A Tale as Old as Time
"Everybody's got an angle," said Bing Crosby's character in White Christmas, the holiday classic movie. That phrase can be true on so many levels. Though the movie goes on to show that not everybody has an angle, that doesn't mean all people are like Bob Wallace. There is always an angle when watching a film or listening to music. The writers or directors are attempting to influence people's perspective of the social class system. Either they want you to think that the class system is not there or that it is very distinct. This neo-Marxist perspective also says that any story throughout history, in essence, has been about class distinction. I'm inclined to agree.
While looking back at various movies, commercials, and stories, they all can have the neo-Marxist perspective applied to them. I even went back to the oldest story discovered, Beowulf. Even that story shows that if we are subservient to the upper class eventually we will be given riches and royalty. A rags-to-riches story is nothing more than a lower-class person overcoming the obstacles of upper society and joining their ranks. There are promises of changing the system now that the main character is there but that is where the story ends. No changes are actually made and people still go through life, hoping to "get ahead" in life.
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| https://chaos-fiction.fandom.com/wiki/Beowulf |
Other types of stories go into other areas of this perspective. However, it appears to me that any story, no matter how old, will always give us inspiration to follow what society wants or attempt to fight against societal norms. Either way, we always get a good story to discuss with friends. What stories do you know from your childhood that have influenced you to act a certain way?
This module was really eye opening to me, because even when I think a story, video, or movie doesn't have an obvious stand-out message (or maybe it does), there are still ideologies being pushed in the background. Many of these ideologies are about pushing the social class system, like you mentioned. Some of the examples I thought about while reading your blog post were a few of the movies where an underprivileged kid makes their way into stardom or any huge goal they wanted that felt impossible to achieve in the beginning. Examples include "McFarland, USA," "The Blind Side," and "Stand and Deliver." While all of these movies have great overt messages to the general audience (i.e. "no matter how hard you have it, you can always push through it," "make something of yourself no matter the circumstances," or "believe in yourself"), after this module in Marxism and the different ways of reading texts and artifacts, I can't help but to think about how many of these movies are still trying to reach society's dominant ideologies: be rich, famous, become a mastermind, successful, follow the path of the majority, etc. It almost makes me think about questions while watching these movies: What's wrong with the way they live? Why do they have to become rich, successful, or famous? Why is that everyone's end goal? While the answer to these questions might be obvious (i.e. no one wants to live on scraps or not have enough money for basic necessities), it just intrigues me that even though the characters or stories are in a setting that is different from dominant ideologies in movies (like the Bill Cosby example in our module), there are still ideas being pushed that everyone needs to think and live a certain way. This realization makes me feel a little bit uneasy about some of the movies out there now, as I begin to think about how Marxism affects our world and what these dominant ideologies are. As a kid and someone who relates to these movies previously mentioned, I remember wanting to make a name for myself, while living through a "non-dominant lifestyle." I began to feel embarrassed for myself, my culture, and sad that I wasn't rich, famous, or living like Jeff Bezos. Why couldn't my life just be enough and I could be content? I felt that I had to achieve big things in my life to feel accomplished. I'm sure all of these things that the dominant people in society were achieving and what I thought I needed to do was a way of pushing social class for sure! Your post evoked a strong reflection point for me! Great job!
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