Nostalgic Resignation:Working‐ClassCharacters in Neoliberal Film

Abstract

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).