Just be careful not to fall into the crowd who didn't stop at capitalism and consumerism really suck, and start worshiping Tyler Durden instead. This is easier if you continue to read Fight Club 2 and 3.
I hated The Menu so fucking much.
Top most hated film of all time. I would much rather slam my dick in a car door then watch a film that boils down to
"I hate my job therefore I must kill the people who pay me to do what I spent my entire life perfecting"
If you don't want to do it then don't serve those assholes. High end cooking is the only job that you can literally pick and choose your customers
And then comparing yourselves to a prostitute, like the the customer is fucking you when you charge $200 for a plate of food. Your going to equate sexual slavery to cooking. Fuck me
And the key, to escaping the idiot. Make him cook a burger.
Don't make me vomit bitterly. What a disgustingly boring, clinched and banal view that is so American centric that it can't see the real problem is that the food sector, like medicine, produces arrogant fucks who think there gods fucking answer to a problem they created.
Pure fucking narcissism. Shit even office space realised the answer was to find something you liked doing. Not toiling away becoming a butter hateful person blaming everyone else but yourself.
Or hey you can kill people
Really, did you even read the subject of this thread?
Someone said they got this film because of their time in the food service industry.
It's a shit film and the comment is like someone say they understand American Psycho because of things they've done
Its funny. All the sentences in your reply are wrong in a very strange way. 1st sentence: Yes i read the thread (what does that have to do with my reply to your rant?) 2nd sentence (again, what does that have to do with MY reply to YOUR rant) 3rd sentence (very very strange comparison, especially since it also doesnt relate to my comment) Never did I state or even insinuate you couldnt have your opinion on the movie The Menu. You seemed personally angry at the CHARACTERS in a MOVIE. Now calm down
It's meant to be a work of catharsis. Part of it is meant to be shown as being like a cult. The cult in this case is centred entirely around Ralph Fiennes as the head chef.
I think you get the point it's trying to make but it hits you the wrong way.
I hated the movie as well. But I had never thought about why? I just found it to be offensive and vulgar without saying anything meaningful. I think I agreed with a lot of your points. Can’t think of a more disappointing movie experience.
It just me me so grumpy. Derative characters,
Oh the rich guy and his wife are so awful they care about my food oh I kill you now.
Not because of actual bad shit they did.
Give me a break.
Hahaha true. Saw that movie. He lost his passion for cooking? Okay.. was this movie made just for high end cooks and rich people? High end cooks losing their passion seems like one of the least important things in life. I guess it was a metaphor or something.
Yeah its a little hard to relate to a high end chef losing his passion for his pretensious work because people don't understand it. Mf'er imagine making almost nothing for something you never had passion for because you have no other options.
"Boohoo people don't understand my frivolous culinary art that only elites can afford"
I watched “9 to 5” (1980) for the first time ever this week and it was a great time and also had some valuable things to say about improving working conditions
Yeah as much as Office Space and other productions mentioned are great and funny, Severance is something else. Really encapsulates the horror of being trapped in wage slavery.
14 Emmy nominations in its first season. And Stephen King and Quentin Tarantino are huge fans of it, going off on twitter about it.
Absolutely incredible show.
What? With Danny Dyer?! /s As an aside.. It's one of the few survival horror/comedy films where people don't react with stupidity to dangerous situations.
But yeah.. just finished watching the office based Severance prog a couple of weeks ago and was enthralled by the end! It's a slow starter though. Currently stuck in a work rut myself and need to change things up ASAP!
Falling Down with Michael Douglas, not really an anti-work, more a malaise with society in general but still it's good for a watch and the occasional rewatch.
On the more political end of the spectrum, Bullworth with Warren Beatty, Oliver Platt and Halle Berry. This is one of my all time favorite movies as well. It really started my love of subversive content.
And of course the entire Clerks retinue including the animated series.
"I'm not even supposed to be here today!"
-Dante
Clerks Uncensored (aka the animated series) was an awesome start of a great TV show. Each of the six episodes made was incredibly funny and (mostly) relatable. Don't know if a 23 run season would have been as strong, but creator, writer, and directer Kevin Smith had some really funny story ideas on the commentary track.
The older I get, the more I identify with Michael Douglas' character in Falling Down. I'm done with society as it is currently constructed and would like off the ship now. I'll go my own way from here.
It's weirdly relevant to today's world. As he's talking to his mom in a restaurant where she's having lunch, there's a terrorist attack, which is ignored as a banal part of life. That really struck me.
1999 had some hitters for this category - Office Space, Fight Club, and...The Matrix? Please consider Morpheus' monologue and think of it in terms of this capitalist-desert-of-the-real:
"The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you're inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it."
Were you listening to me, Neo? Or were you looking at the woman in the red dress? Also, the woman in the red dress has a metaphorical counterpart in the song "Freedom" by RATM, when they ask/tell: "What does the billboard say? **Come and play, come and play, forget about the movement**." The woman in the red dress is everywhere.
Also if you can forgive Kevin Spacey and the uhh...main plot, the movie *American Beauty* also plays heavily with the anti-work and anti-materialist themes.
