A Changing Definition of Class

“Classes are groups of people of similar economic and social position; people who, for that reason, may share political attitudes, lifestyles, consumption patterns, cultural interests and opportunities to get ahead.” This definition of the class is directly from our honors article this week and I feel gives a fairly good definition in an uncertain society that struggles to define class. One thing that I am glad the honors article mentioned this week, which I found there was a definite lack of during the movie which we watched all week, was that class is extremely complex and that middle class nowadays means nothing. Class is so confusing and complex because is changes literally on a daily basis in so many different ways that we may not even think have anything to do with class. Although the honors article did address the idea that class is changing, it focused way too much on figuring out issues of class by using the past and did not change with the class changes. However, it was in no comparison to as bad and biased as the movie was which depicted (in my opinion) the upper class as always a snotty and uninformed level of class that doesn’t know anything about the lower classes. I disagree with this for the most part but I am forced to agree that yes there are some people that are way up there in the upper class that they are truly uninformed of the people even right below them. I feel that although there are people like that, which are the only upper class people they showed, that most of the upper class is not like this and instead are much more in touch with the classes below them (obviously more in touch with the classes that are closer in level first and then less in touch as you move down each class level). Another thing with the movie that bothered me about the changing ways of social classes was that the school in Texas was continually related to BHS. I will agree that some things between the two are fairly similar such as maybe the education or area. However, Mrs. Castelli even told us a story of how her daughter thought that everyone at BHS was very the same in how they acted and dressed while the students at the school seemed very diverse and different. Finally what bothered me the most about the movie was how fake the people became with their statements and thoughts to obviously just be able to get on camera. I feel that at BHS students would be less likely to talk about some of the things they mentioned in the movie and definitely would be less likely to express false ideas on how we may think class works. All in all I enjoyed the movie and especially the article just because it gave me a better sense of the true division of classes within our country, even though it was a few years out of date it still gave an overall sense.