Class in the United States is still tied to the
degree to which one controls the means of production, but it is
also about race, access to power, education and even one’s
belief system.
The corporate media deals with class issues in ways that obscure
their most simple meaning. New advertising campaigns about “white
trash chic” treat class as a lifestyle choice, while economic
coverage in newspaper business sections unquestioningly parrots
Greenspan’s poison about inflation (wage increases) being
the bogeyman and the only response to falling unemployment being
increased interest rates.
Editors and producers, both in the corporate media and
in the alternative press, fear class issues. The corporate
media knows that to talk about class is to talk about inequality,
which is to discuss corporate oppression. But even alternative
journalists, steeped in the logic of journalism schools,
seek out the highest officials for comment on stories that
“matter.” Plain folk are used as props to support
conventional wisdom.
|
As evident in the PBS documentary People
Like Us (see Module 4), people want to
be perceived as “middle class” by adopting class
markers of dress, language, social practices. These class
differences are represented on television in terms of a
display of upper-middle class status symbols in commercials
for expensive cars (Lexus,
Mercedes-Benz,
Cadillac)
or luxury cruises (Royal
Caribbean, Holland
America). |
| In analyzing representations of class differences, it
is useful to examine media texts organized around class
hierarchies — the PBS Masterpiece Theater, Upstairs,
Downstairs; Robert Altman’s film, Gosford
Park, or Titanic portray the disparities in
social practices and values associated with different classes,
often leading to conflicts. |
One example of class tensions within the same text is
the PBS Mystery series, The Inspector Lynley Mysteries:
A Great Deliverance, in which the detective, Inspector
Thomas Lynley, is upper class — the eighth Earl of
Asherton, and his partner, Sergeant Barbara Havers, is working
class, and has a strong resentment about upper-class people.
The program revolves around conflicts in their relationships
as they attempt to solve crimes; the series is based on
the
Inspector Lynley Mysteries book series by Elizabeth
George. |
Upper
middle-class characters that emerged in prime time shows
in the 1980s such as Dallas and Dynasty reflected
an increasing sense of a new wealthy class during the Reagan
and Thatcher era. Some critics noted that the fact that
these characters are often unhappy and conflicted was an
attempt to convey the message to less-well-off viewers that
accumulating wealth does not necessarily result in happiness
— a message designed to placate concerns about not
having wealth. |
During that same period, the de-industrialization of
the economy resulted in closures of traditional manufacturing
plants, particularly in England and Ireland. A series of
films about laid-off workers in these countries during that
time — Brassed Off, Trainspotting, The Snapper,
The Van, and The Last Monty, all portray the
plight, often framed in a comic mode, of male workers who
must find new kinds of employment that had little to with
their familiar, traditional skills. For example, in The
Van, set in Dublin, two works attempt to set up a mobile
fish and chip restaurant, only to encounter a range of challenges.
These films represent workers’ former employers as
well as the British government, as having little or no concern
for their plight. |
Other
films about working-class characters in the
1990s include:
|
The Big Night (1996; dir. Stanley
Tucci and Campbell Scott; cast: Stanley Tucci, Tony Shalhoub,
Isabella Rossellini; subj.: tale of two Italian-American
brothers in Long Island and their struggle to keep their
little authentic restaurant and lives afloat)(cooks and
restaurant owners)
Spitfire Grill (1996; dir. Lee David Zlotoff
; cast: Alison Elliott, Ellen Burstyn, Will Patton;
subj.: young woman comes from prison to small town in
Maine to begin life again working in local diner; screenplay
by Zlotoff) (diner cook)
Sling Blade (1996; dir. Billy Bob Thornton;
cast: Billy Bob Thornton, Dwight Yoakam, J.T. Walsh;
subj. retarded adult man, Karl Childers, struggels
in a small Southern town; surprise low budgeted,
independent film nominated for 1996 Oscar as Best
Film) (mechanic)
Fargo (1996; dir. Joel Coen; cast:
Frances McDormand, William H. Macy, Steve Buscemi;
subj.: murder and kidnap plot involving woman
police detective and car salesman, set in Fargo,
North Dakota; script by Joel and Ethan Coen)
(auto sales, policewoman)
Secrets and Lies (1996-British;
dir. Mike Leigh; cast: Brenda Blethyn, Marianne
Jean-Baptiste, Timothy Spall, Claire Rushrook;
sugj.: slice of life of working class family
dealing with young Black woman’s discovery
of her white mother.
Hidden in America (1996; dir.
Martin Bell; cast: Beau Bridges, Bruce
Davison, Shelton Dane, Jena Malone;
displaced autoworker and family struggle
to get by after wife dies, sharp and
poignant depiction of hidden poverty
in America) (out of work laborer).
Good Will Hunting (1997;
dir. Gus Van Sant; cast: Robin Williams,
Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Minnie
Driver; subj.: Rough Boston youth
with genius for math shows up MIT
academics, wins girl, and gains
confidence with counselor; written
by Damon and Affleck who received
writing Oscars.) (academia)] (construction,
janitor, community college teacher).