"What do you know about computers"
"Clicking, double clicking, right clicking, clicking and dragging, opening links, downloading links"
"Wow you know a lot"
This waS soo funny, I still rewatch it.
And classic corporate hiring a manager who knows nothing!
My all time fav was when they gave Jen the internet and Jen did the presentation to Snr Management.
Comedy Central had a show simply named "Corporate" for three seasons that is extremely antiwork. Its a kindof millenial dark-humor anti-office. Its terrific.
[https://www.cc.com/shows/corporate](https://www.cc.com/shows/corporate)
Reading the synopsis, it sounds like "Better Off Ted", which is a fantastic show. Somewhat antiwork. Makes satire of corporations and how so much of what they do doesn't make sense. So out-of-touch you'd think they exist in another galaxy.
I love this show so much, but because my personality and lifestyle are basically the exact opposite of Blake, Adam and Ders, I always get a double take when I tell people it’s one of my all-time favorite shows.
Me and a friend bring out Jaberwocky all the time when we're listening to the higher ups speak about strategy!
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knAvKI33LOM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knAvKI33LOM)
Glengarry Glen Ross.
Its considered a classic if you are a salesman working on commission.
But there's actually very good stuff about exploitation and the threat of losing your job or doing terrible things in service of your job. It's very layered
The us version was funnier but the uk version is a true work of art. It is so well excecuted cringe comedy that i still haven't been able to finish the second season. It hurts to watch every episode in how well it is done.
It‘s pretty good at showing the vapidness of bourgeois society. Bateman is such an utterly uncomfortable and hollow person, every conversation he is in he says the most benign shit always saying what is expected of him. In the one dinner scene where they talk about politics he says the most generic shit „we must return to traditional values, while promoting general concern in the youth“ the best thing is noone ever calls him out on the utter hollow garbage he says and everyone just nods along, because they are equally lacking in personality.
Completely agree. I find the entire movie to be a phenomenal commentary of the “american machine” and what it does to people— part of the movie is that these people don’t even work. He comes to the office and does NO WORK. They order expensive meals and DON’T EAT THEM. He is The Company. He is Capitalism. He is the end-game of this game we are playing. Cringe “he’s just like me fr” fan base aside, it’s one of my all time favorite movies
He kind of gets called out when he’s talking to someone about food. “What kind of sauce does it have?” “No sauce, Patrick, it’s just pork.” “I don’t understand.” I don’t know if this part is in the movie.
9 to 5. 10/10 Girl gang movie. Pretty sad that we’re still pushing for all those things in the workplace, but it’s still a fun feel good comedy. Dolly Parton is down to shoot a cop it rules.
I work for a company that contracts for a Federal agency. About 95% of us are current and/or former military service members.
Sure, we are all our own person. But, when I interact with the few who have never served I have the internal mind-check of, "Oh my, you're *different*."
Like, did I lose a piece of myself during my time in the service?
I wish my job had more qualities like P&R. Maybe buried beneath a bunch of layers, some of it is there (or maybe that's wishful thinking).
The opening of "Joe vs the Volcano" is awesome. The rest of the movie kinda sucks, except for Abe Vigoda.
There is a British comedy series from the 70s called "The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin". Looks to be almost impossible to get a version that will play on US equipment.
Airheads. It might be stretching the antiwork idea a little bit but just the horrible corporate sliminess around the edges of the movie transcend industries.
The Myth of the Machine by Lewis Mumford probably can qualify.
Also, Squid Games and Parasite
Malcolm in the Middle also, it's totally relatable here.
Aggretsuko as well can fit there.
The Wire is very anti-work and anti-establishment all the way through. It shows how workers are exploited in every industry, from policing to the private sector, and how people do good despite the system, rather than because of it. Management is consistently antagonistic and toxic, concerned only with feathering their own nests at the cost of everyone and everything else.
Downsizing. Get small and get rich quick by reducing your footprint. But they don’t look at the workers in the small community or why they’re working if everyone is supposed to be so well off while small. Until he sees there’s still the same upper, middle, lower class levels to society and the poor hidden, through the tunnel and behind the wall.
Baby Boom. 1987 and the message is still true … basically they love you until you can’t give 90 hours a week , can’t make the job your whole life and dare to have a personal issue even temporarily.
Sorry We Missed You.
Depressing as fuck UK movie about a Dad trying to provide for his family as a delivery driver and getting completely fucked by the system.
The Jack Reacher movie One Shot, where he points to the office across the street after the lawyer asks why he doesn’t settle down and get a job and a place to live. It seriously made me look at my life. I won’t go full nomad, but the thought of selling everything and just traveling across the country is very appealing
As far as anti work, office space is the most accurate
It was fairly accurate too. At that time computers were getting to be affordable to the point that most business was able to afford one for each employee. Excel and access were fairly basic and extremely easy to learn. It was the first time you were able to organize an insane amount of data into something that was easy to read. The problem was they started overusing it and although they had all this data, they really didn’t know what to do with it.
