Dilbert
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Wikipedia-Article "Dilbert"
Dilbert is a popular American comic strip. Written and drawn by Scott Adams, the comic is known for its heavily satirical humor about a micromanaged office, featuring the engineer Dilbert as the title character. The strip has run in newspapers since April 16, 1989, spawning several books, an animated television series, a computer game, and hundreds of Dilbert-themed merchandise items.
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Themes
The comic strip originally revolved around the engineer Dilbert and his "pet" dog Dogbert, with most action taking place in their home. Many plots revolved around Dilbert's engineer nature or his bizarre inventions. These alternated with plots based on Dogbert's megalomaniacal ambitions. Later on, the location of most of the action moved to Dilbert's workplace at a large technology company, and the strip started to satirize IT workplace and company issues. The comic strip's popular success is attributable to its workplace setting and themes, which are familiar to a large and appreciative audience.
Dilbert portrays corporate culture as a Kafkaesque world of bureaucracy for its own sake and office politics that stand in the way of productivity, where employees' skills and efforts are not rewarded, and busy work praised. Much of the humor emerges as the audience sees the characters making obviously ridiculous decisions that are natural reactions to mismanagement.
Themes explored include:
- Engineers' personal traits
- Lack of style
- Hopelessness in dating
- Attraction to tools and technological products
- Esoteric knowledge
- Incompetent and sadistic management
- Scheduling without reference to reality
- Failure to reward success or penalize laziness
- Penalising employees for failures caused by bad management
- Micromanagement
- Failure to improve others' morale, lowering it a lot
- Failure to communicate objectives
- Handling of projects doomed to failure or cancellation
- Sadistic HR policies with flimsy (or purely evil) rationale
- Corporate bureaucracy
- Stupidity of the general public
- Susceptibility to advertising
- Susceptibility to peer pressure
- Gullibility in the face of obvious scams
- Third world countries and outsourcing ("Elbonia")
- Dilapidation
- Bizarre cultural habits
- Lack of understanding of capitalism
Characters
The main characters in Dilbert include:
- Dilbert
- The main character in the strip, a stereotypical electrical engineer. He understands engineering well and has good ideas, but has a poor social life.
- Dogbert
- Dilbert's pet dog. He is a megalomaniac intellectual, planning to one day conquer the world and enslave all humans. Once succeeded, but got bored and quit. Often seen in high ranking consultant jobs, he constantly abuses his power and fools the management of Dilbert's company.
- Ratbert
- A rat formerly used as a laboratory test animal. He usually gets all the lowest and most menial jobs, i.e. temp.
- Catbert
- The company's evil feline Human Resources director. He derives sadistic pleasure from seeing employees worry about their jobs.
- Pointy-Haired Boss
- The manager of Dilbert and the other engineers. He is hopelessly incompetent at management but always tries to disguise this, usually by talking in buzzwords he does not understand.
- Wally
- One of the oldest engineers. He hates work and avoids it whenever he can. He is often seen carrying a cup of coffee.
- Alice
- The company's most competent female engineer. She is often frustrated at her work not getting proper recognition. She also has a short temper and is frequently at odds with Wally.
- Asok
- An Indian intern. He works very hard but does not always get proper recognition.
- Phil, the Prince of Insufficient Light
- A minor demon who punishes people for small crimes by "darning them to heck" with his "pitchspoon", a parody of Satan Damning people to Hell with his pitchfork.
- Elbonians
- People from a fictional Fourth World nation, used as a parody of outsourcing. Their culture is radically different from western culture, and their patriarchy often annoys Alice.
- See also: List of minor characters in Dilbert
Dilbert in popular culture
The popularity of the comic strip within the corporate sector has led to the character of Dilbert being used in many business magazines and publications (he has made several appearances on the cover of Fortune).
The Toronto Star, Montreal's La Presse, the Indianapolis Star, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Brisbane Courier Mail and San Francisco Chronicle, among other publications, run the comic in the business section, separate from other comics, which together have their own section. This is done in much the same manner that Doonesbury is now often carried only in the editorial section due to its pointed commentary.
It is the basis of a popular (though unproven) theory suggesting that the morale at a given workplace is the inverse of the number of Dilbert comic strips taped and posted at various desks and cubicles. A larger number of Dilbert comic strips reflects general frustration with the bureaucratic administration at the company, whereas a generally satisfied workforce sees less identification with the character of Dilbert, and consequently fewer Dilbert comic strips are displayed as mementoes. An office with no Dilbert strips, however, does not necessarily have high morale; rather, it may indicate that a truly authoritarian administration has prohibited employees from displaying them.
