Re: ripening contradictions?

[john gulick <jlgulick@xxxxxxx>]

Pen-L'ers,

On the topic of Michael Moore's conceptions and representations of
the U.S. working class, Michael Eisenscher says,

>Michael Moore frequently makes great sense, but his view of the "working
>class" is about as stereotyped as that of many off-the-wall leftists.  To
>listen to him, you'd think that the only real workers are "Joe 6-packs" who
>hang out at bowling allies, stock car races, monster tractor meets, and
>neighborhood bars.  News Flash: this is not 1952 and the working class and
>the world are just a tad more complex than his oversimplified images,
>however entertaining they may be.  While Mike is rubbing pot bellies with
>the good ol' boys at the tavern, there are a lot of working folks whose
>lives and interests are far more textured and interestings that he suggests,
>and they are not all white guys into arm-wrestling and beer guzzling.

Here in S.F. where I live, young white men who _look_ like Michael Moore's
stereotyped depicitions of the working class (bowling shirts, tattoos, into
car repair, etc.) are rarely themselves from a working-class background, hold
working-class jobs, or have any sense of working-class identity. More likely,
they derive from a middle-class background and already are members of or
are heading toward the technical-professional salariat, and are merely
"slumming" and riding the latest sardonic and demeaning capitalist culture
industry trend, "working-class kitsch," which itself derives from a stereotyped
depiction of "Joe Six-Pack." (Meanwhile these same folks who affect stereotyped
"white working class" styles of dress, mannerism, consumption tastes, etc.,
are pawns in the gentrification of real working-class Latino and black
neighborhoods). In these so-called "post-modern" times, the capitalist
culture industry has become so all-encompassing, savvy, and complex, one risks
wild inaccuracies if one deigns to connect a person's habits and consumption
preferences, and that person's "objective" class location. Corner taverns
formerly favored by working-class old timers are colonized by gentrifying
hipsters who find the gritty working-class milieux so "authentic," yet
don't know and don't care (and make even crack jokes) about its former
denizens. Meanwhile working-class folks flock to the chain family restaurants
and big box stores in the middle-class suburbs, the very places that the hip
twentysomething young adults who latch onto "working class kitsch" are trying
to escape. And so on.

John Gulick
Ph. D. Candidate
Sociology Graduate Program
University of California-Santa Cruz
(415) 643-8568
jlgulick@xxxxxxx