class
The 99%: The (Class) Difference Between
In Harry Potter, then, social class is a way of telling us something about the characters more than the actual lived reality or a source of conflict that it becomes in The Hunger Games. This is because in the wizarding world, power doesn’t come just come from... Read more »
The 99%: "Finding North"
This is the second of three posts on films from the 2012 Sundance Film Festival addressing inequality, poverty, and... Read more »
The 99%: "The Queen of Versailles"
Lauren Greenfield’s film The Queen of Versailles is both an infuriating and humanizing portrait of the economic collapse from the perspective of one of the country’s richest families.
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The 99%: Undercover Boss and the Undervalued Worker
Unions are supposed to help workers have jobs that are safe, fairly compensated, and have opportunities for upward mobility. But unions are having trouble doing that these days, in large part because so many legislators and executives (like the ones on Undercover Boss) are going so far to limit... Read more »
The 99%: Why the Real Housewives of Atlanta Aren
Few women of color are allowed to represent themselves on television with much nuance; frequently they are reduced to stock characters like mammies and Jezebels that deny them full, complex humanity. Successful women... Read more »
The 99%:
For the Bluths, their wealth is a performance, but their class privilege is real. They live in a former shell of their old life: they share a model home built by the once-lucrative Bluth construction company that stands alone in an unfinished development. Beautiful inside and out, the home... Read more »
The 99%: Trashy People Talking Trash on Trash Television, or Jersey Shore
Trailer trash, white trash—these ways of describing low-income people aren’t new. They’re meant to make people quite literally disposable, a way of denying their humanity and their potential to offer anything of value. With Jersey Shore, though, we get the “trash” without... Read more »
The 99%: "But look how far we
Yet, what Downton Abbey also offers for the modern viewer is the idea that, today, class differences have been overcome. The stark separation between the lives of the family and the staff illustrate a segregation that is no longer overt in today’s society. Few people have... Read more »
The 99%: Money Can't Buy You Love (and it Might Get in the Way)
Shows like The Bachelor and Millionaire Matchmaker not only reduce romance to opulent displays of consumerism and gender conformity, but they distract us from actual consideration of the role of class in relationships and the need to negotiate those differences on a real, ongoing... Read more »
The 99%: Welcome Home, Deserving People! Thoughts on Extreme Makeover: Home Edition
There’s something else going on here. There’s the construction (no pun intended) of a “deserving” poor person whose needs can be addressed via a for-profit reality show, as opposed to real, systemic change.
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