Representations of the upper class and wealth
Neo-Marxists argue that mass media
representations of social class tend to celebrate hierarchy and wealth. Those
who benefit from these processes, i.e. the monarchy, the upper class and the
very wealthy, generally receive a positive press as celebrities who are somehow
deserving of their position. The British mass media hardly ever portray the
upper classes in a critical light, nor do they often draw any serious attention
to inequalities in wealth and pay or the overrepresentation of public-school
products in positions of power.
Newman (2006) argues that the media focus very
positively on the concerns of the wealthy and the privileged. He notes that the
media over-focuses on consumer items such as luxury cars, costly holiday spots
and fashion accessories that only the wealthy can afford. He also notes the
enormous amount of print and broadcast media dedicated to daily business news
and stock market quotations, despite the fact that few people in Britain own
stocks and shares.
Representations of the middle classes
Four broad sociological observations can be made with regard to mass media
representations of the middle classes.
Four broad sociological observations can be made with regard to mass media
representations of the middle classes.
·
The middle class are over-represented on TV dramas and
situation comedies.
·
Part of the British newspaper market is specifically
aimed at the middle classes and their consumption, tastes and interests, e.g.
the Daily Mail.
·
The content of newspapers such as the Daily Mail
suggests that journalists believe that the middle classes of middle England are
generally anxious about the decline of moral standards in society and that they
are proud of their British identity and heritage. It is assumed that their
readership feels threatened by alien influences such as the Euro, asylum
seekers and terrorism. Consequently, newspapers, such as the Daily Mail, often
crusade on behalf of the middle classes and initiate moral panics on issues
such as video nasties, paedophilia and asylum seekers.
·
Most of the creative personnel in the media are
themselves middle class. In news and current affairs, the middle classes
dominate positions of authority – the ‘expert’ is invariably middle class.
Representations of the working class
Newman argues that when news organisations focus on the working class, it is generally to label them as a problem, e.g. as welfare cheats, drug addicts or criminals. Working class groups, e.g. youth sub-cultures such as mods or skinheads, are often the subject of moral panics, whilst reporting of issues such as poverty, unemployment or single-parent families often suggests that personal inadequacy is the main cause of these social problems, rather than government policies or poor business practices. Studies of industrial relations reporting by the Glasgow University Media Group suggest that the media portray ‘unreasonable’ workers as making trouble for ‘reasonable’ employers.
Newman argues that when news organisations focus on the working class, it is generally to label them as a problem, e.g. as welfare cheats, drug addicts or criminals. Working class groups, e.g. youth sub-cultures such as mods or skinheads, are often the subject of moral panics, whilst reporting of issues such as poverty, unemployment or single-parent families often suggests that personal inadequacy is the main cause of these social problems, rather than government policies or poor business practices. Studies of industrial relations reporting by the Glasgow University Media Group suggest that the media portray ‘unreasonable’ workers as making trouble for ‘reasonable’ employers.
Curran and Seaton (2003) note that
newspapers aimed at working class audiences assume that they are uninterested
in serious analysis of either the political or social organisation of British
society. Political debate is often reduced simplistically to conflict between
personalities. The content of newspapers such as The Sun and the Daily Star
assumes that such audiences want to read about celebrity gossip and lifestyles,
trivial human interest stories and sport.
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-32824770
The gap between the rich and the poor keeps widening, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) says.
'The OECD warns that such inequality is a threat to economic growth.'
http://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/aug/17/elysium-neill-bloomkamp-interview -
The gap between the rich and the poor keeps widening, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) says.
'The OECD warns that such inequality is a threat to economic growth.'
http://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/aug/17/elysium-neill-bloomkamp-interview -
'The only way things will change is if we're smart enough to
develop technology that can think us out of this, meaning augmenting ourselves
genetically to be smart enough to change shit'
‘Earth is a giant slum, a totalitarian nightmare in
which citizens live like rats with Elysium glowing above them, like
"Bel Air in space," says Blomkamp.’
‘Elysium may be set in the future, but it's merely an
amplification of an age-old problem. "The issues raised by Elysium have
been in existence as long as homo sapiens,"
‘We have biological systems built into us that were very
advantageous for us, up until we became a functioning civilisation 10,000 years
ago. We are literally genetically coded to preserve life, procreate and get
food – and that's not gonna change. The question is whether you can somehow
overpower certain parts of that mammalian DNA and try to give some of your
money out, try to take your wealth and pour it out for the rest of the
planet."
'The way that someone
interprets their own place in British society can affect self-esteem, ambition
and achievement.'
