Hierarchy, Aristocracy, and Dwight Schrute
posted by Nate Oman
The most recent episode of The Office has got me thinking about Dwight Schrute. In it Michael accuses Dwight of being a “butt kisser” while Dwight cuts Michael as a hollow man who has “no friends, no family, and no land!” What are we to make of this exchange? Is Dwight in fact a butt kisser?
I think not.
Michael’s perception of Dwight, of course, is not without justification. Dwight is extremely deferential to Michael and does at times engage in a certain amount of butt kissing. This does not mean, however, that he is a butt kisser. The heart of the problem is that Michael interprets Dwight’s behavior using the typically American categories of equality, freedom, and calculation. I’ve long thought that Dwight’s fish-out-of-water position in the office stemmed not only from his — admitted — weirdness but also from the fact that he ultimately inhabits a different moral universe from the essentially liberal and democratic one of his colleagues. Last episode’s comment about land does much to remove my doubts.
Michael begins with the assumption that all members of the office are essentially equal. To be sure, there is the hierarchy of boss and employee, but it is not a hierarchy that Michael is comfortable with, or which he even understands or can use. Indeed, Michael views his role as boss as being essentially that of a performer and an entertainer, which implies a kind of subservient position vis-a-vis his employees, undermining what little hierarchy there is within the office. Since Michael is incapable of attaching any normative significance to the hierarchy inherent in his position as boss, he necessarily sees Dwight’s actions as motivated by Dwight’s desire to get ahead. It is a kind of manipulation and sycophantic denial of Dwight’s essential equality. In this sense, Michael’s attitude is thoroughly democratic and liberal in the philosophical sense.
In contrast to Michael, Dwight’s moral view point is essentially aristocratic. Dwight does not believe in equality, but rather in virtu in is primal meaning of power or excellence. This aristocratic attitude, in turn, means that in contrast to Michael, Dwight endows hierarchy with immense normative significance. To be sure he is willing to subvert it, as shown by his recent confrontation with the CFO of Dunder Mifflin. The sources of his subversion, however, are diametrically opposed to those of Michael. Where Michael subverts hierarchy to maintain equality, if only because he believes that equality is a precondition of friendship, Dwight is only willing to subvert hierarchy when he regards his own excellence as meriting such a subversion. What this means, however, is that his ultimate moral allegiances remain aristocratic and hierarchical.
Associated with this aristocratic view is an allegiance to the particularity of the soil. Compare, Dwight with Jim. Jim had no problem pulling up stakes in Scranton and heading to Connecticut. He contemplated moving to Maryland and New York City at one point. Ultimately what brought him back to Scranton was love of Pam rather than any real allegiance to place. In contrast, Dwight is literally tied to the soil of Pennsylvania through his beet farm. Indeed, he repeatedly identifies himself as a farmer, even though his occupation is paper salesman.
It is not accidental in this regard that Dwight’s favorite book is The Lord of the Rings. It is possible, of course, to read this as simply a reference to a certain kind of sci-fi geekiness on Dwight’s part, and there is not doubt some truth to this. There is, however, more to the reference than this. Tolkien’s world is essentially heroic, aristocratic, and hierarchical. It is also a world of deep commitments to place and people. Think of the Shire or Rohan. These are places that call forth a kind of deep blood-and-soil identification with tribal and geographic particularity that is ultimately foreign to the America of Michael Scott. It is, however, the moral universe that Dwight Schrute inhabits.
The nature of the humor surrounding Dwight tells us something about the place of the aristocratic and particularistic values that Dwight embodies. First, he is not particularly likable. His behavior is repeatedly portrayed as inexplicable to his companions. Second, his origins are made exotic and vaguely sinister. His cousin/room-mate Mose looks vaguely Amish. His family is enmeshed in the the world of the Pennsylvania Dutch. We even learn in an earlier episode that his grandfather retired to Argentina, where he was pursued by the Shoah Foundation. Dwight, it would seem, is descended from Nazis.
All of these point toward the extreme difficulty of situating Dwight’s hierarchical, aristocratic, and particularistic universe within American culture. The Nazi reference suggests the potential impossibility of viewing it as anything other than a pathology, and the use of the Pennsylvania Dutch is particularly clever because it allows the story to both assert Dwight’s foreignness and at the same time connect him to place and tradition within the geographic confines of the United States.
Dwight, however, also expresses a certain anxiety about the staying power of advanced liberal democracy. It is worth remembering that whenever he and Michael confront one another, Michael almost always gets his egalitarian, democratic butt kicked.
[cross-posted at Akrasia]
February 5, 2009 at 11:05 am
Posted in: Culture
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Responses (3)
Jason Wool - February 5, 2009 at 12:18 pm
What do you make of the fact that although Dwight is more powerful than Michael, and that Michael seems to represent the antithesis of Dwight’s worldview, Dwight (for some reason) never ceases to worship at the alter of Michael, seeming, in a way, to relish his position as Michael’s lieutenant despite his possible superiority?
Granted, I haven’t watched the show as diligently as I once did, but Dwight’s personality always struck me as incongruous with his adoration of Michael. On the other hand, maybe it has something to do, as you say, with the values of Lord of the Rings – Dwight being the Samwise Gamgee to Michael’s weak, fallible Frodo Baggins, literally carrying him on his back.
Creed - February 5, 2009 at 12:29 pm
Jason, Dwight did try to overthrow Michael at one point only to come sniveling back at the end of the episode. I don’t think he truly relishes his underling status.
dan - February 7, 2009 at 9:56 pm
Quite brilliant!
In the aristocratic moral code, there is no contradiction between being subservient and kissing Michael’s ass, and, at times, subverting his authority. The whole concept of friendship is different in that world.
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