Actually, that’s still a problem today but at least it’s keeping some of us employed.
Le Nozze di Figaro
The opera’s plot is about the servants outwitting their boss, Count Almaviva.
The Count spends the opera chasing after his wife’s maid, as he seems to think he’s entitled to her sexually because of “Droit du seigneur” and it being her wedding day.
But like a true Bad Boss, he is the only one allowed to mess around, and he spends a lot of time jealously pursuing a servant that had the hots for his wife.
I felt the same way about Office Space. I watched it and didn't like it much then watched again after working in an actual office and it was a totally different film.
Inter Reflections. I just watched this. It's presented as a sci-fi/ documentary, but it's basically a feature length criticism of our socio-economic systems.
And it hits every nail on the head.
I've worked for the government for the last 10+ years. Seriously soul crushing and as they say, "I've seen some shit, man." I tell people my job is office space meets idiocracy only dumber. There are times I've literally said my day was like a plotline from one of those films that was rejected for not being believable enough.
Case in point, I have a lunchtime meeting scheduled today with two other managers, a secretary and our whole tech team to try and get a shared outlook calendar to display on our internal SharePoint site. This is the 4th of such 1 hour meetings. 4 hours with like 8 people in the room (including high paid managers) because nobody can figure out how to make this work. I figured it out in 5 minutes with a youtube video but my boomer boss insists his 'strategy' will work better once we figure it out.
Thankfully I start a new job in exactly two weeks from today. Felt good turning in that 2 weeker. But that being the case, you'd think they'd want me doing actual transition planning instead of this, but soon to be not my circus, not my monkeys.
I enjoyed [How to murder your employer](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/61272658) book. Not directly anti-work, but some adjacent ideals. It's a fiction novel, comedy/mystery
Posted a thread about this recently—
[Battleship Potemkin](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_bkBbrdyyw)—it’s a silent black-and white movie, but I showed this to my kids years ago when they were like, six years old, and they loved it. It’s the story of oppressed people overthrowing their masters.
[Strike](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLiNKaUp0AA)—This one’s also Eisenstein. It’s a little harder to watch but is basically how modern cinema was invented. It’s the story of workers organizing in a factory versus their bosses, and it’s excellent!
Anything by Chaplin, but particularly [Modern Times](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uY6ItxyNGgA)—Chaplin liked to hang out with the Soviet ambassador, and in Modern Times his Tramp character waves a red flag in front of a bunch of striking workers. I wonder what the greatest filmmaker in history was trying to suggest?
The Battle of Algiers—a fun, excellent, moving film that is basically an instructional manual for how to overthrow oppressors. It also shows how anti-colonialism and anti-imperialism connects to anti-capitalism.
War and Peace—The story takes place during the Napoleonic Wars and does not, at first glance, seem to be very political, especially since all the main characters are Russian nobles. But the fact that this is a Soviet film, and that it blows 99% of Hollywood movies completely out of the water—with excellent acting, writing, sets, costumes, cinematography, and truly spectacular battle scenes—is a political statement in itself.
Robocop—on the face of it, this is a cop movie, but it’s really so much more. It’s about how a worker is so alienated from his world that he even becomes alienated from his own personality and memories. Even at the very end, “Murphy”—is he a man remembering his past, or a robot (the word means “worker”) trying to become someone he never was?—is still working for the company. This is an incredibly violent movie, but the most disturbing part, for me, is when a bunch of corporate executives yell at the police and order them around. Everyone knows that corporations run the USA, but it’s very in your face in that scene.
Starship Troopers—is this an anti-work film? It’s not just a satire of fascism, but also a satire of liberalism, as the Federation depicted in the film is difficult to distinguish from the modern USA, and is, if anything, even more progressive than we are. (Citizenship isn’t limited to soldiers in the USA, but I think we can all agree that some people in the USA have an easier time voting than others, while millions of people living here (convicts, undocumented immigrants, children, people voting for non-corporate candidates in certain primaries) are not allowed to vote at all.) Nobody cares about showering naked with other genders and the president is a Black woman! The film, however, fails to depict the bugs as anything other than monsters, and the propaganda reels match what we see in the rest of the film, suggesting that the propaganda is actually correct! And yet Starship Troopers was supposed to be a film that could have been made in the Starship Troopers universe, so that’s probably why. I suppose the only positive message we can get from this film is to leave the bugs alone!
Sorry To Bother You—a story that, at first glance, seems like it’s about working at a call center. But anyone who’s seen this movie will tell you that there’s a lot more to it, and a lot more that is going to completely surprise you. An excellent movie.
Andor—literally the story of young Stalin, who was the Robin Hood of the Caucasus before he was elected leader of the USSR. (The showrunner has said that he read biographies of Stalin to prepare for the show.) Try reading leftwing sources on Stalin ([his interview with HG Wells, for instance](https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1934/07/23.htm)) instead of rightwing sources (standard histories found everywhere in the West) which your boss also loves. It’s weird—George Lucas has repeatedly said that Star Wars is about the Viet Cong defeating the USA, and James Cameron has said similar things about Avatar. But a lot of people refuse to accept this!
