Media literacy and stereotyping in The Office's "Mafia" episode

Media Literacy, Culture, And Critical Process in the Office

Episode Description

The Fifth episode ("Mafia") of Season Six of the NBC prime-time comedy hit the Office originally aired on Thursday, October 15, 2009. Its principle plot line is Michael's Scott's perception that an insurance salesman (played by Michael Starr, a character actor who has previously portrayed a prototypical Italian-American tough guy persona in mob movies) is shaking him down for protection money.

Starr plays Angelo Grotti, who claims to be an insurance salesman but evokes immediate fears on the part of the hapless duo Dwight Schrute and Andrew Bernard of being a mob shakedown artists selling commercial insurance as part of a thinly veiled protection racket. The episode also contains a subplot arising from the Kevin Malone's character's unwittingly causes Jim Halpert's credit card to be cancelled during his and newly-wed Pam Beesly's honeymoon in Mexico.

Initially, Michael does not suspect anything strange about Grotti, regarding him as a "bad salesman" insulting him (as a "great salesman") by trying to close an insurance sale that Michael clearly finds mind-numbingly boring. Dwight and Andrew immediately draw the obviously premature conclusion that Grotti is a criminal thug and not a legitimate businessman. When they discover that his name is only one consonant away from "Gotti," the most famous name associated with the contemporary American Mafioso image, they recoil in horror. The episode is eventually resolved only after Dwight and Andrew dupe Michael into calling Grotti's bluff and very rudely cancelling his newly purchased insurance policy by assuring Michael that they managed to "check out" Grotti's pedigree and determined that he is genuinely nothing more than a guff-sounding insurance salesman with a thick New York accent.

Cultural Message Analyses and Interpretations

Initially, the Grotti character provides no objectively reasonable reason for assuming he is anything other than an insurance salesman. While much of his dialogue is potentially open equally to innocuous interpretation or to threatening implied innuendo, his delivery is neutral and suggests neither conclusion. On his way out of the office, he apparently knocks over the office coat tree; he picks it up and replaces it right-side-up where it belongs next to the reception desk, but he does so somewhat less apologetically than one might expect of someone who knocked over other people's coats while a visitor in a strange office. Instead of apologizing profusely, Grotti warns the entire staff, "Will you look at that, People? What an unpredictable world we live in, huh?" somewhat cryptically. Other than that slight possible glitch, the Grotti character does not give any overt hints about the potential criminal nature of his character or a threatening purpose of his business proposal.

The restaurant scene includes hackneyed use of typical Italian cuisine that is further designed to perpetuate uncertainty about Grotti. When he orders linguini with red sauce and garlic bread, the camera cuts to a recognition shot of Michael who then orders "gabagool," yet another obvious reference to a type Neapolitan lunch meat called Capocollo, but pronounced "gabagool" through thick Italian-American accents in both the HBO series, the Sopranos, and also in the Godfather. Andrew further reinforces the message in his attempt to help the waitress understand what Michael is trying to order by repeating the phrase "gabagool" in successively heavier impressions of a thick Italian-American accent.

The other direct cultural message comes in the form of Kevin's assumption that Oscar Martinez, an openly gay man, would "love" jail, presumably because all gay men love gay sex so much that even an environment in which forced anal rape is a risk would be enjoyable to them. Kevin says, "I wouldn't last in jail; I'm not like you" after Oscar tells him that Kevin may have committed a serious crime in pretending to be Jim on the phone when Jim's credit card representative called to confirm the charges from Mexico. Kevin reiterates "You would love jail; you would love it" and then looks knowingly at the camera.

Engagement of the Audience

One of the reasons that the episode is engaging is that it also touches so effectively on the dichotomous relationship that many Americans (especially males) sometimes have when it comes to criminally thuggish behavior. Specifically, Michael (who routinely incorporates the characteristics he finds admirable in others into his own purposeful outward behavior) immediately begins emulating Grotti's tough attitude and assertive persona.

After Grotti repeatedly instructs a waitress that if any aspect of his order is not followed "I send it back," Michael begins using the same phrase in every possible context, first bossing around the same waitress and later, his employees once back at work. Much like many other American males, Michael is simultaneously fearful of and admiring of the mafia "wise guy" persona as it is portrayed in popular American culture.

The last cultural message used as a mechanism to engage the viewer is the obvious reference to the Godfather by Andrew who warns Michael that, "Not only that, but if they find out that snitched, you get a dead horse's chopped-off head in your bed." That line is engaging both in its recall of a horrific scene in the 1972 mob epic as well as in the confused inaccuracy of the context and meaning of the bloody message sent in the form of the horse head in the Godfather. Likewise, Dwight returns from "checking out the bathroom" in the restaurant and specifically assures Michael that he checked the back of the toilet, another obvious reference to a scene in the Godfather where Michael Corleone retrieves a pistol previously hidden for his use behind a toilet tank in the bathroom of a Bronx Italian restaurant and uses it to murder a mob rival and his police captain body guard.