Harry Kelber (1914-2013), In Memoriam

Buhle, Paul

doi:10.1177/1095796013500900

Cited by 1 publication

(2 citation statements)

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“…The debate has focused on the early years of the industry through its peak in the studio system (Broe 2009;Dennis 2019;Ross 2000) and rearrangements in the wake of McCarthyism (Dick 2016;McGilligan and Buhle 2012;Pontikes et al 2010). This Cold War campaign against the US labor-and Hollywood-left coincided with transformations in the narrative depiction of working-class subjects: from conditionally sympathetic in the 1930s and 1940s to a complex and ambivalent working-class antipathy in the 1960s and 1970s (Buhle 2001). While that campaign was never as successful as its advocates hoped, blacklists paved the way for the replacement of critical filmography by an ascendant liberalism that downplayed social antagonism (Bodnar 2006;Melamed 2011;Stead 2013).…”

Section: The Working Class and Subaltern Characters In Filmmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…What animates this study is not these objective changes per se nor the perception of them among subgroups but their ideological reflection in media, particularly US film. Despite scholarly attention to the political economy of neoliberalism (Brown 2015; Duggan 2004; Harvey 2005), to working‐class representation in media (Buhle 2001; Kendall 2011; Marcink 2011; Stead 2013) and the deployment of neoliberal ideology in film (Kapur and Wagner 2011; Mazierska and Kristensen 2017), little focus has been trained on working‐class depictions in neoliberal‐era films (Kotwas and Kubik 2022). How have such characters faired during this period of decline and transformation?…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Nostalgic Resignation:Working‐ClassCharacters in Neoliberal Film

Ikeler

Scannell

Charles³

et al. 2023

Sociological Forum

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This article interrogates the depiction of working‐class and subaltern characters in neoliberal US cinema. Deploying a Marxian class schema in a content analysis of 53 top‐grossing films released between 1980 and 2010, we find working‐class characters unexpectedly prominent. They appear in most films, lead in a plurality, and are far more often heroes than heavies. Yet the vast majority are white, male and US‐born while exhibiting near ubiquitous subordination to up‐class co‐leads, mainly professional‐managers. Most working‐class characters also die or exit their class by film's end, abdicating agency and leaving up‐class figures in charge. We argue this amounts to a metaframe of nostalgic resignation: a collective image mobilizing masculinity and Eurocentrism to justify a historic loss of working‐class power. In contrast to critical, disconnected or escapist models of mass media's relation to actual social inequality, we argue these findings support a reproductionist (Althusser 2014) or propagandist (Herman and Chomsky 2002) understanding of that dynamic enriched by Hall's “racially structured dominance” approach (1980).

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