Harsh Reality

This film really showcased the harsh reality of social class. I was completely aware of some of the differences in social class, but I guess I had never seen them presented as they were in this film. Some of the interviews, comments, and viewpoints were absolutely infuriating! I'm not sure of the backgrounds of the other students in this class, but some comments were truly offensive to me. I'm very proud of my background and to see others belittle an individual's accomplishments based on their lack of "class" or material posessions really upset me. At one point in the film a British woman said she would never drive a Volvo. Then she said, "I 'd certainly never drive a Ford, it's probably stolen!" That statement offended me! I can't tell you how many people that I know who drive Fords.

In the beginning of the film a picture of an older gentleman is shown to several people. Their reactions were unbelievable to me. One of the reactions that stuck with me through the end of the film was, "He's definitely lower class, look at the screen door behind him." I guess that bothered me so because I have a screen door, my parent's have a screen door, most of my friends and family do as well. Ouch! That hurt. It is never fun to look at where you come from and to feel like you are worth less somehow because you aren't born into wealth and privilege.

Another offensive comment came from the woman about to be married. When she talked about how much lower her fiance was, it disgusted me. I thought, "How embarassing for him. How could he possibly marry someone who truly considered herself to be so much better than him?" Her statement about police officers being low class made me so angry! I've personally experience people like this, and it never fails to repulse me.

I'm from a very rural area and Tammy's story spoke to me. It almost brought me to tears to see a woman trying so hard just to get by. Instead of taking the easy way out and living off of government support, Tammy walked 10 miles to work every day. I have met many people in Tammy's situation and I was proud watching her. She has pride and she refuses to lower her expectations for herself by giving up on work, giving up on her dreams of going to college, or giving up on her children. Tammy's son could have easily been perceived to be kind of a jerk, but I felt very sorry for him. He was obviously very insecure about his home, his family, and himself. Years of poverty and rejection have taught him that he must be different from his family in order to be accepted, so he rejects his family almost completely. It truly broke my heart to hear his mother say, "really - he's in the same class I am. He's just trying to prove to his friends that he's in their class, but I know different."

The section of the film titled How to Marry the Rich was, for me, almost painful to watch. It seemed absurd to watch a "self help consultant" make a profit from teaching an outsider "how to fit in" with a class that's nearly impossible to fit into if you're not born into it. The woman, the beneficiary of these lessons, seemed desperate to me. I know that I'm judging her, but I just can't understand paying a person to try to teach you to fit in. Most of the interviews with wealthy people showed a sort of snarky criticism towards those "beneath them." It almost hurt to watch the woman be hopeful about the lessons she was learning because in my heart I feel like no matter what that woman did with her life, she probably never truly fit in to the class that she so desperately wanted to be a part of.

One author asked, "is it possible to ever change social class successfully?" He answers his own question by saying, "I don't think so. I think that you are for a lifetime in the class in which you grew up." I'm sure there are exceptions to this rule, but in most instances, I would bet that he's correct.

I think that for some people the most cruel, harsh reality of the American dream is that you CAN'T always move up and fit in. We're taught as children that we can be anything that we want to be if we work hard enough. We're taught that anything is possible. So in a way this video could be sort of heartbreaking if you still believed that you could make lots of money and become part of the upper class. In reality, no matter how much money you make, you'll probably always be judged by the class above you. Either you haven't had your money long enough, you don't spend it the right way, or you don't come from the right family.

"You're 50 yrs old and still worried about what your friends think." What's class got to do with it?

I haven’t had a whole lot of classes that focused on social issues or class issues. I took sociology my first semester and pretty much glided through the class without picking up a whole lot of information from it. Other than that the only class I can remember that I’ve taken that addressed social issues was my Africana Philosophy class, and this class focused more on racial issues and racial identity then a social class issue. So by watching People Like Us: Social Class in America, it opened my eyes to the social struggle that happens throughout our country and how bad it actually is. I’ve been aware about the different social classes in America but I’ve never thought about it being a detrimental part of America and still used as an oppressive construct in our society.

In the first section of this film, Bud or Bordeaux, I was really taken in by the argument in Vermont. The argument the town got into was over what food company they would build in the town to serve their citizens, and their options were between a supermarket chain and a small environmentally conscious specialty store. The problems that arose between the two were that the supermarket supplied a great selection of food at a reasonable price but the specialty food supplied a healthier selection of food and better quality food for a higher price. Many of the people in the town were lower income families who couldn’t afford the higher priced food items, and people were arguing over which brands should be supplied for items as simple as bread. An interesting statistic that they pulled was that Americans consume about five loaves of white bread for every one loaf of wheat bread. Growing up on wheat bread myself, and the fact that I can’t stand white bread due to the insufficient nutritional value of the “bread,” I found this quote to be quite shocking. I was highly amused though at the elderly lady who described what was in white bread and her facial reactions as she explained that it was just starch, egg, and I think milk. The town meeting was also an interesting part of the film where one of the council members was trying to explain the pros of the smaller food store, and the elderly citizens that were there were arguing back quite furiously. This whole debate just opens your eyes to how much our food implies where we fit in our society, and it’s sad how some people will look down on others when they see what kind of food someone else consumes.

