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Search - Class-Passing: Social Mobility In Film And Popular Culture

ClassPassing Social Mobility In Film And Popular Culture
Author: Gwendolyn Audrey Foster

Oprah Winfrey, Donald Trump, Roseanne Barr, and Britney Spears typify class-passers—those who claim different socioeconomic classes as their own—asserts Gwendolyn Audrey Foster in Class-Passing: Social Mobility in Film and Popular Culture. According to new rules of social standing in American popular culture, class is no longer ... more »defined by wealth, birth, or education. Instead, today’s notion of class reflects a socially constructed and regulated series of performed acts and gestures rooted in the cult of celebrity. In examining the quest for class mobility, Foster deftly traces class-passing through the landscape of popular films, reality television shows, advertisements, the Internet, and video games. She deconstructs the politics of celebrity, fashion, and conspicuous consumerism and analyzes class-passing as it relates to the American Dream, gender, and marriage. Class-Passing draws on dozens of examples from popular culture, from old movie classics and contemporary films to print ads and cyberspace, to illustrate how flagrant displays of wealth that were once unacceptable under the old rules of behavior are now flaunted by class-passing celebrities. From the construction worker in Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire? to the privileged socialites Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie of The Simple Life, Foster explores the fantasy of contact between the classes. She also refers to television class-passers from The Apprentice, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, and Survivor and notable class-passing achievers Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Martha Stewart. Class-Passing is a notable examination of the historical, social, and ideological shifts in expressions of class. The first serious book of its kind, Class-Passing is fresh, innovative, and invaluable for students and scholars of film, television, and popular culture. "Class-Passing is positively overflowing with ideas and insights, teeming with splendid observations of an original and challenging nature. Foster’s ability to link class with issues of race, gender, and the body is quite marvelous and convincing. Class-Passing is very much in the forefront of contemporary film and cultural studies, superior in every way." —David Desser, University of Illinois "At a time when studies of social class in media representation have taken a back seat to analyses of race and gender, Class Passing, in daring and original fashion, maps and elaborates on contradictions in performing social class via the media and popular culture. The book is commendable for the range of examples that illustrate continuities and changes in representations of social class as well as their relation to treatments of race and gender. Foster’s innovative analysis is not restricted to cinema but includes television, advertising, etiquette books, popular manuals, and video games, providing a broad field from which to assess the character and vicissitudes of class passing." —Marcia Landy, University of Pittsburgh

ISBN-13: 9780809326563
ISBN-10: 0809326566
Publication Date: 8/29/2005
Pages: 137
Rating:

0 stars, based on 0 rating

Publisher: Southern Illinois University Press
Book Type: Paperback
Members Wishing: 0
Reviews: Amazon | Write a Review

Genres:

Nonfiction >> Social Sciences >> Popular Culture
Nonfiction >> Social Sciences >> Sociology >> General
Nonfiction >> Social Sciences >> Communication & Media Studies
Humor & Entertainment >> Movies >> General
Humor & Entertainment >> Movies >> History & Criticism

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