Paul Bennett
Literature Review
CMC 400
March 16 , 2011
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Where is Class:
A In depth view of the obfuscation of class in Hollywood
Hollywood hides the fact that there is an implicit problem with the American class
structure. Our social and economic systems would not work without the myth of classlessness in
mass media. This literature review presents the arguments of many scholars, with a goal in
proving that many of the ideological messages about class can be found implicitly hidden in
movies. Also to argue that many of the issues have been transformed into arguments about
gender, race, etc. Hollywood has changed in the past 50 years. Movies have become more
progressive including issues such as gender and race, but the issue of class never seems to be
solely addressed.
What is Class
Class is a very old concept. Class has been studied by theorist for hundreds of years.
Many of the early scholars wrote volumes on class and the function of class in society. Marx,
one of the first scholars to study class, explained that class “ is a group of people who by virtue
of what they possess are compelled to engage in the same activities if they want to make the best
use of their endowments.” (Elster 331) Marx is stating that class represents the distinction that
separate people by economic status. He explains that class is what distinguishes people in
society, by separating them by how much capital they have. This is negative because, as Marx
explains, people with more capital, which usually are the upper class, control most of the goods
and services. Class becomes a power struggle between the haves and have nots; those having less
being oppressed by people having more. “It is an intermediate case in that one class is assumed
to be fully class consciousness, and as a collective actor takes step to prevent the members of
other class from achieving class consciousness.” (Elster 347) Class establishes the importance of
capital by creating a hierarchy. Capital is spread out unevenly throughout the classes creating a
never ending struggle. “In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, is developed, in the same
proportion is the proletariat, the modern working class, developed- a class of labourers, who live
only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labour increases capital.”
(Grusky 72) Economic status is not the only capital established by class. Culture capital is
comparable to economic capital when explaining the status of each class. Bourdieu explains this
in great detail. “The members of the professions, who have high incomes and high qualifications,
who very often originate from the dominate class who receive a large quantity of both material
and cultural goods, are opposed in almost all respects to the office workers, who have low
qualifications, often originate form the working or middle class, who receive little and consume
little.” (Grusky 404) Bourdieu explains that cultural capital another distinctive factor in
separating and classifying the social space. “Classificatory system, which is the product of the
internalization of the structure of social space, in the form in which it impinges through the
experience of a particular position in that space, is, within the limits of economic possibilities
and impossibilities, the generator of practices adjusted to the regularities inherent in a condition.”
(Grusky 410) Those with more cultural capital could be in the top class just as if it was economic
capital. An example of cultural capital would be someone with a Harvard degree. Both cultural
capital and economic capital helped class establish distinctive status for anyone in the social
space. This struggle for capital within classes still happens today in America.
The effect of class on American Society
Class is very important to understand in terms of social power. It is an invisible
distinction that sets some people apart from others. “The American class system does not
officially exist. Most Americans can, however feel the impact of the class system and are aware
of it but are unable to define it.” (Kalra xi) Class system in America dictates where people are in
society in a hierarchical fashion. Class dictates to a person’s worth in the American society. A
bum on the street is regarded worthless compared to a wealthy Wall Street banker. “A prime
objective of the American class system is to ensure upper class ownership and control over most
of the nation’s productive wealth.” (Kalra 123) The upper class wants to remain in complete
power.
Ideology and Hegemony
Capitalism creates a discrepancy between the amounts of capital dispersed between the
classes. The ruling class which usually hold the most cultural and economic capital usual has the
dominant ideology. The ideology is a set of ideas which influence the way a society thinks. Karl
Marx was one of the first to talk about the idea of ruling class ideology. Marx explained that
“The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is ruling
material force of society, is at the same time ruling intellectual force.” (Grusky Marx 78) This
dominant ideology over the other classes is called hegemony which was created through the
Marxist intellectual Antonio Gramsci. Gramsci believed that a society can be temporarily be
controlled by a single class in a society. To remain hegemonic this class would have to maintain
their ideology within the lower classes. Cultural hegemony is very important to American
society. In American Society a small percentage of the population owns a large amount of the
wealth of the country. This super-rich minority does this be using cultural hegemony. They
maintain the certain ideologies to keep the enormous amount of cultural and economic capital
they have acquired.
American Dream Ideology
The American Dream Ideology is noted by many sociologist a wide spread myth
throughout the nation. This myth of the American Dream helps the super class maintain their
wealth. There is a super class of ten percent that owns eighty percent of the wealth in the United
States. The rest of that 20 percent is shared between the middle and lower classes. With this
wealth comes a hegemonic dominance of ideology and unbelievable political and corporate
power. The American Dream defined by, Jennifer Hochschild, is the “promise that all Americans
have a reasonable chance to achieve success as they define it- material or otherwise- through
their own efforts, and to attain virtue and fulfillment through success.” (19) The American dream
is the belief that there are endless opportunities in the American society for a citizen to achieve
“success” and/or social mobility. The problem with this ideology is that it is a myth. By assuring
people in America that they can achieve social mobility they are convincing people that there is
no rigidness to the social hierarchy. People tend believe that they can do better than their fathers.
It is wrong that many people are so mislead in American Society. “Social wrong is accepted in
America partly because differences in knowledge about class help to obscure it, and the key to
those differences is the degree of acceptance of the myth classlessness.” (Demott 33) The
American Dream legitimizes the myth of classlessness which upholds the stance that there are no
real class distinctions and that anyone can make their way to the top class with hard work. There
are many factors that allow you to achieve success in America. Hard work and determination
don’t necessarily lead you to success even though that is what it taught in this country. “If
success is measured competitive and defined narrowly, however, the ideology portrays a
different America. Hard work and virtue combined with scare resources produce a few
spectacular winners and many dismissible losers.” (Hochschild 25) The American Dream
continues to drive people’s lives in the American society. This is a powerful tool in the social
hierarchy machine which keeps the super class powerful.