‘The Great British Class Survey results published by the
BBC today claims to brush away the traditional upper, middle and working class
categorisation and, based on the responses of over 161,000 people’
'Social mobility is still very much alive: it’s just that
it’s now going mostly in the wrong direction'
“class relates to the way in
which people make their living in the labour market, and status relates more to
the way they then spend those earnings, their patterns of consumption and their
lifestyle and social intimates.”
‘Over the last century we have seen a continual weakening in
status distinctions’
The Labour MP Emily Thornberry’s tweet. On the surface,
it was simply a photograph of a house and a van with a factual caption: “Image
from #Rochester.” But in matters of class, especially in England, it’s what
under the surface that really counts. The St George’s cross and white van are
symbols of a certain kind of England that is held in suspicion, if not
contempt, by metropolitan opinion. To some, they evoke a belligerent
nationalism and an aggressive maleness. There may be legitimate political or
ideological reasons for this unease but it’s hard to disconnect them from a
fear, or horror, of the white working class.
“Status still matters,” says Goldthorpe. “The difference now
is that when people who see themselves being of higher status adopt derogatory
positions, there is a sharp response.”
The return of class, says Goldthorpe, has not come clothed in
old Marxist fashions. Instead he notes that both in Britain and in several
other countries in Europe “it’s the growth of what one might call rightwing
popularism that attracts significant working-class support”.
‘social class is more likely to determine how well a pupil
will perform if that child is white than if they are from other ethnic groups.’
‘cultural aspirations and expectations, as well as parental
support for education. This appears to have been the case for Indian and
Chinese pupils for many years’
‘They also discovered that African and Bangladeshi girls had
vastly improved their GCSE grades in the last few years.’
‘Poverty affects grades less among non-white children with
social divide noticeable from primary school’
‘You can tell a lot about a country’s neuroses by what’s on
its television sets... Britain’s TV schedules, by contrast, are completely
steeped in class, and have long been so. From laughing at poor people on
Benefits Street to laughing at rich people in You Can’t Get the Staff,
this is how Britain likes to unwind in the evening: by sneering at other
classes, and sneering at people for sneering about class.’
‘All countries are interested in status – in the US this is
usually expressed by a fascination with money and, increasingly, fame. But
only in Britain is there this kind of paralysing myopia where a person is
defined eternally by where their parents sent them to school, where snobbery
and inverse snobbery clash with equal force and explode into a fiery ball
of angry arguments involving such seemingly random – but actually deeply
significant – things like grammar schools and John Lewis.’
‘Perhaps Britain’s class obsession is a way of consoling
itself that old rules still exist, even if the empire doesn’t.’
‘You guys can barely hang on to Scotland – no wonder you try
to distract yourselves by talking obsessively about schools and cutlery.’
Elite Theory
The theory posits that a small minority, consisting of
members of the economic elite and policy-planning networks,
holds the most power and that this power is independent of a state's democratic
elections process.
The aristocratic version of this theory is the classical
elite theory which is based on two ideas:
1. Power lies in position of
authority in key economic and political institutions.
2. The psychological difference
that sets elites apart is that they have personal resources, for instance
intelligence and skills, and a vested interest in the government; while the
rest are incompetent and do not have the capabilities of governing themselves,
the elite are resourceful and will strive to make the government work. For in
reality, the elite have the most to lose in a failed government.
Mosca emphasized the sociological and personal
characteristics of elites. He said elites are an organized minority and that
the masses are an unorganized majority. The ruling class is composed of the
ruling elite and the sub-elites. He divides the world into two groups:
1. Ruling class
2. Class that is ruled
Mosca asserts that elites have intellectual, moral, and
material superiority that is highly esteemed and influential.
Marx
According to philosopher Karl Marx, "class" is
determined entirely by one's relationship to the means of production, the
classes in modern capitalist society being the
"proletarians": those who work but do not own the means of
production, the "bourgeoisie": those who invest and live off of the
surplus generated by the former, and the aristocracy that has land as
a means of production. Class consciousness is not simply an awareness of one's own
class interest but is also a set of shared views regarding how society should
be organized legally, culturally, socially and politically. These class
relations are reproduced through time.
"The media tend to reinforce the popular prejudice"
"The lives of royalty and the jet setting lifestyle of
the rich are portrayed as a glamorous world we can only dream about" This
idea of audience dreaming is lined with the genre of science
fiction.”
Google Book: Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy- Joseph A.
Schumpeter
"We have thus, fundamentally, two and only two classes,
those owners, the capitalists, and those have-nots who are compelled to sell
their labour, the labouring class or the proletariat."