The next section was call High and Low and what captivated me in this section was the WASP, the White Angelo-Saxton Protestant class. This whole part really bugged me, pardon the pun. The WASP’s just seems to be an elitist class of society and you can only get into it if you were born into it or if you were able to obtain a vast amount of money and are able to pretty much train yourself to act like them. It’s almost like an old style of an aristocratic system born in modern America. A high brow group of people that go to balls, plays golf, and has rich people gatherings. They seemed to marry only other WASP’s and looked down on anyone trying to get into the society that could not, or would not “fit.” It really annoyed me when the main white WASP gentleman doing the interviews described an event he went to where he seen a WASP couple having a good time dancing but he described them as not being aesthetically pleasing enough to even be a part of WASP. He was wondering how they got in and thought that the standards of being a WASP were getting to low. It was just really blatant discrimination on the sole basis of appearance.

Also in this section they talked about the Jack and Jill club. This seemed to be a Who’s Who club for young aspiring black students, which seems to be like it could be a good thing, but it turned out to be nothing more then just one more way to separate different student and place them into different class structures. One of the things that they talked about is how some of the graduating students from this club would look at the yearbook for that year to see who would be going off to the same college they were going so they may be able to maybe match up with them and court them; making sure they were dating someone of a higher class, and making sure they married up. On the flip side it showed a group of mothers talking about the program and one of them asked a friend, who had a child in the program, about getting her an application so she could enroll her daughter, and her friend completely blew her off. So this program became just one more thing for some of the lower class black Americans to hurdle over to “feel accepted.”

The third section was called Salt of the Earth, and if I remember correctly I think the story on Tammy was in this section but I will focus on another story since Alexandrea already expanded quite nicely on this story. There was a young woman who grew up in KY, southern I think since they were saying they were an hour away from Nashville, on a farm with her family. She went to college for writing, went to Washington DC, and wanted to raise herself up in the social class and become a writer. Since she was a small town girl, and always has her small town niches, she has a little trouble assimilating into the big city society. Now since she left her hometown and tried to make something of herself, she is also almost treated as an outcast in her home town just because she left. Some of her old friends and even family feel abandoned. One thing that was stated was a quote that they used which was she “got above her raison.” This meant that she tried to fit into a social class higher then her up bringing. When she visits home now her dad won’t even talk about what she does in DC, it just makes him too uncomfortable to talk about it. This notion by itself is sad, since within their own family they’re letting class relations sour their family relationship.

The last section is titled Belonging, in which this section focused mostly on high school cliques which we’ve all experienced this social outcast system. I was mostly a choir/band geek myself. They conducted many interviews with students from Anderson High School and this was a school with the demography of a higher class of society. They even interviewed a few teachers and some even said it was a little uncomfortable when they drove home and their students had much nicer cars then they did that their parent bought for them. These kids all recognized all the different cliques that were around, and that they mostly hung around others that shared pretty much the same social status as them. Some of the girls said that they would hang out with other kids with social classes outside their, but just never had the chance. In my opinion this is completely conceited, since the opportunity for them is open every single day if they just take some initiative. The girl who made the most sense out of everyone interviewed was the out casted, nerdy girl. She said she didn’t really care what others thought of her, and she didn’t mind if she was by herself as long as she was true to herself. Those are wise words that it’s a shame none of the other people interviewed in that school seemed to portray.

To close this entry I want to just reinstate how this film is an eye opener to the idea of how class affects every single one of us in some of the slightest ways. Some ways may be even subliminal with how we present ourselves, to something as obvious as our material things we like to flaunt. Which I am no exception, I have a leather jacket that I love to wear during cooler weather because it makes me feel more confident. This has been an age old issue from the beginning of human consciousness, and I don’t think we as human beings will ever be free from the idea of a social class structure.

P.S. can you get my title reference?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdey7Qa52nM&feature=PlayList&p=C6D871A2A8C3C8EF&playnext=8&playnext_from=PL&index=7

Status or Being Yourself?

Status or Being Yourself?

My analysis of People Like Us: Social Class in America

When I started to watch the documentary People Like Us: Social Class in America, I honestly did not think I was going to see anything I have not already heard or witnessed. I knew it would be about social class and contemporary culture, which is a subject we are always hearing and learning about in school. As I started hearing stories from various people in different social classes I started to notice things I had never thought about before.

