The prevalence of these TV shows may explain why so many Americans remain convinced of the prospects for upward mobility.
99% of all US movies and TV shows exclusively feature characters firmly planted in the labor aristocracy, if not positions of even greater wealth and comfort. Just browse Netflix and take a random sample. No characters are shown to be struggling to make ends meet. On the rare occasion they are featured, its either rags-to-riches or the character is shown to be in their "station" as a result of bad choices.
What this does is create the perception for the comfortable middle classes that basically everyone lives like them, and that poverty is a rare and transient problem. Despite the fact that ~40% of workers make $10.50/hr or less (pre-COVID) or that something like 2 in 3 Americans have less than $1,000 saved. American media is ruthlessly effective in hiding the struggles of the working class and making it seem like the labor aristocracy is Default America.
For further reading on this topic, I can highly recommend the book Fear of Failling. it was written during either the late eighties or very early nineties, and it details how American culture has been hiding poverty ever since the World War II ended. Most of the book is about the professional managerial class, and how they have been affected by the political economy from the 50's all the way to the late 80's. And poverty being hidden is a major theme, since the PMC kind of found their "goal" or "purpose" in their treatment of the symptoms of poverty. I finished the book over the last week, and I can HIGHLY recommend everyone read it. Especially if you yourself are in a kind-of comfortable position w.r.t. having a college degree and/or a pmc-type job.
Fear of Falling: The Inner Life of the Middle Class by Barbara Ehrenreich
Nickel and Dimed also very good, same author.
Unfortunately I know a lot of labor aristocrat libs who've read Ehrenreich and missed the point entirely.
Even in a lot of the "woke" shows that hogs like to whine about, they still uphold their fantasy of "rich people are the only ones that matter."
Case in point: A lot of Cartoon Network shows
- Steven Universe, the kid grows up in a FUCKING BEACH HOUSE and has so many Jesus parallels its absurd.
- We Bare Bears? Three bears that comfortably live in the Bay Area despite not really having a stable job. Not exactly "chosen one" per se, but there's no way that someone sub six figs lives that comfortably, let alone at all in the Bay Area.
Hell, even Scott Pilgrim is a bit of a breath of fresh air because the main character is an awkward "loser" archtype that tries to grow up. Yeah, he's a creep and the story is the textbook manic pixie dream girl, but at least Scott can be semi-relateable to young men who do feel like losers and want to grow up as well. Spider-man tells a rather working class story. But what would really be nice is the story about someone who lives in the midwest in a not-so-glamorous city: Let's say Columbus, Ohio. If they really want to mix things up, make it so that the main character never took a single college class and isn't "the chosen one" by any stretch of the imagination. Even better? Make them NOT conventionally attractive. No abs, not even a waifish twink. If people are able to create an amazing story with all this, they have more than proven to be god-tier storytellers.
Steven Universe:
spoiler
steven is literally the reincarnation of an immortal space empress
“The atom of propaganda is the emphasis, not the lie” :citations-needed:
"Nobody has to work at Burger King if they don't want to."
Burger King closes locations due to labor shortages.
"We need to force people back to these jobs. I want my whoppers."
liberal individualist deology taken to 100. i've got an uncle in the same boat. structural issues don't exist, society doesn't even exist; all of the world's problems are the result of individuals making bad decisions for themselves. very popular for boomers
If everyone took care of their finances, they could earn enough passive income that nobody would have to work!
In the early 20th century there were movements to force people into undesirable jobs "for the good of the economy" - aka slavery by another name. I can see shit like this coming back.
“A Suggestion on the Negro Problem”. Gilman wrote that the mere fact of Black people in America caused “social injury”. Her “suggestion” for that “problem”? A forced labor corp, complete with uniforms and bases.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/oct/07/kitchen-design-history-society
Coming back? This is already the modern reality. In the UK recently, average wages threatened to go up slightly and Amazon/McDonalds struggled to hire minimum wage workers - The response? Increases to cost of living, drop unemployment payouts, further restricting eligibility for benefits and recently a demand that employers stop giving employees wage increases.
Lo and behold, McDonalds and Amazon do not have trouble getting workers anymore. We live in a slavery system right now.
If we got our shit together you could work at burger king if you wanted to and that would be just as valid a career as any fortune 500 CEO (which would be eliminated).
Please don't insult food service by comparing it to CEOs :rat-salute: :chefs-kiss:
Working at the community kitchen would be pretty cool tbh
This! A lot of minimum-wage jobs today are obviously really desirable/essential, and would be actually be pretty fun/respected positions if it weren't all about wage slavery and actually about doing cool community stuff.
I feel like there's a similar effect with cop shows
The average person's experience with them probably ranges from they're useless to they're actively evil but a constant stream if cop shows probably keeps from realizing this
The cognitive dissonance is something else. I wonder how many of these thin blue line psychos are giddy with anticipation when they see those lights flash in their rear view mirror
The only prestige show I can think of off the top of my head that shows average americans struggling is Breaking Bad, the whole plot crux of the show is about how everyday people cannot afford healthcare and how crime pays a lot better than a day job.
"stay working because miracles happen and you'll make it big someday" was not the take home message i got from BB.
"stay working because eventually you will either have a drug overdose and die or get shot by someone for dealing meth"
A lot of Breaking Bad fans really got. that message though, which is why they found the final acts of the story shocking. Like a lot of them hated Skyler because she's the party pooper mean lady who keeps getting in the way of Walt's fun, until the final act where people goes "holy shit Skyler is right all long".
BB is difficult for its fandom because it took a sympathetic protagonist and turned him into an unsympathetic villain over the course of several seasons without a giant flashcard popping up to say "Walt is the bad guy".... despite the fact that it's in the title. whatever poor analysis we imagine is being done by the teeming hordes of sigma grindset weirdos comes from this and their own preloaded ideology, not the show's presentation of the world.
Yeah that's true. Walt becomes a multi-millionaire basically through hard work and determination, only it's cooking meth and killing rival dealers and not being a plucky upstart on Wall Street or something.
It's important to note that Walt's pettiness & pride are the things that makes his situation different from his old partners.
He left Grey Matter because he felt too proud to be Gretchen's peer, and later refused financial assistance from her and her husband because this made him feel inferior.
Breaking Bad still showcases how shitty these things are, but Walt is not an everyday people.
shameless is probably one of the only shows to ever be genuinely funny vs being “”funny“” in a mega contrived or just flat out cringe way
Hell, I remember watching Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous when I was little
That show didn't even pretend to be like "You could have this too!" and yet...
My favorite thing in the world is to tell hogs that THEY'RE the ones that fall for Hollywood propaganda, not the left.
Hell, the boomers still insist they're rootin' tootin' cowboys even if they have a cushy office job and the closest they are to being a cowboy is being a white American with a pickup that lives in a suburb.
I would like to recommend Good Girls as a modern example of a show that is anti-rags-to-riches. The protagonists of the show turn to crime because of financial struggles, but as their criminal enterprises grow, they find that they are still struggling making their financial obligations, but not with more personal risk. Additionally Good Girls portrays the societal role of the police as complicated, enforcing rules based on subjective decisions rather than fairness.