"Marx defies capitalism sociologically by the
institution of private control over means of production"
"Britain is one of the most unequal countries in the
western world: the richest one per cent own a vast proportion of the
wealth"
“Though some 1950s films contained anti-war messages, science
fiction turned much more sharply to the left in the 1960s and 1970s, addressing
issues such as corporate corruption, government duplicity, and ecological
destruction.”
“The film portraying the greatest ecological disaster is
surely Soylent Green , in which the greenhouse effect has made Earth
into an inferno and overpopulation is extreme.”
“The science fiction film genre has long served as a useful
vehicle for "safely" discussing controversial topical issues and
often providing thoughtful social commentary on potential unforeseen future
issues.”
“Most controversial issues in science fiction films tend to
fall into two general story lines, Utopian or dystopian. Either
a society will become better or worse in the future. Because of controversy,
most science fiction films will fall into the dystopian film category
rather than the Utopian category.”
“In the 1970s, science fiction films also became an effective
way of satirizing contemporary social mores”
“More recently, the headlines surrounding events such as
the Iraq War, international terrorism, the avian
influenza scare, and United States anti-immigration laws have found
their way into the consciousness of contemporary filmmakers.”
Black Space Imagining Race in Science Fiction Film By Adilifu
Nama 2008
“the genre offers the audience the opportunity to vicariously
experience a world without many of the challenges a society presently faces
and, in doing so, to contemplate ramifications of and potential responses to an
urgent social problem and present a hypothesized outcome or solution.”
“Science fiction films, with their fantastical plots and
far-off worlds, have the luxury to create any kind of character, social system,
and world within the confines of their narratives.”
“common sense tells us that biological traits such as eye
color, pigmentation, or hair texture does not entitle one group of people to
rule over the other on the false pretense of racial superiority.”
“Both SF cinema and the social construction of race rely on
the acceptance of fictions of the highest order to work”
Media Magazine Issue 47
“its impoverished inhabitants abused and herded by robotic
police.”
“the super-rich have escaped the deprivations of Earth to
live in a utopian idyll where any sickness can be cured at the flick of a
switch.”
“the space station was a form of gated community, the
ultimate version of the well-guarded estates where capitalism’s super rich keep
themselves isolated from the ordinary public.”
“The most recent
parallel is the tragic and continuing death toll of migrants, who in their
desperation to escape poverty and war, attempt lethal crossing from Africa in
leaking overcrowded boats, to reach their own version of ‘Elysium’ in Italy and
the rest of Europe.”
“The Sci Fi notion of the rich escaping to an ultramodern
paradise whilst leaving the massed poor behind can be found way back in
Metropolis itself.”
“Science fiction can be a uniquely poetic and thoughtful
genre.”
“Yet with the modern blockbuster, the underlying assumption
seems to be that audiences cannot handle – and do not want – depth.”
“Eye-catching spectacle, always a part of the genre,
becomes everything, with splashy visual set pieces needing to be laid on every
few minutes.”
“Hollywood has often been accused of infantilising
its content to appeal to young audiences”
Media Magazine Issue 50
“1930s, science fiction was not a film genre as such, but a
type of narrative that lent itself to adventure, fantasy, horror or spectacle.”
“they wanted to distinguish themselves from ‘sci-fi’, and to
promote SF as a ‘proper literary genre.”
Media Magazine Issue 51
“sci-fi film and TV has come to be seen as a place where a
diverse range of sexualities are represented.”
“These relatively rare examples of female sexuality – as
something other than submissive and virginal damsels in distress”
Media Magazine Issue 50 (Sci-fi fans and the power of the
tweet)
“sci-fi on TV has gone from strength to strength.”
“sci-fi generally has flourished because of the power of
audiences in using social media to create a commentary around their favourite
sci-fi texts.”
“Sci-fi audiences are traditionally seen as articulate,
intelligent and passionate”
“while Sci-Fi at the cinema has generally been quite poor
(too much CGI in place of character development, too many explosions in place
of ideas)”
Media Magazine 51 (Representation Old and New)
“that media products were constructed carefully in order to
create meaning. It is the combination of media language choices that construct
a representation. Understanding how representations are created, and how they
create meaning, is central to an understanding of the media, as everything that
appears in the media is in fact a representation.”
“Traditionally, the power to create representations has been
in the hands of media producers working within media institutions.”
“Representations are always, in some way, filtered through
someone’s point of view, and carry particular meanings or values. In other
words, they are ideological.”
“Hall’s critique is known as the ‘Encoding/Decoding
Model’…Hall argued that audiences do not necessarily accept the ideology of
texts passively, but instead draw on their own cultural and social experiences
to create their own interpretations.”
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