Weekly Jam || Week Four, “Smile“
You make me dance like a fool, forget how to breathe
Just the thought of you can drive me wild
Completely unaware, oh, you make me smile
In the Office Ladies podcast (Episode #2 - Diversity Day), Jenna Fischer read a line from the script of the scene pictured above. BJ Novac, who was the writer of this episode of The Office, wrote this piece of stage direction:
“Jim reacts to Pam falling asleep on him like a butterfly has landed on his shoulder .”
“Isn’t that so poetic?” Jenna commented. “And so that’s what John had in his mind. That was his inspiration for how to react to that. Like, how special it’s to have a butterfly to land on your shoulder, and you don’t want to move and you want to savor it.”
It’s safe to say that Pam is symbolized as a butterfly here, but I want to take it a step further than that and say that the butterfly actually symbolizes their entire relationship, and not just Pam herself.
A butterfly is a creature so beautiful - the moment our eyes catch it our vision fills with color - just as Jim and Pam’s days get brighter as soon as they get the chance to interact and be together. We’ve all witnessed the drastic change between the way Pam acts around Jim and around Roy. We’ve all seen Jim die of boredom just so Pam can revive him. Their relationship is playful, just like a butterfly that dances in the sunlight. And it’s also filled with raw beauty that cannot be denied. A tingle of joy amidst the grey and dull life in the office, which fills with color every memory that it touches.
Yet a butterfly is also a creature wild and fragile. If you try to hold it it will crush under your fingers. And Jim and Pam’s relationship is a perfect reflection of that. They’ve been dancing around each other from the very beginning, just like a butterfly that flatters her wings delicately in the air, flying around aimlessly, effortlessly, teasingly. But they have to walk on eggshells when they’re together as well. They can’t be direct, They can’t face what they have. If they put a name on it, if they attempt to acknowledge it, it backlashes: Just like in “The Client”, when Jim called their rooftop date a “date”. A step too far and the walls of pretense they’ve so carefully built will shatter, one wrong move and the butterfly will get startled and fly away.
But what is lovelier than a butterfly? What is purer than the joy of one landing on your shoulder? Beautiful yet fragile, it serves as the perfect symbol of Jim and Pam’s relationship.
I will use it wildly during the curse of this project, and I have BJ and the Office Ladies to thank for that.