Ricky Gervais in "The Office"
The CODE-X series catalogs a vast codex of source codes (aka “signs”) extracted from past audits.
The object of study in semiotics is not the signs but rather a general theory of signification; the goal of each “audit” is to build a model demonstrating how meaning is produced and received within a category or cultural territory. Signs on their own, therefore, only become truly revelatory and useful once we’ve sorted them into thematic complexes, and the complexes into codes, and the codes into a meaning map. We call this process “thick description”; the Code-X series is thin description.
“POINTED ABSURDISM” NORM: Britishness in the US associated with absurdism. British humor is seen as a kind of rage against the machine, with the machine understood as the dominant discourse itself — the supposedly rational, commonsensical consensus that in fact conceals all sorts of injustice and hypocrisy. Silliness as social commentary.
“POINTED ABSURDISM” FORMS: Ricky Gervais, Monty Python, Sacha Baron Cohen, Peter Sellers.