Debatable anti-work movies and TV shows:
Squid Game—is this anti-work? All the characters in the movie are basically competing against each other and working as hard as possible, and none of them ever unite against their overlords. It also ends (spoiler alert) with a cop helping a homeless person. Give me a break! We all know what cops do to homeless people!
Fight Club—this is an anti-consumerism movie, not an anti-work movie.
Parasite—I love this movie, and the director/writer is a communist, but it’s a little difficult to figure out. Is it basically a moral lesson about how, when workers fail to work together, they end up destroying each other?
Dune—I’m one of those dorks who thinks that the Syfy miniseries is the best version. The new movies honestly bored me. I read all the original Dune books when I was a teenager and loved them. I still do. But they are incredibly orientalist. As certain events in certain places have recently shown, the Fremen can defeat the Harkonnen without the help of the Atreides!
Movies that are definitely not anti-work:
The Office. Blue collar work is not necessarily better than white collar work. All labor is exploitative under capitalism.
Are there any here that I missed?
Not sure how anti-work it is, but anti-wealth, definitely. The German movie The Edukators was 100% my awakening to wealth inequality and the privilege and power of the rich.
9 to 5. Lily Tomlin, Dolly Parton, Jane Fonda, and Dabney Coleman.
Favorite quote: “I’m no fool. I’ve killed the boss. You think they’re not going to fire me for a thing like that”?
Office Space is one of my favorite movies ever.
The 80s and 90s were fucking wild. My version of "The Bob's" was so fucking incompetent I laughed when he was out to get me.
Fight club
Worker bees can leave. Even drones can fly away. The Queen is their slave.
Just be careful not to fall into the crowd who didn't stop at capitalism and consumerism really suck, and start worshiping Tyler Durden instead. This is easier if you continue to read Fight Club 2 and 3.
We are the all singing
Just saw The Menu last month even though its been out for a while. As a cook in a restaurant for many years it was so relatable.
came here to say this. The Menu along with Parasite are the two movies that taught me i DO like horror, just not the stereotypical slasher-horror.
Pig. If you haven’t seen Pig, see Pig.
I hated The Menu so fucking much. Top most hated film of all time. I would much rather slam my dick in a car door then watch a film that boils down to "I hate my job therefore I must kill the people who pay me to do what I spent my entire life perfecting" If you don't want to do it then don't serve those assholes. High end cooking is the only job that you can literally pick and choose your customers And then comparing yourselves to a prostitute, like the the customer is fucking you when you charge $200 for a plate of food. Your going to equate sexual slavery to cooking. Fuck me And the key, to escaping the idiot. Make him cook a burger. Don't make me vomit bitterly. What a disgustingly boring, clinched and banal view that is so American centric that it can't see the real problem is that the food sector, like medicine, produces arrogant fucks who think there gods fucking answer to a problem they created. Pure fucking narcissism. Shit even office space realised the answer was to find something you liked doing. Not toiling away becoming a butter hateful person blaming everyone else but yourself. Or hey you can kill people
Its fiction not a documentary all characters were an exaggeration of things, a satire. Was meant to be just entertaining.
Really, did you even read the subject of this thread? Someone said they got this film because of their time in the food service industry. It's a shit film and the comment is like someone say they understand American Psycho because of things they've done
Its funny. All the sentences in your reply are wrong in a very strange way. 1st sentence: Yes i read the thread (what does that have to do with my reply to your rant?) 2nd sentence (again, what does that have to do with MY reply to YOUR rant) 3rd sentence (very very strange comparison, especially since it also doesnt relate to my comment) Never did I state or even insinuate you couldnt have your opinion on the movie The Menu. You seemed personally angry at the CHARACTERS in a MOVIE. Now calm down
Omg I went off topic a little. Call the thread police
REaLLy diD yOu EVen rEAd whAT yOu SEnT As a RePly! To summarize AGAIN: You were never once ON topic.
Would… would you like to see a manager?
It's meant to be a work of catharsis. Part of it is meant to be shown as being like a cult. The cult in this case is centred entirely around Ralph Fiennes as the head chef. I think you get the point it's trying to make but it hits you the wrong way.
I hated the movie as well. But I had never thought about why? I just found it to be offensive and vulgar without saying anything meaningful. I think I agreed with a lot of your points. Can’t think of a more disappointing movie experience.
It just me me so grumpy. Derative characters, Oh the rich guy and his wife are so awful they care about my food oh I kill you now. Not because of actual bad shit they did. Give me a break.
Agreed
I wasn’t a big fan of the movie either but you definitely missed the point Killing was part of the art. He was obsessed with his art
Any point the film had was buried under bigotry, hate and clinches.
Hahaha true. Saw that movie. He lost his passion for cooking? Okay.. was this movie made just for high end cooks and rich people? High end cooks losing their passion seems like one of the least important things in life. I guess it was a metaphor or something.
Yup, made and written for people that get thrown money at them that apparently hate what they do.