Criticism
The adoption of Dilbert as an icon for corporate America has led to Scott Adams being criticized, in some circles, for allowing his creation to be adopted and embraced by the very same corporate world his strip satirizes.
Dilbert's irony admits few serious alternatives to the corporate lifestyle, as if Adams anticipated criticism but planned through irony to disarm the critics. Norman Solomon believes the strip is insufficiently critical of CEOs and disrespectful of ordinary working people (The Trouble with Dilbert: How Corporate Culture Gets the Last Laugh, Common Courage Press, 1997). The idea that white collar people might be in need of more respect contrasts with a common belief that white collar career is a free choice, but downsizing and some of the pressures on Dilbert have been predicted in the 1970s by Harry Braverman (Labor and Monopoly Capital, Monthly Review Press, 1998 being the most recent reissue). Dealing with those pressures would require Dilbert to be more blue-collar in terms of strife over his work process, but in Dilbert the boss can be lampooned but has to be obeyed.
David Noble (Forces of Production, Oxford 1986) narrated the 1950's cyberstruggle over control of the programming of then-new computerized machine tools with a clear beginning (management introduces tools programmed by back-office Dilberts ignorant of shop floor requirements), middle (union men stand and watch the improperly programmed tools create "scrap at high speed") and end (management agrees that the union guys should do the programming). Solomon seems humor-challenged in his own book, but the irony in Dilbert, he feels, is a good way of avoiding serious confrontation over the best allocation of workplace control.
Peter Drucker and C. Wright Mills both pointed out the paradox on which the strip is based but does not address: Dilbert, Wally, Alice and the rest of the gang are at one and the same time supposed to compete with each other, and produce a collective product. The strip satirizes the victims of this double bind. Solomon's concern is that it reconciles people to their fate, and doesn't show them a way out.
The flaw in some of these criticisms might be the possible assumption on the part of their authors that people would use Dilbert as a role model, as opposed to merely finding it a one or two minute "funny" on a daily basis.
Language
Terms invented by Adams in relation to the strip, and sometimes used by fans in describing their own office environments, include "Induhvidual". This term is based on an American English expression "duh!". The conscious misspelling of individual as induhvidual is a pejorative term for people who are not in the DNRC (Dogbert's New Ruling Class). Its coining is explained in Dilbert Newsletter #6.
The strip has also popularized the usage of the terms "cow-orker" and PHB. The word "frooglepoopillion" is now occasionally used to describe an extremely large number, after a strip which revealed that the company for which Dilbert worked owed so much money that no name existed to describe the number, so the marketing department was promptly set to work on it, coining "frooglepoopillion".
Some fans have used "Dilbertian" to analogize situations in real life to those in the comic strip.
Management
In 1997 Scott Adams masqueraded as a management consultant to Logitech executives (as Ray Mebert), with the cooperation of the company's vice-chairman. He acted in much the way he portrays management consultants in the comic strip, with an arrogant manner and bizarre suggestions, such as comparing mission statements to broccoli soup. He convinced the executives to replace their existing mission statement for their New Ventures Group, "to provide Logitech with profitable growth and related new business areas", with "to scout profitable growth opportunities in relationships, both internally and externally, in emerging, mission inclusive markets, and explore new paradigms and then filter and communicate and evangelize the findings".
In order to demonstrate what can be achieved with the most mundane objects if planned correctly and imaginatively, Adams has worked with companies to develop "dream" products for Dilbert and company. In 2001 he collaborated with IDEO, a design company, to come up with the "perfect cubicle", a fitting creation since many of the Dilbert strips make fun of the standard cubicle desk and the environment it creates. The result was both whimsical and practical.
This project was followed in 2004 with designs for Dilbert's Ultimate House (abbreviated as DUH). An energy-efficient building resulted, designed to prevent many of the little niggles which seem to creep into a normal building. For instance, to spare time from having to buy and decorate a Christmas tree every year, the house has a large yet inapparent closet adjacent to the living room where the tree can be stored for later holiday seasons.