Ulee’s Gold
(1997; dir. Vincent Nune; cast:
Peter Fonda, Patricia Richardson,
Jessica Biel, Christine Dunford;
subj.: beekeeper father brings
dysfunctional family together
through hard work and struggles.)(bee
keeping).
October Sky (1999;
dir. Joe Johnson; cast Jake
Gyllenhaal, Chris Cooper,
Laura Dern, Natalie Canerday;
subj.: based on autobiographical
book by Homer H. Hickman,
Jr., a coal miner's son
in West Virginia, who becomes
inspired by launch of Stutnik
satelite, an against a life
in the mines chooses to
invent rockets with high
school friends.(coal miners,
students, teachers).
|
Television programs during
the 1990s, such as The
Archie Bunker Show, Roseanne,
The Simpsons, and
Married with Children,
often portrayed working
class characters as uneducated
and racist. For example,
Roseanne and her husband
are overweight, her husband
drives a pick-up truck,
and their world is often
highly conflicted, phenomena
equated with being working-class.
In contrast, The Cosby
Show, portrays an upper-middle
class family as concerned
with consumer purchases
and achievement.
The media rarely portrays
the actual lives and experiences
of working-class people,
for example, showing how
they often have to hold
several jobs to survive,
the lack of affordable housing
and day care, and the decline
in health-care benefits
provided by employers. One
study found that in
two years of PBS prime-time
programming, 27 hours addressed
the concerns and lives of
the working classes—compared
with 253 hours that focused
on the upper classes.
And, portrayals
of working-class television
families perpetuate
stereotypes of the dysfunctional
working-class family.
Based on an analysis of
two TV talk shows that portray
working-class participants’
revelations about family
conflicts and personal problems,
Laura Grindstaff (2002)
found that while giving
these participants voice
to express their problems,
this expression is controlled
and sensationalized in a
manner that focuses on the
dramatic, as opposed to
larger institutional explanations
for these problems.
|
And, representations
of “poor white trash”
in media texts often serve
to perpetuate myths about
the working class.
|
White
Trash World.com
|
Networks
feed nation’s appetite
for white trash
See also trailers for
the 2000 movie Poor
White Trash.
|
However, such a perspective
fails to recognize the complex
influences of class and
race on identity. From “White
Trash: The Construction
of an American Scapegoat”:
|
The view
from inside the working
class is much more complex.
The working class white
is operating off his own
cultural, family and individual
biases; yet coupled with
these are the pervasive,
historically assumed ideas
that violence, racism and
fundamentalism are somehow
inherent in his class. Even
if one becomes aware of
the layers of identification
applied to oneself, and
most people do not, a battle
against your own heritage
is difficult at best, and
usually impossible. The
class to which we are born,
in which our family circulates
and our formative years
are spent, is the guiding
principle with which we
view other groups and their
cultural beliefs within
our life experience.
Films that show poor
whites as violent people
who attack wealthy citified
whites allow the rich
to justify their treatment
of “white trash”
by portraying the poor
whites as racist, criminal
and uneducated. This
allows other typically
marginalized groups
to join upper class
whites against the “white
trash.” This justifies
upper class stereotyping
of poor whites and serves
to aid in relieving
upper class white guilt
over treatment of “others”
in the past.
The
hatred and condescension
of the poor seems
to be the last available
method of prejudice
in our society.
Just as Americans
have made an effort
to educate, understand
and alter the treatment
of marginalized
groups and alternate
cultures within
our society, we
have held on to
poor whites as a
group to demean.
Making assumptions
about groups of
any sort on societal
and biased definitions
is flawed in any
situation. As with
other groups, there
must be an effort
taken to use an
open mind and individual
code to ascribe
merit to those in
our world.
Thomas Frank (2004)
argues that mid-American
working class people
have bought into
the false binary
of the “two
Americas”
promoted in the
media—the
“Red”
(the “conservative”
central part of
the country that
voted for Bush in
the 2000 election,
and the “Blue,”
the two coasts who
voted for Gore),
a binary contradicted
by Midwestern states
that voted for Gore.
This binary leads
to prototypical
assumptions about
people in the “Red”
areas—that
they hold the bed-rock
values of being
humble, reverent,
upbeat, loyal, and
hard-working, a
prototype set against
what is perceived
to be the effete,
intellectual, snobbish,
morally-questionable,
white-collar worker
who inhabit the
“Blue”
areas. Frank quotes
Missouri farmer
who described the
kind of work he
does as “measured
in bushels, pounds,
shingles nailed,
and bricks laid,
rather than in the
fussy judgments
that make up office
employee reviews”
(p. 39).
For Frank, the
class divide is
therefore one that
has been framed
around a discourse
of cultural difference
revolving around
notions of cultural
authenticity in
which working-class
people are portrayed
as “basking
in the easy solidarity
of patriotism, hard
work, and the universal
ability to identify
soybeans in a field”
(p. 40). The fact
that class distinctions
are framed in fast-track
capitalism in terms
of cultural attitudes
related to valued
social practices
serves as a means
of masking economic
realities of small-family
farmers and business
owners who have
been put out of
business by agribusiness
conglomerates and
corporations. “Deregulated
capitalism is what
has allowed the
Wal-Marts to crush
local businesses
across the Midwest
and, even more importantly,
what has driven
agriculture, the
region’s raison
d’etre, to
a state of near-collapse”
(p. 46).
