Absurdity in Television Mockumentary

Niccole D’Arco

Comedy in TV

Philip Scepanski

March 12, 2019

Absurdity in Television Mockumentary

The Office and Parks and Rec both have a similar comedic style where characters face exaggerated problems in normal day-to-day life. Much of the humor stems from hilariously outlandish situations which have no place in our realities. This allows us for a moment to escape our fears, and laugh down at the characters. Characters often pursue instant gratification to their unseemly desires, including verbal and physical violence, and sexual desire. Shows like The Office and Parks and Rec create a space that parallels reality, but allows audiences to escape their own realities and fears by releasing energy spent on repressing undisclosed desires.

Sigmund Freud believes that part of why we find things funny stems from our repressed fears and desires, and joking about them relieves the energy spent repressing them. The leftover energy is released as laughter. This energy can be relieved in both tendentious or non-tendentious jokes. “The case of tendentious jokes is a special one...An impulse or urge is present which seeks to release pleasure from a particular source and it were allowed free play, would release it.” A tendentious joke is made at someone else’s expense.

A good example of Freudian slip in the The Office is the episode where a man exposes himself to Phyllis in the parking lot of the building. Season 3 Episode 21. Dwight decides to take point in the search for finding the man who did it. Michael makes rude jokes in the beginning of the episode at Phyllis’s expense; such as why the culprit didn’t flash Pam or Karen instead due to their obvious physical superiority. Everyone else in the room is aghast that Michael is addressing this fact in front of the entire office during the event which is rather serious. Not unlike the episode from the Mary Tyler Moore Show where characters laugh about a death, Michael is releasing the tension built by the seriousness of the issue at hand. The audience can’t help but laugh. We are both laughing due to the redirection of psychic energy, and we are laughing down at Michael, for his mechanical inability to behave like an adult. The audience can exist in an environment where these societal rules are being broken, which lifts the pressure off of ourselves to fit those molds.

In the same episode, Dwight’s first plan is to gather a compilation of photography to show to Phyllis in the case that she would recognize the one that she saw. Dwight enters Michael’s office with the folder full of “dick pics” and has Michael rifle through them, including a polaroid suggested to be of Dwight. Then they announce a task force specifically dedicated towards tracking the man down.

Dwight: This is a petition for the business park to upgrade their security cameras, as well as install two floodlights in the park lot. And I know what you’re thinking -- won’t that just shed more light on the penisis. But that is a risk we have to take. Pam. You can draw, kind of. Why don’t you work with phallus on drawing a picture of the exposer that I can post around the community.

Pam: Phallus?

Dwight: Phyllis sorry. I’ve got penises on the brain.

This example is perfect to look at when applying Freud. The word penis is thrown around multiple times in the workplace environment (which is already an incorrect form of behavior), so it comes as much more of a shock when Dwight uses the other terminology. Dwight subconsciously makes a tendentious joke at Phyllis’s expense, and we get to laugh at both Dwight and the joke he made.

In season 6 episode 10, titled, Murder, Dunder Mifflin co workers panic due to an article in the Journal that recommends the company files for bankruptcy. This news greatly weighs on all of the employees, because now they fear they may be out of a job without much warning. Jim, who is co-manager at this point in the show, urges Michael to do something about it. So he rushes into the conference meeting sounding very upset on the phone. Naturally, the employees think it’s new about the company, until Michael says in a southern accent, “there has been a murder.” Michael’s response to coping with bad news is to play a game like a child. In fact, he tells the camera that these were his coping mechanisms when he was going through difficult times when he was a child. This form of regression is funny because there is always going to be a small part of us that would prefer to hide from their fears in this way, but most times we cannot give in to that urge. Jim strongly disagrees with Michael’s logic. Jim plays the role of the super-ego (which I will touch on later) or the pure societal decorum. He doesn’t understand how Michael could want to play a game in a time like this, until Michael explains it to him. The game ends up working, and distracts all of the employees from doing their work. This is not typical workplace behavior, and we laugh because we don’t know how we’d react if we had to deal with a situation like this is our own lives. The energy we spend repression how bored we are with monotony and fear that we will be stuck their forever is relieved by this scene. And therefore that energy is released as laughter.

Parks and Rec is slightly farther from reality than The Office which makes for a slightly different comedic effect. The characters aren’t as relatable as in the Office, and the setting at a parks department is less relatable than a run-of-the mill sales office. This is because the characters are much closer to Freud’s “id,” as opposed to the ego or superego. The id is our most basic, animalistic desires. Someone in touch with their psychic id is more likely to pursue instant gratification including but not limited to sexuality and verbal/physical violence.

Ron Swanson (Nick Offerman), is a character whom we don’t learn much about until show progresses by a few seasons. He doesn’t share too many things about himself, at least to other characters, and he comes across as slightly emotionless and stoic. In season 2 episode 9, titled The Camel, Ron gets his shoes shined by Andy Dwyer (Chris Pratt), and makes some unseemly noises during the process. Ron makes a statement explaining that the noises “involuntary” and “sometimes a sound is just a sound.” “Voluntarily” or not, Ron pursued a desire from his psychic id. Even more hilarious is Andy’s immediate reaction. He laughs and expresses a grossed-out sentiment, and releases an expletive. Of course this reaction is what the we were all thinking during the segment, but it’s so awkward that we don’t expect a direct acknowledgement from either of them. Society suggests that in weird instances such as this one, that we most likely should not address the elephant in the room, or even allow the smallest glimpse of our inner psyches. Addressing them in the show frees us from those constraints for a moment to laugh down at these people who can’t seem to follow the rules. Whilst simultaneously allowing us to relieve our own built up tensions.

Something similar actually happened to me over the weekend, except instead of shoe shining I was painting faces. This one student was making incredibly uncomfortable noises and I didn’t know what to do. Without the releases that Andy and Ron prompted in front of the camera, I was left feeling weird and a little anxious honestly. Without the relief, we are left with pent-up negative energy.

When I sit down to watch something, whether it be television or a movie, I typically won’t choose something that is going to make me upset or uncomfortable in anyway. So I never watch anything in the horror genre, and I don’t often watch dramas either depending on the subject. I know for a fact that I like to escape into what I’m watching, and so if that happens to be scary, then I’m just upset for a few hours. I’d prefer to escape into an environment that releases me from things that I’m stressed about in real life. I’ve come to the conclusion that this signifies an overwhelming disgust for reality and the real world. Reality and society holds an intense pressure over all of our heads about how to behave, choose acceptable career paths, and even just walking outside in public. All of this seems to be adding up as my graduation date approaches at the speed of light, and I must be suppressing and displacing my fears about these society rules. I already know for a fact that I’ve been bottling in my emotions to begin with, because I haven’t allowed myself to properly reflect on what’s about to change in my life, because it makes me too sad. I’m finding myself less and less interested in life after college, and I’d honestly just prefer to keep living in this bubble that I’ve created. By analyzing my favorite shows through a Freudian lense, I’ve learned that I repress fears about conforming to reality and representing ideals and behavioural norms of adulthood.

Works Cited

Marx, Nick, and Matt Sienkiewicz, eds. The Comedy Studies Reader. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2018. 73.

Parks and Recreation. “The Camel.” Season 2 episode 9. Directed by Millicent Shelton. Written by Rachel Axler. November 12, 2009.

The Office. “Women’s appreciation.” Season 3 episode 21. Directed by Tucker Gates. Written by Greg Daniels, Gene Stupnitsky, and Lee Eisenberg. NBC, May 3, 2007.

The Office. “Murder.” Season 6 episode 10. Directed by Greg Daniels. Written by Daniel Chun. NBC. November 12, 2009.