class dismissed

The new documentary Class Dismissed offers a useful, if brief, overview of how popular television programs have represented working class culture for the past fifty-five years. The film exposes how the shift to product-driven programming ("let's give the Borax soap dancers a round of applause, ladies and gentlemen") in the mid-1950s facilitated the shift to programs about upward mobility. Shows like "I Remember Mama" (about working-class, ethnic--albeit white enthic--families) largely disappeared in favor of "Ozzie and Harriet" et al which took place in suburbs. The latter, of course, put products and gadgets and expensive goods and suburbs at the heart of the narratives. Symbols of class mobility, markers of happiness.

Few revelations in the film, though, as familiar talking heads like Barbara Ehrenreich discuss how television foregrounds individuality, meritocracy, and other mythic, capitalist values. But, again, a useful synthesis of how programs tend to emphasize and idealize life in the professional and managerial classes and either gloss over life in the lower strata ("What's Happening" with its happy depictions of downward mobility) or rehearse bootstraps narratives of moving out of the lower strata (e.g., "The Jeffersons"). Those few television characters who DON'T rise to middle-class life generally display some combination of five overlapping qualities:

• bad taste (downward mobility as lifestyle choice/style/subculture a la "Mama's Family")
• lack of intelligence (downward mobility as result of clown-like gullibility a la Ralph Kramden)
• disinterest in political life or adoption of reactionary politics (Archie Bunker's the obvious example of the latter--advocating political ideology opposed to his own interests)
• poor work ethic (two words: Homer Simpson)
• dysfunctional family values (like the folks in "Married with Children")

The documentary clarifies the notion that these depictions offer *explanations* for (personal, individual) "failures" like the failure to climb into comfortable, aesthetically pleasing, functioning, cultural-capital-laden lives.

But of course the film is held back by the constraints of the genre. The talking heads. The familiar faces, speaking in front of the bookcases in their offices. The expected critique. The neat and tidy taxonomy (see my five bullet points above) of working-class archetypes--which, not coincidentally, make for dandy dvd chapters (just as they make for dandy bullet points in a blog post, I suppose). Interesting that this genre of critique-the-media documentaries (Ethnic Notions, any of the Media Education Foundation's releases, and loads of others) creates films that are exactly the length of most college classes. Hmmm.

Also interesting that this genre wears its "independent film" identity on its sleeve, touting its liberation from the corporate media. What are the virtues of indies? First, free of the constraints that come along with studios pushing predictable narratives and market-tested content. Second, free of the political pressure from said studios. And yet, this genre has become just as predictable (sit public intellectual down in his or her office and let said intellectual summarize the thesis of his/her last book, etc, etc) as a hollywood action film. And in terms of politics, a one-sided critique with no voices that dissent from the dissent.

How will i-movie and you tube challenge this genre? What new activist modes of media critique will emerge in the coming years? What visual rhetorics will these homegrown films put into full effect?

This is not to dismiss the usefulness of Class Dismissed, which offers a stimulating, straight-to-the-point, even compelling analysis of corporate, capitalist class television programs. I plan to screen the film later in the semester for my honors course in working-class culture. But I also plan to encourage the students in that class to create their own documents that challenge (no, resist) both genre constraints and easily packaged political analysis.