The Portrayal of Class Stereotypes in the Television Drama Shameless Paul Abbot lived in Manchester throughout the early periods of his life. He lived and experienced the daily goings on first-hand, making his product, “Shameless”, semi-autobiographical. Combining the reality of Manchester’s underclass and his good sense of situational humour, Abbot moulded his most recently acclaimed TV drama with great intricacy. On many occasions, Abbot creates situations of which provide laughter for adult audiences, and additionally an accurate analysis of a social class forgotten and ignored by the surrounding society. Abbot is experienced in this to the extent that he can incorporate humour, without letting us question the verisimilitude of it all. One excellent demonstration of social class is at the breakfast table. We see Carl, aged 11, staring in admiration down at his two scrambled eggs, arranged like a pair of breasts. Slowly he moves his face down toward his plate, tongue protruding and looking as if he’s living an internal sexual fantasy. He manages about 2cms away from his food, only to be whacked on the head for immaturity by his older sister. The fact that Carl even attempts to do this at the dinner table surrounded by other family members, suggests a lack of mature manly influence, absentness of male pride and additionally a child with little knowledge of how to treat and act around women collectively. The oldest manly influence he has is his father, Frank; a poorly dressed, drastically under-groomed and violent alcoholic whose views on women are of a chauvinist nature. The fact that Carl has been exposed to sexual innuendoes and conversations at the age of eleven portrays an undignified, abnormally conducted family with a poor social class. Fiona reaching into the bin to retrieve a used packet of cigarettes is a short, yet important scene in the middle of the episode. The fact that Fiona is willing to reach into a bin amongst the past few days of garbage, for something as trivial as a small cardboard box, introduces me to the concept that Abbot is attempting to convey another common
In the film Mean Girls, teenager Cady Heron was home-schooled in Africa by her zoologist parents. When her family moves to the U.S., Cady finally gets a taste of public school and learns a vital lesson about the cruelty involved in the tightly knit cliques of high school. She eventually finds herself being drug into a group of “the worst people you will ever meet”, The Plastics; and soon realizes how they came to get their name.
She needs to be strong for the whole family while dealing with this tough situation, and most importantly, she has to be encouraging for her daughter. Jessica’s mom murmurs to her, “Things will get better. I promise you, they will” (Van Draanen 58). Her mom knows that her life is grim and it feels like the end of the world to her daughter. She can only make her feel better by continuing to encourage her and give her love and support. Jessica thinks to herself, “She waves back, but even from the curb I can feel her worry, and I suddenly realize that it has nothing to do with the wheelchair or with me falling. The last time Fiona drove me away in her Subaru, it took me more than a week to come home” (Van Draanen 77). Her mom has to decide whether she is going to live in fear of her daughter getting hurt every time she leaves home. This accident was a trying time for everybody in their family and it affected all of
Racial stereotypes, the automatic and mental pictures that people hold about members of a certain race. Stereotypes can be found for any race or ethnicity and are typically generalized to a whole group of people, rather than to one individual and their differences. Although racism itself is not as common in today’s world, racial stereotypes do exist and are very common. The popular sitcom, The Office, addresses the serious issue of racial stereotypes by Michael Scott to its audience with different races of characters.
Sheryl Sandberg, an American technology executive, activist, author, and Chief Operating Officer of Facebook, once said, “We can each define ambition and progress for ourselves. The goal is to work toward a world where expectations are not set by the stereotypes that hold us back, but by our personal passion, talents and interests.” Sandberg mentions how people’s expectations are set by stereotypes, which the media reinforces. The stereotypes of social class are extremely prevalent in the media through the way the wealthy, the middle class, and poor class are portrayed. Dianne Kendall, a professor of sociology at Baylor University, wrote the 2005 book Framing Class: Media Representations of Wealthy and Poverty in America with the excerpt “ Framing Class, Vicarious Living, and Conspicuous Consumption” that analyzes how the media
Strained Relationships, Resentment and Indignation Between the Classes in Great Expectations Great expectations is a profound story. It contains the theme of love,
The film “A League of Their Own,” depicts a fictionalized tale of the All American Girls Professional Baseball League. This league was started during World War II when many of the Major Leagues Biggest stars were drafted to the war. MLB owners decided to start this league with hopes of making money while the men were overseas fighting. Traditional stereotypes of women in sports were already in force before the league even begins. One of the scouts letts Dottie, one of the films main characters she is the perfect combination of looks as well as talent. The scout even rejects one potential player because she is not as pretty as the league is looking for even though she is a great baseball player. The player, Marla’s father said if she was a boy she would be playing for the Yankee’s. Eventually Mara’s father is able to convince the scout to take Marla to try outs because he raised her on his own after her mother died. Her father says it is his fault his daughter is a tomboy. In this case the film reinforces the traditional stereotype that mothers are in charge of raising their daughters and teaching them to be a lady, where fathers are incapable of raising girls to be anything other than a tomboy. The focus on beauty also reinforces the traditional stereotype that men will only be interested in women’s sports when the females participating in
The film being analysed is the Breakfast Club, directed by John Hughes. Trapped in Saturday detention are 5 stereotyped teens. Claire, the princess, Andrew, the jock, John, the criminal, Brian, the brain, and Allison, the basket case. At 7 am, they had nothing to say, but by 4 pm; they had uncovered everything to each other. The students bond together when faced with the their principal, and realise that they have more in common than they think, including a hatred for adult society. They begin to see each other as equal people and even though they were stereotyped they would always be The Breakfast Club. The Breakfast Club highlights a variety of pressures that are placed upon teenagers through out high school. One of the most challenging aspects of screenwriting is creating characters that an audience can identify with, relate to, and be entertained by.
