¶ … Dismissed: How TV Frames the Working Class directed by Loretta Alper. Specifically it will evaluate how work and social class is perceived in this documentary film and other television shows. The working class always seems to be the brunt of negative humor and satire on television and this documentary explores that phenomenon, from the 1940s to the present day. If a person bases their opinions about the working class only on television, they will come to see an uneducated, group of buffoons who are entertaining but certainly not enlightening. Instead of poking fun at the working class, the media should acknowledge the contribution most working class families make to the American culture. The film opens with the statistic that about 62% of Americans are members of the working class, and that means they are the average people you might meet on the street, stroll a shopping mall with, or dine with in a restaurant. They are the "average Joes" who form the backbone of the working force. So why does the media portray them so negatively? One, most of these shows that feature working class families and situations are comedies, so they are meant to make others laugh. Viewers, watching a dysfunction family like the Simpsons or the Bundys in "Married...
The subtle messages being sent by these shows is that the working class is woefully inadequate as mothers and fathers, their families are laughable, and they have no hope whatsoever of bettering themselves, and somehow, they are responsible for their own misfortunes because of ignorance or laziness. Think of characters like Ralph Crandon in "The Honeymooners," Archie Bunker in "All in the Family," or Ted Bundy in "Married With Children." Each man is a clown who is loud, often bigoted, and laughable, with a long-suffering spouse who does not take them seriously. These represent decades of television shows that view the working class as something "less" than the middle class, and that makes them laughable and "beneath" the viewers in some way.
Social Classes in America The American dream is what many people hopes to attain in their lives. Many Americans, or even non-Americans who migrated to America, pursue a goal in life that they call the American Dream. Within this dream is an objective of being in the American workforce. Sad as it is in reality, however, this dream has been categorized by many into classes -- classes that distinguish the higher
For example, in discussing his childhood in "Southie" a poor neighborhood in Boston, Patrick MacDonald talks about the willful ignorance of the people in the neighborhood when he was a child. "They were all here now, all of my neighbors and friends who had died young from violence, drugs, and from the other deadly things we'd been taught didn't happen in Southie" (MacDonald, 1999, p.2). In other words, the
Social Class And Health During the Renaissance and Medieval Times THE BASIS OF PRIVILEGE The Diet of the Rich and the Poor What the rich and the poor ate in those times was vastly distinct (Cheng et al., 1999). The nobles and the wealthy could well afford and were served a wide variety of foods by cooks. Poor peasants, on the other hand, subsisted on a few and affordable types of meat and
These families provide their children with the suitable training within the same social class. The social status is considered to be normally the generalized asset of the family and it cannot be personified. In absence of proper terminology the social classes are attempted to be distinguished as highest, upper, middle, lower and lowest. (Headrick, 66) To conclude, the social class that is always a contentious and contested topic can be
IT is commonly asserted that there are in the United States no classes, and any allusion to classes is resented. On the other hand, we constantly read and hear discussions of social topics in which the existence of social classes is assumed as a simple fact. "The poor," "the weak," "the laborers," are expressions which are used as if they had exact and well- understood definition. Karl Marx, a famous philosopher
SOCIAL CLASS SYSTEM IN THE U.S. Classism' refers to distribution of national wealth is such a manner that it benefits the highest social class, the elites, and leads to the creation of social hierarchy. "Classism is made up of falsehoods about the frugality and seriousness of the upper class and the profligacy and frivolity of the lower" (Dugger, 1998). While in the Britain and other imperial countries, social classes took birth
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