Officeboy vs. Playboy

Do to the awesome response to playboys on my last post (one comment and one email!), I thought I would add one more post on the playboy and a competing archetype: the officeboy. 

This morning I was listening to Bonde do Role's 2007 "With Lasers."  BdR is/was an electroclash band that got pulled from obscurity and brought to the U.S. by former M.I.A. producer/boyfriend Diplo.  In the North, they were the hipster shit for 20 minutes.  I saw them at the Empty Bottle in Chicago in Octoberish 2007 (definitely during systems, as I recall).  I've met very few people in Brazil who know about them, especially compared to their more successful contemporary exports, Cansei de Ser Sexy. 

Anyways, as I was drinking coffee, typing a little, and listening to BdR, I realized that the first line of their song "officeboy" is "Trabalhando o ano inteiro de officeboy, para o final de ano pagar de playboy."  [Working the whole year as an office boy, so (you can) spend like a playboy at year's end.]

Despite the professional sounding ring of "office," one would understand the term better by focusing on the pejoratively used "boy."  Office boys are usually the working class 20-somethings who work as errand boys in Brazil's financial districts, particularly in São Paulo.  As Teresa Caldeira writes, these "boys" and their mobile counter parts (motoboys) are paid low wages in order to curry documents up and down the street and take the subway to do so...things that the business elite would never do.  Unlike bike messengers in the U.S., they are not seen as cool or alternative in anyway.  They also don't work independently.  Most office boys wear suits or shirts and ties to work. 

Anyways, the BdR song puts a new light on the playboy as an aspirational identity.  This jives a lot with Jennifer Roth Gordon's work on Playboys in Rio, who come from poor neighborhoods and dress up and use cosmopolitan codes to lay claim on a higher class status  (thanks, Elina for pointing out Gordon's work).

Ok, so here is the music video.  As I looked it up on youtube, it reminded made me feel nostalgic for those mid-2000's low-fi dance rock music videos (which this is obvies a part).  I'm thinking of early Gossip and Hot Chip.