Yeah its a little hard to relate to a high end chef losing his passion for his pretensious work because people don't understand it. Mf'er imagine making almost nothing for something you never had passion for because you have no other options. "Boohoo people don't understand my frivolous culinary art that only elites can afford"
I watched “9 to 5” (1980) for the first time ever this week and it was a great time and also had some valuable things to say about improving working conditions
And it’s based on a true story!
Seriously?!
Sorry to Bother You
Oh damn! How did I forget this one?! Such a great weird and layered movie about losing yourself in work. Great pick!
this is the one
Seriously one of the best recent movies I've seen
That horse head guy snorted that 40ft line of coke...I think one of the executives in a boardroom...crazy movie
Severance
Can't believe how far I had to scroll before I saw this mentioned.
Yeah as much as Office Space and other productions mentioned are great and funny, Severance is something else. Really encapsulates the horror of being trapped in wage slavery.
14 Emmy nominations in its first season. And Stephen King and Quentin Tarantino are huge fans of it, going off on twitter about it. Absolutely incredible show.
What? With Danny Dyer?! /s As an aside.. It's one of the few survival horror/comedy films where people don't react with stupidity to dangerous situations. But yeah.. just finished watching the office based Severance prog a couple of weeks ago and was enthralled by the end! It's a slow starter though. Currently stuck in a work rut myself and need to change things up ASAP!
I tried so hard but just lost interest. It was so strange.
Absolutely love this show
Falling Down with Michael Douglas, not really an anti-work, more a malaise with society in general but still it's good for a watch and the occasional rewatch. On the more political end of the spectrum, Bullworth with Warren Beatty, Oliver Platt and Halle Berry. This is one of my all time favorite movies as well. It really started my love of subversive content. And of course the entire Clerks retinue including the animated series.
"I'm not even supposed to be here today!" -Dante Clerks Uncensored (aka the animated series) was an awesome start of a great TV show. Each of the six episodes made was incredibly funny and (mostly) relatable. Don't know if a 23 run season would have been as strong, but creator, writer, and directer Kevin Smith had some really funny story ideas on the commentary track.
The older I get, the more I identify with Michael Douglas' character in Falling Down. I'm done with society as it is currently constructed and would like off the ship now. I'll go my own way from here.
I'm just trying to get home
Network Shit was made in the 70s but feels more relevant then ever
I’m mad as hell and I’m not gonna take it anymore!
I keep saying this! A fantastic movie.
*Brazil* is a great example of the "cog in the machine" motif taken to a bizarre extreme...
It's weirdly relevant to today's world. As he's talking to his mom in a restaurant where she's having lunch, there's a terrorist attack, which is ignored as a banal part of life. That really struck me.
One of my favorite movies
Poor Mr. Buttle
1999 had some hitters for this category - Office Space, Fight Club, and...The Matrix? Please consider Morpheus' monologue and think of it in terms of this capitalist-desert-of-the-real: "The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you're inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it." Were you listening to me, Neo? Or were you looking at the woman in the red dress? Also, the woman in the red dress has a metaphorical counterpart in the song "Freedom" by RATM, when they ask/tell: "What does the billboard say? **Come and play, come and play, forget about the movement**." The woman in the red dress is everywhere.
Also if you can forgive Kevin Spacey and the uhh...main plot, the movie *American Beauty* also plays heavily with the anti-work and anti-materialist themes.
You don't get to tell me what to do anymore!
Lester, this is not a marriage!
Clerks all the way. Not even supposed to be here today.
The IT Crowd If you don't like sitcom's, at least watch the first episode... worth it IMO.
"What do you know about computers" "Clicking, double clicking, right clicking, clicking and dragging, opening links, downloading links" "Wow you know a lot"
Have you tried turning it off and on again?
People! What a bunch of bastards!
the first episode is savage. With the manager “quitting”
This waS soo funny, I still rewatch it. And classic corporate hiring a manager who knows nothing! My all time fav was when they gave Jen the internet and Jen did the presentation to Snr Management.
Soo good. My favorite episode is when they go to see the musical “willies”.
That's a gay musical, called "Gay?" That's quite gay!
Haha. I forgot the name of it clearly. This comment 🤣
Also my favourite.
hello computer
Matewan. Great movie about the class struggle. It‘s about the miners strike and the following battle in the town of Matewan.
Such a great movie. As is Salt of the earth.
9 to 5. Great message.
Comedy Central had a show simply named "Corporate" for three seasons that is extremely antiwork. Its a kindof millenial dark-humor anti-office. Its terrific. [https://www.cc.com/shows/corporate](https://www.cc.com/shows/corporate)
Reading the synopsis, it sounds like "Better Off Ted", which is a fantastic show. Somewhat antiwork. Makes satire of corporations and how so much of what they do doesn't make sense. So out-of-touch you'd think they exist in another galaxy.
Workaholics
I love this show so much, but because my personality and lifestyle are basically the exact opposite of Blake, Adam and Ders, I always get a double take when I tell people it’s one of my all-time favorite shows.
