A Slave Who Opposed the Status-Quo

Movies and popular culture constantly remind those below the upperclass that they can be the driving force in making change in the current staus-quo. Popular media is bought buy the masses. Case in point, the bulk of consumers is made up of the working class. The result; the rich get richer and the rest of us get poorer. Another perspective regarding the status-quo is the sustainability of the status-quo by those who are accepting of the way things are because that is simply the way things are. But how and when are things going to change? If we are constantly reminded by popular media that the common person has the ability to generate change by standing up well then why are social classes said to be losing a class? As you can see in the clip above Ridley Scotts character of Maximus, played by Russell Crow has gained the backing he needs to create change but did the world change? Simply put, have social classes changed since the times of the conquering Romans?

The world is becoming to hard to live in unless you're part of the super elite. Homes are to expensive to buy and to rent. Corporations and big wigs are buying everything of value and then inflating the balloon so much with gold helium that the working class has no way of reaching it. Marx saw the status-quo as a fundamental contradiction of capitalism, where the value of a product is divorced from the labor that went into producing it, and where the capitalist class benefits from the surplus value created by the labor of workers. He believed that this exploitation of workers and the commodification of nature would ultimately lead to social and economic crisis, and that a socialist system that prioritizes the needs of the community over profit would be necessary to achieve true human freedom and equality.

In a not so subtle seen here in the movie Longshot we have "Fred Flarsky" (Seth Rogan), an antistatus-quo media voice, ripping into a high class media conglomerate "Wembly" and then falling down the stairs. Although Rogan's character is right on cue, consistant with the Marxist gaze, he falls down the stairs right after and Wembly throughout the movie is left untouched throught the remainder of the film. On the one hand, pop culture texts can reveal hegemony by reflecting and reinforcing dominant cultural values and beliefs. For example, popular films and TV shows often reproduce gender, racial, or class stereotypes, or promote certain political or economic ideologies. By analyzing these texts and the ways in which they reflect and reinforce dominant cultural narratives, we can gain a deeper understanding of the power dynamics that shape our society. On the other hand, pop culture texts are also constrained by hegemony because they are produced and consumed within a capitalist system that prioritizes profit over social justice. This means that the production and distribution of cultural texts is often controlled by a small group of media corporations who are more interested in maximizing profits than in promoting diverse and inclusive representations. SO, as I asked before... How is it that popular media can constantly reinforce the need to challenge the staus-quo in popular media such as film which act as a guide to success for the working man, but the status-quo seems to be getting worse? Are the masses of people who populate our the true carries of the key to social equality or is the working class just holding on to dream that can never be achieved?