Working Class- The Classic Idiot

Blog 8

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The media is filled with stereotypes, and the one thing that never gets old is the working class idiot (as seen on the Simpsons, Family Guy, King of Queens, The Office, and so on). “Studies of comic strips, radio serials, television series, movies, and popular fiction reveal a very persistent pattern, underrepresenting working-class occupations and overrepresenting professional and marginal occupations, minimizing the visibility of the working class” (Butsch, p. 101). The working class is said to be taboo because no one talks about it unless it is the middle or upper class. The media wants to produce settings with lavish stuff to get people wanting to live lavishly like their favorite television show. However, when the media does script a working class family, the main character (mainly the dad) is a complete idiot.

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            In Family Guy, the father, Peter, is a working man trying to provide food for their family. However, Peter is said to be diagnosed as a retard in the show (only a couple time it has came up). Peter is also a belligerent drunk and likes to get into stupid schemes. In other shows, such as, The King of Queens, Doug is also a working man at a UPS delivery type of job. Doug is seen as the funny man and does stupid things to make people laugh. Doug is the comedy in the show, and so is Peter the comedy of the show. Other types of shows and movies with working class introduced seem to have a common theme the idiot. Do the media conglomerates believe people in the working class are stupid, lazy, and obnoxious? Although these characters make us all laugh, couldn’t there be more of a realistic representation of the working class out there? The real representations are barely visible. In the movie Maid in Manhattan, Jennifer Lopez plays a working woman, Marissa, who is a maid at a hotel. Marissa is shown as a hard working woman and will do anything to get ahead for a better life for her and her son. In the media there are realistic views of the working class; however, realistic views of the working class is hard to find and recognize since it is so taboo.

 

Maid in Manhattan

            In order to see more realism and less fictional stereotypes of the working class, people may not feel embarrassed they are part of the working class. Since the working class is taboo because no one wants to talk about, then eliminating the negative stereotypes will allow people to open up more. We need to eliminate:

…[the] attitude based on the presumption that these sitcoms repeated again and again-that this man is dumb, immature, irresponsible, lacking common sense, often frustrated and sometimes angry. This legitimates his low pay and close supervision at work... It is that disrespect that is the ultimate “hidden injury” that working class interviews expressed… (Butsch, p.107).

By eliminating the stereotype sitcoms represent of the working class, the working class then may feel appreciated and well represented opposed to underappreciated and underrepresented.

References

Butsch, R. Ralph, Fred, Archie, Homer, and the King of Queens: Why television keeps re-creating
           the male working-class buffoon. In Dines, G. & Humez J. M. (Ed.). Gender, race, and, class in 
           media (pp. 101-9). Thousand Oaks, C.A.: Sage.