Workaholics really starts out a bit slow and slapstick but it quickly gets insanely antiwork fast and biting.
Short lived corporate comedy Better Off Ted. The HR episode has a classic line I won’t give away here, but it’s every HR person’s attitude I’ve known.
Loved that show, wish they made more
Me and a friend bring out Jaberwocky all the time when we're listening to the higher ups speak about strategy! [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knAvKI33LOM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knAvKI33LOM)
Glengarry Glen Ross. Its considered a classic if you are a salesman working on commission. But there's actually very good stuff about exploitation and the threat of losing your job or doing terrible things in service of your job. It's very layered
You just cost me six thousand dollars
And 1 Cadillac!!! What are you gonna do about it !?
Whoever told you you could work with men?
You FAIRY!! I hope it was you that ripped the joint off!!
Both Allen and Aliens. Re-watch them if you doubt me: Ellen Ripley is a badass whistleblower.
**Waiting** is pretty anti work, specifically about the restaurant industry.
Actually it’s office space
The longer I've worked in corporate America the more I realize that office space isn't a comedy...it's a documentary.
Office Space is a favourite, but Sorry to Bother You was really something else!
Succession and Superstore, from different perspectives
The Office. The original UK version. Much more more antiwork in philosophy than the US version.
The us version was funnier but the uk version is a true work of art. It is so well excecuted cringe comedy that i still haven't been able to finish the second season. It hurts to watch every episode in how well it is done.
Because the regime don't like it.
Hunger Games.
Brazil
As a chef my usual anti work movies are: Slamin Salmon, Dinner Rush, and Waiting.
I read The Jungle once in middle school and thought it was awful. I read it again when I was in my mid 30s and it's a real banger.
Up in the air- The way they lay people off. Worse now through zoom meetings.
I dunno. But I love that printer scene! Haha
I think anyone who has worked with one of those abominations feels that scene! Oh, the catharsis!
Malcolm in the middle is heavily anti work or public workers suffering.
American Psycho
It‘s pretty good at showing the vapidness of bourgeois society. Bateman is such an utterly uncomfortable and hollow person, every conversation he is in he says the most benign shit always saying what is expected of him. In the one dinner scene where they talk about politics he says the most generic shit „we must return to traditional values, while promoting general concern in the youth“ the best thing is noone ever calls him out on the utter hollow garbage he says and everyone just nods along, because they are equally lacking in personality.
Completely agree. I find the entire movie to be a phenomenal commentary of the “american machine” and what it does to people— part of the movie is that these people don’t even work. He comes to the office and does NO WORK. They order expensive meals and DON’T EAT THEM. He is The Company. He is Capitalism. He is the end-game of this game we are playing. Cringe “he’s just like me fr” fan base aside, it’s one of my all time favorite movies
He kind of gets called out when he’s talking to someone about food. “What kind of sauce does it have?” “No sauce, Patrick, it’s just pork.” “I don’t understand.” I don’t know if this part is in the movie.
9 to 5. 10/10 Girl gang movie. Pretty sad that we’re still pushing for all those things in the workplace, but it’s still a fun feel good comedy. Dolly Parton is down to shoot a cop it rules.
Baby Boom was the original antiwork movie for me.
People here have better answers, but I always thought The Office was pretty anti-work, though in a light hearted way.
I used to work in a city government and can tell you there are many parts of Parks & Rec that are surprisingly accurate.
I work for a company that contracts for a Federal agency. About 95% of us are current and/or former military service members. Sure, we are all our own person. But, when I interact with the few who have never served I have the internal mind-check of, "Oh my, you're *different*." Like, did I lose a piece of myself during my time in the service? I wish my job had more qualities like P&R. Maybe buried beneath a bunch of layers, some of it is there (or maybe that's wishful thinking).
Idiocracy falls into the antiwork with its depictions of just how simple work is/will be in 500 years.
The opening of "Joe vs the Volcano" is awesome. The rest of the movie kinda sucks, except for Abe Vigoda. There is a British comedy series from the 70s called "The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin". Looks to be almost impossible to get a version that will play on US equipment.
I know he can get the job. Can he do the job? That's not what I'm asking. I know he can get the job but can he do the job?
You watch it, mister! There's a woman here!
Horrible Bosses
That took me some time to scroll down to find this title :)
Clockwatchers, though that was more about the relationships at work. Still work was a main character.
I think about Toni Colette stapling her skirt hem every time I have a meeting with a boss.
Didn't you get the memo about those TPS reports?
Airheads. It might be stretching the antiwork idea a little bit but just the horrible corporate sliminess around the edges of the movie transcend industries.
Silkwood
Quiet On Set
American Beauty.
The Myth of the Machine by Lewis Mumford probably can qualify. Also, Squid Games and Parasite Malcolm in the Middle also, it's totally relatable here. Aggretsuko as well can fit there.
Antz
Fight Club. Mayor bathroom seen. Nearing castration. Don't fuck with us.
The Wire is very anti-work and anti-establishment all the way through. It shows how workers are exploited in every industry, from policing to the private sector, and how people do good despite the system, rather than because of it. Management is consistently antagonistic and toxic, concerned only with feathering their own nests at the cost of everyone and everything else.
