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Title: The Trouble With Dilbert: How Corporate Culture Gets the Last Laugh by Norman Solomon, Matt Wuerker, Tom Tomorrow ISBN: 1-56751-133-3 Publisher: Common Courage Press Pub. Date: September, 1997 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 2.11 (27 reviews)
Rating: 2
Summary: Solomon's Sacred Cow is Dilbert's Hamburger Dinner
Comment: I love reading scathing criticism of humor by well-meaning but, unfortunately, completely humorless critics. Solomon and Tomorrow show they lack the required funny-bones needed to both understand and appreciate Dilbert. Far from being a double agent of the corporate elite by using the new opiate of the masses-humor-to quiet the grumbling proletariat, Scott Adams uses "Dilbert" to poke fun at us all. If Solomon and Tomorrow would simply go back to Scott's seminal work, "The Dilbert Principle," they would see that Adams' basic premise is that we are ALL idiots sometimes, whether we be managers or peons. Their "shocking" claim that Scott actually favors downsizing comes as no surprise to real fans, either. In "The Dilbert Principle" Adams clearly states that the first round of downsizing probably was a good thing. But too much of a "good thing" can be fatal; and Scott says as much in the same chapter of his book. Furthermore, despite our critics' claims, Adams DOES offer his own solution to the problems of the modern corporate situation: the OA5, or Out At Five, Principle. This principle isn't a groundbreaking insight into how companies could be run; it's just common sense from a man who has actually spent years inside a cubicle working for a large, bungling, and yet somehow successful corporation. What the OA5 principle really says to managers is to simplify things, let your people do what they do best, and don't get in the way.
Solomon and Tomorrow expect too much of "Dilbert" as a vehicle for corporate criticism and proletarian exhortation. That's not what it's about; thus, their critique is really misplaced. There are examples in the strip of dedicated workers (Alice, e.g.) and good managers (although it WAS just an alien in disguise). But "Dilbert" is about the silly and frustrating things that go on in almost all corporations. It's a way for us to relate, not a manifesto for revolutionary change. Nobody is being fooled here by the purpose of "Dilbert," except perhaps for the authors of this book. And as for the co-optation of "Dilbert" by the very corporate America it makes fun of...come on, fellas! This is standard practice. When John Lennon songs are used to sell Nike shoes, Jimi Hendrix is used to sell Camaro's, and Gen X slackers are used to push all kinds of syrupy sodas, it's fairly obvious that corporate America is pretty immune to criticism and only welcomes the opportunity to reach those who vow never to become a part of the heartless machinery of the modern corporation. Solomon and Tomorrow not only miss the point of "Dilbert" entirely in this book, they don't even understand the corporate monster they say "Dilbert" is serving. Critiques of corporate America have their place in our society because there are a lot of things wrong with in the modern workplace. However, isn't attacking a comic strip as a way to sell your rhetoric to the general public a bit dubious and, might I add, "Dilbert"-esque? Solomon and Tomorrow had better be careful or they might find themselves bungling around inside the borders of Scott Adams' strip.
Rating: 1
Summary: Solomon misses by multiple miles
Comment: Several years ago there was a British lecturer who, in order to win a competition for the most boring lecturer of the year, wrote -and delivered- a Marxist analysis of a fairly ordinary joke about a coconut. The lecture went on for several highly tedious hours.
Mr Solomon's "attack" on Dilbert and Scott Adams reminds me of that lecture.
Mr Solomon makes an error common to many so-called media critics. They over-value their own importance and fail to identify terrible faults in themselves. Whilst, mysteriously, being able to see minor (or imaginary) faults in others.
Mr Solomon further attacks Scott Adams for making money from his intellectual properties. Mr Solomon's attack on Mr Adams would, therefore, only be valid if he criticises from the position of a man who writes entirely for free.
Unless Mr Solomon does work for financial reward?
In that case it would be very easy to dismiss Mr Solomon as a self-serving hypocrit and to ignore anything else he has to say on any subject.
For people night suspect that "once a self-serving hypocrit..." But that would be an unfair attack on Mr Solomon,would it not? Almost in the same way that Mr Solomon made an unfair attack on Mr Adams.
