These rap lyrics, more specifically "gangsta rap," don't deviate much from a genre of music that has been synonymously linked with the inner-city and young, black men. Rising out of the hip-hop culture of the late 70s and early 80s, gangsta rap developed a tougher sound and lyrics that emphasized the trials of living in the ghettoes, surviving one day to the next. Howeve, when a white man unashamedly sings these lyrics as he sits in his economy car amid a snarl of morning rush hour traffic in a verdant, suburban setting, as the character Michael Bolton does in Office Space (1999), our perspective is dramatically shifted. The image does not fit. We know there's a distinct line that says "that man should not be listening to that music" and "that music should not be played by that man". This is the black/white threshold.

This line distinguishing "black" from "white" is often quite distinct. There is black music, black hairstyles, black names and black ("soul") food; just as there are many forms of culture that many consider "white". Either extreme of this black/white binary provides a comfort zone for each polar group. Within their grouping each half of the binary can rest assured knowing that their intimate cultural forms surround them and they won't be troubled by other, unfamiliar forms. Yet when we see this very white man listening to this very black music, we're slightly disturbed. Like a very tame sort of minstrelsy, where the white and black forms aren't clearly divided into the separate prescribed areas we're used to, the 'familiar' becomes somewhat muddled. What we know "should" be happening isn't happening, and, in this case, to a greater comedic effect. Exemplefied specifically in this opening scene, Office Space thus toys with the black/white threshold by consistently mixing opposite forms of traditional black and white culture.

Norman Mailer's seminal essay "The White Negro: Superficial Reflections on the Hipster" (1956) quite accurately describes Michael Bolton's flirtation with the white/black threshold in Office Space. Mailer defined the white/black binary in his contemporary terms of "square" and "hip", respectively. The square man, realizing that success was only achievable through conformity, found himself doomed to a rigidly structured existence. Mailer's hipster, in contrast, acquired a fatalistic post-war ideology and, in the face of inevitable death, pursued the sensate pleasures of the body, living life in the "now". The African-American, he wrote, spent their whole American existence on the margins of (what was to them) a totalitarian society. Without the average white "cameos of security… (such as) mother and home, job and family" the African-American did not have the luxury of such security. Without this comfort zone, African-Americans had to be intrinsically tuned into the present, living for the immediate "Good", and reacting to a constantly shifting society; a voice that is intimately spoken through the music of jazz. The "white Negro", then, is the square who crosses the threshold and lives like the hipster. Michael, however, can only flirt with the black/white threshold when in his own private space, and when that space is compromised, he immediately reverts to the square life he's condemned to lead.

With the title of "Office Space" we are immediately thrown into a world of rigidity, structure, and conformity. Michael's appearance is the perfect representation of the type of person we expect to find in such a formatted world. As we see him drive to work in the opening scene, we see the prototypical nerd. As a skinny, white man, perhaps in his late 20s, with thick glasses and greasy, unkempt hair, we equate him with someone who willingly lives the life of a conformist. His short-sleeved, button-down shirt and mismatched tie show us a man who is not concerned with a "hip" appearance, but (and, as we see in the rest of the movie) this choice of attire is what he has to wear outside of his own private space, or in the larger 'office space'.

Even as we later find out that his name is "Michael Bolton", we wonder if there is any way this man could be whiter. The mere name "Michael Bolton" elicits connotations to a bland, adult contemporary style of singing that could not be further from hip. Michael Bolton (the singer) even takes black songs (such as Percy Sledge's "When a Man Loves a Woman", as is referenced in the movie) and makes them agonizingly white. In the opening scene, we are immediately given a sense of how the white Michael chooses to tinker with the notion of the white/black threshold.

The commute that Office Space uses as its establishing scene immediately brings us into a square world. Thousands of cars, it appears, are all lined up on the same three lane highway, headed in the same direction. Each car holds only one person, and each person lifelessly stares straight ahead, all but completely numb to the world and the cars around them. Michael Bolton is in the center of the unmoving traffic, driving a non-descript American car, not noticeably different than the thousands that surround him. Traffic is moving at a snail's pace. Though Michael is driving the same direction, in the same car, in the same commute on the way to (what may as well be) the same job as everyone else, he is playing the hipster. Where we may expect him to be listening to, perhaps, Michael Bolton, he is listening to hard core gangsta rap.

