Page 464 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

Representat ons of Class |

on their own, particularly at a time when social programs (such as federal stu-
dent aid) designed to level the playing field have been cut and the gap between
haves and have-nots has grown wider. Because the media ignore the structural
circumstances that work against class fluidity, class differences are all too readily
ascribed to individual pathologies and lifestyle choices.
The news media’s construction of the “welfare mother” exemplifies this pat-
tern. Since welfare reform gained political currency in the 1980s, news stories
have coded the typical recipient as young, female, irresponsible, lazy, immoral,
and often black—even through white people have historically benefited most
from need-based government programs. Blending ideologies of race, gender,
and class, news discourse has attributed systemic poverty not to the persistence
of social inequalities or the uneven distribution of resources, but rather to the
pathological ethics, work habits, and character flaws of poor people and poor
women of color in particular. In so doing, say media scholars, the news has
supported a policy trend based on the argument that social welfare programs
designed to soften the harshest blows of the capitalist economy are no longer
necessary (Gilens 2000).
Fictional media also tend to represent working-class life as a “deviation” or
pathology. Poor and working-class characters are underrepresented in entertain-
ment genres; when they do appear, they are often slotted into one-dimensional
roles such as criminal or servant/helper. When working-class people take the
lead, they often play for laughs. In a study of TV sitcoms, media scholar Richard
Butsch found that working-class men are almost always depicted as stupid, lazy,
and narrow-minded buffoons who deserve their low-paying, low-status jobs. In-
deed, characters from Ralph Kramden (The Honeymooners) to Archie Bunker
(All in the Family) to Al Bundy (Married with Children) and Homer Simpson
(The Simpsons) are little more than caricatures of bad taste, vulgar habits, muddy
thinking, and undeveloped morals. These representations situate working-class
men as hapless “others,” says Butsch—fodder for voyeuristic amusement, but
not positive identification or political action (Butsch 1992).

JusT Do iT: CLass moBiLiTy anD sELF-TransFormaTion

The patterns of representation discussed so far coexist with the discourse of
class mobility in U.S. media. The inflation and normalization of class privilege
is tolerated in part because the media also circulate rags-to-riches mythologies
and how-to advice for achieving the good life. Hollywood is a major source of
these inspirational stories. From Good Will Hunting (about a janitor who is dis-
covered to be a math genius) to the Rocky series (about a working-class boxer
who becomes world champion), Hollywood films have often taken dramatic
class mobility as a central theme. While male characters often rise on the basis
of their hard work and individual talent/merit, women’s mobility on screen has
traditionally been linked to beauty capital and romantic trickery. In the gen-
dered class fantasies played out in classic Hollywood films like Sabrina, Pretty
Woman, and Born Yesterday, for example, a woman’s good looks are her ticket
out of the dingy world of class oppression.