How and Why Class is obscured?
Class as I stated before is obscured because of capitalistic struggle in the class hierarchy.
The ruling class lives to maintain their status at the top and remain hegemonic. The super-rich,
ruling class uses the obscurification of class to keep the class struggle from entering the public
space so that people don’t try to change the system. The U.S. social system is hard to see through
because it is being rationalized and legitimized by the ideology. This is a great problem with the
ideology itself, because those who fall victim to it become bounded it to it morally. C. Wright
Mills was the first to write about recognizing the system. He called it the sociological
imagination. “The first fruit of this imagination- and the first lesson of the social science that
embodies it- is the idea that the individual can understand his own experience and gauge his own
fate by locating himself within his period, that he can know his own chances in life only by
becoming aware of those of all individual in his circumstances...The sociological imagination
enables to grasp history and biography and the relations between the two within society. That is
its task and its promise.” (Mills 21) A citizen, who failed at achieving the American dream, may
become unable to explain what they did wrong in life that led them to fail. Without a sociological
imagination they cannot see that it is the system rather than their own faults. The ideology is
legitimized for the system to work. People do not recognize the issues within social class system
in the U.S..
Mass Culture and the Media
“Many citizens use the mass media as aids for coping with an increasingly complicated
often frustrating society.” (Chaffee and Patrick 10) People rely on the media for information. The
media is controlled by super class hegemony just like the social system. The American dream
ideology and myth of classlessness is intertwined within televised news and entertainment.
“Entrenched interest groups, both private and public, continue to use the media to solicit support
for the status quo.” (Chaffee and Patrick 10) The messages transferred to the greater the
population seem to be unbiased and realistic portrayals. This is a media magic trick. The media
keeps the conversation from ever leaving out realm of the hegemonic ideology. Noam Chomsky
explains this in detail in his interview on understand power. “What are called opinions ‘on the
left’ and ‘on the right’ in the media represent only a limited spectrum of debate, which reflects
the range of needs of private power- but there’s essentially nothing beyond those “acceptable”
positions...the debate only enhances the strength of the assumptions, ingraining them in people’s
as the entire possible spectrum of opinion that there is.” (Mitchell and Schoeffel 13) The media
keeps class out of the conversation by using coded language when talking about class. This
coded language reinforces the ideology and social system. “Instead there is a great tendency to
talk in murky tones about ‘attitudes’ and ‘values’ and ‘images’ and the like.” (Chaffee and
Patrick 118) Demott explains that by diverging the conversation with this coded language that
they enhance and legitimize the myth of classlessness. He explains that, “they outline-vaguely
yet seductively – grounds for discounting the evident social differences in our midst. And by
indirection they account for the presumed American uniqueness- our imagined luck in escaping
the hierarchies that burden the rest of the developed world.” (Demott 29) Demott argues that
class distinctions are dismissed in the public eye and that it is asserted, “That social differences
are hard, fast, and momentous.” (33) He uses the example that when Bob Dole ran for senator, he
poised himself as a regular man from Iowa even though he had millions of dollars in trust funds.
When he appeared on television he donned a brooks brother’s fur coat. “When reporters inquired
about the fur-collared coat, the candidate exchanged it for plainer garb- and went on repeating
the theme: I am one of you.” (Demott 33) This extraordinary example of the obscurification of
class is just one of many examples of how fixed levels in the hierarchical system in America are
masked.
Transfer of Class Issues in Movies
“Media images have so much power they distort reality” (Hooks 15) Many movies deal
with narratives about homosexuality, race, gender, abuse, etc. Many movies seem to omit the
issues of class. Movies play a big part in relaying ideological messages. The giant corporations
who want stay in the super rich class are the companies that produce the movies at their studios.
We are fed so many messages through movies that it’s almost subliminal. “Artists in this culture
have difficulty imaginatively seeing the whole picture because we have all been socialized to
learn in parts – to see only fragments.” (Hooks 27) In her book, Bell Hooks observes the fact that
class is not a main issue identified in movies. She doesn’t observe class as a single issue. She
mainly links class to race. “As the film (Hoop Dreams) began, a voyeuristic pleasure at being
able to observe from a distance the lives of two black boys form working class and poor inner
city backgrounds overcame the crowd. This lurid fascination with “watching” a documentary
about two African American teenagers striving to become NBA players was itself profound
documentation of the extent to which black life, particularly the lives of poor and underclass
black people, can become cheap entertainment even if that is not what filmmakers intended…
this film tells the world the American dream works.” (Hooks 78) In her example about the film,
Hoop Dreams, she realizes that they use race and class together but doesn’t explicitly explain
that class is a main distinction between the characters. In American film, the only way class is
brought to the forefront of discussion is through coded language and with another issue. “Yet it
is the marker of class positionality that can remain unseen, go unnoticed eclipsed by our
fascinations with sex and race.” (Hooks 92) Class is goes very unnoticed but has great power
within the movies and relies on subtle cues to release its potent messages. “Keeping in mind this
fluidity of American social and economic status, it is still unquestionably true that class and its
boundaries have always figured in American literature and movies, as they have in the society. If
anything, the more fluid status of American Class divisions has meant that class a kind of
mysterious quality.” (Powers, Rothman, and Rothman 139) It is clear to see that class
distinctions play a huge part in society as shown through movies. The role isn’t as explicitly
shown as it should be which creates dilemma because they’re messages of ideology and social
class are as strong as the have ever been.
“On my Honor I have not given, nor received, nor witnessed any unauthorized assistance on this work.”
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