One of the things I have always hated about american christmas movies is that ALL of them are rich people. Like the most disturbingly rich people. Always presented as like the totally average normal american.
Even for British soaps, I often say to people “count how many people on the show are working class”. Because even on like Eastenders (probably the best of them all) the vast majority of the people on the show are small business owners. The only working class people are working in the factory or the hairdressers and there’s like 6 of them. Everyone else owns a pub, a shop, a salon, a factory, a taxi company, etc etc.
One of the things I have always hated about american christmas movies is that ALL of them are rich people. Like the most disturbingly rich people. Always presented as like the totally average normal american.
Not just Christmas movies but pretty much all family themed TV shows in America are set in mansion sized houses in the suburb of a major city while the parents hold middle class jobs.
it’s such an old trope that we’ve had shows subverting it for like 40+ years now, stuff like the simpsons, married with children, malcolm in the middle
And a lot of those shows subverting the trope have themselves ended up depicting an impossible standard of living for your average person in the US since they first aired, because of how much worse things have gotten.
Add the “Home Alone” movies and popular sitcom “Friends” to the list, the latter was even featured or mentioned in a video I saw on YouTube once on this exact subject. I remember watching these shows and others mentioned in this topic when younger while being raised in a single-parent apartment with a barely functional beater car, wondering when our telephone or electric service would be cut off next from overdue bills, or when we’d have to call the local food bank for emergency supplies again.
All In The Family, Married With Children, and especially Good Times. In Good Times, they just rented a shitty apartment and constantly worried about being destitute
this is intentional. the average person outside the imperial core is meant to get an extremely distorted image of american realities, leading credence to the local right wing claiming that prosperity can only be achieved by getting as capitalist as the americans. And given the history of the demise of many socialist and anti-imperialist states, it sadly seems to be working.
I don’t remember the exact statistic (97% maybe), but the great majority of Disney channel shows had rich families. Growing up ain latinamerica, I just supposed that was rhe way normal Americans lived. I think Malcolm in the middle was the first time I saw fiction with working class families, other that realities and documentaries with poverty sensationislm.
One of the things I have always hated about american christmas movies is that ALL of them are rich people. Like the most disturbingly rich people. Always presented as like the totally average normal american.
Even for British soaps, I often say to people “count how many people on the show are working class”. Because even on like Eastenders (probably the best of them all) the vast majority of the people on the show are small business owners. The only working class people are working in the factory or the hairdressers and there’s like 6 of them. Everyone else owns a pub, a shop, a salon, a factory, a taxi company, etc etc.
It distorts the view of average life.
Not just Christmas movies but pretty much all family themed TV shows in America are set in mansion sized houses in the suburb of a major city while the parents hold middle class jobs.
it’s such an old trope that we’ve had shows subverting it for like 40+ years now, stuff like the simpsons, married with children, malcolm in the middle
And a lot of those shows subverting the trope have themselves ended up depicting an impossible standard of living for your average person in the US since they first aired, because of how much worse things have gotten.
Add the “Home Alone” movies and popular sitcom “Friends” to the list, the latter was even featured or mentioned in a video I saw on YouTube once on this exact subject. I remember watching these shows and others mentioned in this topic when younger while being raised in a single-parent apartment with a barely functional beater car, wondering when our telephone or electric service would be cut off next from overdue bills, or when we’d have to call the local food bank for emergency supplies again.
Grimes seeing Homer’s house
Malcolm in the middle clears them all
All In The Family, Married With Children, and especially Good Times. In Good Times, they just rented a shitty apartment and constantly worried about being destitute
this is intentional. the average person outside the imperial core is meant to get an extremely distorted image of american realities, leading credence to the local right wing claiming that prosperity can only be achieved by getting as capitalist as the americans. And given the history of the demise of many socialist and anti-imperialist states, it sadly seems to be working.
I don’t remember the exact statistic (97% maybe), but the great majority of Disney channel shows had rich families. Growing up ain latinamerica, I just supposed that was rhe way normal Americans lived. I think Malcolm in the middle was the first time I saw fiction with working class families, other that realities and documentaries with poverty sensationislm.