Media
Compilations of newspaper strips
- Always Postpone Meetings with Time-Wasting Morons — April 16, 1989 (first strip) to October 21, 1989
- Shave the Whales — October 22, 1989 to August 4, 1990
- Bring Me the Head of Willy the Mailboy! — August 5, 1990 to May 18, 1991
- It's Obvious You Won't Survive By Your Wits Alone — May 19, 1991 to December 13, 1992
- Still Pumped from Using the Mouse — December 14, 1992 to September 27, 1993
- Fugitive From the Cubicle Police — September 28, 1993 to February 11, 1995
- Casual Day Has Gone Too Far — February 5, 1995 to November 19, 1995
- I'm Not Anti-Business, I'm Anti-Idiot — November 20, 1995 to August 31, 1996
- Journey to Cubeville — September 1, 1996 to January 18, 1998
- Don't Step in the Leadership — January 12, 1998 to October 18, 1998
- Random Acts of Management — October 19, 1998 to July 25, 1999
- Excuse Me While I Wag — July 26, 1999 to April 30, 2000
- When Did Ignorance Become A Point Of View? — May 1, 2000 to February 4, 2001
- Another Day In Cubicle Paradise — February 5, 2001 to November 11, 2001
- When Body Language Goes Bad — November 12, 2001 to August 18, 2002
- Words You Don't Want to Hear During Your Annual Performance Review — August 19, 2002 to May 25, 2003
- Don't Stand Where the Comet is Assumed to Strike Oil — May 26, 2003 to February 29, 2004
- The Fluorescent Light Glistens Off Your Head — March 1, 2004 to December 5, 2004
- Thriving on Vague Objectives — December 6, 2004 to September 10, 2005
Special compilations
- Telling It Like It Isn't — 1996; ISBN 0-8362-1324-6
- Work is a Contact Sport — 1997; ISBN 0-8362-2878-2
- Seven Years of Highly Defective People: Scott Adams' Guided Tour of the Evolution of Dilbert — 1997; A grab bag of strips from 1989 to 1995, with handwritten notes by Scott Adams
- Random Acts of Catness — 1998; ISBN 0-8362-5277-2
- Work—The Wally Way — 1999; ISBN 0-8362-7480-6
- Alice in Blunderland — 1999; ISBN 0-8362-7479-2
- Dilbert Gives You the Business — 1999
- A Treasury of Sunday Strips: Version 00 — 1999; Color version of all Sunday strips published in newspapers from 1995 through 1999 (typical compilations have black and white Sunday strips)
- What Do You Call A Sociopath In A Cubicle? Answer: A Coworker — A compilation of select comic strips from 1989 to 2001
- It's Not Funny If I Have To Explain It — 2004; Another grab bag of strips from 1997-2004, with Adams' handwritten notes
Related merchandise
- Corporate Shuffle by Richard Garfield — 1997; A Dilbert-branded card game similar to Wizard of the Coast's The Great Dalmuti and the drinking game President
- The Dilberito, a burrito with 100% Daily Value of 23 vitamins and minerals
Business books
- Build a Better Life by Stealing Office Supplies — 1991; Original cartoons with Dogbert as a guide to the business world
- Dogbert's Clues for the Clueless — 1993; Original cartoons with satirical advice on life
- Dogbert's Top-Secret Management Handbook — 1996
- The Dilbert Principle — April 1996
- The Dilbert Future — May 1997
- The Joy of Work — 1998
- Dilbert and the Way of the Weasel — October 2002
Animated series
- See also: List of Dilbert animated series episodes
An animated series spinoff was created in 1999; it lasted two seasons on UPN before its cancellation. The first season centered around the creation of a new product, the "Gruntmaster 6000": episodes one through three involved the idea process, the fifth involved having it survive "Bob Bastard", and the sixth was production. The product was finally tested by an incredibly stupid family in Squiddler's Patch, Texas in the final episode of the season.
The entire run of the Dilbert animated series was made available on DVD on January 27, 2004. The DVD box set retails at $49.95 and includes some special features.
The theme music, The Dilbert Zone, was written by Danny Elfman.
Voice actors
- Daniel Stern as Dilbert
- Kathy Griffin as Alice (uncredited)
- Chris Elliot as Dogbert
- Larry Miller as the Pointy-Haired Boss
- Gordon Hunt as Wally
- Jason Alexander as Catbert
- Tom Kenny as Ratbert and Asok
- Tress MacNeille as Carol
- Buck Henry as Dilbert's Dad
- Jim Wise as Loud Howard
See also
External links
Official sites
- Official Dilbert website
- Website for Dilbert's Desktop Games, by DreamWorks Interactive
- Dilbert's Ultimate House (DUH)