When hearing the different stories in this documentary some of them touched me more than others. Tammy’s story compared to the number of other stories really opened my eyes to a completely different view on social class. The fact that she walks over 10 miles a day to get to her job at Burger King just to make it to the next day, in means of providing for her family just makes me think about the luxuries I may have that I don’t appreciate as much as I should. I really was interested in her story of how her oldest son, Matt Heid, talked about his mother and their situation. Here you have a mother doing what she knows best to provide for her family and a son that is almost ashamed of it and her. When he was talking about how he doesn’t want his friends to meet his mom because of how she looks just shocked me. When he goes to school he wants to be someone. He wants to be the popular kid and fit in while hiding his true self. I commend him for wanted to make something better of himself, but when he said some of the things about not wanting his brother around or not calming his brother if he is dressed a certain way, just really upset me. It truly makes me sad that kids and young adults cant go to school comfortable in their own skin because they want to fit in a certain clique or stereotype. They feel that they need to dress, talk, and act a certain way to fit in where they want, when in all reality it’s all fake. I guess this just upsets me because I really felt like things were better and high schools weren’t as harsh or demanding on kids to be a certain way. I feel like in Tammys story Matt couldn’t appreciate his mom for what she is trying to do because he has been taught by society and his peers that it isn’t cool or accepted.

The other story that really stood out for me was the ANDERSON high school stories. How they showed social class and peer acceptance from each angle by talking to different students in different cliques or social classes. There was a clear separation between each clique that attended this school. The two young girls they were documenting had me shocked by what was coming out of their mouths about how they view the school and other students. Also, the four girls they talked to that all had nice cars that their parents bought them. One of the girls was talking about how she didn’t just hang out with those girls because they all had nice cars and were all similar to her. She said she hung out with them because they were just her best friends. To an extent I think this is true that you tend to hang around people you have things in common with, but I feel like the things they had in common were all exterior and didn’t come from within. This video made me think that a lot of middle and high school students are very blind to people’s true selves. I feel like these students have been programmed, in lack of a better word, to seek out the people that are in their same social class. Also this section of the video really stood out to me because my family and I moved to The Woodlands, Texas from Dallas, Texas when I was in fifth grade and my brother was in eight grade. The school my brother attended seemed to be just like Anderson high school in this documentary. If you did play a sport, or your parents did know each other you really were an outcast. I remember watching him struggle through the couple of years we lived there and really become somewhat of a loner, much like some of the students talked about in the video. It was a really difficult time for him and our family and this film really brought those same type feelings back.

I feel like society as a whole has put a tremendous amount of pressure of social class. I never really realized how what type of bread you purchase could make a statement to others. I always noticed, when talking about social class and status, types of cars people drive, or their clothing, accessories, and attitudes influence their social class, but I never considered little monotonous this like a loaf of bread because that doesn’t seem like that big of a deal. It is though and I can see why this was brought to attention during this documentary with the story in Vermont. I never thought of the type of food sold in a store as showing different social classes. The people in the film were outraged over the new store and what was being sold and after watching this I can see where they are coming from. Before I feel like I wouldn’t have seen it the way they do.

So while our culture wants to say that social class is not a big issue or everyone is equal, I feel that this could be argued to be wrong. We have come along way, but we defiantly have a long way to go still. I feel like this film opened my eyes to how bad it truly is. I didn’t expect people to be so narrow-minded. When they talked about if you want to mix with other social classes you have to learn to blind in. That is basically saying you need to conform to what they are and not be yourself. This is just awful to me. Ginie Polo Sayles who was the self help consultant and the whole section on How to Marry Rich was basically teaching someone how to act like someone else.

I guess before this video I was extremely ignorant to the fact that social class in America is still an issue. People Like Us really opens our eyes to the fact that it is a problem and people from every status or social class notices it and has an opinion about it. I really want to know if there is any way to help this problem especially in high school so students can feel equal, comfortable, and accepted. Even though the problem is much larger than just high school students.

Welcome to IST 494

This blog will serve as our online classroom where we will share our perspectives on the texts and films that we read and view each week. The blog will allow you to engage with the course material in depth and practice writing for a public audience as you create your own blog posts and post comments on your classmates'. My hope is that this blog will work as a space for free and civil debate about the ideas and issues that we explore in the course, and that our online dialogue will inspire our reflection about and research on social class and its relationship with contemporary culture.

Two model blogs:

Professor Tonya Krouse's post on People Like Us (the first film we will watch this semester). Professor Krouse's post and her students' follow-up comments represent the kind of intellectual exchanges I want us to create in our blog.

Student Mark Hixenbaugh's blog on The Changing World of Work (a book I taught in a previous course). Familiarize yourself with the blog format so you can emulate Mark's awesome use of multi-media elements like web-based images, political cartoons, YouTube videos, etc.

Specific directions for future blog assignments can be found on Blackboard under the "Assignments" tab.

For now, take a few minutes to introduce yourself in a comment to this post. I'll go first.

I am professor Kirk Boyle, also known by literature and writing students at Northern Kentucky University and the University of Cincinnati as "Dr. B." This is my ninth year of teaching at the collegiate level, and my first with NKU's Integrative Studies program. I completed my Doctorate in English and Comparative Literature at the University of Cincinnati in 2009, and have published articles in Jump Cut, Film-Philosophy, The International Journal of Žižek Studies, and The Journal of Philosophy and Scripture. I'm looking forward to exploring the worlds of social class and contemporary culture with you.

Okay, your turn...