Steve Crook

I think you main trouble will be in trying to define "middle class". It's a very vague description.

But just looking at films since 1990, which I presume matches the "contemporary" requirement, what about ...
Finding Neverland (2004), Hallam Foe (2007), The Hours (2002), Land and Freedom (1995), Love Actually (2003), Mothers and Daughters (2004), Room to Let (2004), Secrets & Lies (1996), Vera Drake (2004)
to name but a few

Steve

Steve Crook

It depends if you keep the other 3 fingers flat against the palm or curl them up. In the latter case they're pointing off to the side. What significance does that have?

Steve

Everett Sloane

Sorry - by "contemporary", I meant films which attempt to reflect life in Britain at the time they were made, which I think rules out Finding Neverland and Vera Drake. Haven't seen all the others you mention, but in Hallam Foe the hero's middleclass family is portrayed as creepy and evil, while Love Actually (in my view) is just a ludicrous caricature.

Yes, that's perfectly true. I'm just thinking how rare it is, in a modern British film, to see a character like (say) the provincial doctor played by Roger Livesey in A Matter of Life and Death written and played sympathetically. There don't seem to be these parts any more, and presumably this is why actors like Tom Wilkinson end up doing American films so often.

Steve Crook

There aren't many films like A Matter of Life and Death being made now.
But there haven't been many films like that made at any time


What about Saving Grace (2000), Billy Elliot (2000) [not so much for Billy's family but Julie Walters and her family], Bend It Like Beckham (2002) [you don't get much more middle class British than a Sikh family ]

Steve

Aaryk Noctivagus

Be a pity if some of the reaction in the early part of this thread puts Nic off posting again...

Aaryk Noctivagus

How about 'Notes on a Scandal'... Teachers are classed as 'middle class' aren't they? I don't think the family in it are portrayed as creepy or caricatured, but as sympathetic victims of events (the husband and two children). OK, the older teacher living by herself is portrayed as a lonely and nasty piece of work... but then that is the part Judi Dench had to play for the story to work.

Everett Sloane

Yes, both good examples, thank you. I suppose Closer could also be added to the list ...

trelawnee

Aaaah, this is something I have been meaning to look into for yonks but have never gotten around to doing.

Apparently the Andy Hardy image of white, Protestant middle America was more or less an invention the Hollywood movie moguls who were largely Jews from the New York tenements.

I accept that this post has only a very tenious link with this thread but I thought I would make the point

TimR

Incredible. The mind boggles......

Pardon me while I lose consciousness for a minute.

*slumps and crashes head on to keyboard*

Steve Crook

You get used to him

Steve

TimR

*recovers consciousness, fortifies self with coffee...remembers "Oh, I'm at work"...checks forum with trepidation...*

Ah, thanks for the sane comment.

TimR

It is entirely different depending on where you are in the country: the east coast (both north and south) still has an aristocracy based on birth, education and breeding, but it is far less significant than it was 40 years ago. It does exist, however, and has played a very important role in US history. In places like the north coast of Boston, the main line in Philadelphia and (especially) Virginia and the Carolinas, the old hierarchy is still very powerful - and so is the old snobbishness.

In other cities, money and success play a major role; in boom cities, innovators and succesful professionals are the elite. California is like a different country. Texas is a country unto itself. In the pacific northwest there is almost no class difference.

Films from Britain are intriguing to me because the class differences are assumed in so many of the early films - prior to WWII - but do not seem as evident in recent films to an outsider. In comedies like "Blithe Spirit", Edith the maid is practically a non-person. The same is true in "Brief Encounter", where the tea shop owner is a comic figure and treated with condescension (affectionate, yes, but still condescension)

And it isn't just Noel Coward. The class differences in "The Happiest Days of Your Life"and all of the Ealing comedies are very obvious and fascinating to watch.

I had an interesting discussion with two friends - both from London - who differed sharply on this. One claimed that the whole class structure had vanished. The other argued vigorously that it was ridiculous to think it had even changed very much. Who to believe?

Steve Crook

Except the class based on money. Not just for the people that earned the money but for those that inherit it as well. The money buys a better education and healthcare so the children tend to do better than children from poor families.

And as for the "class structure" in American high schools...
It's little wonder so many of them go on rampages

It did change drastically during and after the war.

Nowadays, most people with a title are likely to be poor. They might have land and big houses but both those things eat money so they don't have much money to spend. And inherited titles and other accidents of birth aren't generally regarded with anywhere near as much automatic respect. The people have to earn respect as individuals.

It's hard to find anyone who is really "working class" or "upper class" by the old definitions. With the decline in manufacturing industry and the introduction of the welfare state and easier access to education and healthcare, we're all middle class now

But of course people being people will always create divisions, however artificial they are, the same as they do in any country.

Steve

AdrianTurner

About USA and the Third World. A few years ago, in 1999 in fact, we were driving from Denver up through Nebraska into South Dakota, aiming for Mount Rushmore, then Devil's Tower, then Glacier in Montana. Anyway, the border zone from Nebraska and South Dakota, in the Wounded Knee territory, really was like the Third World, and I've also driven around India and the Philippines etc. It was shocking and appalling to see that sort of poverty in the richest and most powerful nation on Earth. Then South Carolina into Georgia. In fact, all over, here there and everywhere. And maybe just like parts of the UK, too. Sub-prime.

TimR

Adrian:

I am well aware of the disparities in wealth that are evident in my country, and I am quite open and willing to acknowledge them and discuss them - as well as any of the numerous - and growing - faults and flaws that are a major part (but not all) of American life.

However, my understanding is that this is not a political forum and I am therefore at something of a disadvantage when it comes to addressing the comments that you have written here - especially the term at the very end.

These are exceptionally politically charged times - something I am not happy about, to put it mildly, but something that I am very aware of. I will just say that I hope further trips to the US will provide a more positive experience.

Tim