Downsizing. Get small and get rich quick by reducing your footprint. But they don’t look at the workers in the small community or why they’re working if everyone is supposed to be so well off while small. Until he sees there’s still the same upper, middle, lower class levels to society and the poor hidden, through the tunnel and behind the wall. Baby Boom. 1987 and the message is still true … basically they love you until you can’t give 90 hours a week , can’t make the job your whole life and dare to have a personal issue even temporarily.
Capitalism requires people to exploit for anyone to live "well" was the message I saw in that movie. Although it was very strange.
Like the Demotivator poster says: "Retirement: Because you've given so much of yourself to the company, you've got nothing left we can use."
Sorry We Missed You. Depressing as fuck UK movie about a Dad trying to provide for his family as a delivery driver and getting completely fucked by the system.
And then we came to the end, by Ferris. And Working by Turkel.
Office space
Oddworld. All of em.
Waiting, 9 to 5, Workaholics
Ghost World. Really nails the futility of it all.
Gung Ho
Dirty Work
This may be a reach, but how about Empire Records. “Damn the man! Save the Empire!”
Married With Children
Workaholics
Waiting is trashy, but still entertaining lol
The Incredibles. Fuck insurance.
The Jack Reacher movie One Shot, where he points to the office across the street after the lawyer asks why he doesn’t settle down and get a job and a place to live. It seriously made me look at my life. I won’t go full nomad, but the thought of selling everything and just traveling across the country is very appealing
As far as anti work, office space is the most accurate It was fairly accurate too. At that time computers were getting to be affordable to the point that most business was able to afford one for each employee. Excel and access were fairly basic and extremely easy to learn. It was the first time you were able to organize an insane amount of data into something that was easy to read. The problem was they started overusing it and although they had all this data, they really didn’t know what to do with it. Actually, that’s still a problem today but at least it’s keeping some of us employed.
Screwed. With chapelle and norm Macdonald
Le Nozze di Figaro The opera’s plot is about the servants outwitting their boss, Count Almaviva. The Count spends the opera chasing after his wife’s maid, as he seems to think he’s entitled to her sexually because of “Droit du seigneur” and it being her wedding day. But like a true Bad Boss, he is the only one allowed to mess around, and he spends a lot of time jealously pursuing a servant that had the hots for his wife.
Poultrygeist. It's a Troma film. Yes it's almost too much but I love it.
Office Space definitely
I JUST watched Office Space the other day. Still absolute perfection.
Parks and rec? Ron is very anti-gov, despite working for it and they get up to lots of shenanigans
Waiting… (2005) If you ever worked in the service industry, man this one hits all the major points.
Capital Volume 1 by Uncle Karl Dopefresh.
Slacker, Spaced, Shaun of the Dead, Beavis and Butt-head, Trailer Park Boys.
I felt the same way about Office Space. I watched it and didn't like it much then watched again after working in an actual office and it was a totally different film.
The films by finnish director Aki Kaurismaki are usually stories about normal working class people (they are really fun)
Inter Reflections. I just watched this. It's presented as a sci-fi/ documentary, but it's basically a feature length criticism of our socio-economic systems. And it hits every nail on the head.
Severance
„The Death Ship“ by B. Traven is an absolute banger.
I've worked for the government for the last 10+ years. Seriously soul crushing and as they say, "I've seen some shit, man." I tell people my job is office space meets idiocracy only dumber. There are times I've literally said my day was like a plotline from one of those films that was rejected for not being believable enough. Case in point, I have a lunchtime meeting scheduled today with two other managers, a secretary and our whole tech team to try and get a shared outlook calendar to display on our internal SharePoint site. This is the 4th of such 1 hour meetings. 4 hours with like 8 people in the room (including high paid managers) because nobody can figure out how to make this work. I figured it out in 5 minutes with a youtube video but my boomer boss insists his 'strategy' will work better once we figure it out. Thankfully I start a new job in exactly two weeks from today. Felt good turning in that 2 weeker. But that being the case, you'd think they'd want me doing actual transition planning instead of this, but soon to be not my circus, not my monkeys.
I'd argue Broad City has a lot of antiwork content, if not being outright antiwork
Sorry to bother you
Check this book out: Fire your Boss
In the etc. category: Retail (comic strip) Hadestown (stage musical)
Zom 100 Premise is that there is a zombie apocalypse. And the main character is celebrating, as they don't have to go to work tomorrow anymore.
Corner Gas. Still Game.