Rating: 1
Summary: I don't read Dilbert anymore - but Solomon isn't the reason
Comment: About three years ago, I bought a Dilbert-a-day desk calendar. Every day I ripped aside the previous day to reveal today's comic. It was great up until around August or so, when I realized that Dilbert was still stuck in his cubicle, and so was I, and I couldn't stand the thought of having my nose rubbed in it every day for the next four months.
I threw the calendar away.
In "The Trouble with Dilbert," Solomon professes to have "cracked the code" of Dilbert comics, revealing that Dilbert is actually intended to keep workers complacent. This hurt Scott Adams' feelings, as Norman was accusing him of acting in the best interests of everything he stood against. Who's right? Both of them.
If one considers the entire body of Dilbert comics as one very large text, then it may seem significant that the protagonist (Dilbert) does not evolve as a character. By all rights, a protagonist should be affected by their experiences, and if they steadfastly remain constant, then one must assume there's a good reason for it. The most facile conclusion one might reach is that the character hasn't changed because the character likes things just the way they are.
One might then take the extra step, add a dollop of good old-fashioned paranoia, and assume that Scott Adams intends Dilbert to serve as an example. To subliminally assert that "Things are just fine" would indeed, make Scott Adams a tool. Quite a loathsome tool, to boot, because he's clever enough to disguise this message in what seems (to the uncritical eye) to be a scathing daily condemnation of corporate politics and practices.
But here's where things fall apart: Dilbert does not evolve because he is a character IN A COMIC STRIP. I don't say this to mean "it's too trivial to analyze" - that's simply not true. I say this because a standard convention of the art form known as the comic strip is that its characters do not evolve.
If comics were expected to behave like proper literary texts, then Garfield would have been put to sleep years ago, after suffering from incontinence, arthritis, deafness, cataracts, and kidney disease (not necessarily in that order). Jeffy would be a card-carrying member of the AARP, and Andy Capp would be either incarcerated for spousal abuse or knifed to death in his sleep, take your pick.
Dilbert caught on quick and big because it says funny things about familiar situations. Cubicle-dwellers (like myself) were hooked on Dilbert after that first shock of recognition; the "Oh my god, that's EXACTLY what it's like here!"
Recognition provides comfort, and Dilbert reassures most people that they're not the only ones made miserable by corporate life. In short, Dilbert feels your pain.
Scott Adams feels your pain, too. He's put in his cubicle hours, and honed his insight and humor to a keen edge through years of personal experience. Scott Adams knows just what it's like, and he wants you to feel better. His job is to coax a laugh out of millions of people every day (and he gets paid rather well for it, to boot).
I've almost entirely switched from Dilbert comics to Scott Adams books. Adams has written several books - BOOK books, not just collections of comic strips - which serve as roadmaps to cubicle life, complete with helpful tour suggestions. I have gradually molded my work life into a perfect expression of Adams Fu (translates as "The Way of Adams"), gleaned primarily from "The Joy of Work," which is one of my favorites.
In his books, Adams essentially advocates screwing the company any way you can. A full third of "The Joy of Work" is devoted to various strategies you can use to buy yourself free time at the office. I can whole-heartedly attest to the efficacy of these strategies, as I use several of them in conjunction to buy myself roughly four hours of free time every day. At Adams' suggestion, I have studiously put this time to good use; for example, I'm currently using my free time to write this very essay.
If one considers Dilbert in the full context of Scott Adams, then no, Dilbert is not a tool of the corporate elite. And yet I don't read Dilbert anymore. I just can't; even the occasionally half-glimpsed Dilbert comic makes me want to curl up on the bathroom floor and cry.
If I could take over Scott Adams' brain (and drawing hand), I would create a story arc wherein Dilbert escapes corporate life once and for all. He strikes out on his own and carves a new niche for himself. Several years pass, and one day he returns to his old office to taunt Pointy-Haired Boss. Maybe Dilbert (no longer shackled by notions of corporate propriety or threats of political retaliation) drops his pants and moons the PHB in front of the entire staff. Maybe he sets fire to the building (a la Stephen Root in "Office Space"). I haven't exactly worked that part out yet.
I suspect that part of the reason Scott Adams was blindsided by the Solomon's accusation is that the scenario I just spun out is, essentially, the story of Scott Adams' real life. Adams started drawing from his cubicle, and ten years later - presto! - he's king of his own empire. Safely insulated within the happy life he's built for himself, Adams can well afford to look back at cubicle life and laugh.
Me, not so much.
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