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Film | Class Dismissed: How TV Frames the Working Class

Les séries télévisées américaines contribuent à forger l’image que la classe ouvrière a d’elle-même. Voici un excellent documentaire à visionner et à partager pour comprendre le rôle de ces médias dans la disparition d’une conscience de classe aux USA et en Amérique du Nord.

Sitcoms, reality shows, police dramas are actively constructing America’s working class self-representation or in other words the image the workers have of themselves. Here’s an excellent documentary to watch, and share, in the mean of raising awareness about how corporate media drives us workers away from the consciousness of being who we are as a social economic and political class today.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6ZS91cqpa8&w=420&h=315]

Class Dismissed dares to open our eyes to television’s role in disappearing class from the American consciousness. The carefully crafted interviews set against humorous clips show how stereotypes of working-class buffoons distance us from the reality of corporate greed. Class Dismissed drives home the connections between class, gender and race to ongoing systems of inequality and reminds viewers of the importance of raising class consciousness if we are to succeed in forging meaningful models of citizenship in the future.

– Elizabeth L. Krause | Assistant Professor of Anthropology | University of Massachusetts Amherst

Read more on the Media education foundation web site
Based on the forthcoming book by Pepi Leistyna, Class Dismissed navigates the steady stream of narrow working class representations from American television’s beginnings to today’s sitcoms, reality shows, police dramas, and daytime talk shows.

Featuring interviews with media analysts and cultural historians, this documentary examines the patterns inherent in TV’s disturbing depictions of working class people as either clowns or social deviants — stereotypical portrayals that reinforce the myth of meritocracy.

Class Dismissed breaks important new ground in exploring the ways in which race, gender, and sexuality intersect with class, offering a more complex reading of television’s often one-dimensional representations. The video also links television portrayals to negative cultural attitudes and public policies that directly affect the lives of working class people.

Featuring interviews with Stanley Aronowitz, (City University of New York); Nickel and Dimed author, Barbara Ehrenreich; Herman Gray (University of California-Santa Cruz); Robin Kelley (Columbia University); Pepi Leistyna (University of Massachusetts-Boston) and Michael Zweig (State University of New York-Stony Brook). Also with Arlene Davila, Susan Douglas, Bambi Haggins, Lisa Henderson, and Andrea Press.

Sections: Class Matters | The American Dream Machine | From the Margins to the Middle | Women Have Class | Class Clowns | No Class | Class Action

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