On television today you will see stereyotypes of male and female roles in society. These stereyotyps are exemplified in many tv shows and even childrens cartoons. Some shows which stereyotype sex roles include, the flintstones, the jetsons, and almost every sitcom on television.
Standing up for what one believes in is not always easy. The book Twelve Angry Men by Reginald Rose should be taught in schools for many reasons. The book is about the trial of a sixteen year old boy accused of killing his father. The boy’s fate is determined by the decision reached by twelve jurors in a New York jury room. Twelve Angry Men displays the effects that one person can have on a group, it teaches the value of being part of a jury, and it explores how stereotypes and prejudices can have an effect on someone’s decision or beliefs.
Social class is a system of social stratification, the hierarchy creates specific types of social inequalities. Social inequality refers to the existence of social inequalities created such as ownership, types of occupation that creates differences in wealth, income and power, while social stratification refers to the existence of social groups. Class can be arranged to economic factors such as income, education, wealth and other factors at work. Poverty remains high and could argue that true poverty cannot exist in a country as rich as the United States. It is clear that poverty has an impact on certain groups of people, while other groups have it easy, but poverty is often associated with something low education, poor health and social inequalities groups. Nearly a quarter of less than high school (23.6%) education live below the poverty line, while 3.6% of people with tertiary education live below the poverty line (U.S. Census 2007). The assumption that poverty is something that adds to increasing educational opportunities for the poor and education overall, suggests that it is very difficult to get out of poverty. You can see some similarities between health, poverty and employment status. The results of poor health, poor health contributes to poverty, and the difficulty of working full time. These are all things that come to be in a state of poverty.
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All these types discrimination work to create an undeniable presumption everyone should make ,which has the power to destroy people and their social morale.All of these types of discrimination are in place because of people who differ from the apex heterosexual ,caucasian male, that has access to wealth and resources.Because the United states is ever changing and becoming more diverse by each decade discrimination becomes more and more common because the masses of the society diverges from the apex rich white male. Classism is in place to cause people of higher class to presume negativity about anyone that appears flower class including lesser intelligence and
Identity is a substantial component of a person, it’s something that determines who they are and help establish themselves with people who you find enjoyable and shares similar interests. It could bring people together, and provide a sense of belonging and unity. However, there are times where these people who are within certain cliques are perceived more negatively or believe that all people within that group perpetually have a certain set of traits. In most cases, these negative perceptions lead to discrimination and conflict, and obscures the positive and more genuine traits of an individual. In S.E. Hinton’s book, The Outsiders, there is a group of poor and lower-middle class teens who are labeled as greasers. This group of wild teenagers
During a review by Vox, of the gender biases in Hollywood that were reported by the data visualization website Polygraph, over 2,000 movies underwent scrutiny in determining why men have more dialogue in movies, even in those that are supposed to be focused on the lead female characters. In what was stated to be one of the largest analyses of script reviews of all time, it was determined that the male characters within the study overrule women in over 78% of the analyzed films. This was concluded through a cross-analysis of character information such as name, gender, and age, with the information reported by the popular movie database, IMDB. The results of their study are astonishing. In the 2,005 screenplays across all movie genres that were reviewed by Polygraph, only two movies were delivered 100% by the lead female character. Conversely, the male dominated list has not only the largest number of results;
In the novel Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, Pip's struggle and ultimate failure to become a gentleman was due to social pressure. Dickens comments the stratums of the Victorian social class system. The novel shows that money cannot buy love or guarantee happiness. Pip's perspective is used to expose the confusing personality of someone transcending social barriers. Dickens also shows a contrast between both class and characters.