As a wildly popular form of musical expression at the end of the twentieth century, gangsta rap became the same "hip" voice that jazz was for African-Americans in the era of Mailer's essay. The repetition of sampled sounds and loud beats, were mixed together by a DJ with lyrics added by the singer (sometimes known as the MC) often performed on the street extemporaneously. These songs that portrayed the issues of life in the inner-city were the hallmarks of gangsta rap. A near perfect mirror of Mailer's Hipster, much of the gangsta rap genre detailed how life may not last beyond the next day, so it needs to be enjoyed at the moment. Unrepentantly misogynist, advocating excessive drug use and violence, gangsta rap became a broadly listened to genre of music in the 1990s. In Office Space, gangsta rap is always used to emphasize the threshold between black and white.

Gangsta rap forms the audio cue for any montage that depicts the characters engaging in activities that don't adhere to the strict conformity of the white-collar world. We hear the Geto Boys' "Damn it Feels Good to be a Gangster" when Peter goes fishing instead of going to work; Ice Cube's "Down for Whatever" when the Peter, Samir and Michael engage in a corporate embezzling scheme in the office; and the Geto Boys' "Still" while the three of them destroy a fax machine in a field. The music emphasizes their 'hipness', their chosen refusal to exist outside the white world (even if it is short lived). However, every one of these scenes of rebellion takes place in what may be considered "white areas" of the suburbs. The fishing pond, the workplace and a field are all well within the world of the square. No matter how or where they try to exhibit their refusal to conform, they are still forced to be in a white society. And by remaining in white society, they - eventually - must revert back to conformity if they expect too succeed. Even though the gangsta rap beats and lyrics highlight their individuality from the other squares and expresses their anger against the stiff system to which they must strictly obey, they cannot escape it. It's a fixed notion on the white half of the threshold that success is tied to conformity. Yet this conformity is most significantly represented, with gangsta rap playing a main role, in the opening scene with Michael Bolton in his car.

As Michael Bolton's car creeps along the highway, he is listening to the violent lyrics of the gangsta rap song "No Tears" by Scarface, he tinkers with the division between black and white. With the rap music blaring from his car stereo (we hear as we descend on him from above his car), his actions are quite clear. Not only is he listening to the music, but he is singing along with it, looking in the rearview mirror at himself singing AND he is making "guns" with his fingers to punctuate the lyrics when a gun is referred to. His lips are flared out and, the typically nasally voice you might expect to hear from a man who looks like Michael, is a deep bass. In the private space of his car, Michael has an audience of one for his gesturing, singing, and living as a black, gangland hipster, tough enough to threaten anyone with his gun and be the one everyone knows "who run it." The Michael in the drivers seat and the Michael in the mirror are the Michael he wants to be, tough, in control, and a man who answers to no one.

However, as his car inches along and he is further engrossed by his act and with the mirror, he notices out of the corner of his eye a black man selling flowers on the side of the road, a car or two ahead of him. Suddenly, before eye contact can be made, and his personal space can be invaded, the "square" Michael assumes control. He immediately stops singing and gesturing, turns down the volume on the radio, and reaches over to lock his door, all the while assuring himself that no eye contact has been or could have been made. He sits up straight, assumes all the propriety that a white man in an economy car must have when commuting to work in the morning. Being caught listening to gangsta rap, especially by a black man, would be absolute violation of the white/black threshold, something which he, as a square, absolutely cannot do. When he has assured himself that the man selling flowers can't invade his space, Michael whispers the next line to the song "you gotta realize somethin." Then stops. We do hear, however, that the next word in the song on the barely audible radio, the word he stopped short of, is "nigga". As a word that is only allowed to be used by African-Americans towards African-Americans, Michael, in the face of a black man selling flowers a few feet away from his locked door, wouldn't dare cross that verbal boundary. Whereas he may cross over into "blackness" with great regularity in his car, alone in his cubicle at work, or on occasion with his friends, he is well aware of the "sancta sanctorum" that he may not even dare tread, especially in the face of a black man. But, of course, as his car passes the man selling flowers, he is once again the fearless gangsta, he turns the radio back up, and sings even louder, sticks his lips out further and gestures with his "guns" even more dynamically than before.

Through contrasting the square, white character of Michael Bolton with the hip, black music of rap in Office Space, we can distinctly see the clear threshold between "whiteness" and "blackness". It becomes clear that the threshold exists, and though it can be toyed with, it is virtually impossible for one of the characters in Office Space, especially Michael Bolton, to permanently break with the rigid world he lives in.