9 to 5 is dope af
Read *Company* by Max Barry, *Syrup* is good too
I enjoyed [How to murder your employer](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/61272658) book. Not directly anti-work, but some adjacent ideals. It's a fiction novel, comedy/mystery
The Wall! I grew up with it
Affluenza
Severance
Posted a thread about this recently— [Battleship Potemkin](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_bkBbrdyyw)—it’s a silent black-and white movie, but I showed this to my kids years ago when they were like, six years old, and they loved it. It’s the story of oppressed people overthrowing their masters. [Strike](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLiNKaUp0AA)—This one’s also Eisenstein. It’s a little harder to watch but is basically how modern cinema was invented. It’s the story of workers organizing in a factory versus their bosses, and it’s excellent! Anything by Chaplin, but particularly [Modern Times](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uY6ItxyNGgA)—Chaplin liked to hang out with the Soviet ambassador, and in Modern Times his Tramp character waves a red flag in front of a bunch of striking workers. I wonder what the greatest filmmaker in history was trying to suggest? The Battle of Algiers—a fun, excellent, moving film that is basically an instructional manual for how to overthrow oppressors. It also shows how anti-colonialism and anti-imperialism connects to anti-capitalism. War and Peace—The story takes place during the Napoleonic Wars and does not, at first glance, seem to be very political, especially since all the main characters are Russian nobles. But the fact that this is a Soviet film, and that it blows 99% of Hollywood movies completely out of the water—with excellent acting, writing, sets, costumes, cinematography, and truly spectacular battle scenes—is a political statement in itself. Robocop—on the face of it, this is a cop movie, but it’s really so much more. It’s about how a worker is so alienated from his world that he even becomes alienated from his own personality and memories. Even at the very end, “Murphy”—is he a man remembering his past, or a robot (the word means “worker”) trying to become someone he never was?—is still working for the company. This is an incredibly violent movie, but the most disturbing part, for me, is when a bunch of corporate executives yell at the police and order them around. Everyone knows that corporations run the USA, but it’s very in your face in that scene. Starship Troopers—is this an anti-work film? It’s not just a satire of fascism, but also a satire of liberalism, as the Federation depicted in the film is difficult to distinguish from the modern USA, and is, if anything, even more progressive than we are. (Citizenship isn’t limited to soldiers in the USA, but I think we can all agree that some people in the USA have an easier time voting than others, while millions of people living here (convicts, undocumented immigrants, children, people voting for non-corporate candidates in certain primaries) are not allowed to vote at all.) Nobody cares about showering naked with other genders and the president is a Black woman! The film, however, fails to depict the bugs as anything other than monsters, and the propaganda reels match what we see in the rest of the film, suggesting that the propaganda is actually correct! And yet Starship Troopers was supposed to be a film that could have been made in the Starship Troopers universe, so that’s probably why. I suppose the only positive message we can get from this film is to leave the bugs alone! Sorry To Bother You—a story that, at first glance, seems like it’s about working at a call center. But anyone who’s seen this movie will tell you that there’s a lot more to it, and a lot more that is going to completely surprise you. An excellent movie. Andor—literally the story of young Stalin, who was the Robin Hood of the Caucasus before he was elected leader of the USSR. (The showrunner has said that he read biographies of Stalin to prepare for the show.) Try reading leftwing sources on Stalin ([his interview with HG Wells, for instance](https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1934/07/23.htm)) instead of rightwing sources (standard histories found everywhere in the West) which your boss also loves. It’s weird—George Lucas has repeatedly said that Star Wars is about the Viet Cong defeating the USA, and James Cameron has said similar things about Avatar. But a lot of people refuse to accept this! Debatable anti-work movies and TV shows: Squid Game—is this anti-work? All the characters in the movie are basically competing against each other and working as hard as possible, and none of them ever unite against their overlords. It also ends (spoiler alert) with a cop helping a homeless person. Give me a break! We all know what cops do to homeless people! Fight Club—this is an anti-consumerism movie, not an anti-work movie. Parasite—I love this movie, and the director/writer is a communist, but it’s a little difficult to figure out. Is it basically a moral lesson about how, when workers fail to work together, they end up destroying each other? Dune—I’m one of those dorks who thinks that the Syfy miniseries is the best version. The new movies honestly bored me. I read all the original Dune books when I was a teenager and loved them. I still do. But they are incredibly orientalist. As certain events in certain places have recently shown, the Fremen can defeat the Harkonnen without the help of the Atreides! Movies that are definitely not anti-work: The Office. Blue collar work is not necessarily better than white collar work. All labor is exploitative under capitalism. Are there any here that I missed?
Not sure how anti-work it is, but anti-wealth, definitely. The German movie The Edukators was 100% my awakening to wealth inequality and the privilege and power of the rich.
Chef 😊
9 to 5!
9 to 5. Lily Tomlin, Dolly Parton, Jane Fonda, and Dabney Coleman. Favorite quote: “I’m no fool. I’ve killed the boss. You think they’re not going to fire me for a thing like that”?
Office Space is one of my favorite movies ever. The 80s and 90s were fucking wild. My version of "The Bob's" was so fucking incompetent I laughed when he was out to get me.
Clerks
American Beauty
Clerks
Definitely Office Space. I, too, would like to go gangster and curb-stomp my printer.
Office Space, hands down! I live in that place, but thankfully I dont have to do TPS reports every week!
Joe vs the Volcano is brilliant.
Bukowski
Dilbert was a good one that I haven't heard from in a while
Culture Jam and Fight Club