By definition, a class is the system of ordering a society in which people are divided into sets based on perceived social or economic status. I personally believe that we should all live uniformly without problems statuses or stereotypes.Sad to say the perfect world that i create in my head does not exist and cannot exist. We are human, therefore we need to survive, and therefore money is important and so is being at the top. When we are born, we are automatically thrown into a social status full of stereotypes and then thrown again into an economic status full of even more stereotypes. We then live our lives trying to compete with everyone in this world.
This is where the artists of the world come into play. Part of their work revolves around their surroundings, their beliefs and influences. Social and economic status, whether they agree, disagree or both, is one of the topics that is portrayed by them. For example, Melissa Hillman, aka Bitter Gertrude, brought up Class division in theatre in one of her blogs. She wrote about the difficulty that play-writers of races, other than Caucasian, have in becoming successful. She brings up the problem that critics are only interested in popular and well know playwright as well as those who put in a lot of money into their production. She says that those who’s wish to be successful in theatre face two challenges. The first is “…the mythology of the importance of New york, a class based mythology that places New York above everything else.” And the second is the mythology of “money=importance.” She says and states the sad truth that if your not a play created in the heart of in new york and if your not a play has a lot of money in its budget, it wont succeed. This is sad and untrue because there are a lot of plays that are brilliant and beautifully written that are not in new york an have small budgets. David Rubenstien says, “The world is a complicated place, and there’s a lot of division between people. The performing arts tend to unify people in a way nothing else does.” He is correct, the world is complicated and divided but sadly preforming arts does not unify people. Apparently it is something meant for the wealthy and of “correct race,” both to create and watch.
Class division is something that is very hard to ignore. Movie artists also bring up the distinction between classes in their films. The most compared classes are the upper and lower classes. Stereotypically, the higher class is portrayed at the egotistical money hungry,greedy people. The middle class is the moral hardworking class, that have the blue collard jobs. And the lower class are like the untouchables, they resort to immorality to survive and must fend for themselves doing “bad” things. In Oliver stones film, Wall Street, He compares the middle class to the upper class. Bud Fox, the antagonist was born into a middle class family and desires to live the better life. His ambition leads him to follow in the footsteps of Gordon Gekko, a greedy “upperclass man” in wall street. From the beginning of the film, Stone sets us up with the idea that money is important the american dream is to have money and live in new york and that without it your a nobody. Bud fox says to his father carl, that in order to be somebody he has to live in new york. As bud acquires more wealth he moves to a new apartment with a view of the city and buys fancy suits and starts dating a “rich girl.” He slide into the wealthy life style because thats what wealthy people do, they just get more things because they can. Bud loses sight of his humble background and becomes more like Gekko, a stereotypical rich man. Oliver stone portrays what the general public thinks. Not everyone who is of the upper class is superficial and not everyone who is in the middle class is hardworking or morally perfect. However this is what Oliver stone captures about the view of the public.
In his film Taxi Driver, Scorcese focuses on the lower class but makes reference to the middle and upper class through the politicians and Betsy, as well as the stereotypes between black and white people. Travis Bickle, an honorably discharged Marine, takes a job as a taxi driver mainly in Brooklyn and Harlem. He watches porn films, writes in his journal about the scum of the streets and contemplates about his loneliness and boredom. He falls for a girl of the middle class, and their relationship is doomed from the start because they are of different classes. Bickle does things that she does not approve of but he sees as normal. Bickle also talks about the garbage that he sees on the streets. Prostitutes, pimps, and black people. He is uncomfortable with all of this but Scoroscece shows that it is what the lower class life is about.
