Cartoon is also a serious thing – unveiling the “standard employee” of modern Capitalist soCiety in the sponge BoB square pants Cartoon

Abstract

Considering the settings in the world of work in modern capitalist society, including its centrality in the life of the individual as the basis of identity formation of human beings, it was adopted a qualitative approach to develop an observational study of a fictitious social environment of children’s cartoon Sponge Bob Square Pants – revealing how it may represent an “ideal model/standard of a good worker” that is presented to the child and young audience. The four episodes discussed here are used as a background for a reflection on the organizational relationships and the dualities/contrasts (pleasure and pain) of perceptions and subjectivities present in this context. It is observed in the episodes analyzed a dichotomy between “good and bad worker”. The episodes portray the antagonism in relation to the work of the main character SpongeBob (that establishes a positive and pleasurable subjective relationship with his work activity, but also alienated) and its antagonist Squidward (which represents the suffering and hardship sphere of work). The four selected episodes have essential components for understanding the importance that work represents in the lives of individuals and how is this dynamic in the current contemporary capitalist model guided by managerialism, which values the high performance and transforms the individual into capital that must be productive at any cost.