only because, as far as he can tell, he is morally faultless, a paragon of virtue and moral fiber. A telling example comes when Michael tries to renege on his (unwitting) offer to give Oscar’s nephew 25 dollars per mile for his charity walk (“The Alliance”):
Oscar: I just think it’s kind of cheap to undonate money to a charity.
Michael: No, no, no, no, no, no … I wasn’t, I wasn’t, what I was … no, it’s not about the money, it’s just the ethics of the thing, Oscar … How’s your nephew? Is he in good shape?
Oscar: Yeah.
Michael: How many miles did he do last year?
Oscar: Last year he walked 18 miles.
Michael: Son of a bitch! … That is impressive, good for him.
While Michael ultimately writes out a large check, he does so not because he thinks he’d otherwise do wrong, but because he wants to preserve his self-image—earlier that day he’d confided to the camera that he’d like to be known someday as the anonymous donor of a new hospital wing.
Michael’s exaggerated self-appraisal is not dented by even glaring evidence to the contrary: Phyllis’ new husband, Bob Vance of Vance Refrigeration, wrenches him up and drags him off stage as he tries to showboat at their wedding reception (“Phyllis’ Wedding”); Oscar takes a leave of absence after having been outed by Michael and then forced to endure a make-up kiss as Michael tries to display his gay-friendliness (“Gay Witch Hunt”); Carol rejects Michael’s unexpected marriage proposal at the Diwali celebration, causing him, later that evening, to try desperately to kiss Pam—his advances are rebuffed yet again and, though Pam takes him home, she makes him sit in the backseat (“Diwali”). One might expect Michael’s beliefs about himself not to hold up under these conditions, raising the question how rich a fantasy life Michael must have in order to insulate these beliefs from falsification. But whatever the defense mechanisms, the result is unequivocal: Michael is blind to his moral transgressions because he has, at best, only the slightest inkling that he is morally impure. He can dish out humiliation, but he cannot take it, for he fails to meet the minimal condition of experiencing humiliation, the awareness that he could possibly do wrong.
Humiliation (not in The Office, but) at Home
Michael Scott is rarely humiliated by his actions. Because of his narcissism, he has difficulty conceptualizing the possibility of his doing wrong. Yet viewers of The Office know that no episode will go by without Michael doing something inconsiderate, awkward, indecent, offensive, boneheaded, or ridiculous—indeed, for many of us, it is precisely these moments of unabashed insensitivity that keep us tuning in. While Michael is apparently incapable of experiencing humiliation, however, we, his viewers, are not. We are betrayed by our emotional and behavioral reactions to Michael’s behavior. As we laugh, we occasionally experience his shame and embarrassment. We regret his actions for him. We get a rush of anxiety. We blush. We avert our gaze from the television screen. We participate in Michael’s humiliation by proxy, not so much feeling with him, since he is not humiliated, but feeling in his place.5
Our capacity for feeling by proxy is a sign of our empathy and compassion. These are fundamental moral traits that make possible our concern for others by enabling us to understand what others are going through, the only plausible form of mind-reading available to us.6 They motivate us to do well by others and to help relieve their pain because we share it. Generally, compassion is understood to be a kind of feeling for or with others, as I have said previously. The case of feeling by proxy is rather different: indeed, it might be regarded, and not implausibly so, as a perversion of our compassion, leading us to feel even for those who cannot feel themselves, humanizing the emotionally inhuman. One might even worry that emotion by proxy is dangerous.
But I doubt this. Emotion by proxy could be troublesome if we tended to feel what others should feel while failing to recognize that they are not feeling that way themselves. Perhaps it would lead us then to sympathize with persons who are cold-blooded, ruthless, or unfeeling when we should not (the Todd Packers of the world). The experience of emotion by proxy does not entail such failures of recognition though. Nor is there any reason to believe that emotion by proxy is likely to occur in circumstances in which we are vulnerable to cold-blooded victimizers. More probable is the kind of case we have before us now, experiencing emotions right in the comfort of our own homes. Let’s be honest, actors can be like Michael Scott on so many levels—though especially in leading us to feel emotion without truly feeling it themselves!
Still, humiliation by proxy differs from standard cases of humiliation. The most salient difference is that humiliation by proxy is less likely than humiliation proper to require that we reconsider the accuracy of our self-image—we have not really been humiliated after all, we have transgressed no moral norms—and, as a result, humiliation by proxy is less likely to cause personal transformation. The pain of humiliation is a powerful motivator of change, but only if something in one’s character is calling for it.