In his review
of economic history,
Richard Ohmann (2003)
notes that a major
shift in economic
policy occurred
beginning in the
1970s from one of
what David Harvey
describes as a stable
“Fordism”
to the instability
of “flexible
accumulation”
through “new
sections of production,
new ways of providing
financial services,
now markets, and,
above all, greatly
intensified rations
of commercial, technological,
and organizational
innovation”
(Harvey, 1989, p.
147). Ohmann notes
that the “instability
and excesses of
this casino capitalism”
(p. 33) has resulted
in a shift from
stable, well-paying,
long-term, full-time
jobs with benefits
(Ford believed in
paying workers so
that they could
afford his cars
and decent housing)
to “flex-time,
part-time, and temporary
labor; subcontracting
and out-sourcing;
job sharing, home
work, and piece
work; workfare and
prison labor”
(p. 34). This shift
since the 1970s
has resulted in
a parallel shift
way from the New
Deal politics of
strong government
support programs
and government regulation
to a diminution
of government support
and deregulation,
resulting in funding
cuts for education,
job training, health
care, social security,
child-care, and
housing, particularly
for low-income people.
Changes in the
nature of work:
click here to see
film
clips of working
in the early 20th
century
These shifts have
placed working-class
people in a double-bind.
On the one hand,
the transformation
from manufacturing
to “knowledge-economy”
jobs entail increased
higher education
beyond high school.
However, cuts in
state and federal
spending due to
tax cuts has resulted
in large increases
in tuition in state
colleges and universities.
These economic
shifts and cultural
messages influences
working-class adolescents’
identity construction
around class and
race, leaving many
of them confused
about their social
status and economic
future. They recognize
that their class
status has much
to do with differences
in cultural capital
available to their
middle- and upper-middle-class
peers to which they
may not have access.
Yet, the popular
media, particularly
conservative radio
talk shows, continue
to reify false binaries
of low-income people’s
“authenticity”
associated with
blue-collar work
as set against the
“knowledge-economy”
workers. These conservative
messages deliberately
shift attention
away from the larger
economic forces
of fast-track capitalism
and corporate control
working against
low-income people.
This suggests
that some of the
appeal of the conservative
messages employs
the traditional
“race-card”
strategy of pitting
low-income whites
against low-income
people of color.
In his documentation
of the evolution
of white privilege,
David Roediger (2002)
noted that in the
1800s, wealthy Whites
provided poor Whites
with small tokens
of economic privilege
and social status
that served to create
an economic hierarchy
that set low income
Whites against Blacks.
And, given the rise
of a post-Civil
Rights racism since
the 1970s, politicians
continued to employ
the “race-card”
appeal to attract
white voters. Given
the loss of well-paying
jobs for low-income
Whites since the
1970s, working-class
Whites have increasingly
defined their class
identity in terms
of racial polarization
and resentment against
Blacks and Latinos
as scapegoat targets
for job losses,
defining their sense
of social superiority
through “othering”
Blacks and Latinos
as inferior. This
othering takes the
form of Whites distancing
themselves from
what they perceive
to be low-level
“slave-labor”
work done by Blacks
and Latinos, and
attempting to achieve
what they perceive
as middle-class
status in terms
of not being or
living near Blacks
or Latinos.
For bell hooks
(2000), all of this
serves to divert
white working-class
people’s attention
away from an economic
system that fails
to provide well-paying
employment:
Not
even
the
economic
crisis
that
is
sorely
impacting
on
their
lives
at
home
and
at
work
alerts
them
to
the
realities
of
predatory
capitalism.
Their
lack
of
sympathy
for
the
poor
unites
them
ideologically
with
greedy
people
of
means
who
only
have
contempt
for
the
poor.
Once
poor
can
be
represented
as
totally
corrupt,
as
being
always
and
onlymorally
bankrupt,
it
is
possible
for
those
with
class
privilege
to
eschew
any
responsibility
for
poverty
and
the
suffering
it
represents.
(p.
69).
|
In summary, representations
of gender, race,
and class are often
derived from institutional
forces that represent
groups other than
themselves using
discourses and myths
that serve to maintain
their own power
and status in society. |
For further reading
about
representations
of
gender,
race,
and
class,
see
the
anthology,
Gender,
Race
And
Class
In
Media:
A
Text
Reader
(Dines
&
Humez,
Eds.),
which
contains
numerous
essays
on
the
representations
of
gender,
race,
and
class
in
the
media.
William
F.
Munn,
lesson
plan:
Class
in
the
Media:
Writing
a
Television
Show
Traci
Gardner,
Comic
Makeovers:
Examining
Race,
Class,
Ethnicity,
and
Gender
in
the
Media
|
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