Humiliation by proxy is not for this reason insignificant, however. Watching Michael Scott, taking on the humiliation that he deserves, we realize that we know better. Only a moral blunderer would make the mistakes that he makes without feeling any remorse, regret, embarrassment, or shame. And yet we feel tinges of each of these in Michael’s place—we feel the relevant pains—and so we learn about ourselves that we are decent, caring people, with emotional repertoires fitting for our humanity. This is, after all, why we can experience Michael’s humiliation.
Furthermore, we come to reaffirm commitments to our moral values as a result of by-proxy humiliation. True, this is not moral transformation, but it is important nonetheless. We measure our decency in part by the worth of the moral standards and the degree of self-knowledge that we possess (and, by contrast, that Michael does not). Were we to discover Michael flouting unacceptably stringent, hypocritical, or perverse moral standards, we would have no reason to feel humiliation on his behalf. This does raise a hard question about why Michael’s behavior should be humiliating though. Isn’t it often his racism, sexism, homophobia, and lack of sensitivity above all else that humiliates us, his viewers? Aren’t we therefore endorsing a characteristically Hollywood (or Western or modern) set of values? Indeed, mightn’t a non-Hollywood type actually praise Michael for challenging the doctrinaire norms of Hollywood political correctness?
First, labeling a set of values “Hollywood” ought not to belie its claim to justifiability. Many sets of moral standards might be said to be justifiable; Hollywood sets of values are not automatically excluded from their number.7 Second, the moral standards Michael transgresses are not simply expressions of Hollywood values, Western values, or even modern values, though we see them in these times and places perhaps more often than we do elsewhere. Different conceptions of ultimate value humiliate with remarkably similar results: a rethinking of self, a reworking of one’s relationship to the world, and so on. This is possible because distinctive conceptions of value agree on certain fundamental matters such as the need for self-awareness, moral sight, integrity, and honesty with oneself. These values have to do with how we think about morality, the merit we attach to certain ways of moral reasoning, or with the relationships between values rather than the substance of those values themselves. Michael characteristically misapprehends the meaning and significance of his actions. He breaks moral norms haphazardly. He hurts people’s feelings unknowingly. He thinks the rest of the world is more troubled and in error than he. This is Michael’s staggering blindness at work: blindness that Hollywood and non-Hollywood types can agree is a moral fault. So even if one thinks that off-color jokes should not offend, that Hollywood mores are wimpy and too sensitive, or that the world should just suck it up, one should still be humiliated for Michael Scott.
Dunder-Mifflin’s Scranton manager, Michael Scott, exhibits such pervasive moral blindness that he is rarely humiliated by his actions. We take on Michael’s humiliation, even knowing that he will never begin to approximate full moral vision. By-proxy humiliation benefits us differently than humiliation proper, offering us a reaffirmation of our compassion and decency rather than a call to moral transformation. And while we should not overly congratulate ourselves for our decency, shifting too quickly into a mode of easy self-approval, basic forms of goodness, compassion, and character are nothing to scoff at. We discover in our humiliation for Michael something profoundly human—a fundamental moral conception of ourselves as possibly doing wrong. Michael seems not to possess such a self-conception. He is at once ripe for humiliation and yet, by the same measure, incapable of it. This guarantees that the laughs and self-affirmations will continue—at least as long as corporate doesn’t succeed in humanizing Michael through its diversity seminars.
NOTES
1 Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan: With Selected Variants from the Latin Edition of 1668, ed. Edwin Curley (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1994).
2 Henri Bergson, “Laughter,” in Comedy, ed. Wylie Sypher (Garden City, NY: Anchor Doubleday, 1956).
3 On the relationship between digestion and emotion, see Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols and The Anti-Christ, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (London: Penguin, 1984).
4 Rosalind Wiseman, Queen Bees and Wannabes (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2002).
5 I have no hard evidence of the regularity of experiences of by-proxy humiliation among viewers of The Office. My data is, shall we say, anecdotal. However, if there is value in by-proxy humiliation for anyone individually, that value will not simply dissipate upon remarking that others did not receive it, or that not many others did. And to those who’ve never had this experience, I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news. If I am right, you may well lack a certain degree of moral sensitivity, compassion, or empathy.
6 Karsten Stueber, Rediscovering Empathy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006).
7 Justifiability is not identical to truth. Thus, any number of ethical systems could be simultaneously justifiable, while only one or none were true.